Big D’s Second Coming – Thoughts on Current Events

SAVEUS.BIGD

After his three week sabbatical, the great one has returned.

A bunch of stuff has happened since I have been gone, so I figure I’d take some time to give my thoughts and brief analysis on some of the big events that have taken place in combat sports since I’ve been gone. Remember, even though I was not around, the “Eye of Big D” sees all.

Karate is back!?

Lyoto Machida’s irresistible force overtaking the immovable object known as Rashad Evans is amazing to watch. It’s once a generation that we are priveledged to see two undefeated fighters at this level fight for a legitimate World Championship. What made it even more spectacular is that one of these two behemoths completely annihilated the other. Lyoto Machida made Rashad Evans look like his play thing until he finally put him to sleep in the second round. The hyperbole machine is cranked up to full blast now around Lyoto. A large contingent of MMA experts are already predicting that Machida is nearly unbeatable. They say that Lyoto Machida is about to enter one of those zen-like periods where he just can not and does not lose for a long time (see Matt Hughes, Chuck Liddell, Wanderlei Silva, etc). Personally, I think he’s already entered that zone and truly believe he will reign atop the 205 lb division for years to come. I don’t see anybody beating this man at light heavyweight and the one guy who has a chance is the Middleweight Champion Anderson Silva, and he’s friends with Lyoto.

So now the new buzz phrase is “Karate is Back”. Machida Karate is about to begin sweeping the nation. Or is it? I’m not so sure that Lyoto and his family will reach the same level of mythos that the Gracies did in the early 1990s, but if any time is best to try it, now is the time. The thing is, a lot of people are pointing squarely at Machida’s Karate base as the sole reason as to why he is so dominant and unbeatable. I think some of us need to take a closer look. While I do think the unorthodox start-stop hesitant striking pattern, unique stance, and methodical approach of Karate has certainly prevented Machida from taking any sort of damage, I think a lot of people are overlooking the simple fact that the man just hits very fucking hard. Machida hits REALLY hard. He’s rocked guys like Rameau Therry Sokoudjou and Thiago Silva with one or two perfectly placed punches. People then went on to say these guys had suspect chins. No – Machida just hits HARD and more importantly – hits the right spot.

My advice to anybody fighting Lyoto – DONT GET HIT. Even if its a boring fight. Even if the crowd turns on you. The man is too dangerous. If you rush in there and try to be the Juggernaut, you WILL be humbled! Fight HIS fight to win! It’s only a matter of time before somebody listens… even if its in 2014.

Kimbo joins the UFC

Kimbo Slice on the Ultimate Fighter? Kimbo Slice with 2 other large and scary black men.

MANY Buys (no H)!

Wrestling Sucks

Indeed my uncontrollable rage and hatred for the entire professional wrestling business continues to fester in my esophagus. Week by week, Raw and Impact continue to justify all those millions of fans who don’t care about the business anymore. It’s funny because it almost seems laughable to try to defend the business anymore – like if you do, you’ll get ridiculed, and deservingly so.

I said a few months back I was through defending the business and this stands today. The utter childishness displayed by Vince McMahon last week during his ordeal with the Denver Nuggets proves that age does not equal maturity and that Vince is still a big baby after all these years. The plot holes insult my intelligence. The stupid comedy is cliche and passe and has been for a decade. I tune into Raw and I see cross-dressers, 60 year old men, midgets, metrosexual guys dressed in gold, Puerto Ricans, and a french chick who almost kills herself doing moves week after week. Impact is the same garbage that it has been for the past 3 years. I don’t even watch it anymore, but I hear about it. I tuned in to see Amazing Red come back after all these years and turned it off immediately after. It’s a joke. Pro wrestling is a joke.

Oh, but the truck doesn’t stop with WWE and TNA. The damage that Adam Pearce’s sloppy booking has done to ROH is almost irreversible. Senseless multi-man matches, randomly thrown together cards with no real story or build up, a lack of feuds (who the hell is FEUDING in that damn company right now?), crappy promos, a lack of angles to move the storylines (hell, a lack of storylines), bringing in former WWE JOBBERS and giving them the top spots in the company while the young talent do jobs to guys who couldn’t beat GENE SNITSKY on HEAT!?!? Pearce may be the worst booker in the history of the business, or at least a close number three behind Vince Russo and Jim Herd. I just feel bad for the boys who have to watch their company slowly decay.

