[music] Hello, and welcome to the Hammer. I'm your host, Steve. It is April the 21st, and we have got our really interesting show for you. I am joined as always by my good friend, Steve. And unfortunately, our usual co-host, Greg, cannot be here tonight, but we will do our best to cover for him. Who's going to make fun of Steve Mazagadi and Shail Sunning today? We'll do our best. I'll make fun of Shail, you make fun of Steve Mazagadi. Okay, so we have a kind of an interesting show, and we're going to start with Strike for us, despite the fact that this show was not particularly interesting. It's just the way it works out. Well, to be fair, the card itself wasn't all that great. But there's stories surrounding it. There's stories surrounding it. So we start with a preliminary card, which is actually fairly exciting. Cody Floyd beat Thomas Camel in the first or, sorry, round three by TKL with a knee in the clinch. Dustin Ortiz beat Justin Pennington via rear naked choke in round one. Zach Underwood defeated Hunter Worsham via unanimous decision. Joss Shokum defeated Carl Yarbrough by TKL with knees and punches in round two. This was a standing TKL, I believe. Dustin West defeated Andy Urich by submission rear naked choke at one minute and 36 seconds in round none. That was very, very fast for rear naked choke. And then Kristin or Chris Hawke defeated Oven St. Puru by, I'm sorry, Oven St. Puru defeated Chris Hawke by TKL with punches at 44 seconds in round one. So that was a very, very impressive TKL. Now another impressive TKL on the preliminary card. Jason Mayhem Miller versus Tim Stout. This was three minutes and ten seconds. Miller fought a very technical fight and then ended it with a TKL in round one. In his commentary on it Miller said that he was, he's used to coming out like a wild man. This time he's coming out more technically sound, better trained, fighting a smarter fight to try to pick up a guaranteed win over Stout. Definitely work for him. And that fight was added to the card pretty much at the last minute. Just in case they needed a good TV bout in case the main events went short, which wasn't really a problem. But yeah, none of those preliminary fights actually got shown except for the clips of Miller. The Miller and Stout clips got shown. Unfortunately, none of the preliminary card made it onto the main TV show for reasons we will go into in a moment. However, Miller did his little interview. They asked him about his upcoming fight with Robbie Lawler. He mentioned that he didn't know anything about him being booked to fight Lawler, which is ridiculous. But he said he was willing to fight him but he had his mouth card and he was willing to fight Dan Henderson or Jason Mayhem Miller or Jason Shields. Sorry, mental freeze there for me. So interesting little note there that will come relevant later. So now we go onto the main card where we had three championship matches. This is a two hour CBS show. So this was on CBS, like the CBS TV network, a two hour block and three title fights. Each of them is five rounds. We were talking in the weeks and months leading up to this show that there's no way they're going to get through these three title fights in two hours. Particularly not if the fights go long or what not, which unfortunately we will go into the second. So let's start. They opened the show with a very, very long segment of the three hosts talking back and forth about what great fights we're going to see. This is an example of what not to do. In the UFC, they would have cut in with video packages and shots of the fighters and little interview clips of the fighters and soundbites. This is just 3D talking. None of them is a particularly interesting guy and it looked very, very awkward. Radio on the TV does not work. Learn how to use video clips. I know you don't want to be like the UFC, but there's things that you see does well. Trying to make this too much like an old school boxing match is a reason why boxing isn't that popular anymore. Plus if you're showing this on network TV, most of the people watching this have no idea who these fighters are. Yeah, you got to promote them by saying, "Oh, you can't say, "Oh, massage is a great fighter." If you're going to say massage is a great fighter, go to clips of massaging knocking people out. There's plenty of them. Show me a picture of him kicking a punching bag. You don't want anything. Let me put a face to the neck. Yeah, so they just chatted back and forth for a couple minutes. A little bit awkward, but it's strike force, so we go forward from there. Now we mentioned previously that we hated strike force's production value. They actually corrected most of