In The Mix with Joe Schafer

60 plus days into 2012, barely scratching the surface of the new year, and the UFC has two of their stand-up powerhouse welterweights headlining the second FX offering this Friday night. Martin Kampmann and Thiago Alves have become household names at 170lbs, having fought an impressive list of peers, in a division where the talent runs extremely deep in the pool. 

In fact, aside from the lightweight division, the UFC’s welterweight class in by far their most stacked. There are a steady amount of guys with enough drawing power to go along with skill to shoulder any type of event in need of top slot quality. The same can’t be said about the other divisions and it has shown throughout the last couple of years, leaving matchmaker Joe Silva with the headache of constantly rotating through the same few guys at any given weight. 

Go beyond the ticket selling names of Dominic Cruz, Urijah Faber, Jose Aldo, Kenny Florian (who barely counts because he has only fought at 145lbs twice) at both bantamweight and featherweight and you’re left rummaging through two whole divisions filled with a magnitude of talent, but nobody who can successfully hold down a co and main event on a sizable card.

Even with a champion at the ripe old fighting age of 36—knocking on the door of 37 come April—the middleweight division has a fairly healthy lineup of contenders with names like Mark Munoz, Michael Bisping, Chael Sonnen, Yushin Okami, Wanderlei Silva, Vitor Belfort, Alan Belcher, Tim Boetsch and Chris Weidman. But, nobody comes close to having what it takes to emulate what Silva has accomplished as the kingpin of the division.

Moving on up, the light-heavyweight division plays host to a champion who is only 23 years old, has incredible fighting confidence and finishing skills, is a role model to future generations of prospective fighters and has dominated top 10 competition in his last four fights.

In addition, there are a few guys on the verge of transitioning into the lime light to fill potential top 10 slots like Ryan Bader, Phil Davis and Alexander Gustafsson. Even Rashad Evans is within the most formidable years of his career, fighting for the title in a few months.

Though, over the years this division has slowly corroded away from being the most sought after, having seen nearly all its marque names reach that inevitable stage of their careers that starts begging the obvious question of retirement.

Forrest Griffin, Shogun Rua and Rampage Jackson are old souls with rough mileage from an already long career in the game. Dan Henderson is clearly riding high on a second peaking period in his career—undeniably rare in mixed martial arts—but at 41, his time is around the corner. Rich Franklin, Lyoto Machida, Tito Ortiz and Lil Nog Nogueira are all well into their 30’s. They are a wildly popular generation headed towards the exit without a plentiful group of tantamount competitors to fill their void. 

That leaves us with the heavyweights, which are scheduled to get an influx of talent from absorbing Strikeforce’s big boys later this year. After adding faces like Antonio Silva, Josh Barnett, and Daniel Cormier to the likes of Alistair Overeem and Fabricio Werdum, this historically swallow division will have greatly improved its intrigue to fans. Unfortunately during any given year, this unstable roster is always a few guys short of being filled long standing contenders—clearly not an issue with the welterweights.

In contrast to every division—aside from lightweight—the 170 pounders swim in the deepest waters. There are simply more contenders at this weight than any other in the UFC. Just look at the welterweight battles that have taken place already this year. Johny Hendricks ended Jon Fitch’s night with one thunderous right hand in the first round, Carlos Condit edged Nick Diaz in an interim title fight, Josh Koscheck narrowly got past a very game Mike Pierce, Diego Sanchez and Jake Ellenberger put each other through a three round dog fight for a chance to become a top contender and fan favorite Yoshihiro Akiyama locked horns with former Strikeforce and EliteXC champ Jake Shields. 

Despite already having a good portion of their top welterweights in action within the first two months of 2012, the UFC still has an equal amount of untapped talent ready to compete. There is such a rich diversity of fighters too—every corner is filled with capable guys. Aside from the belt holders and contenders, the division boasts crafty veterans like Brian Ebersole, Mike Pyle, Matt Sera and young studs looking to claim the torch in the coming years like Rory MacDonald, Stephen Thompson, Charlie Brenneman, John Hathaway, Che Mills, Erick Silva, and Rick Story.

And let’s not forget about BJ Penn and Matt Hughes, lingering legends with a few more octagon cameos left up their sleeves and arguably the most popular face of MMA the undisputed champ Georges St-Pierre. 

Even bottom wrung warriors like Dan Hardy and Akiyama, both struggling with unheard of UFC losing streaks, have notable fan bases and remain exciting to watch.

Needless to say, the trend continues with a barn-burning display of the division’s best all around strikers in Kampmann and Alves tomorrow night on FX. This fight will no doubt produce a landscape for these guys to test each other’s technical prowess, determination, and power. If by chance, either guy decides to take the contest to the ground, fans keep winning because both the Dane and Brazilian have very unassuming skills in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu rarely seen in the cage—both having brown belts in the discipline.

