Two-time STRIKEFORCE World Lightweight Champion (155 pounds), Gilbert “El Nino” Melendez (18-2), has signed a new, multi-year agreement with the San Jose, Calif. based world championship Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) promotion.

“STRIKEFORCE is my home, they’ve always been like family to me and I’m looking forward to continuing my career with them,” said the talented, exciting, 5-foot-9, 28-year-old protégé of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu master Cesar Gracie and Muay Thai legend Jongsanan Fairtex.  “There are a lot of great fights out there for me – lots of challenges. I can’t wait to get back into the cage, do my thing and show the world that I’m still at the top of my game.’’

Melendez is seen in most MMA circles as a Top 5 Lightweight, with most placing the Cesar Gracie product only behind the UFC tandem of Frank Edgar and Gray Maynard. Melendez debuted in Oct. 18, 2002, and roared out to a 13-0 record while competing in the WEC, Shooto and Pride Fighting Championhips Organizations. Notable victories for Melendez include Shinya  Aoki, Josh Thomson, Clay Guida and Tatsuya Kawajiri. Melendez captured the STRIKEFORCE interim lightweight belt with a second-round knockout (punches) over Rodrigo Damm on April 11, 2009, in San Jose.


“I’m healthy again and excited about fighting again real soon,’’ Melendez said. “It doesn’t matter who I fight. I just want to get back in there and rip.’’

As he enters the twilight of his tenure in the mixed martial arts game, Sean Sherk has ascertained what the goal is before hanging up the little four ounce baby gloves and calling it a career.  The goal: a second bite of the championship apple, another reign with the UFC lightweight title. Sherk recently spoke about the intoxicating nature of holding the belt and the legacy that a double reign as champ leaves:

"For me to fulfill my career, to really, really be happy with it, I'd like to win the belt one more time," Sherk said, speaking to the Timmins Daily Press. "The feeling when I had when I won that belt was great. I loved being a UFC champion. It's a whole different class of athlete when you look at who has won the belt twice. There are only five or six guys in history."

The road back to the lightweight title will be a perilous one.  While his one time conqueror BJ Penn has seemingly taken permanent leave of the lightweight ranks, there are still a slew  of elite fighters that will greatly complicate Sherk's plans at lightweight domination.  The twin capos of the current lightweight scene - Champion Frank Edgar and the undefeated Gray Maynard - both possess a better stand up game as well superior wrestling to Sherk.  A second battalion of hungry young challengers - from Dunham, Sotiropoulous, Pettis, among a host of others- will be a particularly hard-to-navigate minefield to be negotiated if Sherk is attain championship redemption.

Sherk will look to start his last round up sometime over the summer, as that is the target for his return to the Octagon.  As of now the former lightweight champ is biding his time and allowing old injuries to heal so that he can totally commit to his last shot:

"It's a double-edged sword," Sherk told the paper. "I want to jump in there and train. I want to get in there and win another belt, but I look at the other side and if I'm training hurt, I'm not 100%, that goal is going to be farther and farther away.  I want to go into a fight 100% healthy. Then I know there's nobody who can beat me on my best day."

One of the problems that Sherk is running into as he gets older is the effect on his body of the almost maniacal workouts that he is known for. As you get older and the body is faced with increasing physical limitations, there is a need to shift the emphasis from training harder to training smarter, a philosophy that may be dawning on Sherk, as he spoke to the topic: "It all comes back to how hard I train and how much I put into this. It's the reason I've been so successful and also the reason why I've been injured as well. You can't have the best of both worlds."  Sherk seems to have the self-awareness to know what problem is but the inability to successfully tread the middle ground needed.  The inability to throttle down his efforts is going to be a detriment, and likely the undoing of Sherk if he is  indeed looking to close his career on a high note with championship gold. 

Aussie brawler James Te Huna comes into UFC 127 looking to shake off  ring rust and re-establish himself in the UFC 205 division.  A broken arm incurred in his UFC debut against  Igor Pokrajac has proven to be a vexing problem for the Aussie 205'er.  The severity of the break and resulting complications during his convalescence have sidelined Te Huna since the UFC last appeared in Australia in February of 2010.

