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Thursday, February 22, 2007
Fight league seeks its place in sports scene
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
As much as we would like to think the human race has come a long way over the last several million years, we really haven’t changed that much. We threw rocks at T-Rex and laughed when he blamed the dinosaur next to him. We rubbed two sticks together and burned down trees. We stared when the first Edsel hit an oak tree and thought, “Cool.” Evolution pretty much stopped right there.
Today, we can watch four major sports and notable peripherals at the pro, college and lingering amateur levels. But what sells? Mayhem.
Tonight, something called the International Fight League is being staged at the Gwinnett Arena. The IFL is one of several mixed martial arts competition leagues, ranging from the pay-per-view Nirvana of the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) to the lesser known “World Extreme Cagefighting.”
Rubber mallets and sling blades are optional.
There’s an old Far Side cartoon above my desk. It depicts a dinosaur addressing a conference of his brotherhood, saying, “The picture’s pretty bleak, gentlemen. The world’s climates are changing, the mammals are taking over and we all have a brain about the size of a walnut.”
If only the morons hadn’t stumbled into the tar pits looking for a drink, they’d be running the planet by now.
Then again, at least we know how to market and merchandise. The IFL, which is the only MMA competition in a team format, began only last year. This will make nine shows, and it’s already a publicly traded company. “IFLI” opened at $2 a share over the counter. It closed Thursday at ($11.66).
The league also has television rights deals with Fox Sports Net and MyNetwork (formerly UPN). Gary Bettman must have IFL-envy.
When league co-founder Kurt Otto says, “We’re here to stay,” there’s no reason to doubt him. Several sports once considered a curiosity (morbid or otherwise) have long since become mainstream. We cite: The X-games.
When asked why MMA has exploded, he recites the standard industry answer: “If you’re driving down the street and there’s four corners, and on one they’re playing hockey, on another they’re playing football, on another they’re playing [soccer], and on another there’s two dudes duking it out, what are you gonna watch? It goes back to the Romans. You want to go to the ring to see who prevails.”
The IFL really is international. Three of its 12 teams are based in Tokyo, Toronto and Russia (although local fill-ins often round out the card). But there are no real “home” games. This is more of a traveling road show, the idea being to spread the word as quickly as possible.
So tonight in Duluth, we have the Chicago Redbears vs. New York Pitbulls, and the Toronto Dragons vs. Portland Wolfpack. We market. We merchandise.
Otto: “All of the teams are named after vicious animals of prey.”
Just in case you thought “Dragons” were indigenous to Toronto.
Each team has competitors in five weight classes. Bouts are three four-minute rounds. In an attempt to broaden the fan base, gore has been minimized. Head-splitting, concussive-rendering elbows and the like are not allowed. Matches are held in a ring, not a cage.
It’s a new sports landscape. Boxing is off the radar. It shot itself in the foot for decades, until it finally ran out of feet. But the IFL retains some of boxing’s artistic side and off-beat characters.
Among tonight’s competitors is Peter Kaljevic. He is 5-foot-9, 155 and 43 years old, but don’t tell anybody about the age. He was born in 1963, but when he defected from the former Yugoslavia in 1984, he was given a passport with a birth year of 1968.
“They made a mistake on my papers but I said, ‘Don’t fix it, maybe it will make my career longer,’” he said, laughing.
Kaljevic enjoyed karate and kick boxing as a youth. But mostly he played a lot of chess. “Eight hours a day,” he said. “My father made me. It was very hard.”
He actually defected during a chess tournament in Philadelphia. He never warned his family because he wasn’t sure he would go through with it. For a month, he slept on park benches and showered at a gym. He eventually moved to New York.
His first job: as a bouncer at a club. “If I didn’t try to stop the fights, I wouldn’t get paid,” he said. “It was a mess.”
Other odd jobs followed, then boxing and kick boxing. Brief commentary: “Boxing promoters treat you like a prostitute.”
Mo Fozi, a 28-year-old former boxer from London, agrees. Fozi soured on boxing when he lost a Golden Gloves bout in New York. “It was a controversial decision,” he said. (Go figure.)
“Boxing is not what it used to be — it’s a lost cause,” he said. “The thing with MMA and the IFL is all of their best guys are fighting each other. That doesn’t happen in boxing.”
Otto claims several IFL fighters earn salaries and bonuses totaling “$45,000 to six figures.” Fozi: “I’ve heard that. But truthfully I’m not at that point. I make a couple of thousand a night.” So he delivers and installs kitchen cabinets in Queens.
Jim Abrille is another non-salaried fighter tonight. Promoters wanted a local product so they found Abrille, who manages a “Knuckle Up” fitness and martial arts studio in Midtown.
This will be Abrille’s first IFL bout, although he is a veteran of MMA events. The 31-year-old even competed in something called, “King of the Cage,” calling that “a little more barbaric,” than the IFL.
