Best of the best?

After Saturday's amazing UFC card I realized something as Shogun Rua knocked Lyoto Machida out to become the new Light Heavyweight champion. I was truly watching the two best light heavyweights in the world compete to prove who was the best. Shogun proved to be the superior fighter but as I watched the belt wrapped around his waist I realized that this is possibly the only division that the absolute best were facing one another.

Looking at the title picture in other divisions there are dominate champions and decent challengers but nothing like Saturday's main event. I don't think there is another middleweight fighter that is as good as Anderson Silva, that doesn't mean he cannot lose there just isn't another fighter who you can look at and compare with Anderson. Even though Frankie Edgar just outpointed BJ Penn for an upset victory, I still think BJ is the number one lightweight fighter in the world. Brock Lesnar still has several challengers to tackle before I consider him the best. Then there is the welterweight king Georges St. Pierre, who hasn't fought someone who was a "world class" level welterweight since his second fight with Matt Hughes.

Other MMA promotions have their own champions but sadly no matter what, UFC will be the proving ground to prove you are the best in your division. Champions like Nick Diaz and Gilbert Melendez have destroyed their opponents but havent been truly tested by tough competitors as most fight in UFC. So what does the future hold? How long do we have to wait before another top of the food chain contest? I say the future holds a few options.

First and foremost Brock gets Shane Carwin, winner of that gets Cain Velazquez. That fight will prove who is the top in UFC, the winner from that could face Fedor to prove who is the most dominate heavyweight on the planet. As for Anderson Silva, a fight with Gegard Mousassi at 185 could be a good test, but I would rather see Anderson vacate his title and move to challenge Shogun at 205 for the belt, now that is a fight. With GSP there are a few of options, one that is closer to happening than the others. First Jake Shields will no doubt be signed by UFC and drop back down to 170 to make a run for the belt. With his wrestling and jiu jitsu he presents quite a threat if "Rush" takes him down, but has a few holes in his standup but none the less makes a compelling challenge. The other choice would be for Nick Diaz to crossover from Strikeforce for a shot. His standup and ground game make him a threat, but he has always struggled against decent wrestlers. The last would involve Yoshihiro Akiyama cutting to 170 to try for a title shot, one that I doubt would happen considering he is a fairly good fighter at 185 .Outside of these options I think Georges should move to middleweight and make a run for the belt. As for BJ Penn he gets a rematch with Edgar who I feel would be better suited to drop to 145 and challenge Jose Aldo for his featherweight belt. BJ's options at lightweight would be Eddie Alvarez or Gil Melendez.

Alot of this is wishful thinking yet I feel that these fights have a good chance of happening in the next few years.

And here we go.....

