Mike Straka moves to HDNet

The 30-minute one-on-one weekly interview program will feature conversations with the top stars in mixed martial arts.

“Fighting Words with Mike Straka” is scheduled to debut on Friday, March 26 at 8:30 p.m. ET. The premiere episode is set to showcase a 30-minute interview with UFC President Dana White.

In coming shows, Straka will present unique insights into the sport’s most interesting personalities including King Mo, Gegard Mousasi, Cristiane “Cyborg” Santos, Matt Hughes, Frank Shamrock and Bobby Lashley.

“This show has been years in the making – I wanted MMA fans to get an unprecedented view, from the biggest names, of what it takes to be in this business,” said Andrew Simon, CEO of HDNet Fights. “The MMA world produces the most intriguing personalities in professional sports and this program is designed to give Mike a full half- hour to ask the tough questions – the real questions fight fans want to know.”

“I am proud to join HDNet as the newest piece of the network’s already impressive MMA lineup,” said Mike Straka. “I am excited about the opportunity to present a side of these amazing athletes that the fans haven’t seen before.”

Mike Straka was previously the host of “FOX Fight Game.” He has covered MMA since UFC 30 in February 2001 and is widely recognized as one of the first mainstream journalists to begin reporting on the sport.Similar Posts:

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Gabriel Gonzaga

UFC Heavyweight title contender Gabriel Gonzaga squares off against Junior Dos Santos in what’s sure to be an explosive fight at the co-main event of UFC on Versus.

Dos Santos is currently on a 4-fight win steak against top-tier UFC Heavyweights, and a win over Gonzaga could put him in line for his shot at the UFC Heavyweight Title.

UFC LIVE: Vera vs. Jones

Date: Sunday, March 21, 2010, at 10 p.m. ET on Versus
Location: The Odeum Colorado in Broomfield, Colorado.

Main card:

• 205 lbs.: Jon Jones vs. Brandon Vera
• 265 lbs.: Junior Dos Santos vs. Gabriel Gonzaga
• 265 lbs.: Cheick Kongo vs. Paul Buentello

Under card:

• 155 lbs.: Clay Guida vs. Shannon Gugerty
• 155 lbs.: Spencer Fisher vs. Duane Ludwig
• 170 lbs.: John Howard vs. Daniel Roberts
• 205 lbs.: Eliot Marshall vs. Vladimir Matyushenko
• 185 lbs.: Alessio Sakara vs. James Irvin
• 265 lbs.: Chase Gormley vs. Brendan Schaub
• 170 lbs.: Mike Pierce vs. Rob Kimmons
• 205 lbs.: Eric Schafer vs. Jason Brilz

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Anderson Silva

Middleweight Champion Anderson Silva faces the Jiu-Jitsu ace Demian Maia, and “The Prodigy” BJ Penn will go to war against Frankie “The Answer” Edgar.

The event takes place on April 10th, in an outdoor stadium.

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Lyle Beerbohm is the subject of the documentary, Fight Life

James Z. Feng has released another excerpt from his MMA documentary,  Fight Life.

Fight Life is a  feature length documentary which center on the amazing story of  of Lyle “Fancy Pants” Beerbohm and his career in MMA, a career which began just 8 days after he got out of prison.

“Up through high school everything was going well, I was a student and I wrestled, and then after high school I just started running with a bad crowd, and pretty soon I was selling drugs. I tried meth for the first time when I was 20 years old, snorted it and smoked it for a few years, and then I started shooting it and I was doing that for about six years,” Beerbohm said of his lost years. “Over that time, I racked up eight felony charges, and that’s how I ended up at Walla Walla State Penitentiary. I was raised by really good parents. I have two brothers and two sisters, and it’s a great family. But meth made me do some bad things. Fortunately, it sent me to prison and saved my life. That got me clean and got me to stop doing drugs.

And then one day I was sitting in prison watching The Ultimate Fighter reality show on TV. And I was like, “Are you kidding me? These guys are on TV making money for fighting? That’s what I want to do when I get out.”

Click here to view the embedded video.

If you haven’t seen the main official trailer for Fight Life, you can now:

Click here to view the embedded video.

James Z. Feng
Writer/Director/Producer

Fight Life: MMA Documentary
Website: http://www.FIGHTLIFE.tv
Twitter: http://twitter.com/fightlifemovie
Myspace: http://www.myspace.com/fightlifemovie
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Fight-Life/137610337768Similar Posts:

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Georges St. Pierre against Jon Fitch at UFC 87

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Paul Buentello

Buentello is hoping his exclusively standup game will be enough send Cheick Kongo out of the UFC as they square off in Colorado at UFC Live on Versus March 21st.

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The UFC appears to have corporate tattoo standards

That’s all well and good, just not for promotional purposes. At least in the graphic design studios deep in bowels of ZUFFA headquarters.

