Strikeforce announced that World Alliance of Mixed Martial Arts (WAMMA) Heavyweight Champion, Fedor Emelianenko, signed a multi-fight agreement to fight for their promotion Monday.
“Strikeforce is a top promotion that houses some of the greatest fighters in the world,” said Emelianenko, 32, who will make his debut for the company sometime this fall. “I am prepared to fight any of them.”
Emelianenko (30-1), who had negotiated all last week with UFC to no avail, is considered by many analysts and fighters to be the greatest mixed martial artist in history.
Despite his lofty stature in the world of MMA, it is hard to understand Emelianenko’s decision to snub the UFC and it will be even more difficult for genuine fight fans to now recognize the Russian as anything except a yellow-bellied coward.
“Fedor is a fucking joke,” abrasive UFC President Dana White said after he learned that the last holder of the Pride Heavyweight Championship had signed with Strikeforce. “He turns down a huge deal and the opportunity to face the best in the world to fight nobodies for no money.”
White, and most MMA fans around the world, had envisioned a dream matchup that would have pitted Emelianenko against current UFC Heavyweight Champion, Brock Lesnar, 32.
Lesnar (4-1) is a legitimate beast in the octagon and it is curious and disheartening that Emelianenko would cower and basically refuse to scrap the greatest fighters in the world.
Emelianenko’s moniker is “The Russian Military Experiment.”
One can only presume that the Russian military is conducting an experiment on cravens.
Brock Lesnar is “The Next Big Thing” and Emelianenko is essentially a never was.
University of Hawaii football coach Greg McMackin was suspended for 30 days without pay this past weekend after he used a slur generally targeted at gays to describe Notre Dame’s chant before last December’s Hawaii Bowl.
In the aforementioned contest, the Irish destroyed the Warriors 49-21 on Christmas Eve to finally win their first bowl game since the 1993 season.
However, instead of providing Notre Dame and their players with proper praise for their shire domination, McMackin went on a bizarre tangent against the Irish and their Head Coach, Charlie Weis, Thursday at the Western Athletic Conference (WAC) football preview in Salt Lake City.
“The night before the game, Charlie gave this talk, and he goes, ‘Any Notre Dame fans in here?’” said McMackin, 64, as he recounted a banquet the evening prior to their bowl game. “He had his guys, ‘We do something special at Notre Dame,’ he said, and they do this little cheer, like this, this faggot little dance. So, my guys are looking at me and they are all trying not to laugh.”
McMackin, who has coached in both the professional and collegiate ranks and led the Warriors to a mediocre 7-7 record last autumn, proceeded to use the offensive term two more times.
After he was officially suspended, McMackin appeared before the media and wailed inconsolably like a clown pocket as he profusely apologized for his derogatory remarks.
“I was only trying to make a joke,” sniveled the subpar leader of men who was often seen wearing leis on the sidelines.
Weis said McMackin “demonstrated poor judgment.” Still, the portly Weiss accepted McMackin’s mea culpa.
McMackin will continue to coach the Warriors henceforth as a volunteer and he personally offered to take a seven percent pay reduction in his salary for the upcoming season.
McMackin seemed genuinely remorseful for the hurtful comments that he uttered and he is entitled to be forgiven for his mistake.
Nevertheless, how can anyone affiliated with the University of Hawaii possibly have the audacity to make gay slurs of any kind whatsoever toward another program?
Notre Dame has won eight national championships in their illustrious history and they own the second highest winning percentage in NCAA history (.736).
The University of Hawaii has never once won a national crown and they have captured a measly three conference titles in the feeble WAC.
Furthermore, the Warriors helmet prominently featured a rainbow logo on its sides for 22 years and they were known as the Rainbow Warriors until the university mercifully abbreviated their name in 2000 due to pressure from their student-athletes.
"That rainbow logo really put a stigma on our program at times," athletic director Hugh Yoshida said in a radio interview shortly after the name and logo changes. "It's part of the gay community, their flags and so forth. Some of the student athletes had some feelings in regard to that."