Ladies and gentlemen.....We.....Are......LIVE!!!!! Introducing first; Blogging out of the red corner, this man is a Brazilian jiu jitsu fighter with a record of....Ok now that i've gotten the fun part out of the way. It is true, we are live. I've been kicking the idea around for a few months now about blogging about something that almost completely dominates my life, the sport of Mixed Martial Arts. After much consideration I finally decided to jump in and give it a go by doing what tons of other jackasses do on a daily basis, put my thoughts and views on the interwebs. Although instead of rambling on about conspiracy theories and UFO landings I figured I would do something that meant a little bit more and I knew a little about so I went with MMA. I suppose since this is the first blog I should start with my first brush with the sport. I remember when I was about four or five years old standing in my grandparent's living room watching Bruce Lee in Enter the Dragon and it completely changed my young life. He was easily the badest dude on the planet, next to Hulk Hogan and my Papa. Watching him dispatch an army of bad guys with nunchuks and side kicks crying "Wacha!" with every motion I thought it was the coolest thing ever. I had to learn the ancients secrets of ass-kickery (new word) so when I grew to the ripe age of ten or eleven I begged my grandparents to sign me up for martial arts. The result? I went a handful of times, got a bad ass black gi and generally had little to no intrest in the art of Kenpo karate. Something just didn't feel right about the class, it may have been because I would have rather spent my time playing video games or watching movies with my uncle, but it was different than that. I would show up to class, hit the heavy and what the "sensei" referred to as the "headache bag" and feel like a king, after a few minutes of instruction a chop here a kick there we were able to do my favorite part of class; sparring. We would throw on these thick plastic and rubber coated pads on our hands and feet and begin to prepare our bodies for combat well sort of. I would partner with a guy about my age and height and we always started off slow pawing at each other awkwardly until we got the guts to really throw a punch. It was in this moment I realized that aside from Bruce Lee, most martial artists were thinking wrong. The kid threw a body kick at me and I caught the kick and blasted him in the chin while pulling on his leg, I did this quite a few times in a row until the sensei ran over and admonished me saying that I couldn't use that technique because it was not the "kenpo way". In all fairness he was right, it was not the kenpo way but it was damn sure effective. After this I didn't feel like going to class much after that, martial arts simply were not the cool shit I saw on TV. Of course I fell out of a desk at school a few days later and jacked up my elbow which prevented me from doing anything anyway but when I healed I was ready to give it one more go. My first class back the sensei was demonstrating a maneuver that had no counter. When I asked him what if the opponent would move this way or that he chuckled and responded "Why don't you try it?". Now to be fair I probably came off sounding like a smart ass and who was he to be disrespected by a 110 pound eleven year old, but I don't think it makes you a good teacher when you utilize a throw slamming the kid on the ground who recently returned to your class after recovering from a arm injury. Not the kenpo way indeed. Well suffice to say I was in severe pain and extremely embarrassed and never attended another class again. Martial arts suffered dramatically in my eyes. Why was it ok for the sensei to use something that wasn't the way but was effective and the students could not? Probably because he just wanted to put the little smart ass in his place but at the age that is the question I asked myself. Since martial arts became a joke in my eyes I turned to something that seemed just as awesome, pro wrestling. I wanted to be a pro wrestler in the worst way, but seeing as I had the body density of a gold fish I always looked up to wrestlers who were more technical or submission savvy. Guys like Kurt Angle were my heroes and I thought that one day I too could win the WWE title with a broken freakin' neck. All I had to do was drink my milk and work on my promo skills. Suffice to say I did just that and for many years I dreamed of when I would grace the big stage having the crowd go nuts when I hit my top rope moonsault. Then in my junior year in high school something very interesting happened. A friend of mine called me and asked me if I wanted to do some martial arts training with him, so I figured this was a great way to expand my extensive backyard wrestling repertoire which consisted of Kurt Angle ripoff moves. I agreed and we traveled to the guys house where he had a spare room that doubled as a gym. I say gym to be nice, it was really a room in progress with no carpet and a heavy bag in the corner, but this was our dojo. When I asked what mysterious deadly art we we're about to learn the answer surprised me. Mixed martial arts. The hell did that mean? I could understand if we did five animal uber death strike kung fu, but this was strange to me. How does one mix martial arts? Very well apparently as our teacher Rob started off by explaining the history of what we were going to learn. He said it was a mix of kickboxing, wrestling, and submissions and I had probably seen it on TV. I had not, but I figured if it sounded a lot like pro wrestling it would work for me. We started off simple, a little bit of basic boxing and a few kicks to the bag and I felt better than I did with kenpo. After a few trips to the "dojo" I asked Rob about the submission end seeing as that was what I admired most in wrestling. Watching Kurt get that crazy look in his eye and try and rip the guys foot off with an ankle lock was one of my favorite parts of the show. What Rob showed us was not too different than what I had seen. He went over basic stuff, the armbar, the rear naked choke. Seeing as he was a big pro wrestling fan himself he knew I had a general understanding of how to make these look cool, not actually make them work. When we finished our session Rob said if I wanted to work on anything when I got home turn to Spike TV and watch some of the UFC shows. I didn't think much of this as I hadn't watched Spike since WWE left but I flipped through the channels and found an episode of Unleashed. Instantly I was blown away at what I saw. These guys were amazing. It was like being a kid again and watching Bruce Lee, the biggest difference is that it was so damn fast. Guys didn't throw a punch and wait for a reaction, they charged each other like blood thirsty animals and tried to knock each other senseless. The big part for me was the ground game, or what the announcers called Brazilian jiu jitsu. When one fighter took another down a few deft moves later and the fight was over usually with the guy on top getting a joint cranked out of order. I was blown away, but after a while we stopped going to Rob's and MMA drifted slowly out of my mind, but not completely as periodically I would tune in to be wowed yet again. It wasn't until I graduated high school and continued to sharpen my rasslin skills that MMA started to make a major comeback in my life. When my wife and I lived with some of my friends I started to tune into a TV show UFC produced called "The Ultimate Fighter" that consisted of several fighters living and training together having crazy drama take place. I didn't care much for the drama but the fights were great, these guys were so determined to make an impact they threw caution to the wind when they entered the cage. As time progressed I read less and less about wrestling and more and more about MMA and the UFC. I started watching more fighting on TV, I started to incorporate MMA style training when I hit the gym with my buddies, and most importantly I realized that I had a serious desire to train jiu jitsu and fight one day. By this point my career as a pro wrestler was gone from my mind, why learn to play fight when I could learn to fight for real? As more time went on I stopped watching wrestling all together, but I never missed an MMA event. I was truly hooked. I enjoyed everything about the fighting life, the training, the skills, everything. I even started learning jiu jitsu from books, magazines, and dvds. Then one day not too long ago I realized why I love MMA as much as I do. It is what I saw with Bruce Lee, do what works. No one said a double leg takedown or a straight jab won't work because they aren't the "MMA way". They say do what works to win the fight, be it striking, grappling or submissions. So I found my calling and this is a simple way to express my love for the sport. I will one day earn my black belt in Brazilian jiu jitsu, hell I may even fight once or twice. Until then however I will blog my opinions on anything and everything dealing with the sport. I hope you enjoy my thoughts enough to either agree or disagree with me. I gave a brief view into how I first got hooked by the sport and while I haven't been there since '93 when Royce Gracie choked out the universe, I have learned a lot since becoming first involved back in 2004. So join me as I ramble on a little more and if you aren't a fan yet, maybe I can convert you too. In the immortal words of Mike Goldberg, "Here we go!".

-Mick