Tomorrow’s main event is yet another example of two quality 170lbs fighters headlining the action with an intriguing balance of star power and skill.

Surely a few guys went unmentioned, but the general point stands—no other division is equally concentrated with so much active talent. It’s a dream scenario for both promoters and fans to have a surplus of names that can be shuffled around for high ticket main events.

The UFC welterweight division is setting the bar pretty high this year; time for the others to catch up. 

After last Saturday night’s UFC 143, Carlos Condit edged out Nick Diaz in a close and controversial decision for the interim welterweight belt. The MMA Twitter-verse imploded with a black hole of opinions from insiders who scored the fight for each guy, writers and bloggers rewarding Condit’s surprisingly elusive—yet counter intuitive to the dogfight he was selling on the UFC’s Primetime series leading up to the event—strategy, to fellow fighters giving Diaz the nod.

A few days later and that black hole has now transformed into gamma rays of speculation after Diaz’ trainer Cesar Gracie rained down a black cloud of rematch denial along side a surfaced emailed from the Nevada’s State Athletic Commissioner stating a positive test result from UFC 143. 

Due to Diaz’ triathlon record with marijuana and a couple positive testings from it, people are starting to put the pieces together, worrying the past will rear its ugly head once more to spoil everybody’s rematch party.

Should it really be a big deal though?

Unfortunately, we live a country of stubborn black and whites, the backbone to many illogical and superficial consistencies that influence the way a lot of people make choices. We’re a country of cheerleaders routing for polarizing “teams” to win; whether it’s red or blue, urban or rural, religious or atheist, socialist or libertarian, the Cubs or Cardinals, the Bears or Packers, etc.

People are lazy thinkers these days. Drugs are bad; so therefore we should be fine with Barry the stoner sharing a cell with Bobby the heroin addict, serving out the same sentence. Rules are rules, which should be enforced on a basic, yet consistent, level, but different levels of severity shouldn’t be discounted by a simple judgement. 

So when an athletic commission gives drug tests to athletes, shouldn’t the results pertain more to the competitive impact of said sport than the participants recreational use of non-performance related substances? The whole intuitive purpose of athletic commissions is to regulate rules and to prevent people from cheating. There just happens to be an additional judicial obligation to test illegal drugs along with performance enhancing drugs. 

Now that today’s results have confirmed Twitter’s widespread speculation, Diaz will be suspended for up to 12 months for inhaling a drug that has been erroneously classified by law and offers no obvious sporting advantages. 

To make matters worse, there’s no evidence when he smoked. Maybe the relaxing anxiety killer was lit up with a fit of emotion straight after losing to Condit, a result that pushed Diaz to proclaimed retirement. If that is the case (because why would he knowingly blast a doobie prior to the fight and lose a belt), this test could literally have no sporting jurisdiction—equivalent to Diaz getting caught holding on a corner in Stockton.  

Yet, it could jeopardize an exciting—and depending on who you ask, deserving—rematch if the UFC upholds the commission’s suspension. They have done it in the past with guys like Chael Sonnen, Thiago Silva, and Sean Sherk. But let’s not forget, these fighters—along with many who I omitted—were caught cheating with substances which clearly gave them an edge over their clean opponents. 

Rightfully so, the UFC responded to each of these cases, as they normally do, by upholding the decision of the state governing body. If a fighter smears the sanctity of fighting and tested positive for PED’s, they are banned from applying for a license in that state and usually anywhere else, if they fight for the UFC. 

On principle alone, I’m sure we all agree that cheaters should have to sleep in the bed they make. Back in the more conservative days, society shamed those who abused trust, be it in the bedroom or workplace. That shame was a stain you would carry down the driveway or into the locker room.

Sadly, the latter location is the last pillar of purity upheld by the mass majority today. Swindle tax payers by tanking their national economy and get occupational bonuses without penalty. Nosedive into a stripper’s silicon valley instead of being a faithful dishwasher and the automatic “bye” from your buddies might even extend to forgiveness from your wife (unless your Anthony Weiner) and social acceptance shortly after.

But, break some baseball records while on steroids, you might be thrown in jail for lying during a CONGRESSIONAL HEARING and spark jersey burnings with your name and number across the country. Sports tend to be even more sacred to the less fortunate portions of the population because it helps them get excited about something positive, it helps them escape the dreadful drudgery of being poor. Obviously, times are tough now. 

Conversely, this diehard approach to sports tends to be the only thing most people worry about outside the day-to-day. On any given weekday, you can find people misplacing their principles and priorities up their own asses, but come a Sunday, those same people wouldn’t miss a game or risk not emoting their team colors in the stands for anything.

