Manchester native Jonno Mears recently stole the sporting headlines in his latest MMA outing by finishing a fight with a well-known wrestling move. With MMA being known more for its brutal one-punch finishes or choke-outs in the cage, the Englishman secured a stunning stoppage success in his last bout. 

Mears’ original opponent, Jay Moogan, had to withdraw from their scheduled fight, leaving the eventual winner with a stand-in foe by the name of Aaron Jones, whom he knew he’d have a better chance of overcoming. It was against Jones that Mears produced the first-ever Walls of Jericho, or Boston Crab, wrestling finishing move to actually earn a proper professional MMA victory and take his record to 2-0. 

Milan Chris Jericho.jpg by Andrea90 (CC BY-SA 3.0)

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Training Strongman recently announced that they will be hosting the Official Strongman Games in Raleigh, North Carolina. The event will take place at the Dorton Arena, and this year the majority of the spots will be given out in an online strongman competition. So, anybody with enough strength and basic equipment can take part.

The strongman news came earlier this month that there would be seven World’s Strongest divisions in this year’s games, along with a Giants Live qualifier, which offers a tour spot. The men’s divisions include the under 80kg, under 90kg, and under 105kg, while the women’s divisions are the under 64kg and under 82kg. The Giants Live is an open men’s competition.

The structure of the 2017 Official Strongman Games marks a major step forward for the inclusiveness of the sport. This will be the first time that all the weight divisions, as well as the men and women’s titles, will have contests on the same weekend at the same event.

The format serves lower weights well, and a couple of the competitions are open to those who wouldn’t usually consider it. Tennis superstar Andy Murray, for example, who currently has 4/1 odds on BetStars of winning the U.S. Open, has a pretty intense strength training regime. Could we see a rise of athletes who usually focus on other sports coming to the forefront of lighter divisions?

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Oh My God! It happened again! Only a few short weeks after Mousasi kneed Weidman into a baffling and controversial TKO win by apparently legal knees, after the bout was stopped because the referee thought the knees were illegal (what?), and after Miragliotta took all the heat for his apparent mistake, and all the discussion surrounding the use of instant replays and referee polling, it happened again.  This time with the consensus one of the best referees in the business, Herb Dean. There was nothing different between the two incidents. Nothing. Except that this time it was worse. Much much worse.

Let’s take it from the top. First of all, we should remember that the new unified rules of MMA have not been adopted everywhere, which is a big part of the reason this confusion is taking place. In New York, where Weidman and Mousasi fought, the new rules had been adopted, which means that a fighter is only considered ‘downed opponent’ when both his hands (and feet) are on the ground.  In Texas, where Alvarez and Poirier have just fought, the new rules had not been adopted, which means that one hand on the ground is enough to consider a fighter “downed”, and therefore illegal for his head to kneed at.

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In a recent post, I was rather dismissive of Vitor Belfort’s League of Legends: a special league that he proposed the UFC to create, where older Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) fighters past their physical prime can face each other under a modified rule set. While Belfort’s idea is not likely to ever come to fruition, the fact remains that as long as there are aging fighters who are still willing to step in the cage and fans who still want to see them compete, these fighters will continue to fight – despite the fact that accumulating additional traumatic brain injury is very detrimental to their future health.

When the UFC was owned by Zuffa and Dana White wielded much greater power in the company than he does under the current WME-IMG ownership, there were a few select fighters who were offered an executive position with the UFC, essentially as a way to force them to retire from active competition while at the same time preventing them from lending their name value to a rival promotion. To my knowledge, only four fighters have been offered this deal: former UFC champions Chuck Liddell, Matt Hughes, Forrest Griffin, and Antonio ‘Big Nog’ Nogueira. When the UFC was sold, Hughes and Liddell were soon released from their jobs in a cost-cutting measure. Griffin and Nogueira remained on board (rumor has it that these two actually took their new jobs seriously, whereas Liddell and Hughes did not do much to earn their paycheck besides an occassional promotional appearance). It’s clear that WME-IMG has no intentions of paying former fighters a lucrative salary to prevent them from fighting. Just a few months after Matt Hughes’ UFC executive job has been terminated, he is already talking about potentially returning to MMA competition. There are talks of a Hughes vs Royce Gracie rematch taking place in Bellator, while another UFC veteran Mike Swick is campaigning to be the one to welcome Matt back to the combat arena.

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We’ve recently published an article related to the weight cutting issues in MMA, which have become a lot common since the introduction of the early weigh-in and the ban on intravenous (IV) re-hydration. I don’t want to continue beating a dead horse (where’s the referee to stop this beating?), but this issue deserves additional discussion in the light of the current MMA climate.  Fighters missing weight (or suffering health issues during the weight cut process which are severe enough to cancel the fight altogether) happens so often these days, that fans should be able to use the price per head sportsbook for placing bets on which fights will be cancelled in the 24 hours before the event. The regulatory bodies involved with the sport are well aware of these issues, and Andy Foster – executive officer of the California State Athletic Commission (CSAC) – recently proposed a set of changes to address extreme weight cutting in MMA.

Foster’s proposal includes 10 key points, and I am not going to go over each one individually – you can read them all here, under “Agenda Item #15”. Most of the proposed points make sense, are feasible to implement without undue burden on promoters or fighters, and might actually make the sport safer for its participants, as well as reduce the number of disappointing last-minute fight cancellations. Whether these rules will actually be implemented is anybody’s guess, and the fact that some fighters will still find a way to bend or break the rules in attempt to gain a competitive advantage (even at the risk of their own health) is pretty much a given. Overall this seems like a very solid plan, which is unusual for something produced by a state athletic commission. However there are two points that I do want to address specifically, as they seem to be the biggest gaps in the otherwise well-thought out design:

• Additional weight classes. 165, 175, 195, 225 with the removal of 170. This places each weight class below 205 at 10 pound increments. Along with licensing by weight class and ringside physician certification, the new weight classes· are essential so that each individual athlete has more options to choose a class that is suitable for them. (Authority-Association of Boxing Commissions) – Please see attached letter from the ABC Rules Committee and letter to the ABC Medical Committee

The proposal states nothing about 155 or below, heavyweights, or women’s weight divisions – so I am assuming these will be left intact. If the leading MMA promotions as well as state and international commissions all decide to adopt the new weight classes, this will lead to a major redistribution of talent. Lightweight, welterweight, and even middleweight as of late, are some of the deepest divisions in the sport, and have the talent pool to support the redistribution of fighters who currently perform between 155 and 185 lbs into five viable divisions spanning from 155 to 195. For light-heavyweight and heavyweight divisions, however, this doesn’t look promising.

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