UFC 84: Squiggly Worms

I’m going to do a writeup of the gut-bustingly spectacular UFC 84 just as soon as I get a chance to watch it again slowly and headbutt a quiche, which is usually what I do to get myself pumped.

Rest assured though, I will be pointing out the following things to you in hilarious fashion:

– Machida’s christening Ortiz as “Cheeto”

– Goldy calling Wanderlei Silva “The Ice Man”

– Urijah Faber looking like a vacuum-packed skull…

and much more!

TUF Shit, series 7 episode 8.19b banana

TUF productions are pulling out all the stops with this season and have completely revamped the intro again.

Fade up from black to pink as a guitar wails hard. Some tinkly piano music can be heard as well as the sound of a tin of beans being slopped on an old bed. Suddenly “Livin’ on a Prayer” starts chunking out of your speakers HARD and there is a closeup of a foot with a cowboy boot tapping to the rythm. Zoom out to reveal Dana White in a cowboy outfit and a stars and stripes ten gallon hat. He has a large red white and blue saxaphone in his arms. Cut to a close up of his face. He winks twice then begins rocking out HARD on the sax. Suddenly the screen explodes and you see Rampage Jackson driving a hummer over the ocean. Water sprays up behind him. Zoom in on his face and he smiles and you see his teeth are gold. The words “Coach Quinton Rampage Jackson” slam and fizzle onto the screen in big purple letters.

Wipe to Forrest Griffin swinging from tree to tree like Tarzan. He is wearing a bear skin. Zoom in on his face and he smiles and you can see his teeth are just made from normal teeth. “Coach Forrest Griffin” dribbles onto  the screen with a fizzling noise. Bon Jovi appears on the screen and high-fives Griffin.

Random montage of whales splashing through the ocean, submarines crashing into each other and exploding, a monkey stuffing onions in a blender, a tank rolling over a supermarket, two helicopters firing missiles at a donkey which explodes, and a man in suspenders eating a cigar.

THE ULTIMATE FIGHTER writes itself onto the screen as if being sprayed on with aerosol. Fade down to black.

A recap of last week’s fights are shown. Cale Yarborough defeated Patrick Schultz by snapping off the Bostonians frosted hair and stabbing him in the eyes with it. Referee Steve Mazaggatti’s moustache had become aroused during the bout and swelled to five times its normal size, obscuring the pint-sized official’s vision, thus allowing the young fighter to get away with the flagrant bending of the rules.

Griffin and Rampage, no doubt spurred on by panicking producers, get really pumped and start yelling and breaking stuff. Like a bunch of college students whose drinks have been spiked with Viagra, everybody walks around being really pumped and not really knowing why or who to punch. The coaches decide to settle their differences with a game of hide and seek but unfortunately Rampage has to pull out halfway through when he steps on a banana skin, slips up, somersaults in the air and lands on a home barbecue set covered in delicious marinade.

Back at the house, a sunglass wearing competition is in full effect. The game remains tied for a few hours with participants frantically wearing the sunglasses as hard as they can. Eventually the game is abandoned as no winner can be decided but everyone agrees Jesse is the loser because he dipped his glasses in ketchup and ate them with a confused look on his face.

Dana White arrives in a private jet which lands on the roof of the TUF house, crushing the east wing and slaughtering a cast member known only as Bill, but he was quiet and had not received any air time yet so it’s all cool. Dana White backflips from the cockpit and fires a machine gun into the air. He produces a megaphone and simply yells “Fuck” really loud a few times. In the ensuing silence, somebody from the cast yells “WARRIOR” and everybody cheers.

A helicopter appears out of nowhere. David Letterman wearing nothing but a tattered pair of overalls and a baseball hat abseils down and grabs Dana White around the waist then the two of them fly off into the sunset.

Fade to sparkling green as “Take my Breath Away” begins playing.

What the fuck is up with UFC 85?!

Just read that Evans will be out of the event altogether. Surely this makes it the most botched card in history?

Shogun vs. Liddell was originally the main event. Then Shogun’s knee explodes so he is out.

Evans steps in to replace Shogun and face Chuck.

Then, Chuck pulls out due to his hamstring crumbling away and his leg beginning to resemble that of an aging stripper.

James Irvin comes in to replace Chuck, to face Evans.

Now James Irvin has pulled out due to a foot injury leaving Rashad holding his balls, thus the UFC scrapped the fight, fearing that if they replaced any more replacement replacement fighters with replacements then they’d have to change the subtitle of the event to UFC 85: THE REPLACEMENTS.

