From Canadian MMA:

Dear CanadianMMA Fans,

The CBC is doing its first ever television segment on Mixed Martial Arts this Sunday, May 28th. It’s a 30 minute segment mainly profiling Georges St-Pierre and David Loiseau in their fights at UFC 58: USA vs Canada.

The latter portion of the segment will feature an interview with yours truly, Marco Antico, speaking about the impediments of legalizing MMA in Ontario and a rebuttal from the Ontario Athletic Commissioner, Ken Hayashi.

The news program will be part of CBC News Sunday. It will air in the morning at 10am and then repeat in the evening at 10pm. An extended 60 minute version is also planned for the summer time.

It is encouraging to see a highly respectable news agency such as the CBC do a feature on MMA and it was truly my pleasure to be involved with this project. Raising the public’s awareness on this issue is very important in achieving our ultimate goal. Therefore, please feel free to pass this information along to anyone you know who may be interested.

Sincerely,
Marco Antico
www.CanadianMMA.com

It’s been many months of anticipation for the much hyped about fight between Royce Gracie and Matt Hughes at UFC 60, and tonight, we’re going to find out who the better man is.

Personally, I don’t think Gracie stands much of a chance.

Matt Hughes is way too strong, is a more well-rounded fighter, and has more experience in MMA than Royce Gracie.

Hughes is a farm boy who hauls around haystacks all day long.  He could probably suplex a horse if he wanted to.

Royce looks malnourished.  If I didn’t know he was a fighter and saw him on TV, I probably would think that it was a show about starving people of a third world country, and I would be inclined to pull out my credit card to get ready to donate money to him for food.

Even though Gracie is coming into this fight billed as the “old man” and “MMA Legend”, if you compare their professional mixed martial arts record, you’ll see that Hughes has over twice as many fights as Gracie.

Chronologically, Royce is older, but based on fight experience, I would say Matt Hughes is over 2 times older than Gracie!

The caliber of fighters Matt Hughes has fought is much higher than the people Royce Gracie fought too.  The last few of wins for Hughes was against Joe Riggs, Frank Trigg and George St. Pierre.  As for Gracie, he beat Chad Rowan (AKA Akebono), Nobuhiko Takada, and Dan Severn (which happened in 1994 at UFC 4!).

For the fight itself, I think it’s going to end in one of 3 ways:

1.    Matt Hughes knocking Royce Gracie out on the feet in the first round
2.    Matt Hughes beating Royce Gracie to a pulp via ground and pound so his corner will throw in the towel, or
3.    Matt Hughes winning via unanimous decision over a long, drawn out and boring fight where Gracie’s only offence is holding onto Hughes in Gracie’s guard, and heel strikes to the kidneys.

Of course there’s always an outside chance for any underdog to win a fight, so Royce might pull out a fluke submission out of nowhere…but again, it’s an outside chance.

My money’s on “old man” Matt Hughes.

Here’s a good article that compares the dangers and violence between mixed martial arts, boxing and (American) football.

Football? Sounds crazy at first, but when you think about it, football is pretty violent.

I don’t know about you, but I would rather be in a position to defend against one person trying to punch, kick, take me down or submit me rather than defend myself against a group of guy’s the size of refrigerators all trying to tackle me.

Ultimate fighting no more violent than boxing, football

…Of course, some people who have seen the mixed martial arts might be  inclined to call it violent, and occasionally the sport lives up to  that description. In fact, it lives up to that description almost as  well as football or boxing. In boxing, concussions are commonplace. The  rules of boxing place a boxer in greater risk of a concussion than the  rules of mixed martial arts. Though boxing gloves are more padded than  mixed martial arts gloves, they are actually not designed to protect  the head; they are designed to let the fighters hit each other longer  without breaking their hands.

Also, a mixed martial arts fighter has fewer restrictions when it  comes to defending himself from punches. In boxing, when a fighter ties  up his opponent to defend himself, the referee steps in to break it up  so that the fighters can keep punching. A mixed martial arts fighter  can defend himself from punches by grappling his opponent to the  ground, locking up his opponent’s arms and attempting to subdue him  with a hold. These submission holds offer a fighter a way to win a  match without concussing the brain of his opponent.

And what  about football? How often do people see highlights of brutal hits? If  people are so against brutality in sports, why is Chicago Bears’  linebacker Brian Urlacher a hero? If a defensive end slipped around the  blocker and decked a quarterback who didn’t even see him coming, would  that be against the rules? No. It would be in the highlights on Sunday  night. If 11 men all tackled one guy at the same time, would it be  against the rules? No. If 12 men did it would be a  too-many-men-on-the-field penalty. Is that a 10-yard penalty, or 15?

The rest is here.

Imagine…Watching the UFC live inside the Skydome (now known as the Rogers Centre)…man, too awesome. Almost as awesome as Wrestlemania 6 at the Skydome with Ultimate Warrior vs. Hulk Hogan back in 1990.

Source: Ultimate Fighting Championship looks north of the border to hold card

(CP) – The Ultimate Fighting Championship has approached sanctioning bodies in Quebec and Alberta about staging its mixed martial arts cards in Canada, UFC officials said Monday.

“Montreal and Edmonton are very, very excited about having a show up there,” UFC vice-president Marc Ratner said in a conference call.

Ratner said the UFC had been looking for dates in both cities, but had been frustrated because of arena conflicts with hockey games.

“We’re working on that as we speak,” he added.

“We will come to Canada soon,” added UFC president Dana White.

Ratner is a former executive director of the Nevada State Athletic Commission who recently joined the UFC to help increase the number of states that sanction the sport.

Quebec and Alberta have both hosted mixed martial arts cards by smaller organizations: TKO in Quebec and King of the Cage in Alberta.

Ratner said he also plays to talk to Ontario about holding a card.

“I’d love to go to Toronto,” said White. “When we finally do make the move up to Canada, I’d probably hit all the major cities.”

Check out the rest here.

It’s true.  Tito Ortiz sports a halter top on episode 7 of the Ultimate Fighter.

Maybe he’s marketing a new line of ladies fashion for the UFC, but I’d rather see a halter top on the UFC ring girls (either Amber Miller or Rachelle Leah would do).

Proof below, along with some likely thoughts in the minds of Josh Haynes and Danny Abaddi when they saw Tito wearing this…lovely shirt.

 

And for those of you who don’t know, this is what a halter top should look like on a girl: