Chachie

So many fight leagues.. so little time.

Bump-diddy-bump-bump... Bump bump.

My all time fave uni is the 70th Anniversary. I know they aren't popular but I really loved them. I'm not a fan of the yellow helmet but gold pants are the best. If I were allowed to choose the redskin uniforms, I'd go with spearhead helmet, burg jersey for home, white for away, and gold pants for both. Great job on photoshopping the new look, btw.

We were there 2 seasons ago and made the 2nd round. QB change, injuries to Portis, Moss, and our defense took us down hard last year but we have just as much chance of making it back as you guys do. I have to ask- Are you a CincyCowboy because the Bengals stunk for so long?

Any team in the NFC East can win 10 games in any given season. Injuries usually play it out, usually at the QB position. The sad thing is that it's SUCH a tough division, any one of these 4 teams could lose 10 as well. :2cents:

I like Nick Diaz.

All I require is that they say, "Yes."

Bump to keep the thread title close to the top of the page.

Holy moly. Run, Forrest, RUN!! (2nd attempt at this joke. Forgive me.) Also- Very interesting match-up between Cro Cop and Kongo. 2 strikers. Mirko has the experience and is battle-tested. Kongo has the size and strength.

I find that most of the Dallas Cowboy threads started in the ATN are from Tr1 and Bubba. Also- there used to be a LOT more Philadelphia Eagle threads here when Dallas and NY were struggling (along with the redskins) to stay out of the NFCE basement. With the Cowboys on the rise (although we'll have to see how Wade does), more threads will naturally come out of it. Also also- With the 'Boys making the playoffs last season, there are naturally more Cowboy fans roaming in to mix it up. (They do tend to get braver, louder and prouder with wins.)

Liddell vs. Jardine is a joke. This might be a way of keeping Chuck busy without risking his status as a top 3 UFC LH. As long as the Wandy fight can't happen, Dana just wants to keep Chuck in contention after promising a title fight to Hendo in his debut. It also may be Dana's way of saying "F YOU" to Silva for not taking the intitial offer for September. If it's not going to be Silva, then Liddell should be fighting Houston Alexander, not Keith Jardine. Houston's got even less hype than Jardine though, so maybe that's Dana's logic in all this. Basically this is all Forrest griffin's fault for getting punked by Jardine in the first place.

Apparently Silva turned it down, according to Sherdog.com.

That video sample made Chuck look so competitive with Rampage.