"I had snapped the ulna, it was a bad break. The ends were badly splintered so when they brought it back together and ran the plate alongside of it, there was a bit of a gap in there and it took a while for it to fuse together,” Te Huna  said in speaking to the  Penrith Press.   “When it did fuse together it took about four or five months to heal.  I started training again but I got an infection and it went inside the bone and it caused big dramas.  I went back in hospital for a week, came back out, started training again, and then went back in hospital for another week.  After the second operation I had time off, tried to get it fixed and now I’ve been training the last couple of months.”

The lingering effects of the injury caused Te Huna to turn down a bout at UFC 120 in London. With his body now fully healed, Te Huna will look to get back on track and move up the light heavyweight ranks.  His opponent at UFC 127 will be bruising Swede Alexander Gustafsson. With wins over Jared Hamman and Cyrille Diabate as well as a spirited but losing effort to Phil Davis, Gustafsson is a rising prospect in the 205 ranks.  Te Huna  is looking to steal a bit of the Swede's mojo and use the momentum to propel himself to bigger and better things in the 205 picture.  A win by either fighter could possibly lead to a break out from the UFC Aussie/International card ghetto into a Stateside appearance.  With much on the line and both fighters given to a wide open offensive philosophy, the Te Huna vs Gustaffson looks to be the hidden gem the UFC 127 card and a possible darkhorse candidate for Fight of the Night in my estimation.

With the Strikeforce Heavyweight Grand Prix (SFHWGP) just around the corner, there as been a drumbeat of questions from the British contingent of mixed martial arts fans. With a field that includes nearly half of the Top 15 heavyweights in the world, British MMA fans have been anxious to find out what viewing options may be available for them to view the SFHWGP.  MMAFA.tv was able to get in contact with Strikeforce Director of Communications Mike Afromowitz, who confirmed that the San Jose based promotion would be going the Pay Per View route for broadcasts of Strikeforce content in the UK.

The move to PPV was somewhat necessitated by the recent shuttering of the Bravo UK television channel. Bravo had played host to stateside MMA broadcasts such as the UFC as well as domestic shows like Cage Rage. Additionally, it served as the most recent home for Strikeforce broadcasts in Great Britain. The Bravo channels closed on January 1, 2011, and many of the programs offered by Bravo were transferred over to Sky/BSKYB, which had previously bought and subsequently shuttered Bravo. Sky Sports has been home to the UFC's The Ultimate Fighter reality show the past few seasons, which would preclude Strikeforce from airing there. The only other Sky channels that have shown MMA are "The Active Channel" free to air on Sky and Extreme TV on Channel 419,  but both channels are considered of low quality and not really viable options by most UK MMA observers.  Other networks that have been friendly to MMA in the past have bitten the dust recently, with NUTS-TV (formerly the home of the Cage Rage promotion) going under in the past few years. The British promotion BAMMA has very recently signed a deal to air their cards the UK SyFy channel, so this may be a possibility for Strikeforce in the future, but nothing is in the offing at this time.

The most likely home for the Strikeforce PPV's would be Primetime Tv on Sky channel 480. Sky is the dominant satellite provider in the UK and Primetime 480 has been host to recent American MMA PPV offerings such as Moosin as well as a few other small US MMA shows. Pricing for the Strikeforce PPV's has not yet been announced, but looking at some comparables in the combat sports field will give us some points of comparison. Recent It's Showtime kickboxing events have been available for £5.95 (about $9.50), while boxing PPV's such as the Super Six tournament fights have sold in the range of £12.95 to £14.95 ($20.50 to $23.75). Somewhere in the mid- to upper-range between those two figures would give us an idea of what kind of price point at which the PPV's may be offered. 

