Fuck you, Larry Merchant

As has become the norm while I type this self indulgent nonsense, I'm spending another Saturday night watching men beat the everloving crap out of one another while I have a beer.

Pictured:  My typical Saturday night

Tonight we're running a double feature, HBO's Boxing After Dark and Bellator 46.  By the way, as I'm watching BAD first, the intro to this show is now some ridiculous short form movie that's somewhat reminiscent of Rocky III only without the pathos.

What the BAD intro is missing, apparently.  What the fuck, Google?

Anyway, did you know that walking corpse Larry Merchant is not only still alive, but is still providing rambling incoherent commentary and poorly thought out post fight interviews?  This, in my humble opinion, is the greatest crime against humanity since the Rape of Nanking.

Notice the lack of soul in his eyes.  He's smiling because he just drowned a kitten.

  Wikipedia tells us that this incompetent old douche was born in 1931, meaning that at present, the human stain is 80 FUCKING YEARS OLD!  No wonder he doesn't make sense half the time and the other half he's busy shitting himself.  He literally just called the state of Missouri fat.  His conception of race relations is as stunted as Peter Dinklage.

Get it!  Seriously though, watch Game of Thrones, he's awesome.

Oscar de la Hoya asked for this old bastard to be fired for talking shit about mariachi music.  Considering the fact that about 90% of the global boxing audience is Hispanic, this might have been a bad move.  The Grand Wizard must have invoked his dark master, because not only did he save his job, but he got a contract extension in 2005 to go through 2007.  On top of that, HBO picked up his contract option for multiple years after that.  He's so bad at commentating that he forgets that he's talking halfway through the statement.  The only thing he slanders worse than minorities is the english language.  If Jim Lampley has to carry his corpse any further, he's going to qualify for workman's comp.  He literally tried to just use the weather to draw an analogy that was so bad that I think Roy Jones Jr. just caught cancer from it.  He's bad, is what I'm trying to say.

The only explanation I have for this atrocity is that HBO is operating under the "there's no such thing as bad press" philosophy, because there's no goddamn way I'm the only person who thinks Larry Merchant is about 35 years past his prime.

I've gotta tell you, it feels like I've vented about all this shit before, but you know the motto by now:

Safety Dance!

I don't read my own work, so if this is a rerun, my bad.  Although it could just be that I've bitched about this to anyone who I watch boxing with to the point that this feels familiar to me.  Astonishingly, Merchant sounds a little more lucid than normal tonight.  Remember, lucid doesn't mean sane, I still think he's in his own reality.  You know what's awesome about how far television technology has come?  watching fight highlights in slow motion.  They just slowed a combo in slow motion that made a dude's face look like a shar pei shaking.

Yep, just like that but with more sweat and less cuteness.

Digital video has made it so you can capture those incredibly small moments in time in incredible detail.  Everything from a batter hitting a ball, to a knock out punch can now be analyzed by the millisecond without any loss in fidelity because you're not constrained by framerate.  What a fantastic and frivolous use of technology.  God bless America.

I think I just figured it out.  Larry Merchant is the Larry King of boxing.  Neither knew when to hang it up, and they waited until they were so out of touch that someone else had to say "I think you should spend more time with your family".

Hey, here's some cool shit I think people should check out.  First up is something AVClub linked on their page:

shortly after learning about that, a friend directed me to this:

Also, as part of my ongoing effort to expand the mindshare of AVClub's Undercover project, here are 3 of the best, that also happen to be 3 of the most recent.  Surfer Blood's cover of the Pixies is particularly good.


Parts & Labor covers Kanye West


Surfer Blood covers The Pixies


...And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead covers Indigo Girls

If the video isn't above, click the link and give those struggling bastards some love.  Indie rock still is alive and well and it needs your support!

Who wants some of this?

Ladies and gentlemen, I welcome you to another night spent with 2 of my friends.  Beer and physical violence.  That's right, it's time for another Strikeforce-based, self indulgent ramblefest wherein I bore the bejesus out of anyone that bothered to read this that doesn't follow MMA.  Tonight, your main event will be this guy:

Alistair Overeem, AKA the Demolition Man

Versus this guy:

Fabricio "Excuse my Junk" Werdum

This is a rematch from 2006 where Werdum surprisingly submitted Overeem with a Kimura and it is also part of the Strikeforce world heavyweight grand prix, which means nothing.  Lots of good fights on this card, so let's get the ball rolling with a battle between this guy:

Pictured: professional fighter, amateur douche Chad Griggs

And this guy:

Valentijn "the second most famous" Overeem

That's right, there are brothers on this card.  I don't think that matters at all, it's not like they're fighting each other.  Now that would be cool.  Talk about a blood feud!