that. The camera angles were clean. They made sense. There was no weird shots of the ring post for like 5 or 6 seconds or anything like that. There was one little botch where a guy was running with a camera and you could see his feet, because his camera was pointing down, but that's to be expected. The show looked pretty good and a lot better than other recent strike force shows. They definitely learned from their last shows and picked it up a little bit. They also replaced the keys to the cage, which we thought was horrible, because it was always a right job. They would say the keys to the cage, this fighter is his right job. And that's it. They were just put up a little graphic that said right hand jab. It's a single leg. It's like they're finishing move. It's like Ryu's uppercut. Yeah, terrible. So instead, they've got this new video game coming out with EA. So instead of keys to the cage, they had Ken Shamrock playing the video game with Marl Wernalow. Me at gaming out, what the fight might look like and commenting on it. So instead you saw a video game clips of Masashi punching Muhammad Law. It's a little bit clunky, but hey, if you've got to promote this video game and you're going to make money off of it, why not? Yeah, I got no real problem with it. Yeah, it worked better than the keys to the cage. So let's go forward to the fights. We started with Masashi versus King Mo Muhammad Law. Now we had high hopes for Masashi, but we said that Muhammad, I think Steve said that Muhammad Law is good enough for us so that he might be able to hold him down for five rounds. After Muhammad came down with a lot of good takedowns, kept the fight down. Masashi was looking cool from his back, fighting off a lot of the ground in pound. In the second round, his game pair is a little bit better. He landed a lot of shots from the bottom, although King Mo still had top position. Masashi punished him, closed him of his eyes, really, really beat him. However, in the third, fourth and fifth round, King Mo kept getting takedowns. He ended up with nine shots, nine takedowns. So even though Masashi, I would struck him from the bottom, closed him of his eyes, and King Mo definitely looked at the more damage. King Mo had dominant position almost the entire fight. He also landed a lot of shots from the top, not as many as more as Masashi did from the bottom, but enough to really, really make it clear that he was in control. Also, in the last round, Masashi was looking a little bit frustrated. He went for an up kick. He's knocked people out before, from his back, with up kicks. Unfortunately, Muhammad had his knee on the ground. So, Masashi ended up kicking him down opponent in the head. The ref immediately docked him a point for this. So we go to the decision. It was 49-45 unanimously for King Mo, the new strike-forced light heavyweight champion. Now, King Mo was cheered throughout the fight. Well, he had a big wacky entrance with girls and umbrellas and all that stuff. The crowd, the crowd, they didn't know him. They liked him. Yeah. He also, he had a lot of fans and friends in the Nashville area. So, you know, the crowd was strongly behind him. They actually booed him during this decision, because apparently there's still some hardcore fight fans there who were fans in Masashi. Oh, not a lot of people thought King Mo was going to win this fight. In Masashi's considered one of the best fighters in the world, especially at his weight class. And, yeah, King Mo just, he did it. The only thing is though, he won the light heavyweight title. But this isn't the first fight of the night. I mean, it just didn't seem like that big a deal. Yeah. So, it was the first fight of the night. You know, he was booed. He mentioned that his haters made him stronger. Interesting quote. Masashi left quietly with respect. So, Muhammad, Goliath is the new strike-forced light heavyweight champion. Now, an interesting little note about Masashi. We had mentioned before that UFC was making a solid run at getting Masashi to come to the UFC, because the UFC has generally the fastest light heavyweight division in the world. I would say he's the only great light heavyweight that isn't under contract to the UFC. Him and maybe King Mo. No. No. So, with that being said, this was his last contracted fight. He would have been free to leave after this. Unfortunately, he signed back with Strike Force for a six-flight contract, which means UFC is no longer in the cards from him, and he's not the strike-forced champion. So, kind of like a double kick to the groin there. Yeah, it doesn't really seem like it's too great for him. He's just going to hang out there on Strike Force doing