One possible problem faced by Strikeforce in going the PPV route in the UK is a television culture in Britain that generally doesn't fully embrace the PPV concept. While there are some outliers, like the like the 1.2 million PPV buys that Hatton vs. Mayweather is reported to have done, on the whole the PPV format hasn't proven quite as successful on a regular basis as has been the case in the US. This scenario very much resembles their setup in Japan, a country also notoriously reticent in availing themselves of the PPV market. Other impediments that Strikeforce may run into are 3AM start times for live viewing in the UK as well as the generally unpredictable run times of Strikeforce events. Strikeforce can mitigate the start time problem by having  their shows repeated throughout the week on Sky Box Office, a tactic that has been used effectively by the WWE.  Such a repeat policy may be putting the cart before the horse so to speak, as another problem could be Strikeforce's lack of advertising budget leading simply to people not knowing the PPV is on. Run times like the abbreviated hour and a half run time for this past weekend's Diaz vs Cyborg card could also be a problem. If Strikeforce holds to their policy of non-inclusion of undercard fights on the main card, a lower price point may be the best option to take. While the PPV option may not be the optimal route, the simple concept of access for its' British fans may be the driving force in moving to the PPV option for Strikeforce.

We all know that there's a big problem with judging in MMA, and we all know that Kizer is pretending that there's nothing wrong with having a bunch of people with no martial arts training and no understanding of the sport judging it on a professional level. There's only one way for me to bring the maximum attention to this issue; and that's to voice my opinion on air during a live Television show where I know that millions of people are going to listen to it.

I understand that this upset him, but he's had plenty of time to correct all of these judging issues, and yet he denies there's a real problem and continues to employ people to judge important fights that are ignorant of many of the details of Mixed Martial Arts.

I also found it quite hilarious that he denies that the NSAC is 100% to blame for this judging situation and even brought up that we're taking NSAC appointed judges to Canada. The NSAC for all it's flaws is the most important ruling body in combat sports. To bring judges that aren't appointed and approved by the NSAC would open up a whole new can of worms. The question would also come up as to who appoints those other judges?
What is the UFC's relationship with them?

Kizer is a politician, and one of the biggest issues with him is that he's not willing to admit that he's not done the best job possible with the best intentions of the sport and it's participants in mind. This calculated denial of a problem is the reason why these same judges are turning in bad decisions over and over again. In order for him to correct the problem he's going to have to admit that he's been wrong in employing these people, and he's not willing to do that.

Mixed Martial Arts is a far more complicated sport than boxing, and in order for someone to be educated in the subtle details that are playing out in a fight they have to have some martial arts experience themselves. There are PLENTY of fans out there that would do a far better job than these people that he's got working for him that have been grandfathered in from the boxing community. To judge MMA on the highest level is a huge honor and responsibility, and should be bestowed upon people that appreciate that honor and appreciate and understand every single aspect of the sport. Anything less than that is an insult to these great athletes that are dedicating their lives to compete in the toughest sport in the world, and an insult to the fans that have to be disappointed with one terrible decision after the next.

Thankfully we live in a time where the fans have an option to get their opinions out there.
I've seen all the positive support online, and I urge you guys to keep it up. Please keep up the emails, and keep up the blog posts. The only way this thing is going to change is if the people in charge feel like they have to do something about it to keep their jobs intact.

Joe Rogan  via UG

UFC middleweight contender Alan Belcher sat down with Mark from Purefight.org to give an update on his recent training injury: 

"I had a detached retina, I just lost the vision in my right eye. It just happened all of the sudden, pretty much overnight. I was training in Brazil, messing around there for a few days and had surgery the day after I came home. I think it happened in training but I don't exactly know when. It's gonna take a couple of months to heal, to be at its peak, so then I'll know how much my vision comes back. I lost a lot of my peripheral vision but I got that back right away but everything is blurry and distorted, pretty much like it was before the surgery. [The Doctor] says it's definitely not gonna get back the same, but at best it's gonna be something like 20/40, 20/60 vision. There's gonna be more surgeries probably even at the best case scenario. Worst case is I don't get any better than this and I'm only working with one eye and then I probably don't want to risk fighting again with only one eye because if I lose that one I'm gonna be blind. I'm not even thinking about fighting right now. I'm just going to wait a couple of months and see where I'm at. It's disappointing because I was on a roll and getting really close to a title, but there's nothing I can do about it, just deal with it. I'll be back in there if my health allows me to."

