I already posted the pictures from Fedor Emilianenko and Randy Couture's photoshoot for Affliction in my previous post.

Following that up check out a short clip on that same photoshoot.

Fedor Emelianenko visited United States this week to meet with Affliction and Randy Couture, check the news bits on that at M-1 Global news site and MMAJunkie.

Fightlinker.com also had nice find on Fedor possibly travelling with out babysitters.

Well the meeting between Fedor Emelianenko and Randy Couture did take place. Hopefully they talked about actually fighting each other and how to go about fighting each other. I personally, as many of you I'm sure, would love to have this fight actually happen sooner than later.

Anyways, I came across several pics from the photoshoot for Affliction. Last one is just precious.

So I just got a chance to catch SpikeTV's "Countdown to UFC 79 Nemesis". It was mostly a good show except for the narrator, but as most UFC's tv shows it'll get better I'm sure.  I think they really got some good footage, quotes and to a trained eye, like myself, lots of insight with some hints as to what may actually happen during UFC 79 this Saturday night on December 29th.

Georges St. Pierre had the best quote of the whole show: "I'm gonna hit him as hard as I can ON his head" - I love it! I really hope he does, even though I also like Matt Hughes most of the time, just not when it comes to St. Pierre.

When asked about the lovely incident immediately following St. Pierre's TKO loss to Matt Serra (who is a prick btw, but more on that later) when Matt Hughes together with Sean Sherk were laughing and hugging each other in cause they were both apparently very happy see Geoges lose in the biggest upset in MMA of 2007, St. Pierre seemed a bit ticked off but said "he laughed...what are you going to do...now I'm gonna hit him as hard as I can ON his head". St. Pierre is such a respectful guy that he's just going to do his talking and laughing in the octagon.

St.Pierre's loss to Matt Serra was good for him in retrospect, he himself expressed how much it grounded him, made him re-focus on his training. He seemed to be really enjoying himself getting better at each of separate MMA disciplines, Muya Thai, Wrestling, Boxing and Brazilian JiuJitsu and combining them for a complete package. This approach has worked for him in the past.

By the way, did I mention, how smart he was to anticipate the boolsheet (wallid's famous words) of Matt Serra dropping out the fight with Hughes and being in shape and getting another crack at cementing his top contender status and beating MMA legend, again? Well, it was very smart of him to anticipate the fight falling through and being right there to jump on it. There are also numerous reports of St. Pierre looking veerry sharp in final days of training.

Matt Hughes...for the record, I really like the guy, he is what some may say a "straight-shooter" (at fightlinker.com for example). He was great on the last season of Ultimate Fighter TV show opposing the short "kofee and kake" prick Matt Serra and now came across some wonderful excerpts telling it like it is to Tim "The Lame-iac" Sylvia from his new book Made in America: The Most Dominant Champion in UFC History.

Back to the UFC 79 Nemesis Coundown. So it looked like he didn't have a good gym to train in or lots of good sparring partners, well except for current EliteXC middle weight champion, man no words, Robbie Lawler. Hughes's thinking when taking this fight was that St. Pierre didn't have too much time to train and would be unprepared, but as everybody in MMA knows now that wasn't true at all and Georges St. Pierre was very much prepared when he took the fight.

I gotta point out Joe Rogan's thinking that if Hughes has a desire to not to just avenge his loss to St.Pierre BUT re-establish himself again as the most dominant welterweight champion, we could, potentially see Hughes become that dominant champion again. Thing is, Hughes has been saying this whole past year that he's almost done with MMA as a fighter and generally portraying himself as not too motivated.

So I think Georges St. Pierre vs Matt Hughes will be an exciting and possibly lengthy fight with St. Pierre fighting smart and beating Hughes again.

Now, Wanderlei Silva...his english improved quite a bit! So now we can actually understand his interviews. There are also lots of other good news for him from the show:

• his head does not look swollen any more and looks almost normal (no more juice?). He also generally looked leaner so his cardio has got to be great
• for the first time in his career he has a whole camp of trainers and sparring partners JUST FOR HIM. So all the personal attention he is getting will be great for him all around.
• the fact that Wanderlei trains at Xtreme Couture gym and I'm sure will have Randy Couture's support as far as strategy and game plan
• I doubt the fight will go to the ground at all, but Silva's Brazian JiuJitsu coach is Andre Galvao. Awesome! This guy is a Ninja! Marcello Garcia type.

The bad news? Well he was knocked out twice in his last two fights, but I don't think it'll be a factor. Silva had a nice long break since then.

Chuck Liddell... good ol Chuck and Hackleman are singing the same ol tune of "Ima gonna knock him out". Chuck said he doesn't get bored with training but he does. His late night outings right before fight nights and same old routine isn't going to do him any good.  Granted Hackleman does put together good game plans, but he also puts together bad ones and can't control Chuck very well if a first round of the fight isn't going well. We saw this with first Quinton Rampage fight in Pride, his first fight with Randy Couture and lately against Keith Jardine. So Hackleman saying that he didn't really see anything in Wanderlei Silva's game they could capitalize on, they're back to same old stuff and Chuck will be bored through training.