who knows what network. Yeah. Yeah. And just kind of hoping. The first thing is you think they would put him back in there with Mo at some point soon. However, Mo is becoming kind of a draw. So, I don't know how eager they are going to be putting Masasi back in there with him. They might want to give Masasi our most saucy couple tune-up fights before them. Here's the problem with Strike Force. It's unlike in UFC. There aren't a lot of good light heavyweights in that division. Like, there's those two guys. Are they going to fight each other again? Yeah. They have to at least have one fight between them fighting again. Yeah. So, that is a fight that will most likely occur sometime early next year, I would imagine. However, we don't really know what's going to go on with there. Both guys are under contract. So, going forward, we'll see what happens. So, good for King Mo winning the Strike Force. It's going to be my championship. And this is another example of a good wrestler having a strong advantage over even a great striker. Yeah. So, we go forward to another wrestler versus striker on match. And another title fight. And another title fight. This one for the lightweight championship. Gilbert Melendez, Defia facing Shinya Aoki. Now, Melendez had a great front of the year candidate with-- With Thompson. With Thompson earlier this year. It's an excellent fight. And Shinya Aoki is known for his incredible submissions. He's the dream champion. So, this was kind of an inter-promotional dream match. But only the Strike Force light heavyweight title was on the line. Yes, because dream is contested in a ring. So, they won't let it be contested in a cage. So, Melendez, it was very well aware of how good Shinya was in the ground. His game plan was clearly to strike. And this is an example of a guy with a great counter wrestling game. Facing a guy who was a great submission guy but not necessarily the best wrestler. That's really all Aoki has going for him. If you can get him on the ground, he's nothing. He can't get you on the ground. He's on the ground. He's on the ground. He's on the ground. He's on the ground. He's on the ground. He's on the ground. He's nothing. And Melendez had a game plan. And he-- He was running him from the top, hitting him standing up. Shinya Aoki tried to crab walk, which is basically lying on his back and scooting towards. There was a lot of those. And Melendez kept stepping back and then Superman punching him on the ground. Aoki took a lot of hard shots. He definitely looked abused by the end of this fight. This was an excellent all-around fighter facing a very one-dimensional fighter. Aoki's a very good submission guy but he is very-- He doesn't have a strong stand-up game and he's not a great wrestler. So if you can submit a guy on the ground but you can't get him on the ground, it's a bit of a problem. Melendez is a good enough counter-wrestler that he's not going to go to the ground with you unless he wants to. He's cooled him. And he just abused him. So this is an example of how the sport has evolved. And Aoki has not evolved with it, unfortunately. So Melendez is still the strength force-- Strike force like he would-- And he looked good doing it. Yep, unanimous decision, 50 to 45. Before the fight, Shinya Aoki had commented that this was a match of Japanese styles versus American styles. And that if he did not win Japan, could he become a colony of the United States? It hasn't happened yet. But we will keep you informed. I did like in the post-fight interview with Melendez. They asked him if now because B.J. Pan has lost his title and Frankie Egger is relatively unproven. If Melendez felt that he was now the number one light heavyweight in the world. He's like, eh, maybe top three. Not very forceful. He could have really pushed himself there but I guess he's honest. Yeah, well, but I mean, he is honest. And unfortunately, even though B.J. Pan has slipped out of that top spot, he's still kind of an overwhelming presence in the division. Melendez is actually-- he has gone up in the rating. He's now considered the third. So it's now considered Frankie Egger, B.J. Pan. Oh, I'm not saying it's not the right place for him. I would place him at number three as well. But say your number one. Yeah, you know, go for it. You know, or at least say your number two to Frankie Egger. Right. B.J. Pan, he just overshadows that division. So with two decisions down, we go to the middleweight championship out of Jake Shields versus Dan Henderson. Now, it was expected that Dan Henderson would be a huge draw because he's coming off that crushing UFC run where he devastated Michael Bisping. Unfortunately, that was a year