Detached retinas have heretofore been an injury more prevalent in the world of boxing, but as MMA fighting becomes more and more popular, we may see more of these types of injuries enter our sport.  As with boxing, it isn't so much the "in competition" action that leads to chronic injuries such as these, but the high volume of sparring that is incumbent in being a world class fighter.   I wish Belcher a speedy recovery, but it seems like even the best of recoveries may still leave him in a vulnerable state when it comes to resuming his MMA career.  While other high profile athletes like Sugar Ray Leonard have returned to the ring successfully from detached retina surgery, it is a crap shoot and maybe a risk that isn't worth taking.

Another issue in boxing that I think may be note  and applicable to MMA is dementia pugilistica, or punch -drunkness.  With the sport still being in its infancy, there aren't a lot long range studies to guage the ill effects on the brain of an extended MMA career.  The heavy amount of sparring and high number of concussions that are endemic to stand up training for MMA may be sowing the seeds of a problem we won't see for years down the line.

Ahead of her participation in this Friday's Strikeforce 135 Tourney, Miesha Tate sat down with Bleacher Report for an extended (around 30 minutes or so) interview.  She discusses how she got into the sport, where she is training now, and what she hopes to do once her fighting days are over.  Worth a view.....

Rising up from his stool to enter the fray for the fifth round, Chael Sonnen stood upon the precipice. After having been written off by most everyone but himself, Sonnen was a single round away from the promised land.  One round away from exorcising the demons of being a  perennial bridesmaid,  a lesser light in his Team Quest sphere, often in the shadow of the likes of Lindland and Henderson.   His  absurd-ist level of self confidence had willed him to this moment. It had been a long, lonely road to that point for the Oregonian pugilist.

I will admit that I had essentially written off Sonnen as an entity at 185 after his loss to Demian Maia.   Up to that point Sonnen's career had been a solid if unremarkable affair.  Bouncing between 185 and 205, Sonnen had built a more than decent  record, but hardly one that placed him among the elite in the sport.  Sonnen had a come from ahead loss to Paulo Filho,  followed in quick order by a hollow victory to a "lights are on but nobody's home" Filho in their rematch.  Soon after his win over Filho in the now shuttered WEC 185 division, he was ushered into the UFC and summarliy disposed of in short order by Demian Maia by sub.  Sonnen had been a case of unrealized potential over his career, undone by the fatal flaw of submission defense. With the loss, the die had seemingly been cast as to Sonnen's chances of competing at the highest levels at middleweight.  Sonnen entered his fight with Dan Miller on a downturn, an afterthought, if thought of at all.  With Miller having some nice sub skills, and Chael having to lose 36 lbs in 22 days as a late replacement, prospects for Sonnen were bleak, but a funny thing happened. Sonnen won. And then he kept on winning.  Faced with a Yushin Okami that was firmly ensconced in the MW Top 5, Sonnen defied the odds again, dominating the Japanese star in route to a decisive win.  Faced with an upswing in his fortunes, he  was placed against Nate Marquardt, in a bout that no reasonable observer expected him to win.  Nate the Great would get the win in route to getting his much sought after rematch with Middlwweight kin Anderson Silva.  Or so we thought.  Again he dominated his opponent, making the improbable possible.  I won't pretend to be a great prognisticator of Sonnen's rise, I picked against the guy at every step of the way.  

In the course of just a few fights, Sonnen had resurrected a career that had seemingly run aground on the shoals  and earned a title shot at Silva.  Sonnen's march to a championship tilt wasn't one neatly orchestrated, like say a Dan Hardy.  Nor was it one met with great fanfare or adulation. It was the Cinderella rise of a fighter with the personality and likability of the wicked stepsister.   In the absence of anyone having faith in his abilities or efforts, Sonnen had created his own reality, willed his own destiny. Sonnen's monsoon of pre-fight hype sold the fight, but also served to do what few thought possible.  The caustic tone of Sonnen's propaganda was able to turn Anderson the Court Jester of Abu Dhabi into the man that would give the brash American his comeuppance, turning Silva  from a pariah to savior in some people's eyes.