http://sports.espn.go.com/extra/mma/news/story?id=2928261&lpos=spotlight&lid=tab5pos2 Friday, July 6, 2007 Updated: July 11, 11:13 PM ET White not worried about the competition By Ryan Hockensmith ESPN The Magazine You wouldn't expect a wallflower to be in charge of the largest sanctioning body in mixed martial arts. And because Dana White, 36, has been UFC president since Jan. 15, 2001, you get the feeling he knows how to get things done. The former boxer and manager of UFC fighters Tito Ortiz and Chuck Liddell sat down for an interview with ESPN.com and -- surprise, surprise -- he didn't pull any punches. ESPN.com: You ran into an interesting problem this season with "The Ultimate Fighter." You had a brawl at the house between two fighters, and you reacted with a passionate speech about how too many people think that MMA is just a bunch of brawlers beating the crap out of each other. But there was also the urge to see those two in the octagon, and the UFC actually announced that that would be a fight. Take us through that decision-making process. Dana White: Spike really wanted that fight to happen, and we ended up booking the fight. Then I realized, 'How the [expletive] did we book that fight?' That fight will probably happen somewhere else, but it won't happen in the UFC. The thing that people have to realize is in "The Ultimate Fighter," those guys aren't UFC fighters. They want to be UFC fighters. We're looking at them through this microscope and looking at all their strengths and weaknesses. Not just in fighting, but in everyday life. Do they drink too much? Do they do this or that? We're looking for the next guy who can become a world champion. If you ask people out there, they'd love to see those two fight. But if you asked them if those two guys deserved to be in the UFC, everybody would tell you no. ESPN.com: At UFC 75, Dan Henderson will fight Rampage Jackson. Is this a unification bout or is this just for the UFC title? DW: It will absolutely be a unification bout. We have to respect Henderson's titles. He knocked out Wanderlei Silva and had the 185-pound championship. When he fights Rampage, they both have belts. Why should Dan Henderson get the UFC title if Rampage can't get the PRIDE titles? It makes one of them the undisputed guy. ESPN.com: Chuck Liddell versus Wanderlei Silva. Is it going happen? DW: God, I hope so. So many people have wanted to see that fight for so many years, and PRIDE basically killed the fight. Now that Chuck has lost, the fight makes more sense, and I'd love to make it happen. We're on the phone every day with fighters and fighters' managers. There's still work to be done. ESPN.com: Will this fight happen in the next six months? DW: I'd say yes. I honestly believe that. But when you're dealing with me, I don't believe there is a fight we can't make, a TV deal we can't do. I'm a very positive guy. ESPN.com: What is Chuck up to these days? DW: He's texting me every day, telling me he's ready to go: "When am I fighting? Who am I fighting?" He's already training again. He's ready. ESPN.com: What about the rumor that there will be a UFC event in November in New Jersey, at the new New Jersey Devils arena? True? DW: It's true, it's true. It's going to happen. We haven't announced it yet, but it will be a pay-per-view. ESPN.com: Where are you with the New York athletic control board? DW: We haven't even started working on them yet. We just got done in Illinois and Michigan. We'll start working on New York next. ESPN.com: What's that process like? DW: This thing is so big now. Everybody gets it. There's not a whole lot of explaining to do. There aren't a lot of stupid questions anymore. Rather than us going in to sell people, the control boards want it in their states. ESPN.com: How do you feel about the IFL, Bodog, EliteXC and other competition popping up? DW: It's good for us. I don't look at those guys as competition at all. They're nowhere near the league that we're in. I need shows like that. They're the feeder leagues. All the guys who fight in those shows aspire to be in the UFC someday. They're creating all the UFC talent of tomorrow. ESPN.com: Do you watch other shows? DW: I actually watched the IFL once, and it was [expletive] painful. These guys are minor league shows. They're necessary. I need them to exist, to continue to pay money to put on their shows. I need them to create more talent and get guys experience in fighting. But I don't worry about them. I'll give you an example. There are races going on all over the country, every weekend. But you know when NASCAR rolls into town. ESPN.com: Did you watch Showtime EliteXC's Phil Baroni versus Frank Shamrock recently? DW: I had dinner at the Palms, and I had them put it on in the room because I wanted to see Baroni knock his head off. It didn't work out that way. ESPN.com: What did you think of their skill levels? DW: They both looked bad. Phil's a good friend of mine, so it's unfortunate. Frank Shamrock is not going to fight anybody near the top-10 level. ESPN.com: You wouldn't be tempted to bring back Frank for a big event? DW: Who knows? But Frank is such a moron. He's so hard to deal with. He really is a jackass. If I could get it done, maybe I would. Look at me and Tito. We don't get along at all. You won't ever find two people who work together talk more [expletive] about each other. Tito's an idiot. He's a complete, absolute moron. But we can do business. ESPN.com: So why not kill two birds with one stone. How about Tito versus Frank Shamrock? DW: Frank Shamrock would never fight Tito Ortiz. Tito would crush him. Frank's not going to fight anybody serious. He's going to very carefully handpick his opponents, and continue to play the smoke and mirrors game. ESPN.com: When did you know that all the work was paying off and that the UFC was about to hit it big? DW: When we got the Spike deal. We knew when we first bought this, we knew we needed to get sanctioned. Once we did that, we knew that would help us get back on PPV. Once we got back on PPV, we knew it was going to be very hard to get on free TV. But once we got on TV, we knew we could do it. ESPN.com: But you also had to deliver a good TV series. DW: It really did work out. If you really knew the backstory, it's [expletive] crazy. We financed the whole show ourselves; Spike wouldn't pay for it. It cost us $10 million the first season. We decided to take the shot because we believed it would work. We picked these fighters to come on, but we had no [expletive] clue what we were doing. We had a basic premise on how this show was going to work. We went and found these guys. But everything else just unfolded. I was out one day trying to get sponsors, and Lorenzo Fertita stopped by the gym. "The Contender" had started a week before everybody moved into the house. On "The Contender," it was on NBC, they had sponsors out the [expletive] and they got paid good money for every fight. When the guys heard they weren't getting paid, Lorenzo called me and said, "They're all saying they won't fight." I said, "Really? I guarantee you they'll fight." I went down and gave them the "Do you want to be a fighter" speech? That speech was 20 minutes, but you didn't see that on TV. Season 1 was an incredible, lucky experience. ESPN.com: Let's run through some quick UFC questions. How many PPVs for the coming year? DW: We want 10. ESPN.com: When's the HBO deal going to get done? DW: It will be done very soon, in a matter of weeks. People don't realize this stuff isn't easy to get done. ESPN.com: Fedor Emelianenko -- when will he be in the UFC? DW: We'll have him soon. We'll have him before the end of the year. ESPN.com: What's the process? Do you talk to his agent? To Bodog? DW: We don't talk to Bodog. We talk to his managers twice a day. ESPN.com: Twice a day? DW: It's not easy to get these contracts done. It takes time and a lot of work. There are a million sticking points. Every guy has his own set of issues, what is important to him. Plus, we have our set of standards. It takes time and a lot of negotiating. There are a lot of trust issues in this business. We want people to trust us. We're having fun. We love this business. You won't find people who love this sport who promote it as much as us. We really, truly love this thing. We bought this and were investing in this when we were losing millions of dollars and nobody cared about it. It never looked like we were going to make it on pay-per-view, let alone free TV. At the end of the day, we don't want guys who are unhappy fighting with us. ESPN.com: The original plan was to have mega PRIDE versus UFC events. Is that still the plan? DW: I don't know what we're going to do yet because that thing is so messed up. We're still trying to figure it out. It's a complete disaster. They went out of business for a reason. Ryan Hockensmith is an associate editor at ESPN The Magazine.