ago and he's cooled off significantly since then. People kind of forgot about him. They haven't been promoting him. They haven't been running TV ads for him. So Jake Shields came out to have a similar game plan to Muhammad Law. Take the fight to the ground and pound him out. Dan Henderson obviously is an incredible striker. So his plan was to counter Russell and punch. Jake Shields came out in the first round, walked right into a stiff right hand, got dropped. Henderson pummeled him throughout the first round. He had an excellent first round. He got on the ground on his feet. Henderson looked. He looked like Henderson. She looked like Henderson. You know, he countered every stuff that we take downtown and just kept punishing him. Shields looked to be in severe, severe difficulties. However, in the second round, Shields was able to get top position and hold it. Then in the third, fourth, and fifth round, Shields just kept on top, kept punishing him, kept abusing him. And the thing is, Shields is a decision fighter. He goes to decision all the time. Henderson is not a decision fighter. He's a knockout fighter. And he's not been in championship matches. The five round championship matches recently. With a year layoff, he looked to start gassing in the third round. Shields is a lot like John Fitch, where he'll, he's a wrestler. He'll take you down. He'll lie on top of you. And he'll just keep you there. And I mean, he wins fights. He's like 15 in a row. In the stomachs, he can't breathe. But you know what? He doesn't finish fights and he's not excited to watch. And people were turning this fight off like crazy. It got hammered in the ratings. Because, I mean, Jake Shields boards me. He boards me. He bored me the last time he fought Miller. He's not an exciting fighter to watch. Actually, even Dave here. Dave, you're usually the guy who, you know, if I'm bored by a fight, you're like, no, no, no. These guys are some of the best in the world. No, no, no. You know, like, I appreciate the art. Yeah, I appreciate a good technical fight. Your eyes were rolled in the back of your head. Jake Shields was, I was getting, I was in pain. You were dying. I was in like, I didn't think you could make it. So, yeah, I appreciate a good technical. You know, I appreciate submissions and a good grappling match. But with that being said, this was just Shields lying on top and Henderson gassing. I'm never afraid to say I'm bored during a fight. This was really bad. Yeah. So, Shields does pick up the unanimous decision victory. 49, 46, 49, 45, and 48, 45. Henderson scored that and pressed the first round. But, unfortunately, he was not able to bear it out. So, we go to the post-fight interviews. They said, you know, Jake, how do you feel about winning this fight? And Jake began to talk about how he felt about winning the fight against the living one, just legend Dan Henderson. However, before you could say more than two or three words, all of a sudden a grinning Jason Mayhem Miller showed up. He just disappeared, like magic. Now, normally you'd expect that, you know, the promoter of the fight would walk a number one contender into the ring after the champion had given his, this is how I feel speech and then face them off with each other. In this case, Jake Shields just cut, or Jake Shields just got cut off by Jason Miller in mid-sentence, in mid-word. He asked for a rematch. Uh, Jason Mayhem Miller said, how about my rematch? Shields smiled and pushed him. Uh, Jason, Jake, Jason Miller fell back into the big promotion sign from the, for the Shields of Jim. Dan Gilbert Melendez, who just won his fight, pushed him again. And then the Diaz brothers jumped Miller as well. So basically all of the guys from Jake Shields training camp, including two different Strike Force champions, the lightweight champion, um, Gilbert Melendez and the Walter Wade champion, Nate Diaz, uh, and his brother, Nick Diaz, who's a UFC fighter, all jumped on Jake, on Jason Miller and he's some Miller and began pummeling him. Uh, they cut away, but then they came back and the throw all was still ongoing with trainers from Jake Shields camp running in, kicking Miller while he was down, punching him. It's swarming on him like a, like a gang brawl. This was like something out of the WWE. It's just a big explosion. Ridiculous. Refs coming in to trying to pull people apart and just, it was like eight on one. It was, it was ridiculous. It was terrible and professional. Uh, they did get Miller out of there safely. Afterwards, they go to the promotion. They finished the promo with Jake Shields where he was said, uh, he was, he was upset about that, but he was still excited to fight, to