As Sonnen came out for the fifth round Saturday night, he would get Silva down shortly into the round, and victory was just five minutes of riding time away. As we all know now, Chael had his greatest foible, his sub defense, come to the fore once again.   Sonnen's crestfallen look in the cage afterwards spoke to a fighter assigned a cruel but inevitable fate. I won't ask you to feel sorry for Sonnen. In his months long press parade leading up to his shot against Silva, Chael said and did too many loathsome things to really have one extend him that sympathy.  But his story of personal redemption lost as it was just within grasp is just as enthralling to me as that of Silva pulling his win out of  near certain defeat. There is as much story to be told with shadow as there is with light, as much as the triumph is heralded, often lost in the mix and shunted aside is the tragedy.   One of my favorite quotes is by Heywood Broun -"The tragedy of life is not that man loses but that he almost wins." It is a narrative that I have used before, noticeably with Keith Jardine.  Sonnen in the wake of his loss was a tragic figure, but a less than empathetic one to most, and that view sells the entirety of the moment short.  Viewing the result of the fight as Sonnen getting his just desserts is one way to view the conclusion, but hardly the only correct one.  

In our post from the other day, we took a look at the legal claims by Roy Jones Jr’s Square Ring, Inc that Roy Nelson and Zuffa’s acts constituted a violation of SRI’s contractual rights.  The response makes a general blanket denial on most of the major points put forward by Square Ring, Inc., imbued with all the accompanying legalese that these denials entail. The response gets interesting, though, when Zuffa seeks a cross-claim against Roy Nelson in the suit. Justin Klein over at The Fight Lawyer Blog intimated that Zuffa could go after Nelson for fees and any judgement against Zuffa and the cross-complaint by Zuffa makes this case. Zuffa seeks to use the warranty and indemnification clauses in their promotional agreements in order to make sure if there are any real and actual losses in the event of an unfavorable decision in the SRI case, it will be the fighter Roy Nelson that will bear the brunt of these costs and damages, not Zuffa.

Zuffa claims that at the time that Nelson signed his promotional contact for The Ultimate Fighter on June 27th, 2009 he represented and warranted that he was free and clear to sign said contract and was under no other contract or option that would interfere with the performance of his Zuffa contract. Nelson’s promotional contract would kick in in the event that he was named a finalist for TUF Season 10. There are two main points from the Zuffa Standard Contract that are the crux of the UFC’s argument; they read as following:

REPRESENTATIONS AND WARRANTIES

Fighter represents and warrants to ZUFFA that:

b. Fighter is free to enter into this Agreement and has not heretofore and will not hereafter enter into any contract, option, agreement or understanding, whether oral or written, which conflicts with the provisions hereof or the grant of Rights contained herein or which would or could interfere with Fighter’s full and complete performance hereunder or the free and unimpaired exercise by ZUFFA of any of the Rights;

INDEMNIFICATION

Fighter shall indemnify, defend and hold harmless ZUFFA, its subsidiaries, affiliates and sponsors, and each of their members, managers, directors, officers, employees, representatives, agents and contractors from and against any claims, actions, proceedings, expenses (including attorneys’ fees of counsel of indemnified party’s choice, as and when incurred) and damages arising from or relating to any negligent or intentional acts or omissions by Fighter or any of Fighter’s Affiliates or by the actual or claimed breach of this Agreement or any Bout Agreement by Fighter or any of Fighter’s Affiliates or the inaccuracy of any of Fighter’s representations, warranties or covenants contained herein or within any Bout Agreement.

In making the finals of the TUF 10, Neslson signed a bout agreement on Oct 3oth, 2009 that triggered the promotional agreement and said provisions in the standard contract. Nelson at that time re-affirmed that all warranties in the agreement were true. In Addition, Zuffa claims that Roy Nelson’s lawyer, Rodney Donohoo, stated in writing that – “I am aware of no contractual obligations which would interfere with Mr. Nelson’s obligations to your organization.” The Donohoo name may ring a bell for MMA legal eagles. Donohoo is also counsel to Ken Shamrock and represented the UFC Hall of Famer in his court case againt the UFC seeking the final fight on his contract with Zuffa. In that case as well, the indemnification clause of the fighter contract was invoked when Shamrocklost the case, which resulted in Ken owing the UFC in excess of $175,000 in lawyer fees.