Hardy’s rather large stomach ink was Photoshopped out of the posters for UFC 111.

“It was something to do with too much visual stimulus on the poster because obviously, the tattoo’s quite prominent and it kind of draws the eye away from the important information about the fight, the show,” Hardy said. “That was the information that I got.”

Hardy takes on UFC welterweight champion Georges St-Pierre.

St-Pierre’s “tasteful,” and considerably smaller, tattoo got to stay in the poster. As did those on Shane Carwin and Frank Mir.

So what was wrong with Hardy’s stomach tattoo? I guess we’ll never really know. Similar Posts:

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It’s a little hard to figure.

The television viewership numbers for a card packed with great fighters who turned in great fights were less than stellar.

Recent WEC broadcast viewer numbers as compiled by MMAjunkie.com:

• WEC 47 (Bowles vs. Cruz): 373,000 viewers
• WEC 46 (Varner vs. Henderson): 640,000
• WEC 45 (Cerrone vs. Ratciff): 330,000
• WEC 44 (Brown vs. Aldo): 414,000
• WEC 43 (Cerrone vs. Henderson): 419,000 (first event after loss of DirecTV viewers)
• WEC 42 (Torres vs. Bowles): 670,000
• WEC 41 (Brown vs. Faber II): 1,300,000
• WEC 40 (Torres vs. Mizugaki): n/a
• WEC 39 (Brown vs. Garcia): 531,000
• WEC 38 (Varner vs. Cerrone): 702,000
• WEC 37 (Torres vs. Tapia): 671,000
• WEC 36 (Faber vs. Brown): 497,000
• WEC 35 (Condit vs. Miura): 423,000
• WEC 34 (Faber vs. Pulver): 1,540,000

The WEC makes its pay-per-vew debut in its next event with WEC 48.

The WEC’s  broadcast strategy hinges on the $49.99 offering, and if the numbers mimic the performance of WEC on the upcoming PPV show, that will spell trouble.

Of course, the inclusion of superstar Urijah Faber and the sensational Jose Aldo will help generate buzz for the WEC PPV offering, but it remains to be seen whether or not the fighters in the lighter weight classes that are the WEC’s stock-in-trade can support the pay model.Similar Posts:

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Playboy cover model and UFC All-Access host, Rachelle Leah, is going to take a turn at her old job as an Octagon Girl for one night only on Saturday, March 27th at UFC 111 in Newark, New Jersey’s Prudential Center.

In honor of that appearance, we thought we’d give you a little Rachelle Leah gallery to provide a preview of sorts for her one-night stand.

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Boxing has its own distinguished literature.

Ernest Hemingway, Norman Mailer, Joyce Carol Oates and perhaps the greatest fight writer of them all, A.J. Liebling, wrote reams of excellent copy about the “Sweet Science.”

Sam Sheridan is trying to do the same for MMA.

Sheridan, the Harvard-educated author, follows up his superb tome, A Fighter’s Heart: One Man’s Journey Through the World of Fighting, with his latest effort, The Fighter’s Mind: Inside the Mental Game.

“This is almost like a gift back to the fighters and to my friends that helped me with the first book,” Sheridan said. “After doing the first book, I had a bit of access, cachet and a name, and I could get these guys, these famous fighters, to talk about the mental game.”

Sheridan has a way of getting the most out of an interview, and in this book, his talks with fighters peels away the public layers they develop.

Sheridan spent time with trainers like Greg Jackson, martial artists including Marcelo Garcia, a Brazilian jiu-jitsu world champion. Through those interviews, Sheridan sought to delve into the details of MMA at the highest levels.

“Successful fighters have a similar track,” he said. “Usually the bigger, better, faster fighters for five or six fights blow through regular guys. They don’t start to appreciate the mental side of things until they run into the first guy who gives them a struggle. Everybody you’ve ever punched has been KO’d, and then in the seventh fight, you punch him and he’s still coming at you. Can you figure out other ways to beat this guy?”

Sheridan knows a thing or two about the men who fight for a living.

He did it himself to gather material for his first book and, well, because he liked to mix it up. What he found – and finds again in this book – should provide a cautionary parable to fighters at the end of the string like, say, Jens Pulver who figured prominently in Sheridan’s first book.

“A lot of these guys, their issue is they’re damaged men,” he said. “They come from self issues, self-loathing, but on that one night, you’re loved. It’s your day. When you’re in a big fight, you’re the most important guy in the world. You feel bigger than a movie star. You’re ‘it.’  Andre Ward’s trainer Virgil Hunter would say, ‘In the next 1,000 days, one of those days is your day and no one can take it from you. It’s hard to walk away from that feeling of euphoria.”Similar Posts:

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