fought Henderson. Uh, weirdly throughout this interview, Marlou and all the players, having his arm and rubbing his back. Apparently what he was doing there, it looked like he was like concerned and was like, just rubbing his arm was very, very strange, but apparently they were sure on time he was just trying to, to lure him out of there. But I mean, you're talking to the champion about, uh, about a giant brawl that just, uh, that just broke out. Let him talk. What do you have to say? Yeah. Well, this looked really, really awkward. It was very awkward. You could tell they were unprepared for this sort of thing. Yeah. And then unfortunately because of this brawl and cutting away and going back and whatnot, it was a two hour time slot. They ended up going for two hours and 45 minutes way over what CBS had a lot of them. CBS was extremely annoyed. They ended it with an extremely unprofessional looking brawl and the rating came back in. And what was the rating? They were not very good. Um, this was like as low as any, uh, MMA show has ever been on CBS. It was a 30% decrease from the last strike force show, the one that had Fedor. And, uh, yeah, it just, people were tuning out that main event in droves because they were just so bored. We were bored. Everybody was bored by three, five round title fights that went to decision. They weren't all that exciting. This may be the last strike force show on CBS. And Scott Coker, he had the idea of, you know what, I'm gonna load all my championships into this last CBS card and try to nail down the show. Unfortunately, you can't do that. You put on one championship, but then you put on all your strikers if you don't have an exciting show. You don't put on your three grappling champs. Three round fights are usually more exciting because there's shorter. People don't want to sit there for half an hour and watch a fight. Yeah. Unless they're emotionally invested in it. Yeah. Uh, so this, this was very, very ridiculous. And then the big test is for CBS, they have to weigh, are you going to beat our typical run of reruns of CSI? Uh, or whatever it is. Or whatever. And they barely did. Yeah. So this really does not justify it. And with cage fighting, having a bad reputation and this fight ending in a brawl, strike force may well be on his last legs with CBS. I would imagine that the contract renewables, they're either gonna have to offer up some sacrificial lambs and fire some of the people involved in the brawls, keeping in mind that three of them are promotion champions. Or just put together a card that you can't miss that they can promise ratings. Yeah. But how can they do that? Gina Kranos off film a movie and Fedor is giving them issues too. Yeah. So, so this, this, this, there may be another one, but it's, it's like you're out. Strike force might be done on the show. My opinion. I am calling it. I feel that strike force is done. I don't think CBS is going to give them our shot. I think that they're mad enough of the time slot issues and they're mad enough about the lack of ratings and the lack of delivery that this is definitely in the scale back. They're addressing it in strike force and the promise strike force is before they weren't, you know, hiring the best talent, but they weren't losing money because they didn't have the best talent. The paying for all these guys like Fedor, guys like like Dan Henderson, and it's not working. Yeah. So, I mean, strike force, I believe is going to go the way of lead. See, I'm calling them to have maybe another year and a half of life left in the money before. I think my favorite thing about, about all this is immediately following the show, minutes following the strike force show, Dana White on his Twitter, his post was just a smiley face, like an emoticon smiley face. He could not have been more happy with this. Yeah. What a train wreck. Well, he just saw, I mean, he just saw the closest rival promotion, just south to strong, the national TV. So, you know, this is, this is train wreck disaster. Strike force is over. So, let's go forward to the news. All right. So, this week UFC has released Robert Emerson, Jason High, Fabrizio Camost, who lost to Carpolo Greeno in the last, last, last, last pay per view. Rafael Lavera, not Veach, who is unfortunate because we've stepped on board with him. He had a great winning streak, but two losses in a row. They got no time for it. Two losses in a row and, I mean, you know-- They lost to Paul Kelly. Lost to Paul Kelly. It's hard, buddy, but, you know, either you come out and rally and get back in it, or, you know, you have to say, if you can't beat the top guys, I mean, the guys he was on the undefeated against