Never have seen these before, but on the 4th we went to a guy's house and we watched a couple of shows or maybe they were DVD's.

Anyway, this was some impressive fighting.  Other than no elbows, head butts, biting and groin kicks, it's pretty wide open.  I think the rounds went 15 minutes.

One we watched started off with some red-haired guy, with what sounded like a Japanese name, vs. Royce Gracie.   Gracie eventually got worn down.

Anyone know the name of the red-haired guy?  In fact this DVD / tape had several of his fights, some when he was younger with black hair.  I thought somebody said he was Brazilian, but I might have got that mixed up with his explanation of the Gracie story.

I prefer [url]www.bumfights.com[/url]

I believe the fight you are talking about was Royce vs. Kazushi Sakuraba the great Japanese fighter.  Royce has not fought much in Pride and when he does there are special rules that aid his style. If you like this type of fighting try PRIDEFC.COM.  The fighter’s to watch are Vanderlei Silvia and Igor Vovchanchyn.

Most of the fights in Pride are first round 10 minute and rounds two and three 5 minute.

Thank you.

Kazushi Sakuraba it is. Evidently he hurt his shoulder and is out of the arena for a while.

There was some discussion at the barbeque about how boxers would fare in this, and the resident expert said that they don't have much of a chance, which seemed to make sense since in their boxing matches, they have no contact with or from the lower body, and those kicks can seem to take their toll.

The we watched Bob Sapp against some guy I don't know.  I don't know if Sapp is a boxer or not, but he just creamed the guy, it took about 15 seconds.  He missed with his fist, but on the same swing, his forearm connected, and that was the end of it.  The man's gotta be 350 if he's an ounce.  

He might not last a long time, but then I'm not sure how well the other guys would avoid him long enough to wear him down.

No, it was Kazushi Sakuraba.  But thanks.

Kazushi Sakuraba took a real beating in both fights with Vanderlei Silvia last year. There rumors that he has kidney problems and will not be fighting much more.

A boxer cannot go with a fighter in this discipline unless he learns to avoid the shoot and masters the guard position.  Igor Vovchanchyn and Maurice Smith were kick boxer’s before moving into mixed martial arts and have proved that being a dominant puncher or kicker will typically result in victory.  The problems these two fighter encounter is when taken down they loose, not because they are beaten its just they can’t use their advantage.

Bob Sapp has not fought a real fight yet!!  If he faces Heath Herring or any other heavy weight that can defend he will have trouble.

Leg Kicks are very underrated, but many Thai fights end with blows to the legs.  If used correctly they can be devastating.

Don Fry is the guy to watch out for!

Bob  [8D]

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[img]http://www.sherdog.com/fightfinder/pictures/yamamoto.jpg[/img]

Isn't that the little guy from Fantasy Island?

I work out at LA Boxing in Costa Mesa, CA
Many PRIDE Fighters (even Don Frye) are sent here to train along with the Marco Ruas RVT studio in Laguna Nigel and the ZERO ONE Dojo in Santa Monica. What kind of questions do you have about mixed martial arts - King of the Cage, Rage in the Cage, UFC, Pride, Rings, Shooto, Muay Thai, Draka - many of the fighters are at these gyms.
I'll answer your questions the best I can.

He was in one fight I watched that day that was the most intense thing I've seen in a long time.  I believe it was 6/23/02 against Yoshihiro Takayama, from what I can tell he was a last-minute substitution for Mark Coleman, who I know nothing about.

They started by totally tuning out the ref while both acting like their eyelids had been surgically removed.

Then when the fighting began it was nearly nonstop pounding the shit out of each other.  As I recall, there was a little bit of clinching, when the camera would move in, and you could see Takayama's eyes starting to close up.

From the time of 6:02, there must have been one bell - it just doesn't stick out in my memory, because when it started back up, it was more pounding and pounding.  I had to give a lot of credit to Takayama, he kept trying to give it back and did pretty well in spite of a tremendous number of solid hits by Frye.

But his eyes got closed and they stopped it, though he was pretty well worn out by that time anyway.

Anyway, in looking around on the net the last couple of days, it seems that Frye may be leaving this part of the sport, the only thing left on his agenda seemingly is another bout with Ken Shamrock.

I guess my first question would be: What is/are the best magazine(s) or web sites for following MMA?  That is, if you can only spend on a few.

Then, the only ones I know anything about is what I've seen recently, (Pride) and a little bit about UFC from an old article in Penthouse or Playboy several years back.  So I really don't know a lot, especially about UFC.  

I remember the article was kind of negative about this kind of fighting, though what I saw on the 4th was not negative at all.  In fact, one thing that impressed me was that that it was clean fighting and for the most parts they we good sportsmen and at least seemed to conduct themselves much better than all the contrived WWF and even boxing BS you see.

Can you tell me what King of the Cage, Rage in the Cage, Rings, Shooto, Muay Thai, and Draka are, how they differ, etc.?  I'm guessing Muay
Thai is kickboxing but that's about all I know.

Second, I don't have cable, but we can play DVD's and VHS.  I don't think there's any broadcast coverage, so what can you recommend to watch for really good fights.  I would rather rent, but would buy some of the better ones.  My problem is I don't know what are the ones to buy --  the Pride FC site has a lot of stuff, but they basically seem to sell events, and I would rather get good "best of" type compilations, or at least know which events had the better fights.

It seems like they have webcasting pay per view, but I'm not sure I want something I can watch only once.

Finally, is there a good source for "who's who", with pictures?  As you can tell, I have trouble identifying these guys.  I would like to have a single magazine / yearbook type publication where I could match the names with the faces, at least much of the time.

I guess when you're immersed in this you can spot ID a lot of these people quickly, but right now I need some aids.

At any rate, watching these fights is a lot better than a lot of what you see on TV.


Thanks for your help, Specwar.

The best site for MMA is Sherdog.com. I frequent that site almost as often as this one. In fact, you can download highlights of many fights and fighters including the Gracie vs. Sakuraba fight (one of the greatest fights of all time). The downloads take a long time but they are worth the wait.

OK, I'd been there and went back and registered at the forums.  I will look at the downloads after I get back to my host who can give me more details about what we were watching.


Oh, yeah -- Can someone tell me what K-1 is?

Sakuraba fought Royce Gracie in the Pride Grande Prix finals. Also, to match fighters to names, you can do a search for fighters on sherdog.com and also search events. When you search events, the fighters will have links attatched so you can see their pictures. Sometimes they also have links for video highlights. I think there are about 25 video highlights that are downloadable and over 3 minutes long. If you are interested in NHB, the best thing to do is go out there and do it. I was training with Jerry Bohlander and Joe Hurley out of the Lion's Den in Napa CA for a while, but I moved away and haven't grappled in while. A good magazine to look at would be "Black Belt" and "Grappling". Check them out at Barnes and Noble or "Borders" so you don't have to pay.