P.S. Smackdown and ECW are usually decent shows – that rant just applied to the companies as a whole and their flagship programming.

Interest in Boxing

I don’t know what it is. It may be some kind of wacky coincidence or just a prelude of what is to come, but ever since Manny Pacquaio put Ricky Hatton in the morgue, more people than ever since the Tyson era have been talking to me about boxing. I’ve had individuals whom I didn’t even know cared or perhaps never even did care before, talk to me about Pacquaio and the return of Mayweather. Once the clip of Ricky Hatton eating canvas made it to Sportscenter, the IMs and phone calls I’ve gotten have been expodentially more frequent than ever. Everybody wants to talk about Manny Pacquaio. Much like Lyoto, we are seeing a proverbial star being created in front of our very eyes.

2009 may prove to be one of the more profitable years for Boxing in quite some time, and while I don’t see a single card trumping De La Hoya vs. Mayweather from 2007, I can definitely see a series of cumulative cards doing big buyrates and big gates across the year, even in a suffering economy. Boxing has always done very well on pay per view, and one of the reasons that it has these advantages over pro wrestling and MMA is that big boxing cards never over-saturate the market. You usually get no more than 3 superfights a year, and usually just 1 or 2. UFC has a similar formula in that only about 5-6 PPVs this year will really matter, and we’ve already gone through 2 of them. The ratio of 3 big cards to 5-6 is still pretty good for UFC. Then there’s WWE, who is doing 14 PPVs a year, flip-flopping names around a game of “Guess Who” (from Parker Brothers!), and each and every one of the PPVs are doing significantly worse numbers than their previous years counterparts. Wrestlemania this year was a financial success on paper, but in terms of what they were expecting and what the last two Wrestlemanias pulled – it was a huge letdown. WWE has nobody to blame but themselves, and yet they’d rather spend 2 hours making fun of the owner of the Denver Nuggets, who is exceedingly richer than Vince McMahon.

Kennedy (Kennedy) Fired (Fired)

Not much to say here except I’ve been saying for months now that if he gets hurt ONE MORE TIME, that he will probably go bye bye. But not even I could predict that just FIVE days after he sprains his wrist, he is gone. Add that to the fact that he almost dropped the WWE champ on his neck, and you’ve got a sure fire recipe for unemployment. It’s a shame, but what can I say. Kennedy has made an ass of himself inside the ring and out. WWE had BIG plans for him. He was supposed to defeat the Undertaker to win the World Title. He was supposed to be a member of the McMahon family. He was supposed to have a high marque match with Triple H at Wrestlemania. He was supposed to be in more WWE Films. It’s not like this guy had heat from the get-go, WWE tried and tried and tried to push the man and make him a big star. What they saw in him, who knows but I can tell you he got consistently worse since his debut in 2005. The non-stop injury after injury karma may be God telling him he needs to find another line of work. Bad timing for Ken.

Ric Flair returning?

Not a big fan of this at all. I love Ric Flair. Most people do but anybody around me will tell you that I LOVE Flair, but I don’t want him back. The retirement weekend that he received in Orlando last year will never be duplicated again for any star, ANY STAR, including Triple H. Flair has had more great matches than anybody, so why tarnish that legacy. Granted, almost everybody who retires ends up coming back and usually they do multiple times. The issue is, nobody has ever gotten THAT kind of send-off. Flair just loves to be Ric Flair and like he said in the Highspots.com shoot interview, he can’t be “Richard Fleihr”, he HAS to be Ric Flair now and forever. As a result, he needs money. Ric isn’t going to go back to selling insurance folks. He HAS to be Ric Flair. But dammit Ric, you’re in your 60s now. Make a change…

Like the song says – leave the damn memories alone.

Eh, who the hell am I to give advice to Ric Flair?

Anyways, that’s all I got right now… later

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