weren't top names. Right. So, you might not be able to guy who's, and that interior. Yep. So, too bad for him, and also, Mustaf Al-Turk, finally. And the stuff Al-Turk has been on losing streak forever, so-- And he just lost to John Madsen, who is-- He's the new Mustaf Al-Turk. Yeah, exactly. The new bottom of the barrel in their heavyweight division. Paul Blintell, he claimed that he was retiring last week, following his loss to Chek Congo. But now he says he's not. He's going to rehab his hand. He's going to come back. That's cool. I wouldn't mind seeing him fight again. He's an exciting fighter, and he does enjoy him, so, I mean-- If he keeps losing, I ditch him, but not yet. Yeah, not yet. The next edition of the UFC Primetime specials is going to be that Rampage and Rashad build up for the end of May. There's going to be three, 30-minute episode, just kind of hyping it up, starting May 12th. It should be very exciting, because those guys love to trash talk. Not only do they love to trash talk, but there's actually legitimately bad feelings between Rampage and Rashad. Rampage, even when he was kind of semi-retired in another game, he kept coming back and saying, "Hey, if this one guy "I'm going to come back to beat up, it's Rashad." Yeah. So, now he's got his chance. So, yeah, that should be fun. Watching those guys trash each other for 90 minutes, that'll pipe me up to watch their fight. Last week, we speculated that Jail Sun-in would get the next shot at Anderson Silva. It turns out he will. The fight is rumored to happen in July or August, likely as a co-main event with the Lesnar fight, because nobody can really trust Anderson Silva to headline a show after that last performance. Yeah. Well, I mean, if you're going to put him on underneath someone, putting him on underneath Brock makes sense. He's in the box in heavyweight class anyways. Now, Dana also said that if Anderson tries to do what he did to Damian Maya again, he will be fired. So, that's a pretty hard stance. It's a champion repulsion. It's easy to say, but I don't see him just firing him. It's hard to fire a champ. You know, when you do say, "Get back your belt and get out." The champion arguably the best in the world. He can't just fire him. Yeah. But, I mean, though that's a stern warning, Dean is definitely not amused. And, I mean, he's the kind of guy if he makes a threat. He likes to back it off. He likes to show that he's, you know, not afraid to carry it out, carried out. And the guy who Dana White has threatened many times, T2RT's is pretty angry. He's threatening his own fans on Twitter. He's very upset. The people are calling him for lack of a better word. I don't really want to say it, but they're calling him a wuss for ducking out of the fight with Chuck Liddell on June 12th. We don't really know what's happening. They're both the coaches of Ultimate Fighter this season. Something happens to Tito, and the fight's now going to be Chuck Liddell and Rich Franklin. I don't know what the story is there, but Tito RT's is angry about it, and he's offering to fight his fans. If you email him, he will just come and find you and be the grabout of it. So, interesting words from Tito. I guess that proves you tough if you say, "Hey, email me, and I will come to your hometown and fight you." Should we threaten him and get him into the studio here for an impromptu interview? I think if you want to fight Tito RT, he's a cinnamon email. No, we'll just say Greg will do it. Yeah. We'll suggest Tito an email on Greg's name. So, going forward. And Dana White also has issues with a book called Why I Fight the Autobiography of BJ Pan. White says the book is 90% lies and says he will never read it. White also claimed that Penn told him that the Penn did not read the book or write it. So, for some reason Dana is just taking a really personal stance with this biography of BJ Pan. Well, I mean, 90% of the people that have their autobiographies written have it written by ghost writers. So, I mean, there's no surprise there. A little interesting side note about BJ Pan. He actually did have a match recently. He went to promote his book on Fox News, on Fox and Friends. One of the commentators asked him, you know, how he could deal with a guy who saw it much bigger than him and it ended in an impromptu wrestling match, where BJ Pan took down a Fox News anchor, grappled with him and teabagged him. Well, he's actually been doing this on this whole press round. He's just been grabbing guys who are interviewing him and trying to, like, submit them. I guess he's got to get a win somewhere. He can't be freaky aker, at least he can be Fox News. And Mike Wayhead, a guy who's