The Afternooner for November 19

Contributor: Ben Kohn

Great news everyone! Because my email works as well as a male porn star with ED, I am now combining two days’ worth of news in one big article! Isn’t that awesome?  ISN’T IT?!

• This edition begins on a dark note unfortunately. For those of you who do not know, Dennis Munson Jr. died mere hours after collapsing in his debut in Duke Roufus’ American Fighting Championship in March. The Milwaukee Sentinel Journal published an article on his death which opened the eyes of many to the errors, mistakes, and horrible negligence of the officials and coaches during and after the bout. It’s important to note that this was not a sanctioned event. Roufusport submitted 2 videos to the police although the hi-def footage was missing 32 seconds, which is the part immediately as Munson collapses. The 32 seconds shows his coach, Scott Cushman, pushing and slapping Munson and literally holding him up. Many former Roufusport fighters have now come out claiming the gym is full of behavior that fosters a destructive and dangerous environment including former head grappling coach Eric Schafer, who called Roufus “a bully, a liar, and one of the worst people I’ve ever met” in a long statement on the UG. Another former member of the team who has spoken out against them is Rose Namajunas, in a series of tweets. I will keep you all updated as more news comes out in relation to this situation.
• Former UFC WW Champion Georges St. Pierre is still unsure regarding a return to active competition. Speaking of his training, he talked about having to re-learn things in a way where he doesn’t stress his ACL’s. Personally, I hope GSP stays retired, it’s too rare that a champion goes out on top and he has nothing left to prove. He has plenty of money as well and his health is intact as of now. Please consider carefully Georges.
• Anderson Silva spoke of his lower back injury and admitted he was very scared and feared he would be paralyzed from it. This is troubling news from Anderson as he’s coming off a horrific injury and layoff because of it. Not to mention he’s nearly 40 years old. I truly hope Anderson does not return as a shell of himself when he fights Nick Diaz at UFC 183.
• News from the BJJ world, Kevin Casey is injured and cannot have his match with Vinny Magalhaes at Metamoris 5, which was scheduled to take place this coming Saturday night. Casey had to have emergency surgery to remove a blood clot over the weekend. I wish him well and a speedy recovery. In addition, Ralek Gracie essentially issued an open challenge to any black belt in any discipline to challenge Vinny. If they win, they get 10k. If they lose, they do not get paid.
• Bellator salaries are out and Tito Ortiz made 300k for his night of work against Stephan Bonnar, who made 100k. This is impressive considering Bellator signed Ortiz well past his prime and having only one win, over Ryan Bader, since 2006. Good for him getting paid but I feel it’s ridiculous that Tito alone made almost half the entire reported salary payout for the whole card. For perspective, Will Brooks made 62k and Michael Chandler made 25k.
• Matt Brown and Tarec Saffiedine are going to fight as the headliners for UFN 60 in Broomfield, Colorado. Feb. 14th is going to be an awesome fucking night just on the basis of this fight alone. Both men need wins to retain the relevancy in the top 10 at WW and this is amazing matchmaking by Joe Silva.
• Nick Diaz said he would want a rematch with GSP but not in Canada “where you can just be on steroids”. Diaz mouthing off about GSP is not exactly a new thing and accusing him of steroids is also old news. However, he claims he was not drug tested at all for his fight in Canada so that’s kind of interesting. The Quebec commission tested 6 of 24 fighters on the card but it did not reveal which fighters were subjected to the random testing.
• The UFC released its official schedule for 2015 and it’s a packed one. 13 PPV’s, 4 FOX events, 18 FS1 events and 10 events on Fight Pass. This is a crazy schedule and the fact that the UFC has not lowered its PPV load to an even dozen or less worries me. They should really work towards moving away from PPV’s imo to increase the quality they can put on the fewer PPV cards. But I digress and look forward to lots of MMA.
• Tito Ortiz joins the duo of Rampage and BJ Penn in ripping Mike Dolce about his weight cutting and nutrition system. Tito is basing his statements off of BJ Penn and has not personally retained the services of Dolce. Dolce immediately returned fire essentially pissing on Tito’s claims about him and personally I’m siding with Dolce. Tito has never hired or used Dolce and is basing it off of Penn, who’s notoriously lax in his attitude towards training. Dolce’s list of success with fighters is too long for me to believe he doesn’t know what he’s doing.
• Interesting news from the main event at UFC 180, Werdum reveals that Hunt asked the referee to stop the fight after landing the knee and the referee did not listen. I hope that’s not true because that’s really bad if it is. Hopefully this is just Werdum trolling everyone.
