Heavyweight Lavar Johnson was shot in the abdomen by an unidentified assailant at 12:34 a.m. PST on July 5 in Bakersfield, Calif., according to a news release distributed by the Bakersfield Police Dept.
The Bakersfield Californian was the first to report on the incident
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[Source: Recent News on Sherdog.com - Posted by FreeAutoBlogger]
Update: Johnson Hospitalized After Shooting
Alvarez Not Fighting �JZ� in Dream
Despite reports to the contrary, Bellator FC�s first lightweight champion Eddie Alvarez will not be facing American Top Team product Gesias "JZ" Cavalcante in Japanese promotion Dream
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[Source: Recent News on Sherdog.com - Posted by FreeAutoBlogger]
Radio: Jordan Breen Show
Jordan Breen returned to the Sherdog Radio Network Tuesday with his usual brand of listener-led discussion
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[Source: Recent News on Sherdog.com - Posted by FreeAutoBlogger]
Kimbo's next move
LAS VEGAS – Kimbo Slice, the controversial heavyweight who in 2008 headlined the most-viewed mixed martial arts card in history, will be one of 16 contestants on the forthcoming season of “The Ultimate Fighter,” the Ultimate Fighting Championship’s reality TV series.
Dana White, the UFC’s outspoken president, has repeatedly mocked Slice for his lack of fighting ability. Slice, whose real name is Kevin Ferguson, became a cult figure by competing in street fights that were posted on YouTube. Slice’s “bouts” drew tens of millions of views and led him to turn professional.
He fought for the now defunct Elite XC, garnering massive media attention but getting mocked by White and others affiliated with the UFC for a lack of ability.
White has called him a “joke,” a “bum” and “not a real fighter,” among other less than kind descriptions. He said that Slice would “get murdered if he fought in the UFC” and suggested that his lightweight champion, 155-pound B.J. Penn, would “annihilate” the 230-pound Slice.
The UFC president has repeatedly insisted he would not allow Slice to compete in the UFC unless he won his way onto the show by competing on “The Ultimate Fighter,” which beings taping Wednesday and is scheduled to air in September.
Slice has called White’s bluff and will appear on Season 10 of the highly rated Spike TV series, White has confirmed. Fighters live in the same house and train together, and then fight during the show in a bid to earn a UFC contract.
His appearance, along with that of former UFC light heavyweight champions Quinton “Rampage” Jackson and Rashad Evans as coaches, should guarantee massive ratings.
“It should be interesting, given some of the things I’ve said about him,” White said.
Slice, who has a 3-1 professional record, appeared in the main event of the first MMA card shown on network television in the U.S. when he fought James Thompson on May 31, 2008, on CBS.
Slice won by third-round stoppage in a bout that attracted a record 6.5 million viewers and remains the most-viewed MMA bout in history.
But Slice hasn’t fought since Oct. 4, when he was knocked out by a jab from late replacement Seth Petruzelli, a light heavyweight, just 14 seconds into another fight broadcast on CBS. The plug was pulled on Elite XC, which reportedly lost millions of dollars, in the aftermath of the fight.
White promised “some major surprises” as he announced on a Thursday conference call that Jackson and Evans, each of whom is a former light heavyweight champion, would serve as coaches on Season 10.
He declined to say anything further but urged reporters on the call not to miss media day, which is Tuesday at the UFC Training Center in Las Vegas.
White worked hard to keep Slice’s appearance on the show a secret, hoping to have unveiled him Tuesday. Season 10, which is being called “The Ultimate Fighter: Heavyweights,” was originally slated to feature a cast of eight heavyweights and eight middleweights, but the UFC quietly informed the middleweights who tried out that it was going with an all-heavyweight show.
And unlike in recent seasons, where the competitors had to win a fight to earn their way into the house, there will be no such arrangement this time. All 16 fighters – Spike and the UFC are keeping names of the others a closely guarded secret – will automatically move into the house.
Though White goes to great lengths to insist that nothing on the show is scripted, it’s virtually guaranteed that Slice won’t fight early in the competition. Having him around and alive in the competition is going to keep ratings elevated.
If Slice is able to advance to the live Dec. 5 finale, with a chance to earn a UFC contract with a win, ratings would likely be the largest in Spike history.
Javon Walker Had Surgery Without Telling the Raiders
Filed under: Raiders, NFL Injuries
Oakland Raiders wide receiver Javon Walker had knee surgery last month. No surprise there; hundreds of NFL players have surgery each offseason. But here’s the odd twist: Walker didn’t inform the Raiders that he was having the procedure.
It’s not completely clear what is wrong with Walker’s right knee — the same [...]