had fights in the UFC and Strike Force, and actually he was on the Ultimate Fighter before, too. He's been charged with sexual assault and open and gross lewdness. The arrest was tied to an alleged assault last Saturday. Apparently, they also found a grow operation at his house, too. He has a win over Zach Jensen. Big deal. But he's probably better known for losing to Brande Vera, Keith Jardine, Tim Silvia, and also King Mo. Well, I mean, if you're going to end your UFC career, your mixed martial arts career, why not do it with gross lewdness and having a grow operation in your house? Well, obviously he's not winning any big fights, so he may as well try something new. He could be weeds. Yes. And yeah, that's pretty much it for the news. So we go forward to the WEC, which we're going to be covering quickly. They have got their WEC 48 coming up on this Saturday. Oh, actually, this is kind of interesting. The Zufa, the guys who own UFC, they also own WEC. It's their smaller weight class division. Well, they're actually going to really support this pay-per-view. They're doing a countdown special. Mike's like they do under UFC shows. They're doing a free spike special in the hour leading up to the WEC show with two free matches. And they're using the same commentary team from UFC. You've got Joe Rogan, you've got Mike Goldberg, and you've got Bruce Buffer. They're all there to kind of add like an era of legitimacy to it. Well, it's legitimate promotion. It just happens to be smaller weight class. Oh, WEC's amazing. So I hope this works out. So this is going to be their first pay-per-view, I believe. Yep. I'm really looking forward to it. They've got a lot of talent to have hacked into this card. So we've got Brandon Visher versus Tyler Toner. Takeo Misogi versus Rania Yaya. Yaya is a great fighter who just came off an incredible knockout over, um, I'm drawing a blank. I believe it was one of the Gambirian brothers. Chad Menendez versus Anthony Morrison. Brad Pickett versus Demetrius Johnson. Then free on Spike TV, they're going to show Alex Carlekas and Anthony Pettis. And then Leonard Garcia versus Chan Song Young. These are all four of these guys are strikers. They're coming out the fight. So there'll be some entertainment on Spike TV. And here's the thing about WEC is that all of their fights are entertaining. Like I don't think I've ever seen an uncool WEC fight. Because they're like guys. They've got gas in the tank. They can fight for all three of us. You may not know or recognize the names, but you're going to get more action out of your average WEC show than you are out of a strike force for sure. And UFC often. So we go forward to the main card. Anthony Benollos will be taking on Scott Jorgensen. Jorgensen is a Bantamweight who is almost in line for championship shot. So this is the number one contender as much. Now these guys have fought to his position previously. And Benollos, he won. But you know what? This time Jorgensen's coming off a three-foot win streak. Jorgensen's coming off a win streak. He's looking good. They're considering him for a title fight. I can't see him not winning this fight. So we're calling Jorgensen to win that one. Now we have Anthony Angicuani coming off of his kind of disappointing knockout over Chris Horducky. Disappointing for who? Disappointing for Horducky. Horducky turned his back and ran. And Angicuani kicked him in the face from behind. He actually ran away. And what would be part of this guy's highlight reel forever is that he kicked a guy while he was running away from him. And then D.K. Odom. So versus Anthony Angicuani will take on Shane Rauler. Anthony Angicuani is very, very big for the lightweight division. Some calling him to win this one. He's huge. He's 6'2", I believe. He's had a very good record. And his only losses are to Benson Henderson and Donald Seroni, who are not slouches at all. How can you not pick him? Then we have Mike Brown versus Manaville Grombirien. Now Manaville Grombirien is cutting from the UFC's lightweight division to fight featherweight against Mike Brown. They're considering him almost a shoe-in for a featherweight championship shot. However, Mike Brown has been to the dance before. He's one of the best featherweights in the world. He's one of the best of his weight class for the world. Like, you know, like as a whole. He's one of the best powerful town guys in the world. I have to say that, you know, as good as Grombirien looks when he's fighting guys that aren't Mike Brown, taking on Mike Brown is a different thing. I'm calling Brown to win this one. I'm calling up by TKO. I totally agree. Like, like, in Buring, he's a good striker. He's a good