Everything reported in the media has indicated that George McMackin is a decent man who made horrible remarks.
Still, McMackin mocking the Irish while he is the coach at the University of Hawaii is akin to a midget poking fun at a munchkin for being too short.
The New York Times reported last week that Boston Red Sox World Series heroes of yesteryear, David Ortiz and Manny Ramirez, are two of a 104 players who tested positive for performance enhancing drugs when baseball conducted its "anonymous" testing survey in 2003.
Ramirez, 37, being fingered by the renowned publication as a charlatan is not a surprise considering that the slugging hemorrhoid resumed playing for the Los Angeles Dodgers just last month after he served a 50 game suspension for abusing women's fertility drugs.
On the flipside, most of New England was comically shocked and shattered when the beloved Ortiz, 33, was finally exposed as the cheating weasel that he has been for years.
Big Papi, a five-time All-Star selection and four-time Silver Slugger Award winner, had been a harsh and outspoken critic of juiceheads.
After Alex "Bitch Tits" Rodriguez was officially found to be an utter phony in March, the hypocritical designated hitter suggested testing should be administered three or four times a year and that a single positive test should result in a one-year suspension.
Upon being “informed” that he was a farce, Papi played coy in a sad and pathetic statement to the media.
“Today I was informed by a reporter that I was on the 2003 list of MLB players to test positive for performance enhancing substances,” said Big Papi, who was personally trained at a popular gym in Boston on Lansdowne Street by a known abuser of steroids.
“Based on the way I have lived my life, I am surprised to learn I tested positive. Two, I will find out what I tested positive for. And, three, based on whatever I learn, I will share this information with my club and the public. You know me. I will not hide and make excuses.”
If the fraudulent and gap-toothed Dominican wants to “not hide and make excuses,” he will readily admit that he utilized synthetic testosterone like the phenomenal majority of his colleagues in the sport did for more than the past decade.
Respected truth-teller and whistleblower Jose Canseco hardly flinched when he was told that Ortiz and Ramirez were the latest ballplayers caught with dirty urine.
“When you tell me something I didn’t already know, I’ll be surprised,” Canseco, 45, told ESPN.
However, the six-time All-Star selection and 1988 AL MVP ominously continued to sling mud around the diamond.
“I’ll tell you this, Major League Baseball is going to have a big problem, big problem on their hands when they find out they have a Hall of Famer who’s used.”
When asked to name the Hall of Famer, the blacklisted former Bash Brother refused to divulge the identity of the individual.
“It’s not about naming names,” said Canseco, an admitted juicehead who last performed on the major league level for the Chicago White Sox in 2001.
“I’ve never had anything against the players. It’s always been against Major League Baseball. I know who’s on that list, but like I said, it’s not about attacking the players. It’s about the machine that allowed this to happen. What I speak out of my mouth is the truth. It burns like fire. Just remember, I have never lied about this subject.”
It is impossible at this juncture for one to precisely pinpoint who Canseco is speaking about in this instance.
However, it is easy to speculate that the Cuban twin is alluding to his former Oakland Athletics teammate and 2009 Hall of Fame inductee, Rickey Henderson.
Henderson, 50, a ten-time All-Star selection who has stolen the most bases and scored the most runs in the history of baseball, arrived in Cooperstown two weeks ago on the first ballot after he garnered an astounding 95% of the vote.
Sports Illustrated’s Tom Verducci wrote in 2003 that Henderson once called Padres General Manager Kevin Towers and said, “Kevin, this is Rickey. Calling on behalf of Rickey. Rickey wants to play baseball.”
The public already realized that Ramirez was a cheater.
Last week, Ortiz was finally unmasked as yet another fake superstar.
Now, because of Canseco’s insinuations, it appears likely that Rickey did steroids.
Rickey probably knew everyone else was using and Rickey didn’t want to be left out.
Amidst all of the controversy, Canseco, unbelievably, remains the most trusted voice in the game of baseball.
Last week was just another week in the sordid annals of “America’s Pastime.”
