I needed a couple days away from MMA. This sport, with the personalities we deal with, and I only meekly include myself with fighters, trainers, businessmen and officials here, can be taxing sometimes. I’m not talking about anyone in particular, or anybody negatively. The fight game is by default a very alpha dominated pissing contest, and everybody needs to take a day off to cleanse the mechanism and wipe the slate before getting back into the dog fight of week in/week out mixed martial arts. So that’s what Sunday and Monday were. I needed to take a step back and take a deep breath, because I saw myself getting very burned out on the sport very quickly.
But fortunately, nothing too terribly exciting happened the last two days. At least nothing I’m aware of, so I bring you this as a gift of thanks for being able to reenter your internet consciousness. Paul Heyman continues to tease the MMA world. Continue Reading
According to Matrix matchmaker Sam Caplan and promoter Jimmy Binns Jr, Julio Rosario and Brylan Van ArtsDalen will square off in the main event of their third Matrix show. Van ArtsDalen, representing the US Army and Daddis Fight Camps comes in with Matrix and Bellator experience. Rosario, a US Marine and 3 tour Iraqi War veteran fighting under the Semper Fi MMA flag, can use this fight to announce his presence on a bigger stage. Continue Reading
Yes, I was not a fan of the matchmaking of the last M-1 Global show in Atlantic City. Paul Andres (Raging Wolf) took over the book for the second show of the tournament series in June. That show featured 7 first round stops in 8 fights with 7 T/KO’s. Saturday night’s event, the tournament semi-finals, was much more inline with the type of quality that Raging Wolf fans have come to expect from the high-energy Anders. There were a couple outstanding fights on the 10 bout card with a couple decisions, a couple submissions, a couple knockouts and one walk-over. Overall, the quality was much improved, and has set up some very interesting matches for the September 18th Finals event at Bally’s on the AC Boardwalk. Continue Reading
If you’ve followed Mid-Atlantic MMA since last year (and God bless you, if you have), you may have noticed that events come in waves. Part of the “How to Not Lose Your Ass as a Promoter” eBook involves booking your shows about every 8 to 10 weeks. Any closer together and your don’t give yourself enough time to build the event. Any farther apart and you lose your fanbase’s extremely short attention span. And for some reason, promoters all want to book shows in the same month, so we’ll get very active months with every organization running a show, and then we’ll get months like July, where it seems like nobody wants to run a show.
That is with two distinct exceptions. We’ll start about two weeks from now up in North Jersey, which has suddenly become a hot spot for shows, with organizations like UCC, KAP and the entry-level amateur show, Evolution AMMA. To take another page out of the “How to Not Lose Your Ass” hand guide, I want to point out that MMA.tv has the event, with bout sheet listed, while Evolution’s own website has no mention of any event after the March date. So its very possible that this event won’t happen. Lesson to promoters: Make sure you maintain an accurate and up to date web presence, this includes your website, your event schedule on the site, and your Facebook and Twitter accounts. Continue Reading
More than a belt was at stake when Virginia’s Joel Wyatt faced New York’s Randy Smith in Locked in the Cage 4 for the promotion’s new Heavyweight Championship. The main event was a chance for Wyatt to prove that his Matrix 1 loss to Brock Lesnar training partner Cole Konrad was an aberration, while Randy Smith had an opportunity to prove himself a true heavyweight prospect.
Wyatt lost his fight to Konrad after a strike from mount closed his right eye. Joel still contends the damage was done with an eye poke, but Konrad kept the win, and immediately following the fight was announced as the newest signing to Bellator Fighting Championships. Wyatt went back to Virginia to recover and continued to work on his game under the tutelage of MMA Institute’s Rick McCoy.
Randy Smith has banged around the Northeast fight scene for several years, putting together a string of wins on the backs of mediocre opponents. Inflating his record to 15-6 against foes like Michael Oldson, a 1-0 from Virginia who hadn’t competed in two years. In Wyatt, Smith had an opponent who had a winning record for the first time in 6 fights. Defeating Joel Wyatt would lend a modicum of credibility to the quickly fading reputation of CNYMMA’s top heavyweight. Continue Reading
If you’ve followed Mid-Atlantic MMA since last year (and God bless you, if you have), you may have noticed that events come in waves. Part of the “How to Not Lose Your Ass as a Promoter” eBook involves booking your shows about every 8 to 10 weeks. Any closer together and your don’t give yourself enough time to build the event. Any farther apart and you lose your fanbase’s extremely short attention span. And for some reason, promoters all want to book shows in the same month, so we’ll get very active months with every organization running a show, and then we’ll get months like July, where it seems like nobody wants to run a show.
