Our Daily Dread: A fistfull of mixed martial arts notes
What was the quote the other day from Stephen Colbert: "Ultimate Fighting has it all, from the occasional moment of action to the 40 minutes of awkward spooning."
CNBC wants to knife, fork and spoon with it for a full hour tonight.
The NBC cable channel devoted, mostly, to business news but also Olympic sports when there's too much for the mothership to handle, has stick a fork in reporter Scott Wapner to go on with an episode called "Ultimate Fighting: Fistful of Dollars." It airs tonight at 7 and 10 p.m. (as well as Thursday at 10 p.m. and Sunday at Friday at 7 p.m.)
A little late, perhaps, to capitalize on the fact that UFC 100 has come and gone -- don't financial news channels preach a capitalizing society? But this apparently isn't such a new idea for the network -- they're taking a documentary they did in 2007 and adding new interviews.
Thanks for the recycling efforts. We all need to pitch in.
One of Wapner's new interviews includes Mark Cuban and Donald Trump, who are working together to present mixed martial arts events. UFC hothead boss Dana White tells Wapner that they are just another in a long list of competitors he is ready to take to the mat.
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Last week, on Sirius Radio's Channel 98 -- Hardcore Sports -- MMA hardass Bas Rutten was on the show hosted by Gabriel Morency and Cam Stewart.
Stewart said he was a fan of Rutten's self-defense video and asked Rutten choke him out on-air.
Don't you wish all sports-talk show hosts requested that by their listeners at one point or another?
Rutten did him the favor, and got Stewart in a blood chokehold. Stewart was out cold in five seconds, then made some strange snorting noises, regained consciousness and resumed his hosting duties.
Watch it (with some coarse language):
Now you understand what David Carridine wanted to do, but couldn't quite pull off.
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The Affliction MMA event that was supposed to be this Saturday night at the Honda Center in Anaheim was abruptly canceled last week when it couldn't find a suitable replacement for someone to fight Russian heavyweight Fedor Emelianenko.
Emelianenko's scheduled foe, Josh Barnett, tested positive for steroids.
Holy crap! Steroids, in MMA?
That'll keep him out of the MMA HofF.
After that announcement, Afflication said it was getting out of the MMA promoting business and just sticking to cranking out clothes. Last year, another UFC competitor, Elite Xtreme Comat -- which tried to mainstream the sport on CBS -- fell apart.
All this means is that UFC is ready to add Emelianenko to its stable of fighters, and he could be the next combatant for Brock Lesnar.
We know way too much about all this. Sorry, now we'll turn on the Lifetime channel and try to purge all this away.
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