wrestler. But, you know what? Mike Brown's a great striker and a great wrestler. And there's just no way he can't win this fight. Yeah. And this is being considered a number one contenders match as well for the featherweight challenge. And, you know what? Brown's got to win this. And he's going to win a face in the winner of the main event. Yeah. So, absolutely. I'll call him Brown for that one. Then we go to the lightweight championship, which will be Bendo, Ben Henderson versus Donald, the Cowboy Stroni. Now, these guys had a great match previously. One of the fight of the year contenders last year. Now, in that fight, Henderson won by unanimous decision. Yeah. But it was a very close decision. It was a close fight. But, you know, Henderson did win. But this was a fight that you have to see. If you haven't seen it, YouTube it. It's one of those fights like Diego Sanchez and Craig Rita from last year that you just have to watch. So, it's hard to describe these two guys. But Stroni is a great wrestler with some good striking and stand up. Henderson is an incredible striker, very light on his feet. And he's got some incredible submissions and good counter wrestling. So, these guys will put on a show absolutely definitely worth watching. Well, these guys are like, here's the thing like Stroni. His stand is really good. He's got very interesting submissions. And then Henderson is just a great wrestler who just doesn't get tired. Like, their skill sets are just different enough and are just both so talented. That this was going to be fight at the night, I'm sure. I can't wait to see it. And then we go forward to forward featherweight championship. Your eye favor makes his return. He's coming off of an injury, but he's back now. His injury was two broken hands. Two broken hands. He broke both his hands beating on Mike Brown. Lost the fight, but he's back in and recovered. And he will be taking on one of the Marlins of the pound-for-pound world. Featherweight champion Jose Aldo. Now, Aldo is pound-for-pound. Almost as good in his division as Fedor is overall. Aldo's a real deal. Yeah, definitely almost unbeatable. Arrive favor. He's tough. He's got a lot of heart. He's got a good chin. He can take a beating. He fought with two broken hands before. With that being said, as entertaining as the California kid is, as much as the crowd loves him, I don't see anyone be able to take Aldo in that division. He's just too good. That crowd is going to be so insanely hot for your eye favor, and they're going to be leaving very dejected. Because I love favor favors great. Just such a likable guy. A good finder. Great heart, but there's just no way he's going to be Aldo. Like, favor lost to Brown. Aldo dismantled Brown. Now, with that being said, if anyone can take on Aldo, it's favor. He's got enough counter wrestling to knock it into the grand to the typical ground and pound situations that Aldo likes. And then he's got a tough chin. Aldo's a striker. He's going to come all hard, but favor can take a punch. This guy isn't going to back down. My favorite will never say die, but sooner or later you're going to get hit hard enough. It's going to take anyone else. We've seen a lot of champions upset lately. BJ Penn, you know, Masasi, even shields is considered upset because Henderson was a favorite going in. Oh, true. I wouldn't even be upset. I mean, anyone can upset Aldo. I wouldn't even be upset if, if, if favor, one, I think paper's great. It's just, I mean, Aldo's on fire. Four wins last year. How many guys win four fights in one year at this level? Yeah, not too many. But with that being said, although I do have to call Aldo to win, I'm thinking he's probably going to win by TKO. If there is going to be an upset on this card. That's the one. That's the one. Her eye favor has definitely got. He's one of the few guys in the world that's got the ability to beat a guy like Jose Aldo. So, I mean, I'm definitely going to be watching this. I certainly would recommend it to you. This will be an incredible card. Look forward to seeing these champions do what champions should do rather than the typical. Yeah, I would recommend watching the Spike Special. If you see what you enjoy, pay for this pay-per-view support these guys because if they don't, if WEC doesn't do very well on this first outing on pay-per-view, they may not have any more and these guys are awesome. They're as good as UFC if not better. So thank you very much for tuning in to us. We will see you again next week. We are live on CFMU-93.3 and you can also find us on iTunes under the hammer or on our Facebook. That's www.thehammerhammer.com. Have a great week, guys. [BLANK_AUDIO]
