Jon Fitch is back in the UFC after a 24-hour window of free agency and my faith in the sport is restored. That’s correct, I had lost a little faith in MMA after watching a fighter with an 8-1 record inside the Octagon get cut.
I lost a little faith watching a guy disposed of like a piece of trash even though he had been nothing but a professional during his Zuffa tenure.
I lost a little faith seeing a hundred-million dollar company take out their anger towards the American Kickboxing Academy and Zinkin Entertainment on poor old Jon Fitch.
Sports is a business and MMA is no different than professional baseball, football, or basketball. However, the unfortunate situation involving Fitch being let go from the UFC for reasons unrelated to competition served only to momentarily compromise integrity of sport.
The Fitch firing never should have happened, but it did. The dismissal was too public to take back but given the circumstances, the best scenario as far as a remedy has now transpired. Fitch is back where he belongs and cooler heads have prevailed with both sides talk again in hopes of averting a further crisis.
Despite the situation being worked out, some fans are not happy and I’ve come across e-mails and forum messages blasting Fitch for allegedly comprising his principles. I have a simple response to that line of thought, which is: Are you kidding me?
Let’s remember, the reason why so many fans were upset in the first place was because there wasn’t a strong secondary option for Fitch. What made the cut hurt was that a fighter of Fitch’s caliber wouldn’t be able to continue on a stage that could rival the one that the UFC provides. The uproar over the situation wasn’t about Fitch leaving the UFC; it was about him no longer being in it. So now he’s back and we should all feel a sense of relief.
If there was a strong competitor to the UFC, then Fitch wouldn’t have been released in the first place. If this situation hadn’t been resolved in this manner, Fitch would have continued fighting but would have done so in front of less people and for less money. Fitch didn’t deserve such a fate. This isn’t a Randy Couture or Tito Ortiz situation; are people not forgetting that Fitch didn’t want to leave the UFC in the first place? Fitch was angry but he was angry about no longer being in the UFC. Do people not realize he had the rug pulled out from underneath him? Leaving the UFC was the last thing he wanted so cut the guy a break.
And before anyone suggests Fitch compromised his integrity by rejoining an organization that treated him so poorly, please bear in mind that we do not know what terms he is returning under. For all we know, Fitch may have received financial remuneration in exchange for cooperating with the UFC in order to help make all of the bad press go away. And the licensing deal he initially didn’t want to sign that he has now signed? How do we know that what he supposedly signed yesterday was the original deal he had been offered?
Sadly, we’ll likely never know the true terms that Fitch is returning under. If the UFC made it worth Fitch’s while to take them back, it’s more than likely that all parties have been sworn to secrecy as not to give other agents and managers future leverage.
Thomas Gerbasi, UFC - While 18 UFC fighters were competing in the Octagon last Saturday night in Las Vegas, another of the organization's warriors, Goran Reljic, was in a fight of his own back in his home country of Croatia - one to save two young people who had driven off the road and into the Adriatic Sea.
As reported by Croatian newspaper Slobodna Dalmacija, and here in the States by AOL’s MMA Fanhouse, the unbeaten middleweight was resting at his home in Zadar when he was awakened by the crash of a car into the water. Reljic ran outside to see what was happening, and upon seeing the car sinking, he ran into the water, broke the side window of the car and pulled both passengers from the vehicle.
Amazingly, he did this while still nursing an injury that forced him to withdraw from a UFC 90 bout in October against Thales Leites.
“Even suffering a severe lower back injury, and without any training and exercise in the past month and a half he risked everything, jumping under cold water and helping save lives,” Reljic’s manager, Zoran Saric, told UFC.com Thursday night. “When I spoke with him earlier today, he said “I wasn’t even thinking about my injury or about myself, I just dove into the water and started punching the window; there was only one thing on my mind, to save them.”
All parties involved in what could have been a tragedy are doing well, with no injuries reported by Reljic or the two passengers in the car. And when it was over, Reljic simply went back to his home. But witnesses at the scene weren’t so shy about this rescue, and their retelling of Reljic’s exploits has made headlines across Croatia.
And according to Saric, it isn’t the first time the 24-year old Reljic has performed such a heroic deed.
“Actually this is second time that I know Goran saved a life in the water,” he recalled. “Two years ago, he jumped into a wild storm near the cliffs in the Adriatic Sea, where a person was swimming and trying to get out the water, but the waves and current were so strong that they were pulling the person back in. I have no idea how Goran managed to pull that person out of the sea, but he did it."
The field of Strikeforce fighters scheduled to compete at the HP Pavilion in San Jose, California on November 21 recently tipped the scales at the Palm Court in the lobby area of Hotel DeAnza for the official “Destruction” weigh-ins.
