MMASucka

This past week, the man they call “Ragin” Kajan Johnson auditioned for the upcoming Ultimate Fighter season. It has been known by many, including MFC President Mark Pavelich that Johnson’s overall goal in MMA was to be a UFC champion and today MMASucka.com learned from sources close to the fighter that he was released from the MFC. The roster move has not officially been released by the organization.

With Johnson officially a free agent, hopefully UFC President Dana White and Matchmaker Joe Silva will use this opportunity to get him one of the best 155lb’ers in Canada into the TUF 15 house.

Ragin recently did an interview with Ed Kapp of Bleacher Report and stated “Ideally, going on the show would result in the world knowing my name and style, a solidified place in the UFC and a title-shot not too far away.” Although the organization will not let fighters who auditioned know whether they have made it to the show until next week Kajan says, “I know I have what it takes. I’ve known for a while. I’m gonna beast on the UFC whenever they let me in. It’s only a matter of time. I will not stop until I’m at the top with a belt on my waist. UFC champ or dead—that’s what it is.”

The lightweight moved his training camp recently from Vancouver, Canada to train permanantly at the TriStar Gym in Montreal, Canada with the likes of Kenny Florian, Rory MacDonald, trainer Firas Zahabi and of course the UFC welterweight champion Georges St-Pierre.

Kajan will be on TapouT Radio tomorrow to chat about his fighting future and the release from the MFC. The interview will be up on the TapouT Radio website at approximately 1pm PT/4pm ET.

Many of MMA’s best were on the red carpet for the debut of UFC on Fox: Velasquez vs. Dos Santos. Karyn Bryant of MMAHeat.com caught up with the coaches of The Ultimate Fighter Season 14, Michael Bisping and Jason “Mayhem” Miller.

Bisping chats about the now-classic TUF prank with the mariachi band, his fight against Miller and how he is portrayed as a bad guy.

Miller chats about how crazy the pranks this season were, the opportunity he had coaching this season and his upcoming fight with Bisping.

Ryan McGillivray has returned to the place where his career was launched.

Coming off his appearance on The Ultimate Fighter: Season 14, “The Kid” has signed on to once again be a key figure in the Maximum Fighting Championship’s welterweight division. McGillivray (11-5-1) will make his return to the organization at MFC 32: Bitter Rivals taking place on Friday, January 27 at the Mayfield Conference Centre in Edmonton, Alberta.

“There were a lot of factors in my decision to be back in the MFC,” explained McGillivray, who has 12 fights in the MFC ring on his resume.

“I got tired of dealing with the people in other organizations. I just want to fight and the MFC is the best platform for me to do that.”

McGillivray’s opponent on the HDNet Fights card will be announced shortly, though the 25-year-old, who will be fighting in front of a partisan hometown crowd, already has his eye on a few names including those in the hunt for the MFC welterweight crown.

“You’re only as good as your last fight. Dhiego Lima and Sheldon Westcott are both doing very well, but come January I’m going to show where I belong amongst them,” noted McGillivray, who boasts nine victories via submission but is determined to show an improved overall attack.

“My stand-up has never been better. I was never known as a stand-up fighter. I’d look to take it to the ground. Now I think I’ve got a vastly underrated stand-up game.

“I learned a lot of tricks being on the show and training down at (Greg) Jackson’s. I think I’ve improved 10-fold.”

McGillivray, whose career began with a five-fight unbeaten run, has dropped just one of his last five bouts. While part of that success has come from those improved striking skills, a major element has been McGillivray’s change in mental approach. The ever-jovial personality is still there, but added in is a clearly much deeper desire to compete at an elite level.

“I’m fighting more desperately,” declared McGillivray. “Fighting has always been a part of my life, but it’s now become how I feed my daughter Peighton, pay my bills, and make my living. I think that says a lot. It’s become much more important to me.

“It’s my business and I want to increase my value. Fortunately it’s my life … it’s what I do for work and it’s what I love. It’s really given my life deeper meaning and I’m fighting with a lot more emotion.”

