I’m here to talk about MMA’s most intense rivalries. Catering to the casual fight fan first, I’ll start with the most obvious one. (I know it’s not fair to you hardcore fans, but no one cares about you. We know that you will tune in no matter what. I still...

Anderson Silva vs. Chris Leben is an obvious pick, I know. The 49-second demolition from Ultimate Fight Night 5 has been anthologized in dozens of Internet lists — from “Worst Game Plans of All Time,” to “Most Spectacular UFC Debuts” — and kicked off the greatest win streak in UFC history. It’s a...

The greatest fight that only went one round, you say? Psh, please.  The 2004 PRIDE heavyweight grand prix semi-final between PRIDE heavyweight champion Fedor Emelianenko and 1992 Olympic silver medalist in judo Naoya Ogawa ended in less than a minute with Fedor winning via armbar. But the result was a combination of...

MMA offers all kinds of painful penalties for celebrating early, and you’d think that everyone would have learned the lesson by now. Call it a jinx, call it karmic retribution, but those fighters tend to fall on their face, while the rest of us revel in their defeat. You shouldn’t have...

Until their recent rematch truly helped bring to light how incredible their first encounter was, I would argue that Eddie Alvarez vs. Michael Chandler at Bellator 58 was the most criminally underrated fight in MMA History. It wasn’t difficult to see why; the fight just happened to transpire on the same night that Dan Henderson defeated Mauricio Rua...

You can mourn for Anderson Silva’s pristine UFC record and title run if you want — but you shouldn’t. The Spider losing to Chris Weidman was the best possible outcome at UFC 162. Even Anderson Silva himself said that Weidman winning was the ideal situation. Hear me out before you add your voice into the...

“Personal Demons.” It’s arguably the most annoying phrase in sports journalism. The phrase is nothing more than a cop-out; what we use to show that an athlete’s performance has been sub-par due to his life outside the sport, while concurrently admitting that we have no business going there.  Yet “personal...

(Because if Rocky movies were fair game, this column would just be all of us agreeing that Rocky IV was the greatest movie ever made.) In an attempt to keep this column from quickly degrading into a list of Rocky movies, we agreed that none of them would be eligible...

When I was told the subject for this round table, I thought I’d have to pass on it, simply because on first reflection I couldn’t think of any fighters that I was a fan of, but then went off completely, or vice versa. But then I did something I try,...

One of the reasons we love the sport of MMA is the absolute reality that a fight can end in the blink of an eye. We have all held off taking a leak or grabbing another beer until the end of a round because we all know that in the...

For four months in 2001-2002, Dave Menne — the fighter who Phil Baroni famously steamrolled at UFC 39 — was the UFC’s middleweight champion. That’s right: The belt that Anderson Silva has proudly worn for the last five-and-a-half years used to belong to this guy. Menne won the title in September 2001 by beating 5-0 newcomer Gil Castillo,...

It’s crazy how life goes full circle: When I was ten years old, Doug Flutie was my favorite NFL player. I begged my dad to buy me Flutie Flakes for breakfast, so that I too could grow up and be a successful, albeit undersized quarterback for a small market football team. My...

This wasn’t a hard decision for me: My personal “greatest upset” would have to be Fabricio Werdum vs. Fedor Emelianenko. While I normally disagree with that crazy fanboy explaining to me how Fedor is an intelligent machine, sent back in time to destroy craniums and assassinate Andrei Arlovski, I completely wrote off Werdum here....