Strikeforce: Carano vs. Cyborg 8/15/9 - Printable Version +- Forums (http://www.brotherhoodofdoom.com/doomForum) +-- Forum: Doom Arts (http://www.brotherhoodofdoom.com/doomForum/forumdisplay.php?fid=6) +--- Forum: Doom Media (http://www.brotherhoodofdoom.com/doomForum/forumdisplay.php?fid=15) +--- Thread: Strikeforce: Carano vs. Cyborg 8/15/9 (/showthread.php?tid=1694)

Strikeforce: Carano vs. Cyborg 8/15/9 - Drunk Monk - 08-17-2009 I love Strikeforce. They take really good care of me. At the fights at the HP in San Jose, they give me a big fat (almost) all access laminate with my name and the mag's name on it. Since I'm one of the few remaining print mags, it gives me instant authority (everyone else at the reporter's table are blogging on MMA sites). Strikeforce feeds us - feeds us well! There's a nice spread: salad, bread, a veggie dish, garlic mashed potatoes, and a main course of beef, chicken or fish, plus dessert. It's cafeteria style but very tasty and satisfying. They give me a program and a seat with my name on it. But most of all, they throw some awesome fights. My girl Gina didn't win (see http://ezine.kungfumagazine.com/ezine/article.php?article=834) but it was a great fight, none the less - solid action for 4:59 (and the earlier fights were all good too, all except one that was became a boring wrasslin' match but there's usually more of those in an MMA card). It was a great night of fights. LONG LIVE WOMEN'S MMA! Here's the review thread(s) on KFM: http://ezine.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?t=54184 http://ezine.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?t=55005 Where are the goddamn pictures, slacker? - Greg_phpbb3_import1 - 08-18-2009 Oh, wait. I have some. I went to the weigh in on Friday. There's probably a story in that. The Weigh In - Greg_phpbb3_import1 - 08-18-2009 As Eli Wali states in “The Good, The Bad and The Ugly” if you are going to shoot, shoot. Don’t Talk. Words I really need to live by. I found myself in the Bay Area over the weekend. I was amused that I was going to be in town the same time as the Gina Carano-Chris “Cyborg” Santos fight. I called up Lucy at Kung Fu Magazine because he had been playing one-up with us by going to an interview with Gina Carano and getting his picture taken with her. In the parlance of Texas Hold ‘em, I limped in with a bid of you should take me to the fight so I can take pictures. I didn’t really expect anything to come of it. But it never hurts to ask. Who knows I could have been spending Saturday night ring side. Doyle Brunson would have mocked me for the lame effort. Of course, Lucy pounced immediately with a counter offer. “You Know, Charlie, they are having the weigh in, today” I looked at my schedule and saw that my calendar was filled with a whole lot of nothing for the rest of the day. My choices were to spend a desultory afternoon talking about the joys of the upcoming Estate Sale I came to San Jose to run or I could venture downtown to the San Jose Marriot to see well developed woman get on a scale. I had heard the tales of Ms. Carano’s weigh where she had to take off all her clothes to make weight, so there might be a certain titillation factor in the weigh in. I had my camera in the car. I even had my “Got Qi” shirt. “I’ll do it” You can tell if Lucy lies by watching the lips. If they move, they lie. “These things are very well attended, usually just a bunch of family and friends” Excellent. I’ll leave my folks house at 3 and be at the Marriot by 3:20 or so. I should get there in plenty of time to get a good seat. As I circled the block looking for some on-street free parking, I got the first indication that all might not be as it was purported. In front of the hotel stood a mobile television broadcast truck complete with big uplink dish. I noted it but didn’t think it had anything to do with my event. I was looking for a small gathering of family and friends and a scale. As I continued my circuit, I started to see groups of people doing a slow jog to the hotel carrying posters and wearing Strikeforce T-shirts. They didn’t look like family or friends. The looked like fans. And there were a lot of them. I quickly drove into the pay parking lot. I was at the hotel forty minutes early but I might already be too late. As I went up the stairs to Salons I,II, III where the weigh-in was to occur, I ran into a huge group of people in the halls. They carried posters. They wore MMA T-shirts. They had energy drinks from one of the sponsors. The place was packed and we weren’t even in the salon. We were still in the hallway. Thankfully I was given a contact name to get