Just so that’s clear:

Shogun vs. Liddell. Shoguns pulls out. Evans vs. Liddell. Liddell pulls out. Irvin vs. Evans. Irvin pulls out. Evans pulls out.

The resulting fight would have been so far away from the super ultra mega bout that Liddell vs. Shogun was going to be, it would have been RI-DICULOUS.

Leben also had to pull out of his fight with Michael Bisping because of some old drunk driving conviction giving him hassle.

RI-DIC!

World MMA Awards

Headed up by Martial Farts commentator (important title, that) Hywel Teague, Fighters Only Magazine is pretty much the coolest MMA magazine I’ve ever read. And I’m not just saying that because they have published two of my articles.

They have organised something that every MMA fan should check out…

The World MMA Awards.

In their words:

Fighters Only announce first World MMA Awards

Fighters Only, The UK’s Only Mixed Martial Arts and Lifestyle Magazine, is proud to announce plans for the first World Mixed Martial Arts Awards.

In a move that reflects the development and growth of the Sport and the Magazine, Fighters Only will organise and host an event that acknowledges outstanding achievements and efforts in MMA worldwide. Fighters, promoters and industry individuals will be eligible to win in a variety of categories that reflect their accomplishments in the sport.

The first World MMA Awards will be held in December 2008 with winners being nominated and chosen by fans throughout the year online. Using state of the art software Fighters Only will accept open nominations from May 2008 and the top 5 nominations in each category will be short listed for fans to choose from when nominations end on 31^st July 2008. Fans who nominated will then be asked to vote for their winner from the shortlist.

Fighters Only Managing Director Rob Hewitt:

“The last 12 months have seen huge developments in MMA on a global level. We feel that now is the right time to launch an annual award ceremony which focuses on all that is great in this sport. Fighters Only have been innovators in terms of the feature and coverage that we provide to our readers, traditionally in our magazine and now on our website, and it is only natural that we should continue to blaze a trail by organising what is another first in the industry.”

“MMA fans are the best in the world and we feel that these Awards will give those fans a voice in the industry by allowing them to directly show their appreciation for the men and women who make this sport the best in the world.”

The World Mixed Martial Arts Awards website can be found at:

http://www.onlineawards.co.uk/fightersonly/home.asp

For further information contact:

Jim Burman

(+44) 7970 868333

Jb.i2media@gmail.com

Fighters Only Website:

www.fightersonlymag.com

Now that’s something I can get behind.

Get out there and vote, snotfaces…

The Ultimate Fighter Intro: Redux

With an unexpected afternoon off work and a new musical discovery (Dead Can Dance), I boshed together my own take on the TUF intro.

It is nothing special, I did no fancy editing, I just wanted to give it a different flavour. I tried to do it “Pride style” if you will, with the “epic, earth-shattering consequences” feeling that Sato Daisuke somehow managed to capture in all his videos.

Enjoy!

Tell me what you think. Would you like a TUF that was presented in a more dramatic way, or does it not fit? Do you prefer the nu-metal soundtrack, the locker-room samurai feel?

TUF Shit… Series 7, episode 1,00,6,4999.1b

In a radical change of pace for the series, the show opens with a montage. First, the screen is black. Hard rock musics plays hard, most likely Aerosmith. A bald eagle smashes through the screen sending shards of glass into your eyes. The image explodes to reveal Dana White wearing a stars and stripes unitard with a flying-V guitar in his hand. The camera zooms in on his face and he winks, then his mouth moves with Big John McCarthy’s voice overdubbed yelling “Let’s get it on!”

Octagon girls start can-canning across the screen and Dana White shoots them all with a machine gun. A quick fade to black then back up to show some fights. Fists slam into noses. Elbows crush windpipes. Shin-bones mangle neck-bones. A guitar wails HARD. Heels crumple stomachs. All the while there will be rapid cuts of Dana White in a giant throne made out of the bones of TUF washouts, completely naked, cackling maniacally and stroking Tito Ortiz’s monstrous head. (Tito is on a leash at his feet.)

A shot of Forrest Griffin yelling so hard his windpipe flies out of his nostrils, and Rampage reading a book (“How to talk like black folk”), then two TUF idiots headbutting each other. A dinosaur foot stomps on the screen with a farting noise and then lifts up to reveal THE ULTIMATE FIGHTER branded onto a cow’s arse.