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[Source: NFL Access - Posted by FreeAutoBlogger]
Silva not winning over fans or boss
MONTREAL – Anderson Silva wasn’t one of the Ultimate Fighting Championship’s biggest pay-per-view draws despite a slew of highlight reel knockouts and a reputation as the finest mixed martial arts fighter in the world.
After Saturday’s performance, the toughest job in sports may belong to the person who has to devise a marketing campaign for his next fight.
Silva won a unanimous decision over Thales Leites in the main event of UFC 97 on Saturday night at the Bell Centre, but it was such a mystifying and dreadful performance that it left UFC president Dana White angry and embarrassed.
“I can honestly tell you that I’ve never put on an event that I was embarrassed to be at until tonight,” White said. “I want to publicly apologize to all the fans.”
Leites was flopping onto the ground at the first sign Silva would throw a punch at him, hoping to turn it into a grappling contest. Silva, though, wouldn’t fall for the bait and forced Leites repeatedly to stand.
And while it was admittedly hard to look good with the way Leites was fighting, the man who is supposedly the best fighter in the world needs to find a way to force the action.
It’s the second consecutive time that Silva has been in such a fight. At UFC 90 in October, White was so mystified by Silva’s lack of aggression that he said he thought he was in “bizarro world” watching it.
Silva had an unlikely ally Saturday in Chuck Liddell, whose career likely ended earlier in the night when he was knocked out by Mauricio “Shogun” Rua. Liddell clearly placed more of the blame for the lack of action on Leites’ unwillingness to engage even a little.
“He was attacking the whole time,” Liddell said of Silva. “It’s a frustrating fight for a striker when every time you go to hit a guy, he falls on his back.”
Silva is paid big money to hit his opponents and then knock them on their backs. For the second fight in a row, he failed to let his hands and feet go and fought a measured, controlled fight.
The crowd of 21,451 at the Bell Centre was booing a minute into the fight and by the final round, it was chanting an obscenity in an attempt to convey its displeasure.
White planned to have a long conversation with Silva and manager Ed Soares following the postfight news conference. During the fight, White got up from his cageside seat and walked over to Soares and gave him an earful.
Just as he was in Chicago, though, Silva was singularly unaffected. He had the air of a man who had just performed his job exceptionally, rather than one who had more than 20,000 people in the building and thousands more watching on television at home feeling he’d cheated them out of their money.
“Everything I trained to do, I did,” Silva said.
It’s one of his stock answers these days, as he repeated it incessantly prior to the fight in response to numerous queries about his performance against Cote.
But the bottom line is this: If Silva is going to be the big star, if he’s going to make the big paycheck, then he has to realize it’s incumbent upon him to put on a show. Liddell has now lost four of his last five and has been knocked cold in three of them, but he came to fight and made his bout entertaining for as long as it lasted.
The same can’t be said of Silva, who doesn’t seem to grasp that he’s not carrying his end of the bargain.
“I apologize. I personally apologize for what happened tonight,” White said. “You guys know, this isn’t what the UFC was built on and this isn’t the way the fights usually go. Listen, any night you can have an off-night. When a guy is that talented and can literally end a fight whenever he wants to, wow.”
Leites clearly deserves his share of the blame for the debacle that was the main event. He had a three-month training camp and knew he’d have to deal with Silva’s striking at some point.
The challenger, though, simply ignored that facet of the game. He backpedaled until he could go back no more and then, more often than not, fell to his back hoping to sucker Silva into a jiu-jitsu fight.
It never worked. And when Silva did manage to keep the fight standing, he didn’t force the action and try to knock Leites out.
“I’m comfortable with people’s opinion, because they have a right to their opinion, but when I went out there, everything I [prepared for] in training, I felt I executed in the fight. My game plan was that I wanted to go to the later rounds with Thales. I was unable to finish. Sometimes I’m able to finish guys and sometimes I’m not able to. But I felt I proved to everybody that I’m able to go five rounds and that I’m in good shape.”
Nobody really wanted to see that, though. They purchased big money for the tickets – the paid gate at the Bell Centre was $4.9 million – to see him blast Leites and get rid of him as early and as violently as possible.
The only thing that may change Silva’s performance at this point is to give him an opponent he feels may be able to defeat him. White was pressed a lot about making a fight between Silva and welterweight champion Georges St. Pierre, but he noted St. Pierre has a difficult bout upcoming against Thiago Alves.
The other option is for him to move up again, however briefly, to light heavyweight and challenge one of the slew of great strikers who compete in that division.
“We’ve got to do something,” White said, shaking his head. “Watching that was hard. That was tough to take. It was embarrassing, honestly. It was really and truly embarrassing.”
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