One of the best fights of the Pride OWGP 2006 in my opinion.

Josh Barnett vs. Antonio Rodrigo Noguiera was pretty close, but I think the knee bar attempt by Barnett at the closing seconds of  the fight secured the victory.

Josh Barnett vs. Antonio Rodrigo Noguiera Part 1

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Josh Barnett vs. Antonio Rodrigo Noguiera Part 2
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Somebody sure has a deathwish…

From Sherdog.com

“[Ortiz-Shamrock II] had a lot of buildup and a lot of hype and it ended in a minute,” White told Kevin Iole. “Nobody got to see the fight they paid to come to see, so we’re going to give it to them.”

I’ll be honest…I’d like to see Ken Shamrock win this one (he was one of my favorite fighters in the early days of UFC and Pancrase, and he was my favorite character in the video game Fire Pro Wrestling!), but I think he’ll get beat up once again (reminds me of Sak Vs. Silva…)

Chances are after this fight, he’ll be retiring.

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.

I just realized this while watching Pride: Total Elimination Absolute, after the fight between Josh Barnett and Aleksander Emelianenko.

I’m surprised I didn’t notice earlier with previous MMA fights, but isn’t it a little unhygienic for fighters to give high fives to fans after the fight?

For example, during the fight with Barnett and Aleksander Emelianenko, blood was spilled by both fighters, and chances are, some of that blood will end up on each other’s hands and MMA gloves.

Also, if you watch the end of the fight right the arm lock finisher, Barnett wipes the blood off of Aleksander Emelianenko’s mouth with his hands!  So there was blood on Barnett’s hands for sure.

As Josh Barnett was leaving the ring you could see him giving high fives to some of the fans.

Now, I could be wrong, and somehow, off camera, they somehow wash their hands right after the match in the ring.

But if they don’t, all that blood (along with probably a mix of both fighter’s sweat, saliva and boogers) can potentially get passed along to the crowd while fighters gives everyone high-5’s…and to take it even further, those fans can potentially pass the “yuckiness” to other people around then, and they could end up rubbing their eyes, putting their fingers in their mouth and getting some of it into their system.

I’m sure they do some sort of pre-fight blood testing to make sure fighters don’t have any STD’s or anything, but still, pretty nasty when you think about it.