Modern Fighting

Main Event – WEC Featherweight Championship
Jens Pulver (145) vs Urijah Faber (144.5)

WEC Bantamweight Championship
Yoshiro Maeda (135) vs Miguel Torres (135)

Kenneth Alexander (155.5) vs Rob McCullough (155.5)
Chuck Grigsby (204.5) vs Mark Munoz (205.5)

Donald Cerrone (155.5) vs Danny Castillo (155)
Mike Brown (145) vs Jeff Curran (144.5)
Will Ribeiro (135) vs Chase Beebe (136)
Jeremy Lang (183.5) vs Tim McKenzie (184.5)
Luis Sapo (170) vs Alex Serdyukov (169.5)
Alexandre Nogueira (145.5) vs Jose Aldo (145.5)
Dominick Cruz (135) vs Charlie Valencia (135.5)

By Michael DiSanto

On Wednesday afternoon, I was speaking with a venture capitalist about an investment in a privately held technology company in Silicon Valley, when he suddenly asked an unexpected question.

“Who do you think will win the big fight this weekend?”

The question threw me for a bit of a loop. I had never before discussed any type of sport fighting with him, so I didn’t know where he was going with the question. The first assumption, of course, was that he was referring to a boxing match, since that sport has a vast and storied history in America.

Yet, there is no major boxing event this weekend, so that couldn’t be it. I assumed, therefore, that he was referring to the UFC event that had occurred the prior weekend, so I informed him that the fights already occurred and that BJ Penn dominated Sean Sherk, Wanderlei Silva “axe murdered” Keith Jardine, and Tito Ortiz dropped what most believe was his final bout in the UFC.

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 By Thomas Gerbasi

30. It’s the age when some athletes start to feel a few more aches and pains than they used to, when the reaction time isn’t what it used to be, and when they start to lose a little bit off the fastball. It’s a scary time.

Strangely though, history has shown that heavyweight fighters – whether boxers or mixed martial artists – don’t start to peak until they hit that milestone, and if his last bout with Gabriel Gonzaga is any indication, that’s good news for heavyweight contender Fabricio Werdum, who takes on highly-touted Brandon Vera on June 7th on London’s UFC 85 card.

“With age comes experience,” Werdum told UFC.com through translator Julio Heller. “In jiu-jitsu I reached the top in my division, and it’s always good to look for new challenges. I see my career in a new stage now; I can see myself as a complete fighter now, and MMA is fantastic because it gives me the opportunity to learn and practice other martial arts.”

Werdum’s credentials on the mat are impeccable – two-time Jiu-Jitsu world champion, 2007 ADCC world champion, European Jiu-Jitsu champion, and the owner of a Black Belt in Jiu-Jitsu and a Brown Belt in judo. Six of his ten MMA wins have also come via submission. But it was Werdum’s standup that provoked questions among hardcore MMA fans, especially after a less than scintillating decision loss to Andrei Arlovski in his UFC debut in April of 2007.

So Werdum took matters into his own hands, joining up with Brazil’s famed Chute Boxe team to sew up any holes in his game.

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Beginning at 11am ET / PT today, the UFC takes over Spike TV with a day and night’s worth of hard-hitting action capped off by a special two-hour tribute to mixed martial arts legend Chuck ‘The Iceman’ Liddell. Kicking off with a marathon of The Ultimate Fighter: Team Rampage vs Team Forrest, the kicks and punches continue with Ultimate Knockouts 4 at 8pm ET/PT, and then at 9pm ET/PT, the premiere of the in-depth documentary, “Ultimate Iceman.” But that’s not all, as the night is capped off at 10pm ET / PT by the main event of all main events, the never before seen on Spike TV battle between Liddell and ‘The Axe Murderer’, Wanderlei Silva.

Thomas Gerbasi, WEC - The Championship Rounds. For some fighters, it’s the promised land; for others, a daunting prospect that can keep you awake at night, wondering if you’ve got enough gas in the tank to fight another man for ten minutes more, ten minutes that could determine whether you leave as a champion or just another contender.Jens Pulver, 33 years on this earth and nine years in mixed martial arts, knows all about the Championship Rounds.

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Ten months ago nobody paid much attention to Dan Miller. When he filled in for Fabio Leopoldo at the Semi-Finals of the 2007 Playoffs, people barely blinked. He was just a fill-in, a nobody replacement. Even when he nearly decapitated Dave Philips with what would come to be known as the “guillotine from hell,” it was shrugged off.

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