Regardless how lopsided society’s moral structure seems, cheating is a main component in our society. It’s wrong, but it happens and judgement will come at the hands of those who decide if the time is fitting for the crime. Typically, those who judge harshest end up being the sleaziest hypocrites. 

At the end of the day, as far as the UFC is concerned, Nick Diaz did not compromise his athletic integrity at UFC 143. He is not a cheater for having strains of THC on his fat cells.

Where is the competitive advantage in such an act? Where is the foul play?

If Diaz wants to retire, fine. But, the UFC shouldn’t suspend him from the octagon for up to a year. Dana White, join me in my logical, case-by-case bubble of gray!

For as thick headed as the UFC brass can be at times, he has consistently surprised his critics by being open to what the fans and fighters say and want. Cool heads have prevailed on more than one occasion.

In regards to this case, there’s not much pressure for systematic change the public can apply towards a governmental sporting body like the NSAC. They will hand down Diaz’ suspension regardless if it’s based in broken legalities. Fundamental change is slow and painful. All in all, marijuana’s status as a Class A drug will have to be decided on a national level by voters (ideally).

Hopefully the UFC can avoid the NSAC’s authoritarian recommendations enough to buck the trend though and make an exception for the purest fighter they have the pleasure of paying. 

All Dana’s options are plentiful too. Diaz vs. Condit 2 would do great business on cable or even on a Canadian Pay-Per-View—a fun way to ruffle the feathers of the Georges St-Pierre loyalists before a potentially huge battle with their hero. The fighters want the rematch, the fans want the rematch and after all the drama and interest garnered from the first bout, I’m sure the UFC wants it too. 

Okay, let me be clear about which part of the night I feel failed to meet expectations. It was the most important segment of the event, the three final fights, which aired on FOX as the “tripleheader”. Fortunately, the seven odd preliminary bouts on Fuel TV delivered for the most part, saving the entire night from mediocrity.

In an effort to put my criticism into perspective, last night officially marked the UFC’s inagural showcase on FOX for millions of viewer—loyal fans and those looking to be converted—and the fights underwhelmed in many ways. All three matches were concluded by decisions, largely due to the fact that nearly all the participants fought too cautiously and/or sloppy to make the affairs exciting. 

It was as if the fighters had too much on the line or not enough time to properly prepare. Chris Weidman took the fight with Demian Maia, by far the most important of his career on the biggest stage, on 11 days notice. I’m not sure what Maia’s excuse was though. After the first round, both men were running—or hobbling—on mere fumes and laboring their punches almost on an amateur level. 

Following that bump in the road, Chael Sonnen vs. Michael Bisping, arguably the most intriguing and hyped fight on the entire card, ended in a controversial decision victory for Sonnen, a 5-1 favorite, who looked out of sorts from start to finish. A convincing argument can be made that Bisping’s takedown defense and striking won him the first two rounds.

Similar to all UFC events though, there was that infamous “WTF” moment after hearing Bruce Buffer read the scorecards, from one judge in particular who gave Sonnen all three rounds (Since when does hair buoyancy get you points? That would have been the only mathematical way he won all three rounds). 

Not only did Sonnen vs. Bisping have title implications, but so did the main event between Rashad Evans and Phil Davis, the winner getting a shot at Jon Jones’ gold strap. Quickly speaking of Jones, his commentary for FOX was beyond awkward. He was clearly wearing his nerves on his sleeves, stammering over his points and creating dead air. It was Brock Lesnar at the first Fox event all over again; leave the oratory skills to the retired fighters. 

Anyways, instead of 15 uneventful minutes of battle, fans were treated to a main event filled with 25 uneventful minutes. Davis seemed overwhelmed by Rashad’s ability to change levels and land strikes first with his superior hand speed. To make matters worse, Davis looked like he was fighting on ice skates, slipping and sliding on the mat at every turn. The young prospect never really looked comfortable enough to make the most of his opportunity to fight an experienced and elite guy like Rashad. 

As Davis’ chances of finishing the fight dwindled with every passing second, Rashad threw his opportunities out the window as well by failing to capitalize on a lesser opponent. There were plenty of chances for Rashad to be more aggressive had he not been thinking about Jones the entire fight. This lackluster main event closed out the evening how it started: boring (yes I said it). 

As a result, I fear the product missed the mark of displaying what makes the sport of mixed martial arts intoxicating. If one of the essential goals of being on primetime television is to convince an untapped slice of the sporting fan market why they should watch MMA or the UFC, UFC on FOX 2 produced dull results. 

To truly appreciate the intrinsic value of the sport, you can’t expect a thrilling knockout or limb shattering submission every time the bell rings. But, there is a certain level of entertainment and unpredictability that is required to sell the sport’s legitimacy and longevity to casual fans. The FOX partnership is a perfect tool for the UFC execute those strategies; they should couldn’t get it done last night. 