Yeah he did. I was surprised at how easy it was for Rashad to bust him up once he decided to throw punches. Towards the end of that fight it looked like Tito was fighting Chuck. I think Ortiz is reaching the end of his road. I like him and he's a legend but he's approaching "the wall."

Even though I thought Tito won, I would take Rashad in a rematch. Evans finally started throwing punches in the 3rd round and this had a BIG effect on Ortiz. I don't think Tito does well against strikers with fast hands and Rashad was really strating to tee off on him. Even though Tito would have choked him out at the end of the 2nd, it's also true that Rashad would have KOed Tito if he had 10 more seconds at the end of the 3rd. I also thought Tito was gassing in the 3rd.

Also- If Tito had another 5 seconds at the end of the 2nd round, Evans would have been choked out.

Predictions for UFC 73: Stacked...? I'm going out on a limb to say that Rashad beats Tito by decision.

Very valid points. I am a Diaz Bros. fan so I probably speak with some allegiance. I just felt like this fight looked like every other Nate Diaz bout. He's tall but he's so light that he gets thrown around and taken down. All of a sudden he wins by sub. He's simply a slow starter and a fast finisher. We'll never know until they do it again.

Nate Diaz loses the first round in every fight. He also wins every fight. I can't predict how he'll do as a UFC fighter with top-notch talent but he would have submitted Manny Gamblahblahblah.

No I totally agree about Baroni. I just mean that Frank is getting way up there in MMA years. For him to win yet another fight will still be a great achievement- even if it's against a punk like Baroni who at least has hands of stone.

I keep wanting to hate Frank for his personality/ego but the man keeps winning. Got to give him his due respect if he beats Phil.

Holy moly about Gracie. I actually just watched an old fight of his on DVD last night. Versus Kimo Leopoldo. Back in the day when hair-pulling and genital-punching were allowed. Weird stuff.

I forgot about Minotauro coming over. Good point, guys. Arlovsky-Nog would be sweet. Cro-Cop-Sylvia might work well too. I'd personally like to see Croatia-Cop v. Belarus-Cop. Then Andre would be forced to actually mix it up a bit.

I was just thinking that other than Kongo, there isn't really a fight out there right now for Cro-Cop or Arlovski except to fight eachother. Their performances at UFC 70 basically sealed their fates for an upcoming bout at UFC 73 or 74. What do you guys think about this matchup?