Tickets for MFC 32: Bitter Rivals are on sale now and available exclusively through the MFC Ticket Hotline at (780) 504-2024.

This episode was entitled “Draft Dodger” after Team Bisping’s TJ Dillashaw opted to take an easier fight in his quarter final match versus Roland Delorme instead of taking on Team Mayhem’s number one pick in John Dodson.  His own team thought this was a draft dodging move especially Akira Corassani and Diego Brandao who decided to teach Dillashaw a lesson during their sparing sessions.  While grappling, Brandao submitted Dillashaw several times and gave each lock an extra crank to let Dillashaw know that they were unhappy with his decisions.  While MMA sparing, Akira added extra power to his strikes, which upset Dillashaw.  Dillashaw’s discontent spilled over into his next sparing round against Marcus Brimage and caused a heated exchange between the two team Bisping fighters.  Coach Bisping was required to step in and calm his team down and regain the peace within his team.

I can understand TJ’s decisions as this is a reality show.  It is a game just like Survivor, or Big Brother, and you want to play it as strategic as possible, so taking an easy road to the finals would make sense.  If you can come out of each fight with the least amount of injuries especially with having multiple fights within a short period of time can extend your life in the game. When it comes down to it, the more times he has a chance to fight, the more air time and exposure you get, the more likely you will gain some fans and have a chance of getting into the UFC even if you don’t win the whole show.

On the other hand however, you don’t want to come off like a guy who is not willing to fight the best in the house.  Once you get out into the UFC, all of a sudden you are fighting the best in the world.  Dana and Lorenzo always talk about how much they love guys who come out and fight.  Being a draft dodger may show you are the exact opposite.

On Team Miller, Roland Delorme was fighting an injury to his foot which caused him to miss several practices leading up to his fight against Dillashaw.  Fortunately he had five days to recover from the injury and the doctor’s had cleared him to fight.  The additional benefit to the injury was that it caused Delorme to lose weight and had no trouble making weight for the fight.

Also on this episode, both teams had brought in great guest coaches.  Mayhem Miller brought in his coach Master Rafael Cordeiro of Kings MMA to help the team with their Striking.  Master Cordeiro was one of the head coaches from the legendary Chute Boxe Academy in Brazil that had produced fighters like Wanderlei Silva, Mauricio “Shogun” Rua, and Anderson Silva.  The team was excited to learn from Cordeiro as he has a wealth of knowledge of striking in MMA.  Michael Bisping brought in his former Ultimate Fighter Coach Tito Ortiz.  Ortiz showed Team Bisping techniques to help with their ground and pound.

The last quarter final bout of the season went according to plan for TJ Dillashaw.  Dillashaw was able to capitalize on his strong take down abilities, especially off of Roland Delorme’s kicks.  Delorme spent most of the fight off his back actively attempting to work his submission game.  Dillashaw was able to stifle all Delorme’s attempts and reign down strong ground and pound.  At the beginning of the second round, Dillashaw connected with a solid punch to the jaw which dropped Delorme to the canvas.  Dillashaw eventually secured a rear naked choke to make it to the semifinal round.

TJ Dillashaw defeated Roland Delorme via submission (rear-naked choke) 1:43, round 2.

Afterward, the head coaches and Dana White sit down with each semifinalist to see whom they want to fight.  Bryan Caraway, who is coincidentally a teammate of TJ Dillashaw outside of the TUF show at Team Alpha Male in California, pulls his own draft dodger move when voices that he would like to fight Team Bisping’s Akira Corassani as he believes that Diego Brandao is the tougher opponent and they would make the best fight for the finals.  Unfortunately for Caraway, the fight against Brandao is the exact fight that the coaches and Dana would like to see. The Semifinal fights are:

Bantamweight Semifinals
TJ Dillashaw vs. Dustin Pague
John Dodson vs. Johnny Bedford.