The Zuffa cross-claim argues that the complained of incidents are not as a result of the actions of Zuffa, but because of the actions and deeds of Nelson and Donohoo. In the case of a loss in the case against SRI, Zuffa requests to be reimbursed by Nelson for the compensatory damages in excess of $10,000, indemnification for any damages awarded to Square Ring, as well as costs associated with the suit and attorney’s fees.

Zuffa are once once again using the heavy hitting duo of Donald Cambell and Colby Williams in this case. Campbell and Williams have been the go-to outside counsel for the UFC. The duo served as counsel for Zuffa in past cases against Randy Couture/HDNet, Ken Shamrock and are currently handling the case of UFC vs. Bellator and Ken Pavia. Legal Counsel to Randy Couture Sam Spira had this to say to Josh Gross on his dealing with the pair: “Don Campbell and Colby Williams are very smart and tough litigants. They serve their client’s well and do not file frivolous complaints.” With a daunting pair of litigants in their stead, the UFC may be able get a decision in their favor that renders the indemnification from Nelson moot, but in any event the fight promotion seems to have covered their bases sufficienctly to make sure they aren’t on the hook legally/financially. Indeed, if I were Mr. Nelson, I wouldn’t be too quick to spend any kind of locker room or knock bonus he may win this weekend, he may have to end up sending it back to his Zuffa minders to cover any of their losses in the court case.

UFC 117 has a lot to offer to the viewing public.   A match up of the widely hailed P4P king versus the brash upstart oozing braggadocio.  A battle of hard hitting heavyweights with Brock Lesnar in the offing.   A Hall of Famer looking to add another notch on his belt denoting his wins over the Gracie camp. All of these have their own unique attraction, but the fight that has the most allure to me is the show down between the two best welterweights in the world that don't have the initials GSP.  The match-up is one where both men are faced with a quiet desperation, the impact of a win or loss greatly altering their career path going forward.  Much like soccer teams in England's  Premier Division,  Jon Fitch and Thiago Alves head into their UFC 117 bout facing a match that will essentially resemble a relegation scenario.  Win and you're in, title shot contention that is, with a chance to recapture a glory that escaped them the first time. Lose, and you face a long and arduous road back to title shot contention, one that might never end in a second shot  at Georges St Pierre's title.

Josh Koschek is next in line for a shot at the popular French-Canadian  welterweight champion, with a showdown scheduled tentatively for December 2010.  Jake Shields entry into the UFC is also likely to provide a further complication to the winner of the Alves -Fitch bout getting a timely title shot.  Shields was seen by most observers to be a Top 5 welterweight before stepping up in weight and capturing the Strikeforce middleweight championship. Shields WW reputation  and win over Top 10 fighter Martin Kampman  will provide a fresh and intriguing  match-up for GSP, one that will be highly enticing for the UFC matchmaker Joe Silva and the Zuffa braintrust.   With GSP fight schedule rarely accommodating more than two fights a year, a late Spring 2011 match-up with Shields would push back the Alves-Fitch winner to a late 2011/early 2012 bout for the belt. The Winner will then have to avoid the Karo effect (getting a title shot and then losing it before cashing in) as they await the passage of time until GSP's dance card clears.  Such a long delay will be daunting for the winner, but the fate of the loser is  much more bleak.   

The loser will have lost, but he will still be too dangerous to place as a roadblock to a contender being built towards a title shot.  The loser will envisage a future of after the fact match-ups, in that they will most likely be facing fighters on the back side of getting a title shot.    As the competitors face the wrestling buzzsaw that is Georges St Pierre and fall prey to another five round decision loss, the parting gift on the back end will be a Boilermaker or a Pitbull. Interspersed in these match-ups for the Alves-Fitch loser will be the fights that resemble a dead end road when it comes finding the road map back to a title shot. Fitch has seen this somewhat already with fights against the likes of Gono and Pierce.  With these two scenarios providing a bulk of your schedule, building a portfolio of fights that will earn another shot at the welterweight belt will be a tall order, not a an impossibility but essentially a longshot. It is these starkly different futures that await the fighters that make this showdown  probably the most engrossing bout on the card.