MMA veterans Yves Edwards and Duane “Bang” Ludwig will face off at a catch weight of 164 pounds after lightweight champion Josh “The Punk” Thomson was forced to bow out of the match due to a foot injury.
In addition, Kim Couture had already agreed to fight Lina Kvokov prior to the weigh-ins after being informed that Kvokov would not be able to hit the 130lb mark.
All other fighters on the card made their respective weights.
Here are the official results:
205 lbs.: Bobby Southworth (204) vs. Renato “Babalu” Sobral (204) 155 lbs.: Yves Edwards (164) vs. Duane “Bang” Ludwig (163) 170 lbs.: Joe “Diesel” Riggs (170.5) vs. Luke Stewart (170.5) 185 lbs.: Scott “Hands of Steel” Smith (185.5) vs. Terry Martin (186) 130 lbs.: Kim Couture (132) vs. Lina Kvokov (133)
Under card (May not be broadcast):
175 lbs.: Lemont Davis (173) vs. Brian Schwartz (175) 135 lbs.: Brad Royster (134) vs. Darren Uyenoyama (136) 185 lbs.: Tony Johnson (184) vs. Eric Lawson (185) 145 lbs.: Alvin Cacdac (143) vs. Jose Palacios (145) 155 lbs.: Bobby Stack (155) vs. Cyrillo Padilha (156) 155 lbs.: Zakary Bucia (169) vs. Adam Steele (168) 185 lbs.: Kurt Osiander (185) vs. Josh Neal (184) 185 lbs.: Nik Theotikos (185.5) vs. Luke Rockhold (185.5)
*Note: Fighters are allowed to weigh one pound more than the division limit in non-title fights.
HP Pavilion doors will open for Strikeforce: “Destruction” at 5:30 p.m. MT and the preliminary card will begin at 6:00 p.m. MST. The main card will commence at 7:30 p.m. MT, which will air on HDNet live at this time.
After a tumultuous 24 hours, during which he was abruptly terminated, former number one contender Jon Fitch is back on the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) roster after a discussion with Zuffa co-owner Lorenzo Feritta.
MMAmania.com spoke to Fitch, who described the conversation as, “good, really good.”
He also added this via MMARated.com shortly after getting the good news:
“Communication kind of broke down with Dana (White) so we talked with Lorenzo. (I) just got off the phone with him and we came to an agreement. We’re going to move ahead and I’ll be back in the UFC. We’re going to sign off on the video game and I’m back. It was never even about the agreement or the contract. It was the approach that we felt Dana was being a little bit hot-headed and was threatening us right off the bat. It didn’t seem like a professional way of doing things.”
White and the management team at Zinkin Entertainment, which represents several of the fighters who train at American Kickboxing Academy (AKA) where Fitch is stationed, had an explosive falling out over business-related agreements just yesterday.
In short, White made it clear that the fighters at AKA needed to sign a video game agreement that would give the promotion exclusive lifetime rights to their likenesses or risk losing their jobs. It was the “your either with us or your not approach.”
So when Fitch’s management team attempted to negotiate the terms, which were nonnegotiable, White escalated the situation and cut ties with the camp, terminating the promotional contracts of Fitch and stablemate, Christian Wellisch, shortly thereafter.
The move sent shockwaves through the entire mixed martial arts community, which was made more alarming when the president of the company indicated that others could be next who did not want to be “partners.” He indicated that the AKA contingent was historically the most troublesome when it came to the business side of things and that, essentially, he no longer wanted to work with them … and their fighters.
That included Fitch, who is tied with Royce Gracie and Anderson Silva for the most consecutive wins in UFC history (eight). He even just recently lost a gutsy unanimous decision to welterweight champion Georges St. Pierre at UFC 87: “Seek and Destroy” on August 9.
The message was clear: No one (at AKA, anyway) was safe.
Fitch today took to the airwaves to please his side of the story, saying that his management team, in fact, eventually encouraged him to sign the the deal. But based on the way he was treated and the way the situation was handled, Fitch stood his ground and worked to find a solution to a situation that probably should have never happened.
That solution, of course, was Lorenzo Fertitta. He spoke with Feritta directly (he never spoke to White throughout the ordeal) to hammer out a resolution.
He signed the video game agreement and was reinstated shortly thereafter. In fact, he is once again scheduled to fight Akihiro Gono at UFC 94: “St. Pierre vs Penn 2′ on January 31 at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada.
So in the end, cooler heads did indeed prevail. Now the focus can hopefully shift to what is really important, which is fighting … inside the Octagon.
THQ — the acclaimed video game development company — is scheduled to release “Undisputed” sometime in early 2009.