me by the gate keeper. After a bit of a wait, I was ushered into the weigh in room. Journalists filled the room to capacity. There was a platform with six video cameras on it. There was a video camera near the door where a reporter was doing a stand-up. In the back corner, Showtime had set up their talking heads booth. It had multiple cameras, four HD monitors and five chairs for the talkers. One of the talkers was Cung Le. I was expecting a sparsely populated auditorium where the announcements echo around the empty cavern. Instead I got pandemonium. I saw every camera conceivable most of them were crappy cel-phone cameras, but the high end digitals were amply represented. One of the Strikeforce people kept coming around to tell us not to stand up and interfere with the video cameras. He must have made that announcement twenty times. He even went up to people individually to make sure we wouldn’t block his precious cameras. I was to the left of the video platform , close to Showtime land. I thought I was in a good position. The room is packed, full of chatter from the reporter contingent. The announcement comes that the fans are going to be let in. I’m sure we broke the fire code regulations when that occurred. The amount of cel-phone cameras in the audience tripled. While setting up for the pictures, I texted Lucy about the mobs at the weigh-in , a direct contradiction of what he informed me to expect. He texted back that he was posting my messages on the Internet. My phone is about a hundred years old. I’m about half that age. My texting skilz are poor at best. Suffice it to say I wasn’t even sure I could text with the phone. Now with the news that my messages were going on-line, I felt more compelled to provide information about the proceedings. They announced it was time for the weigh in. It was at this point I learned I was in the line of fire. One of the Showtime cameramen irately told me I was right at the edge of his shot. He had been promised a clear line to the stage, dammit and he was going to get it. I thought to myself he should have put his camera in position where no one could get in front of him. Or maybe he could have set up on a platform, like the other videographers. For some inexplicable reason, the weigh-in started with Carano and Cyborg. Shouldn’t you have the desert last? Once you show those two the only reason people are staying around is because there is a lot of people between them and the door. Chris Santos stepped on the scale first. She didn’t have an ounce of body fat on her. I’m thinking fat was too scared to be that close to her. She looked fierce and tough and ready for business. It only got worse when she smiled. Those teeth looked like they could rend you in a heartbeat. Gina Carano on the other hand looked embarrassed to be on the stage. She giggled. She didn’t seem like she wanted to strip down to her skivvies to get on the scale. Some of the embarrassment might have come from memories of the nude weigh in. She did look toned. But where she had defintion around her abs, you could count the striations in the muscles of Santo’s six-pack. Some people might have wanted have wanted to paint Santos as this angry villain, but she actually came across more as a person focused on her job. Her job was to beat up Carano. Okay, let’s beat up Carano. I don’t think antagonism towards her opponent ever played a part. Carano just stood between Santos and her goal. After some applause and a bunch of pictures where again Carano looked embarrassed and Santos did her job, they left the stage and the rest of the weigh–ins took place. Some of the young men looked ready to fight and played to the crowd. Some looked like they were embarrassed to pose for the cameras. One fighter was booed because he came up kissing his energy drinks and had them in all his poses. He only set the drinks down for the weigh in and then promptly picked them back up. My favorite advertisement was on the man who wore the Fult-Tilt Poke Boxer shorts. It just seemed odd to me to have a man with full tilt on his groin getting his picture taken. All the fighters made weight except for Melendez who was given an hour to lose a pound. I’m glad he didn’t strip down to see if he could get closer to his goal weight. And with that it was over. Carano and Santos came back out to talk to the real press. Carano drew a huge crowd of fans. I don’t know how they did an interview with that many people around her. Santos answered some questions and then went into the back. With the weigh done, all that was left to see who would win the fight. loved every second of it - Drunk Monk - 08-18-2009