Good for Laughs: MMA Fighter Look-a-Likes

Everyone looks like someone. Well, maybe not an exact match, but, close enough for comparisons to be drawn. While we all can’t look like Pitt, Clooney, or Denzel, the fighters below have some look-a-likes. How about Brian Bowles and Dirk Diggler? Ok, what about Rich Franklin and Jim Carrey? You decide!

Check out our MMA Fighter Look-a-Likes photo gallery.

Big Ben Rothwell, Complain All You Want

Contributor: 2JupitersTooMany. Consider Ben Rothwell. I’m talking about that heavyweight monster who was undefeated in the IFL. If you’re a casual fan, maybe that doesn’t ring a bell. How about this: He’s the one who fought in the UFC last week. Now that the Rua bandwagon has quieted down and Machida is off sculpting bonsai trees and practicing crane kicks in the sunset again, it’s Ben’s turn to complain. Still nothing? He’s the heavyweight who got knocked around by Cain Velasquez for just over a round. You know, the one with the shaved head and the beard. Ah yes, Mr. Rothwell.

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Should the “10 Point Must” Go?

Contributor: Marko. The light heavyweight title fight between Mauricio “Shogun” Rua and Lyoto Machida is the latest to be added to a long list of fights that prove the current scoring system to be too flawed for MMA. This is not meant to bash the judges’ decision, but rather the use of 10-point must scoring for MMA in general.

The problem is this – Machida lost that fight but rightfully earned the decision. That means when you view the fight as a whole, Shogun would be the winner. However, when breaking it down round by round and awarding a 10-9 score for each round, Machida was the winner. The reason is that several of the rounds were close and the judges favored the Champion. The idea that a close round would go to the Champion because “the challenger needs to take the belt” carried over from boxing and is well documented. It may be ridiculous, but it is commonplace in scoring fights.

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Problems with Judging: Breaking Down Cecil’s Explanation

Contributor: Joe Stewart. Okay, we get it, judging in MMA has always been terrible. Anybody who failed to realize this now knows after Saturday’s fight between Lyoto Machida and Shogun. It’s one thing when I personally think the fight could have gone either way, though, when I watch a fight half a dozen times (sound on, sound off, doesn’t matter) and my personal opinion is still the same, I tend to believe someone got screwed over. And this isn’t just a screw over; this is probably the biggest judging f*ck up in the history of any combat sport. Yes, I said it. Bigger than Ricco vs. Big Nog, bigger than Bisping vs. Hamill. Hell, I’ll go so far as to say it’s far worse than any Olympic boxing judging, which tells you something considering how obviously bad Olympic boxing judging has always been. This was, in my opinion, so bad that I had no will to even talk about it or to even watch the sport any longer. After all of that I turned off the television, sat in shock for a good hour thinking…..what the hell just happened? Heck, I didn’t even stay up and watch Dream 12 because of the bad taste that was left in my mouth. And this is coming from a guy who’s never missed a Dream event or, more importantly, a UFC event in nearly a decade. THAT bad.

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Shogun Wins Fight, Machida Wins Decision

Contributor: Richard Green. UFC 104 was held on Saturday night, and frankly, my shock has yet to wear off. The main event pitted Pride Fighting Championship wunderkind Mauricio “Shogun” Rua against the inscrutable Lyoto “The Dragon” Machida. Machida entered the bout a heavy favorite. He had never lost a round in the UFC, let alone an entire fight. In the aftermath of the dismantling of former-champion Rashad Evans at his hands, many declared that the “Machida era” had begun. Apparently, Mauricio Rua never got the memo.

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Dentistry and Josh Neer

Contributor: 2JupitersTooMany. Calling Josh Neer “the Dentist” feels right, but it’s not just because he’s got molar prints on his ring fingers. He hasn’t exactly been leaving a trail of bicuspids on the UFC’s Harley Davidson decals lately. Still, I can’t think of a better name for the guy.

