You Know Amanda Nunes and Jamie Varner Mean Business...

…When they join AMA Fight Club in New Jersey.  With about twenty UFC fighters sparring there nightly, Mike Constantino is running one of the toughest, top-level gyms out there, and as the old adage goes, "steel sharpens steel" - which means Nunes and Varner are going to get pretty damn sharp soon.  Here's a quote from AMA FC's press release: "AMA is very proud to announce that we have added Strikeforce fighter and #4 ranked fighter Amanda Nunes to our team!  Amanda has a pro MMA record of 6-1 including six straight victories all by knockout!"  As for Varner: "AMA would also like to welcome former WEC champion Jamie Varner.  Jamie will be training at AMA over the next several months.  We are happy to have Jamie here at AMA and we look forward to working with him!"

Liveblog: Bellator 44 Part 4

It's time for Falaniko Vitale and Hector Lombard to do their thang. Rounds 1 and 2 are pure suckage, as the two throw intermittent strikes and dance what can only be described as a waltz. But Lombard redeems himself in Round 3, land a short right hook that has Vitale doing the funky chicken at 54 seconds in. Nice KO, crappy fight. Now Patricky Freire and Mike Chandler are up for the lightweight tournament finals. Round 1 is pretty back and forth, and Chandler shows no fear of trading with the Brazilian. Round 2 is more of the same, but Chandler edges ahead when he catches Freire's kick, takes him down and pounds on him. Unfortunately, the American knees him in the junk in the second, and when he kicks him there again in the third, it costs Chandler a point. In the end, though, it doesn't matter, as he gets Freire down, beats on him, and takes the unanimous decision. Last bout of the evening and it's heavyweights Randy Smith vs. Jamall Johnson. Smith sports a 40-pound weight advantage and a jab that never stops. Johnson possesses head movement and enough wrestling to get Smith down and enough jiu-jitsu to tap him with a rear naked choke at 4:16 of Round 2. And that's it.

IMG02298.jpg

Sent from my BlackBerry® smartphone with SprintSpeed

IMG02297.jpg

Sent from my BlackBerry® smartphone with SprintSpeed

Liveblog: Bellator 44 Part 3

The live MTV2 broadcast is underway, and the first bout is Alexander Shlemenko against Brett Cooper. This is a qualifier bout for the next middleweight tournament - which sucks for Shlemenko, considering he won the last one. Why should he have to qualify? Anyway, it's a well-known fact that the Russian gets paid by the spinning technique, and in Round 1 he racks up about 1,800 bucks wobbling the American. Cooper wobbles him back, though, and bloodies him, too. Round 2 has Cooper trying to add some wrestling into the equation, but Shlemenko is nonplussed. The final round is a complete slobberknocker, with both men eating so much leather they're guaranteed to be crapping whole cows tomorrow. The crowd loves it - as they should - and the judges award the unanimous decision to Shlemenko. Next up: local hero Sammy Oropeza against Giedrius Karavackas. Oropeza's striking - his kicking, especially - is top notch, and he flexes that muscle early on. The round ends with him on top, dropping bombs. Karavackas isn't a pushover, and he comes back hard in the second round, judo-ing Oropeza and dishing some of that fistic love back. Round 3 is all Karavackas, as he throws Oropeza down, pins with a kasagatame, punches him unabashedly, and taps him at 3:59 of the round with a bent armlock (the kind where you use only your legs). It is the most epic of comebacks, and the Sammy Oropeza Fan Club is crushed.

IMG02296.jpg

Sent from my BlackBerry® smartphone with SprintSpeed

IMG02295.jpg

Sent from my BlackBerry® smartphone with SprintSpeed

Liveblog: Bellator 44 Part 2

First up is Gemiyale Adkins and Jay Silva in a middleweight pairing. Adkins is short and built like a fire hydrant that shoots fists instead of water. Silva, meanwhile, begins every day with a flying knee to his bathroom mirror. Round 1 sees Adkins realize quickly that he's too short to go toe-to-toe with his opponent, so he spends half the frame playing the huggy game. Silva, of course, just blasts him on the feet and knees him relentlessy against the cage. Adkins spends all of the second and third round desperately clinging to Silva's leg while Silva punishes him nonstop, and when time runs out the judges award Silva the unanimous decision. Next is Anthony Leone and Jeff Lentz. Leone's fought everywhere, and Lentz was on TUF, so, um, yeah. The bout opens with Lentz inexplicably letting Leone kick him in the leg about two dozen times. He warms up as he goes, however, finding his range and firing back with just about everything he knows. Round 2 has Leone slowing and Lentz continuing to find his groove (and by groove, I mean pounding on Leone against the cage). The third round has Lentz high-kicking Leone and planting his big toe right in Leone's eye - which saps the shorter fighter completely and enables Lentz to batter him until the final bell. The TUF vet takes the unanimous decision.