• Conor McGregor calls Denis Siver a Nazi….that’s a thing that happened. Despite Siver being born in Russia, a fact Conor either doesn’t know or conveniently ignored, the tweet and picture accompanying it really aren’t funny. It’s a lame joke and telling him to kiss his feet makes zero sense. Really dumb line by McGregor here.
• Dana White has said that Anderson Silva and Conor McGregor could both get title shots with wins over their respective opponents, Nick Diaz and Dennis Siver respectively. This is not surprising at all for McGregor although it kind of is for Silva. He’s 0-2 against Weidman and didn’t look so hot in the rematch. Granted, they could try and sell them as fluke wins but I think Dana is delusional if he thinks he’s getting near 1 million buys again….unless Silva looks incredible against Diaz….I see what’s going on here, well played Dana.
• Ronda Rousey is undoubtedly a huge star right now and when asked about her future plans, she answered “I have a lot of important decisions to make”. This implies she’s strongly considering options other than MMA. This doesn’t bode well for Dana and co. because they bank on her a lot for PPV buys at this point. It could be a way for her to angle for more money but either way, she’s in demand and that means Dana is going to need to pay big bucks to keep her around.
• A new Japanese promotion called “Ganryujima” is being former and headed by former K-1 promotional head Sadaharu Tanikawa and will be a form of MMA fighting without submissions. The matches will be held on a flat circle with no ring or cage surrounding it. It’s interesting and we shall see if combat sports can be revived in Japan.
• Big news for Bellator which blew all expectations out the door with incredible ratings, the best the company has seen yet. With an average rating of 1.2 million viewers, the broadcast peaked during the Ortiz/Bonnar fight with a whopping 2 million viewers tuned in, making it the most watched MMA fight on TV this year. This is huge news for Bellator and as Scott Cokers first show, it’s definitely a success. It remains to be seen whether they can maintain it without big names like Ortiz heading the shows but I hope they can, people need to see fighters like Curran, Straus, Pitbull, and Brooks.
• Following Gastelum’s big win, and new top 10 ranking, sitting pretty at #7, he already has his next opponent. In the co-main event of UFC 183, Gastelum is going to be fighting Tyron Woodley. This is an awesome fight as Gastelum always pushes the pace and Woodley is a counter-puncher for the most part. Pushing Woodley can lead to an epic KO or epic beatdown, see Rory MacDonald fight for reference. I look forward to seeing Gastelum again and we could very well be witnessing the next phenom on the rise to his title shot.
• Jon Jones and Anderson Silva had a two hour training and sparring session together at UFC headquarters. While there’s no official footage, I imagine the UFC is saving it for a special occasion and I really wish there was someone filming it without supervision. I would have loved to see unfiltered footage of these two amazing fighters sparring. God I wish they fought in Silva’s prime.
• Speaking of Jones, he is willing to fight superfights with anyone but Silva, who he respects too much to risk beating. Speaking about moving up to HW, he talked about a potential bout with Werdum. First off, make that shit happen Joe Silva. Secondly, I really do hope he moves up in weight at some point. It’ll be interesting to see him destroy some HW’s so people can stop diminishing his accomplishments.
• Rousey has claimed she will kill Cyborg with her bare hands and that entering the cage on steroids is like using a weapon. Funny that Frank Mir said something similar about Brock and was forced to apologize but I doubt Dana says shit to his golden girl. Also, Ronda, remember your friendship with multiple time PED user Chael Sonnen? Ya, fuck off.
• Duke Roufus and Erik Koch have both responded to criticism regarding the atmosphere in the gym and Roufus responded to Rose specifically, stating she came to train at the gym immediately after Munson’s death. Addressing those concerns are nice but there’s a hell of a lot more to answer for than just a bad environment and claims of bullying. For what it’s worth, Rose responded that she didn’t know about Munson’s death when she went back to train there.
• Nate Diaz talked about how he’s already done the things Cerrone has in regards to making money and having lots of fights claiming “fighting five times a year? I’ve done that the whole time I’ve been here”. He claims the difference is he didn’t talk himself up for doing it. Fact checks reveal Nate Diaz has never fought five times in a calendar year in the UFC, something he claimed he did, the most being four times in 2011. He did fight five times in 2006 but someone should tell Nate that was over 8 years ago and Cerrone has had 15 UFC fights in the past 3+ years, Nate has had just 8. For reference, Nate’s total amount of UFC fights is 19 and he’s been in the UFC four more years than Cerrone. But Diaz gonna Diaz I guess.

-Ben can be reached at [email protected] or @agentbenten on Twitter.