I’m a forgiving MMA loyalist and I thought the card was barely sub par. I can’t imagine what the naysayers or more importantly the fringe fans had to say about the night. 

To be somewhat fair, there were obstacles out of the gate for the UFC to overcome.

From the beginning of the match making process, these top three billings started off in a bad way. Originally, Mark Munoz was slated to face Sonnen and Bisping was put up against Maia. But after Munoz pulled out due to injury, the lineup was shuffled around. Bisping and Sonnen both had little time to prepare for their new, drastically different, opponents and stand in up-and-comer Weidman got threw on the card to face Maia 11 days before the big event. 

Whatever the reasons—preventable or not—the show did not produce the results I’m sure the UFC was hoping for. Luckily, they have plenty of chances to get it right. On the brighter side of things, the host city showed its appreciation by packing pre-fight events and proving to the organization that it is a great sporting town with unique venues for future shows. 

Despite poor fight results, it’s fair to say UFC on FOX 2 was a local success.

Huge success or not, nationally, as a Chicago local I was thrilled to have the UFC return after a long three year absence (though also irate that Dana White opted to open up more tickets for sale rather than continue his tradition of tweeting complimentary ones to the public).

Hopefully, the third largest market in the country doesn’t have to wait another three years for the UFC to bring the octagon back to the Windy City. 

News was confirmed by UFC president Dana White today that Mark Munoz is out of his No. 1 middleweight contender bout with Chael Sonnen on January 28th for UFC on FOX 2 in Chicago.

The octagon head honcho also made it clear on his twitter account who was going to try their luck against reigning 185lbs champ Anderson Silva later this year: the winner of Sonnen and his replacement opponent Michael Bisping. 

This co-main event slot, anticipated only second on the card only to Rashad Evans vs. Phil Davis (which coincidently could crown another divisional No. 1 contender), was always understood by fans and pundits as an “unofficial” contender bout. Now all of us Sonnen fans will be short of guaranteed to see our anti-hero once again in the cage with his arachnid arch-nemesis “The Spider”—the man who spun together Sonnen’s arm and neck into a last minute fight ending victory.

Frankly, Bisping is a much easier fight for Sonnen than Munoz would have been. There’s no denying Bisping’s rightful place in the middleweight heirachy as a Top 5 divisional competitor. He has proven himself consistently against decent opponents, only losing three times out of his total 15 appearances in the octagon, won season three of the Ultimate Fighter and participated in three “Fight of the Night” performances. 

This British bad boy is no slouch and shouldn’t be taken lightly. Unfortunately for him and his past accolades, Sonnen is a terrible opponent stylistically. 

At first glance, this is a classic wrestler vs striker match. From a technical standpoint, each man is far superior than the other when it comes to their own advantageous discipline. 

Bisping’s kickboxing is too accurate and technical for Sonnen’s to be considered in the same league. On the flip side, the “American Gangster’s” wrestling is too relentless and effective for Bisping to even dream about throwing a singlet on in training leading up to this bout.

The problem for Bisping is Sonnen possesses enough answers and tools to overcompensate his own striking deficit while concurrently nullifying the Brit’s one chance of winning. Sonnen has a better chance of surviving on his feet in the world of striking—just look how well he hung with Silva, who is clearly a more notable striker than Bisping—than his opponent has against the take down.

That’s not to discredit Bisping’s takedown defense, it’s some of the best in the division, just not at the level where it will need to be to stop some of the sport’s best takedowns.

To make matters worse, Bisping’s mediocre power won’t be enough to threaten Sonnen’s battled tested chin either. So there goes his chances of putting Sonnen to sleep.

All of these factors would be missing from the table if Munoz could somehow stand across from Sonnen in Chicago. Unlike the Brit, Munoz has comparable wrestling and enough dynamite power to really even out the odds. 

If the undisputed divisional and pound-for-pound champ had issues knocking Sonnen down and defending his takedown, the chances of Bisping being able to do so are slim to none.

It’s going to be a long, ugly and painful night for the Brit as soon as his legs get tied together by Chael’s God-fearing American arms.

The Red Coat is choking, the Red Coat is choking! 

In The Mix with Joe Schafer: Episode 5

• Tom Brady made it a personal quest to pull the curtain down on the Teblow Show by throwing 50 TD passes for about 10K yards.
• The UFC returned to Rio
• Edson Barbosa performs possibly the greatest knockout in UFC history
• Leg lock finishes are still hot…at least for one fighter
• The fans were going apeshit at 1-3am Brazil time
• A ref completely blows a call and screws a deserving Erick Silva from his win
• Anthony Johnson will have to find somewhere else to fight at Rumbleweight 
• Vitor Belfort has the perfect homecoming fight
• Jose Aldo continues to destroy whatever is in front of him, especially fighters from Team Alpha Male

Next episode will feature chemicals found in bathroom products