I’ve changed dentists as many times as I’ve changed insurance companies. We’ve just never managed to develop that chummy dentist-patient relationship that you read about in 1950s heartland novellas. Why is that? I think it’s probably because I’ve never registered an ounce of joy from a single one of them. They’ve all just sort of hovered like androgynous cherubs, sterilized by fluorescent light, and they communicate an absolute disenchantment with the idea of getting too invested in the long-term welfare of my little plaque and tartar ecosystem. And when they aren’t making exasperated moral judgments about my failure to floss, they are simply bored. Bored and disgusted, like puritanical rodents running exercise wheels in a bordello. If that’s too abstract for you, how about this: they remind me of Josh Neer.

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Why Hendo Can’t Get His Dough?

Contributor: Joe Stewart. Fact. The UFC has generated $330 million off of pay-per-view revenue and ticket sales alone so far this year. Those are staggering numbers considering just years ago, the UFC was blacklisted from being shown on any pay-per-view channels. So you may be asking yourself at this moment, why is Dan Henderson, one of, if not the most, decorated MMA fighters of all time, having negotiation problems with the UFC? Why is it so hard for him to get his money? To Dana White, if Dan Henderson wants a seven figure signing bonus, give it to him. He deserves it, as do plenty of other fighters who have busted their ass for years upon years only to receive less money than WNBA players.

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The MA in MMA

Contributor: Gary Blevins. I could barely hear my fighter over the crowd. It was a small bar filled so far past max capacity that I had to climb over people just to get into the corner of the ring. The ring itself was stained with the blood and sweat of years worth of amateur boxing matches. There were no lower ropes to stop an opponent from falling out of the boxing ring and landing directly onto tables lined with empty beer bottles and overflowing ash trays. As the bell rang and the crowd screamed I had the somber realization that this wasn’t my MMA, this was just fighting.

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What’s With Training UFC?

Contributor: 2JupitersTooMany. Unlike sports like basketball, or even hockey in Texas, the sport of Mixed Martial Arts used to be illegal. That means that at least a handful of proud supporters spent some time ducking from shadow to shadow to support the sport when it was a bit sexier and unsavory. Of course, it wasn’t called Mixed Martial Arts back then. It was Pankration, or the Gracie Challenge, or No-Holds-Barred or just something along the lines of Come To My Garage and We’ll Beat the Hell Out of Larry. But, eventually, along came the UFC.

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Is Kimbo Angling for Petruzelli Rematch?

Regardless of how Kimbo Slice performs in this evening’s televised bout with Roy Nelson – or during the rest of the season (if applicable) – is Kimbo already laying the ground work for a rematch with famed Kimbo-killer Seth Petruzelli? For those living on Mars, Petruzelli TKO’ed Slice in 14 seconds at last October’s EliteXC Heat showdown. Kimbo mentioned the following during Monday’s press call hyping this week’s fight between him and Nelson.

Seth needs to be careful because we live in the same backyard and I know that sissy ice cream shop (Petruzelli owns in South Florida). No one ever approached me with any rematch with Seth and I never turned that down. That’s (expletive). That didn’t happen. If Seth signed with UFC and Dana wanted to match us up, I’d do that. I don’t like lying. I’d never turn down a rematch with anybody. It ain’t personal, but it’s (expletive). I never said no to nothing to him. I’ve been hearing that dude talking (expletive).

Petruzelli hasn’t exactly been an innocent bystander, as well. He recently dropped the following on the well-known MMA.tv UG message board.

I did have respect for you, after our fight you said I was the better fighter. There were 3 times that we could have fought after the Elite(XC) show for you to get a rematch, but you declined all 3 times. Now you go on ESPN making excuses, saying the only reason you lost was that it was sprung on you the last minute and that you can beat me with one hand behind your back!!!! You can go F yourself…maybe now that the UFC is having me back we will see for sure.

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