Featherweight Semifinals
Akira Corassani vs. Dennis Bermudez
Diego Brandao vs. Bryan Caraway

For more on this TUF episode, please check out MMASucka’s TUF insider Marcus Brimage video blog!

This week MMASucka’s resident TUF video blogger Marcus Brimage chats about the ongoings from episode 7 of The Ultimate Fighter 14. In this episode Team Bisping has a bit of a tiff to pick with TJ Dillashaw and right in the middle of it was our man Marcus Brimage. He also discusses the fight which was between TJ Dillashaw and Roland Delorme, as well as his thoughts on the semi-finals match-ups.

Earlier today the UFC held their media conference call for UFC on Fox 1. Dana White explained his plans for the promotions hit reality show “The Ultimate Fighter”. A few weeks back White revealed his plans for The Ultimate Fighter: Brazil, which would mark the shows first time going international. He took the international outlook a step further today, explaining that Brazil will be one of several countries to get its very own version of The Ultimate Fighter. The plan is to have the winners from each country move on and participate in a “TUF World Cup”.

I just announced last week about The Ultimate Fighter: Brazil. The amount of talent that TUF: Brazil is going to create is going to be phenomenal. And as we continue to go into these different markets and do The Ultimate Fighter, it’s going to get very interesting. I’ve said it many times and finally I feel like I’m on my way. My goal is to get TUF running in all of these different countries at the same time and then when you have a winner, we do like the World Cup, where each guy from each country fights each other and you end up with one winner. So, we’re getting closer and closer to this dream I’ve had for the last five years. – Transcript thanks to LowKick.com

What do you Sucka’s think? Is this a cool idea? Is it something that will turn The Ultimate Fighter into something that fans will once again want to watch?

This week we were treated to two fights on episode 6 of The Ultimate Fighter Season 14. The show again proved to be better than the last week, as the two coaches again feuded with each other, fighters were bitter with each other and the fights were killer. Our TUF Video Blogger Marcus Brimage does not only seem like he dissects the episode for us here at MMASucka, but he seems to be the guy on the show that does that as well. He gives his insight on all the happenings this week, including the two fights.

Here is a snippet of Marcus Brimage’s Blog that he writes over at Fighters.com

Like you saw in this week’s episode, I was doing some sparring with Diego Brandao even though we’d butted heads earlier in the season. There’s no question Diego is a dangerous fighter. Some people might say his recklessness is a weakness but you’ve got to remember, Wanderlei Silva was the same way in PRIDE and we all know how effective he was. He’s got one of those “I’m gonna hurt you before you hurt me” type of skill-sets. That in itself is a threat, but at the same time if he learned to calm down – to keep his emotions in check – he might become an even better fighter.

MMASucka’s resident TUF 14 video blogger, Marcus Brimage discusses the ongoing mishaps that happen during this season. This was probably the most exciting episode of the season with Diego telling people he is going to cut their heads off to the cowboy hat incident at the house. Marcus discusses all of that, along with the fight between Akira Corassani and Dustin Neace which gave Team Bisping their first victory.

For a full review of Episode 5

This week was a double dose of fights and in this weeks video blog Marcus Brimage chats about both of them and the fact that Team Bisping is now 0-4 in the competition. He also chats about the fact that Bisping didn’t show up to the weigh-ins and also his coaching style.

Here is an excerpt from Marcus’ Fighters.com Blog, to read more click here.

For those who are wondering, no, we never got an explanation from Michael Bisping for his absence from the weigh-in on this past week’s episode. It was very weird. As a fighter you want to believe in your corner, you need to know your corner will be there for you at all times. It’s a trust issue for fighters. So when the guy who is supposed to be in your corner is not there at the weigh-ins, it’s kind of like, “WTF?”

Make sure you follow Marcus on Twitter (@brim205)

We are LIVE for The Ultimate Fighter 14 Episode 4 Chat. What will the cast go through tonight? What will the coaches go through tonight? Will they fight with each other?

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