There is a brief recap of last week’s fight, which ended somewhat surprisingly with Matt Brown ripping out Jeremy May’s entrails and force-feeding them to the judges at ringside with a strangely reassuring voice. Back at the house, all hell is breaking loose as the producers of the show have decided to periodically release noxious and deadly gas into certain rooms of the house. A few cast members die but they have received no air-time and nobody knew they were there anyway, plus they quit their jobs and left their girlfriends so nobody is going to miss them.

Meanwhile, in the pool outside, Grody O’Brady has decided to get completely shitfaced. He drinks so much neat vodka that he hallucinates, imagining the pool is a pit of bubbling lava and he can’t escape. The camera zooms in on his drunken face as he squeals “I’m melting I’m melting heeeeeeeelp me!” Johnny Martinz hears the screams from inside the house and runs outside but trips up on one of the camera cables and ends up impaling himself on a rake.

Dana White arrives on a personal jetpack, melting the toes off the crowd of fighters that has gathered in the garden.

“Fucking shit, assholes. What the fuck is going on here? Do you want to be a fucking fighter or should I shove this jetpack up your asses and fry your pancreases? Huh? Fucking shit fucks. Christ. I don’t need this shit. Me and Lorenzo are supposed to be having a fucking champagne bubble bath in Urijah Faber’s face-ass crevice in three minutes, and I gotta deal with this shit.” Then he flicks the switch on the jetpack and flies away into the night.

The producers release a troupe of rabid kangaroos into the house just as a stage emerges from a secret compartment revealing Alice Cooper and the London Philharmonic Orchestra, who begin rocking out hard. Some quick cuts of the kangaroos stalking their prey in the house, a random shot of an egg frying, then the credits roll.

That’s a rap!

TUF Shit Episode 6

The episode opens with a cat being flayed alive and nailed to a wall. No, wait, sorry. That didn’t happen.

The guys in the car on the way back from the fight pick make some actually rather amusing gags about Matt Brown.

Then the show is in danger of showing too much normal activity and interesting dialogue from the fighters so that scene quickly switches to muscled, tattooed guys with their caps on backwards knocking back shots of liquor. Phew!

After every shot the boys say “woo” and look around at each other, pleased as little kids who have just laid a turd on the kitchen floor and are waiting for their mums to come home and see it. Tim Credeur breaks the unwritten rule by talking to the camera man. They let it slip this time because he is badmouthing some idiot but I know that Dana White later inserted a screwdriver into Tim’s rectum while whispering “Will you ever speak to the cameraman again big man?” in his ear.

Jeremy May makes out that he was only pretending to be doing shots and was really doing water, but I don’t believe him because his face is so disgusting greasy and his eyelids so puffy that he has to be hungover.

Jeremy May says that “in a good Christian way, he is going to beat his (Matt Brown’s) face in.” If there’s anything I like more than an annoying twat, it’s an annoying religious twat. He claims to be training Jeremy Jitsu. I can’t even begin to describe how lame this is.

Lots of shots of Matt Brown looking moody and be-goateed. He says some things about prison and drugs and alcohol. He doesn’t say “warrior” which is strange, but I commend him for resisting the urge.

The Excite-O-Pumpometer vagely flickers between “Huh? What?” and “Ooh I found a toenail” as Matt Brown and Jeremy May do the weird posing-for-non-existant-photographs thing.

Jeremy May says that he has been faking a knee injury because he has to do “what works for him.” So what works for him is not training hard for a fight? This Jeremy Jitsu is sounding shittier by the second.

The fight starts and Jeremy May throws punches so wide that I think he brushed the gums of the audience with them. I’m waiting for Brown to unleash the kind of attack that will have May’s grandchildren pre-emptively retroactively crapping in their pants in the future. It doesn’t come.

I feel Forrest’s frustration as he yells “RELEASE THE ANIMAL ALREADY BROWN!” again and again, so loud that he loses his voice. I mean, Brown was made out to be some kind of dangerous killing machine that could flip out at any moment and start tearing people’s ears off at the breakfast table, but in the fight he looks about as aggressive as a neutered koala. Who is asleep.

Jeremy May shows the most advanced technique of Jeremy Jitsu, called “gasping for air and flailing around”, but luckily Brown is able to capitalise on it and counter by kicking him in the face.

There is another fight between two people that I didn’t even realise were on the show until now. Way to go, idiot editors.

They have a pretty good fight and exchange a whole bunch of headbutts. The handsome guy wins one for team Rampage, which has Rampage happier than a pig in shit.

Fade to black with the SAME FUCKING MUSIC AGAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAIN.

PS Here is last week’s wrapup. Show me some comment love assfaces!