“The King of the Cage was like a UFC event,” Abrille said. “They allowed any kind of submission, joint manipulation, elbows, shoulders, knees, chokeholds. Probably the worst thing you could do was attack the spine.
“The strangest thing to me was how they made it such a spectacle. With the lights and the cameras, I couldn’t see anything until I got to the cage. Then you hear that cage lock.”
Fear not. Abrille won in 37 seconds. He tore a tendon in his finger but twisted his opponent’s leg until he submitted.
“It seems like they have made the IFL much more like a sport,” he said.
Hopefully that won’t hurt the gate.
Permalink | Comments (2) | Categories: Jeff Schultz
Mark Bradley’s Friday Fallout
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
Every Friday until the end of the regular season, Mark looks at who’s up, who’s down and what you should be watching as the countdown continues to the Final Four in Atlanta.
THE TOP SEEDS
If the season ended today, here’s what the top four seeds in each region should look like:
SAN ANTONIO
1: Florida
2: Kansas
3: Memphis
4: Virginia Tech
SAN JOSE
1: UCLA
2: Wisconsin
3: Georgetown
4: Nevada
EAST RUTHERFORD
1: North Carolina
2: Pittsburgh
3: Washington St.
4: Butler
ST. LOUIS
1: Ohio State
2: Texas A&M
3: S. Illinois
4: UNLV
RISING: Louisville
Louisville was 12-6 on Jan. 19 without a single victory
of significance. The Cardinals have since won eight of 10 to rise to third place in the Big East. Winning at Pittsburgh and at Marquette last week, the latter on a 3-pointer at the horn, punched the ‘Ville’s NCAA ticket.
FALLING: Oregon
The month began with Oregon challenging UCLA atop the Pac-10. Heading into Thursday night’s game against Washington State, the Ducks had won only once in February, and three consecutive losses, the most recent a 19-point thrashing at Stanford, had put even an NCAA bid in peril.
WHAT WE’RE WATCHING
• WISCONSIN AT OHIO STATE, 4 p.m. Sunday, CBS
It’s still No. 1 against No. 1, even though the Badgers, who top the AP poll, lost Tuesday at Michigan State, and even though the Buckeyes, who head the coaches’ poll, had to rally to beat a terrible Penn State team the next night. Wisconsin won the first meeting 72-69 on Jan. 9.
MID-MAJOR OF THE WEEK: Winthrop
Winthrop won at Missouri State over BracketBuster weekend and then rallied from an 11-point halftime deficit to beat High Point and clinch the Big South regular-season title. The Eagles are 24-4, their losses coming at North Carolina, Maryland, Wisconsin and Texas A&M.
NAMES TO KNOW: Nevada’s Ramon Sessions and Marcelus Kemp
Center Nick Fazekas is the big man on the Nevada campus, but junior guards Kemp and Sessions are essential. Kemp is the WAC’s third-leading scorer; Sessions is third in assists. They led the Wolf Pack to two January road wins after Fazekas sprained his ankle.
FUN WITH NUMBERS
VMI averages a best-in-the-nation 103 points. The rampaging Keydets, alas, are only 12-17. Their opponents, see, average 99.6 points. VMI is only 10-7 in games where it has scored 100-plus points, including 122-117 and 118-108 losses to Liberty, which is 13-16.
Permalink | Comments (6) | Categories: Final Four, Mark Bradley
Wrecks spoil NASCAR fun
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
An awful lot of people got really excited about the climax of the Daytona 500 — the rampant wrecking, Clint Bowyer’s car going upside down and catching on fire, Kevin Harvick edging Mark Martin at the finish line. And I’ll admit it was a spectacle. But I’m sort of weird. I’m a guy who doesn’t like it when they wreck.
I like it when they drive.
The fascinating part of this Daytona was, at least to me, watching from on high as Tony Stewart went from 40th place (after a near-wreck on pit road and a subsequent speeding penalty) to first. I watched him every lap — I’ll admit that riding with Stewart at Atlanta Motor Speedway last fall and living to write another day made me something of a fan — and I can’t say that I’ve ever seen more skill displayed at any sporting event.
He was passing cars two, even three, at a time. He was reeling in the leaders like Quint hooking Jaws. (OK, maybe not the best example, since Jaws wound up dining on Quint.) The man regarded as the best pure driver on the circuit was motoring like the best pure driver in the history of the automobile, and when he took the lead I felt like justice had been served.
And then he wrecked. He and Kurt Busch got tangled in Turn 4, and Stewart hit the wall not far from where Dale Earhardt hit on that fateful day exactly six years earlier. A bunch of stuff would happen after that — the wrecks and the flaming finish and whatnot — but for me the oomph went out of the race when Stewart crashed. Like I said: I’m weird.
Permalink | Comments (8) | Categories: Mark Bradley, Quick Hit
