I was just watching UFC Unleashed on Spike and Antonio Rodrigo "Minotauro" Nogueira vs Heath Herring was on; man, it was frustrating to watch.  I didn't like the fight since it was announced. This was to be the third time the two fighters were going to meet and there was completely no point to it. Nogueira already had with a one sided decision win and a submission victory over Herring.  What was the point? To put Nogueira over to US fans? Herring looked like an amature fighter that he's always been in his debut against Jake O'Brian and in all his other fights for that matter. It's disgusting to see his STILL sloppy striking, that's after all those years of supposed striking training in Holland. Bleh...

Herring is big/heavy, strong and wild. It can be tough to fight someone like that. But that's how he got by in all his fights. Let's go over some of his big fights starting in Pride.

vs Willie Peters - scrub from Rings with zero ground game.

vs Tom Erikson - the only fight where herring was actually smaller than his opponent, but so what? He was getting dominated and landed a lucky knee. Erikson never amounted to anything spectacular.

vs Enson Enuoe - we're talking about Enson's next fight after Igov Vovchanchyn's disturbing beating and doubling Enson's head in size from swelling.

vs Vitor Belfort - Herring was fighting a light heavy and couldn't even do anything to him

vs Mark Kerr - same as Erikson fight, get beat on and land a lucky knee

vs Rogdrigo Nogueira (first match) - you know, lots of people at the time called it the greatest heavyweight fights, i beg to differ. It was all Nogueira beating on Herring, standing and on the ground. Herring showed some explosiveness in his escapes - thats's it.

vs Igor Vovchanchyn - ya, he got Vovchanchyn down at the beginning of every round and sat on top of him taking a nap. Vovchanchyn came a way unscathed after that lay and pray.

vs Fedor Emelianenko - it was painful to watch because Fedor was hitting him so hard and landing most of the vicious ground and pound ever seen to date.

vs Mirko CroCop Filipovic - again, his takedowns were sloppy, his stand up was sloppy. CroCop liver kicked him into submission.

vs Gan McGee - "please, make this amature big sloppy loof night stop!!!" i kept thinking when i made myself watch this atrosity of a fight. It was a crime against what MMA. Never watch that one.

vs Nogueira (second fight) - a replay of the first, Nogueira dominating up and down and making him tap with the anaconda choke. Herring again showed nothing.

vs ...aah, what's the point...

My point is that this guy never amounted to anything and rode the hype of his stupid hairdo's and a few lucky breaks. But fight in and fight out, his striking never improved, he's takedown defense never got better, he's takedowns never got less sloppy. A shame really.

I'm not sure what UFC was thinking after keeping him on a contract after the Jake O'Brian fight. I know fighters have off days, but there were zero glimpses of any hope of any improvement...ever.

Mandaloniz and Richie both thought Matt Serra played favorites by spending more time preparing George Sotiropoulis and Matt Arroyo. From what they showed on TV, it definately looked that way, but they were both stupid for not training with Matt Hughes. People would pay big bucks to train with Hughes and these two dummies just passed it up.

Apparently their love for Matt Serra and camaraderie for their team was too much to take advantage of training with one of the greatest fighters in UFC. Funny that Serra hearing about their little egos didn't even give a crap.

First fight, Matt Arroyo vs Troy Mandaloniz,  Arroyo once again showed good ground game by submitting Mandaloniz with a quick armbar from sidemount. Even though he took the fight to the ground pretty quick, he showed some glimpses of some composed standup game.

Second fight, gool ol Richie Hightower actually gave a hard time to George Sotiropoulis for the first minute or so but then just as every one expected George easily submitted him shortly after it hit the ground with, my personal favorite, kimura from north-south position.

DRUM ROLL, please...........and teh real WINNAH of the show is? Richie Hightower of course! He was so happy about losing... 

He self-proclaimed himself as someone that belongs in UFC and can definately hang at that level. MMA NINJA Please! His only accomplishments are beating Blake Bowman, another person who didn't belong on the show and getting easily beaten by George.

Joe Silva, Zuffa, this one is for you, make it happen...Richie Hightower vs Luke Cummo. Getting KTFO by the weirdest Ultimate Fighter alumni out there may possibly bring Richie back to reality of just not being that good at MMA. Did the show editors told him to act just like Danny Abbadi, the quintessential ultimate fighter, did after losing? Who knows, but the fight would be entertaining just because a LOT of people would be happy watching a good beating of Richie.

so ya, i'm the MMA Ninja.  Been lurking around for a long time, like since this whole MMA thing started and during it's dark ages where I went to great lengths, like a good MMA Ninja would, to catch the UFCs in its' teens and early twenties and sneak around internets to find some bootleggers willing to sell a few grainy Pancrase and Gracies in Action tapes.

Just want to share some opinions, observations and reminisce on some magic and mystical moments of Japanese MMA and whatever's left of it.

Off I go to write some more mma stuff