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You've got to say one thing for James Toney - he's not exactly hoping to come into the sport of MMA and get a token win over a lesser fighter. As everyone knows by now, he'll be taking on Randy Couture at UFC 118. But before that fight materialized, Toney had other ideas. Namely, he wanted to take on UFC Heavyweight Champion Brock Lesnar.
"He's a champion, I'm a champion and I wanted to do it," Toney said in a live chat with MMAFighting.com regarding his request to fight for a championship in his MMA debut. "But they said I couldn't do that. Then they said, 'How about Kimbo (Slice)?' But I said, 'That's too easy. That's like kicking a little kid's butt.' But then Randy started saying he wanted to fight me, so I said, 'OK, you're the first one getting it.'"
Toney has been talking a lot of junk coming into this match up with Couture. He seems awful confident for a man that has never embarked on an MMA journey before- I mean, he asked for the UFC champion in his debut. The good thing? He knows how to hype a fight. The possible bad thing (at least for him)?
With all of his verbalized confidence, if he loses, he's not going to look too good.
There are people out there that believe James Toney is going to defeatRandy Couture at UFC 118. I am not one of them. Rather, I believe that there is very little chance that "Lights Out" lasts more than one round with "The Natural". Does he have a puncher's chance? Yes. But that's not a great chance. Regardless, I believe that Toney's appearance at UFC 118 is likely to improve MMA. Why, you ask?
First, because Toney will bring fans and interest from the boxing world. This will allow a wider variety of combat sports fans to witness what the great sport of MMA has to offer, and that will translate to even higher pay per view sales and more money for everyone involved. Second, Toney's emergence will compel other high level boxers to make the jump. And when these athletes start in at training facilities, it will result in the improvement of stand up fighting in MMA to some degree.
A win-win situation.
Of course, if Couture gets knocked out- which is something I don't believe is going to happen (Randy Couture vs. James Toney prediction)- then that might not be the best thing for the sport. In other words, boxing might be looked at as superior by the masses, which could actually result in less boxers making the jump to MMA (why would they then?).
In the end, the Randy Couture vs. James Toney fight will go down in combat sports history as highly important, no matter what the outcome.
Combat sports are a tough one. The far majority of the time, athletes that participate in them come out of matches okay. But every now and then, due to the nature of these sports, someone gets hurt or even killed. Unfortunately, according to the Orange County Sheriff's Office, Adrienne Simmons received a left hook from Lindsay Scheer during their Muay Thai kickboxing match on Sunday from the Orlando Marriott World Center Resort. The punch, which happened in the third and final round, sent Simmons to the canvas, where the referee ended the bout immediately.
After the fight, she sat up and spoke with doctors attending to her. Simmons was then led out of the ring by medical personnel, prompting her coach, Eric Haycraft to write on his public Facebook page that it all "seemed like a normal bout."
Unfortunately, it was anything but. Soon after, Simmons was airlifted to the hospital. She died on Monday at the Orlando Regional Medical Center.
Sad news. Our hearts go out to her friends and family.
Taylor Lautner is more than just the next big time action hero in the movies. He's also a very well-accomplished karate practitioner that by the age of 11 was ranked number one in NASKA's Black Belt Open Forms, Musical Weapons, Traditional Weapons, and Traditional Forms. And let's put it this way- his Hollywood co-stars are beginning to take notice.
"He's a martial arts prodigy," Abduction co-star Jason Isaacs told Metro on July 25, 2010. "Even at 11 he looked like Bruce Lee. He's a phenomenon; he's like a gold-medal gymnast."
Then Isaacs went on further to say "He's been doing karate since he was six! I've done 10 kickboxing lessons. Hollywood decided he is the latest action hero apparently, and I'm there in this film to make him look even more muscular. And I'll do that."
Lautner is getting all types of roles lately. Don't be surprised if his martial arts acumen coupled with his acting abilities make him an absolute superstar very soon.
Coming into his UFC 117 bout against Anderson Silva, Chael Sonnenhas likened the black beltSilva received from the Nogueira's in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu to "a toy that you get in a happy meal." Then there was the time when he said that Silva's "going to punch the air, he's going to dance, he's going to look more like Michael Jackson than a cage fighter." And that's really only been the tip of the iceberg. If you've been watching all of the pre-fight chatter unfold, Sonnen has literally been talking more junk than any fighter in recent UFC memory, which is particularly shocking considering the caliber of fighter he's taking on.
That said, Silva and his manager Ed Soares have seemingly been unphased by it all. But apparently that's not entirely true, at least not for Soares. You see, at the UFC Fan Expo this past May Silva's manager saw something that he didn't like very much.
"I was walking back to the hotel and Anderson was signing autographs for I don't know, there was maybe 15, 20 kids around and their parents, and there's a crowd around him," he told MMAWeekly.com. "Chael walked by completely by himself with his manager, and he says 'go ahead, sign all those things because in a couple months nobody's going to want your signature. Nobody's going to want that.'
When he said that, it's in front of kids, it's the first time that it kind of pissed me off."
It's all very interesting, isn't it? Sonnen would be the clear bad guy here if it weren't for the way that Silva acted at UFC 112 while taking on Demian Maia. It was such a disrespectful performance by the current champion that people are giving Sonnen a pass no matter what negative things he throws Silva's way.
Regardless, all of Sonnen's talk is either going to cause Silva to make a mistake born of aggression or motivate the current UFC Middleweight Champion. My guess?
I think Silva will be motivated (though I still think Sonnen is a lot of fun). And a motivated Silva is one you don't want to mess with- just ask Forrest Griffin.