Muhammad Ali Vs. Antonio Inoki. Boxing with sort of-MMA rules?

Some people may not have heard of this (including myself, until now). Basically, back in 1976, Ali agreed to "fight" a pro-wrestler with what can best be described as pseudo-MMA rules. Ali's purse was a whopping $6,000,000. Apparently he thought this would be a staged match, but he was mistaken. Neither man was prepared to throw the fight. The full story can be viewed HERE.

The fight ended with Ali being leg-kicked to holy hell. Since we can't ask James Toney how that felt (because Couture was such a nice guy and opted to just choke the man out), I think Ali can offer some insight.

The rules were fucking weird.

"Ali would wear four-ounce gloves, and would be able to tag out of any grapple by touching the ropes. Inoki would be bare-handed. There was to be no kneeing, kicking, or hitting below the belt. Anyone thrown out of the ring would have 20 seconds to get back in".

Additionally, Inoki could't throw a kick unless he had one knee down on the mat. The guy must have gotten some epic mat-burn...

Ali's camp was sure to make the rules as ambiguous as possible, and no official rule-set was made public prior to the match.

Apparently the golden moment was when Inoki knocked Ali down and obtained mount. Here's an excerpt from the article:

"It got worse. In the sixth, Ali tried to grab Inoki's ankle as he kicked him, but Inoki wrapped his other leg around Ali's calf and flipped him over on to the canvas. He then rolled over on top of Ali's chest and squatted on his face. It's not a great moment in Ali's career. The indignity of it even spurred him, in the next round, to throw his first punch."

Overall this is an interesting read. Definitely a nice piece of combat sport history that many people don't know about.

Tiger Schulmann's Karate!

I had a few friends who took classes there back in our Elementary school days. I think I may have checked the place out when I was around 7 and my mother was seeking some kind of extracurricular activity to spur my interest. Basically, this place is a legend up north. They're everywhere.

Here's a cool article I just read on Sherdog.

http://www.sherdog.com/news/articles/1/The-Worlds-Greatest-McDojo-27665

Regarding UFC 125 and Walker's Strikeforce Bout

UFC 125 was SUPPOSED to be a kick ass fight card to bring in the New Year. While it is still somewhat kick ass (maybe), I feel like Aldo's departure has really affected it in a negative way.

Jose Aldo was the new Urijah Faber of the WEC after claiming the Featherweight belt, and now that the 2 organizations have merged, he's the reigning champion of the UFC's featherweight division. If you don't know Aldo, you should. The guy is a fucking beast.

Anyway, he's injured and now the co-main event has been canceled. This is greatly disappointing. The card's main event is now for the Lightweight belt, pitting 2 notoriously boring fighters against each other. Edgar is OK, but Gray Maynard is so fucking awful that I would want to stab my brain with a fork rather than watch him fight.


Yeah, I really hate Maynard.

In addition to this, it seems Herschal Walker is out of his Dec. 4 Strikeforce bout. This makes me even more pissed off. So basically, I'm just really pissed off at MMA right now.

This was the strikeforce poster before Walker pulled (see Walker, bottom-left). I find it hilarious that he's the only one on there (as opposed to BOTH fighters, like all posters). It just shows that no one gives a shit about the nobody Walker was scheduled to be fighting.

Blogs...

Well I really hate blogs. Honestly. But I've been using Facebook a lot for some general thoughts I have regarding the sport of MMA, and I figure I should try consolidating such posts to a blog.

We'll see how this works...