Liveblog: Bellator 44 Part 1

MMA Journalist is here in the majestic Caesar's in Atlantic City for Bellator 44. Headlining the card is Hector "Angry Cuban" Lombard vs. Falaniko "Hawaiian Punch" Vitale, and the undercard will see the lightweight tournament finals between Patricky Freire and Mike Chandler. Know who's not on the card? Anthony Morrison, who failed to make the bantamweight limit for his bout. Now I'm going to throw some facts at you, and you make your own jokes: Morrison was supposed to make 135 and he was 146.5, and his nickname is "Cheesesteak". Ok, go.

IMG02294.jpg

Sent from my BlackBerry® smartphone with SprintSpeed

IMG02293.jpg

Sent from my BlackBerry® smartphone with SprintSpeed

Blogger Issues

This week Blogger, the platform that this beloved blog is hosted on, suffered some serious outage issues. With that in mind, if those problems return tonight, my liveblog for Bellator 44 in Atlantic City might be non-existent. We'll see, though. And if worse comes to worse, you can still follow me on Twitter ("jim_genia" is my account). I'm always posting live results and stuff there.

Rest In Peace Michael Tome

Last night MMA lost one of its biggest proponents.  Michael Tome, a.k.a. "Snake", wore many hats in the sport - as a promoter, he ran sanctioned shows on his reservation in Upstate New York, as a sponsor he helped out many fighters, and as a coach and trainer he ran a gym that was open to anyone free of charge (he wanted to keep kids of the streets).  To know him was to know a real character, and though he looked like a cross between the Kurgan from "Highlander" and Magua from "Last of the Mohicans", he was cool as hell and always willing to help.  Rest in peace, Snake.  You will be missed.

Bellator 44: It's All About the Local Guys

First, the good news: this weekend, Bellator touches down at Caeser’s Resort in Atlantic City.  And now, the great news: the card features some pretty damn decent local talent.  Yeah, middleweight champ Hector Lombard is taking on UFC vet Falaniko Vitale, and the lightweight tournament final between Patricky Freire and Michael Chandler promises blood splatters and death for everyone, but the meat and potatoes of the card is all about the Northeast fighters who’ve worked their way up to the Bellator stage.  Let’s take a gander at them, shall we?

• Anthony Morrison – This Philadelphia native can box and he can wrestle, and last year he went from ROC champ to WEC competitor, so you can say Morrison has “been there and done that”.  You can also say he’s going to kill bantamweight tournament washout Bryan Goldsby on Saturday night.  All would be accurate.
• Sam Oropeza – Fight Factory exponent Oropeza has an interesting style.  He’s got devastating kicks, and his wrestling (or anti-wrestling to be exact) means he’s usually going to stay on his feet long enough to land something.  Oropeza should have his hands full with Giedrius Karavackas, though, who’s emerged as one of the tougher grapplers and beating-dispensers in the area.
• Jeff Lentz – Lentz may have fallen to some wannabe on TUF 12, but that doesn’t change the fact that he was a killer in the Northeast circuit.  He’s taking on WEC, Strikeforce and Bellator vet Anthony Leone, who’s been on a bit of a downward slide of late, so watch for the Kurt Pellegrino-trained Lentz to smash and smash hard.
• Randy Smith – Smith is big.  That is all.
• Jay Silva – His explosive striking got him into the UFC way too soon, and he got crushed by Bellator champ Lombard in six seconds last year, but Silva’s still very dangerous.  At Bellator 44 he’s taking on Gemiyale Adkins – a short and stocky heavyweight who likes to bang – so my crystal ball is telling me “flying knee, flying knee, flying knee”.

IMG02280.jpg

Sent from my BlackBerry® smartphone with SprintSpeed

IMG02279.jpg

Sent from my BlackBerry® smartphone with SprintSpeed

IMG02278.jpg

Sent from my BlackBerry® smartphone with SprintSpeed

IMG02277.jpg

Sent from my BlackBerry® smartphone with SprintSpeed

Kudos for the "New York Mixed Martial Arts" Documentary

Last night MMA Journalist went to a private screening of Kahleem Poole-Tejada and Sambo Steve's documentary "New York Mixed Martial Arts", which details the decline of the public's appetite for potato knishes.  Psyche!  The film is about New York MMA (duh) and the state's lack of sanctioning for our beloved sport, and it focuses on an amateur fighter named Brad Desir, a rally and a roundtable, and a ton of snippets from industry insiders.  Hey, did you know Josh Barnett doesn't trust the government?  Or that Gesias Cavalcante can speak pretty good English?  I did not, but thanks to the documentary, now I do.  Anyway, "New York Mixed Martial Arts" will be shown to the general public at the Bronx Week Film Festival on May 16 to 19, and it's worth checking out.

Lyman Good Injured, Out of Bellator 44

File this one under the heading "NOOOOOO!"  Lyman Good, who was scheduled to fight Dan Hornbuckle at next weekend's Bellator 44 in Atlantic City, was injured in training and will be unable to fight.  This turn of events sucks on many levels - and all those levels involved watching Good kick ass.  Oh well, what can you do?