Wednesday, 13 June 2007

UFC 72 This Weekend

Belfast is going to be rocking this weekend. The biggest MMA event to hit Ireland is only days away, and Fighters Only will be there to cover it. We can't wait.

Believe it or not, the UFC have actually been criticised for putting on a sub-standard card for this show. The 8000-seat arena will see the likes of Rich Franklin, Forest Griffin and more in action. Could it actually be a case of that fans are being spoiled with increasingly high profile fights featuring the superstars of the sport? Whatever the vocal minority think, there will be plenty of people watching this card including, no doubt, generous numbers of the sizeable Irish-American community.

Anyway, we're looking forward to it. Former middleweight champion Rich Franklin will be headlining the event against the tough Japanese fighter Yushin Okami, and Forrest Griffin is going to face hard hitting Hector Ramirez. Also, three UK fighters will be making their UFC debuts. Go guys.

Franklin lost his belt to a fighter very familiar to UK fans, the Brazilian Muay Thai expert Anderson Silva. 'The Spider' took out 'Ace' in devastating fashion last year with a series of brutal knees. Okami is more of a ground and pound fighter but is no easy fight back for Rich.

It'll be a case of whoever wins this fight will face Silva for the belt. Silva told Fighters Only a few weeks ago that he'll bew watching this fight with interest. He'd like to fight Franklin again, but he says he particularly wants to take out Okami. The reason? He calls Okami a "samurai without honour".

Okami and Silva met in the Rumble on the Rock tournament in Hawaii, with Silva being disqualified for ilegal kicks. He says that the rules were not properly explained to him, and that Okami exploited the situation to get to the next round of the tournament. Fights are always that litle bit more exciting when there is bad blood, so it will be very interesting to hear Silva's reaction if Okami wins.

Forrest Griffin may seem like a goofball, and truth be told, he kind of is. But he takes his fighting seriously, as we saw when he cried his way out of the Octagon following his loss to Keith Jardine earlier this year. We've seen and heard good things about Ramirez, namely that he hits f***ing hard, and what with Forrest's habit of blocking punches with his face, we've been told not to blink. You heard it here first.

Look for Fighters Only sponsored fighters Jason Tan, Stevie Lynch and Colin Robinson on the weekend.

Jason Tan will be facing off against a TUF veteran Marcus Davis, a handy boxer with good submissions who wisely changed his name from 'The Irish Hand Grenade' (not a good choice of name for the land of The Troubles) to 'The Celtic Warrior'. Tan brings solid Muay Thai skills and BJJ to the Octagon, and is part of Terry Etim's coaching team.

Stevie Lynch and Colin Robinson are two tough fighters out of the UFR Team in Northern Ireland. Both guys are locals, and you can bet the crowd will go wild when they see a couple of their own feature enter the cage. The Belfast crowd are said to be loud, lets see just what they can do come Saturday.

One last thing - a source from inside Zufa told us that he had seen the ticket reports and apparently a lot of them were sold to people who live in London. It seems cheap flights have prompted fans from the capital city to make their way over to the province for a bit of MMA action.

posted by Fighters Only Mag Editor at Wednesday, June 13, 2007 << Back To Main Page