I think Wanderlei Silva has everything going for him to beat Chuck Liddell and put himself in the mix for the UFC's light heavyweight title.

More on the rest of the card of UFC 79 in the next post or two.

Oh, yeah, don't forget to check out Matt Hughes's new book Made in America: The Most Dominant Champion in UFC History. Should be a blast!

Finally got a chance to watch recent HDNet Fights "Reckless Abandon" event broadcast on Mark Cuban's HDNet network.  HDNet Fights is yet another new MMA promotion with TV network support and deep pockets owner/backer. I've read both positive and negative on the very HDNet Fights show and was excited to check it out for myself.

While it was a mixed bag of the few negatives and more positives, overall I liked the show and think it has a lot of potential to compete the number 2 or 3 MMA event United States.

Few negative points:

• interviewer Ron Kruck was very awkward on camera and Jeff Blatnik's co-host were was not yet very knowledgeable about MMA
• TKO of the night award was.....drum roll.......a watch, huh!? Event ended so well and taking time out to announce this "award" put an "amature feel" damper on it. Should have showed highlights of the event instead.
• they hype up the "so much to work with stand up comedy bit" between Mayhem Miller and Tim Kennedy and it was not funny...Mayham's Tapout spoof video was definitely funny, but this forced banana stroking and dull dialog was not funny.
• CompuStrike Stats? How do they "compute" all that? Especially Sub Attempts? Do judges see these? I hope not.

Positive points:

• Interviews with MMA celebrities like Randy Couture about his situation with UFC and Fedor, Ken Shamrock about fighting Frank Shamrock and his IFL issues. This is a bit one up on UFC and them keeping PPV paying fans in the dark as far as what's going on around different weight divisions, like never addressing Randy Couture or Sean Sherk situations.
• Getting Fedor Emelianenko's New Years Yarennoka fight broadcast on HDNet. How cool is that! Just shows that HDNet Fights are a secure in what they're doing and not worrying about giving their fans a glimpse of on of the best fighters out there, even though he's not fighting for HDNet Fights. UFC gained lots of resentment from the fans on repeatedly dropping the ball on getting Fedor.
• Event had a decent fight card with many recognizable veterans of MMA. Pete Spratt, Yves Edwards, Edwin Dewees, Frank Trigg and Jason Miller as well as decent up and comers with good records.
• Production quality was pretty good I thought, watching it in HD and good sound, must have been even better.
• Having Michael Buffer announce the fights.

HDNet Fights is off to a good start as they continue to gain experience in putting on MMA events, getting more known/established MMA fighters and build their own stars. I'm definitely looking forward for more from HDNet Fights.

On to the few notable fights on the card.

Pete Spratt vs Tristan Yunker - Spratt is rebuilding his career with HDNet Fights picking him up after 3 straight losses in KOK and UFC.  His stand up looked powerful and crispy as usual. He did good for a little bit defending Yunker's takedown and pulled off a nice reversal to get on top. While on top he established good posture and started landing hard strikes which cut Yunker for a stoppage. Looked like he started to work more seriously on his ground game and it's showing promise for a nasty combo with his top notch striking.

Bit of MMA trivia, Yunker has a win over Jason Chambers earlier this year, the host of Discovery Channel's Human Weapon series.

Krzysztof Soszynski vs Robert Villegas - was an ok fight with some striking and few interesting leglock attempts by Villegas.

This fight, in my mind, will go down in history of the first time (correct me if I'm wrong) a fight was stopped due to a move made popular by the Gracies, butt flopping. I was as shocked as I was happy about the referee calling the fight OVER after repeated butt flops by Villegas in favor of Soszynski. I was shocked and happy when during Tito Ortiz vs Rashad Evans, when the ref took away a point from Ortiz for grabbing the fence, but this was just a great start to putting a stop to one of the least "warrior" maneuver out there. I think all MMA organizations should take notice and do the same. Can you imagine how easy Sakuraba's Gracie Killer job would have been if this was enforced during early PrideFC days? Think about it.

Yves Edwards vs Alonzo Martinez - Alonzo Martinez definately has a greatMMA game with some hard wild striking and good wrestling and he game Yves a tough storm to weather in the first round. Yves Edwards, being an experienced MMA veteran, showed why he at one point was an uncrowned light weight champion. He weathered the fast pace assault and turned it on in the second round with a knockdown and a choke.

Frank Trigg vs Edwin Dewees - a quick fight with Trigg getting a very low percentage kimura submission from bottom of half guard. Good for Trigg.

Jason "Mayhem" Miller vs Tim Kennedy - Tim Kennedy impressed in the first round dominating the standup and doing good from the top on the ground. What's Mayhem doing with his stand up? Does he train striking? It looked pretty bad here as it looked in his last fight in WEC. Fortunately for Miller once he was able to get the fight on the ground and stay on top, he was doing much better and did enough to win the decision.

Up next for Miller is a fight with Frank Trigg. I'm picking Trigg to dominate standup and finishing with some ground and pound, though I'll have to watch their first fight to see how that went.

Good fights, good production, some interviews with news bits everyone wants to hear and stopping fights due to butt flopping makes up for a good event and some nice momentum for HDNet Fights to be an important player in MMA.

If you had a chance to see it, what did you think?