Now if there's one thing I learned from the last time I did this, it's to not bother to write all the action.  It's not like you're reading this to get a play by play.  If you wanted that you'd go to Bloodyelbow.com or Sherdog.com or buy a Showtime subscription.  Hey, while I was typing that, Griggs mobbed on Overeem and got a stoppage by the ref, even though it was a pretty lame stoppage.  Overeem pretended he was a turtle, got hit in the face and decided to tap out.  The announcers are questioning his heart for tapping out from strikes, but I gotta tell you, I'd probably tap out as soon as I got punched.  Although to be fair, I'm a pussy and that's why I don't fight MMA for a living.

Moving along to our next fight, we are now pending a match up between this guy:

2 time olympian Daniel Cormier

versus this guy:

Jeff "the Snowman" Monson.  Seriously, that's his nickname.  Like he's fucking Frosty or something.

So, Daniel Cormier is an Olympic caliber wrestler, but he's fighting probably 20 pounds heavier than he should.  He's undefeated in MMA and that's pretty much just because he can throw dudes around like they're nothing.  Monson has like 60 fights, so this should be interesting.  One thing I've been noticing in the last few MMA events I've watched is that people are simultaneously forgetting all about leg kicks and using them a lot.  It's pretty fantastic, because when they are employed, they are now devastating instead of just annoying.  So as I watch the best televised sport, I can't help but remember that this weekend they are also showing the worst televised sport.  Golf.  Seriously, what the fuck?  Who watches that?  The only good thing about televised golf is if you have insomnia, at least you can save some money on Ambien.  How the shit is that televised on a regular basis?  I mean, for the love of God, it has it's own channel!  There are some great human stories in the golf world, especially how Lefty has battled back from crippling arthritis to be relevant again, not to mention his wife's breast cancer, and his mom's.  Also I think his kid is autistic.  How much shit can one man deal with?  Apparently it's a lot.  Anyway, yes he's a great story, but I still think he's getting paid way to much to chase a ball.  I'd rather watch college baseball than golf (and I have this weekend, much to my chagrin).  If they could hit each other with their clubs, then you might have a sport.  I mean shit, you can't even cough in a guy's backswing without it being a controversy.  Let's make it more like an NBA freethrow, where everyone is allowed to try to distract you, at least then you'd be separating the men from the boys.  Hey, I almost forgot there's a fight on and Cormier has Monson in trouble.  It's not enough trouble to finish the fight but it's been better than nothing.  All in all, this has been a pretty good performance for Cormier.  He's a wrestler by trade, but he dominated the fight with his control standing and striking.  To Monson's credit, he almost never looked like he was in danger of getting knocked out, but he was also never in danger of winning.

Wow, run on paragraph much?  Whatever, it's not like you came here for grammar.  I've got Cormier winning that fight 30-27 by the way.  Judges agreed with me, so there.

Up next, fight number 3 of 5.  This guy:

KJ Noons.  No jokes, there's nothing funny about him. 

Versus this guy:

Jorge "Gamebred" Masvidal.  He makes all us hispanics look bad in that picture.

This should be a good fight from a standup perspective.  KJ Noons has a lot of pro boxing experience and Masvidal straight up doesn't give a fuck.  I recently read a great theory on rooting for teams that I'm going to apply to this fight.  The basis is that if you don't have a preference in the fight/game, you root for the underdog.  If you're there in person, you root for the home team.  The only exception is the Doug Williams exception: if your team isn't playing, you root for the black quarterback.  I'm extending that a little further since I'm a minority and I'm rooting for the beaner.  You know what I just learned that's kind of fucked up?  Blogger doesn't recognize racial slurs as something that should be flagged by the spell checker.  On the plus side, apparently I spelled Beaner right.

The good news is that my default pony in this race just kicked the shit out of KJ Noons.  Noons is bleeding like he got stabbed in the head, and also he almost had the fight stopped after a head kick and some brutal ground and pound.  The bad news is that Noons survived and we are now in round 2.  Looks like Noons has a hematoma growing on his face, and he can't stop a takedown to save his life.  I've met hookers who spend less time on their backs (ZING!).

Noon's hematoma is making him look like Hellboy.  Red with a budding forehead.  Seriously, that thing is nasty.  It's kinda like another head is trying to grow out of his forehead.  You know that dude in Total Recall with the little guy growing out of his side?

Yeah, that one. 

Like that, only on his head.  Somehow he made it all 3 rounds.  Masvidal still kicked his ass 30-27.  Once again, the judges and I agree.

We move on to our co-main event of the evening!  This is also part of the Strikeforce Heavyweight World Grand Prix!  This guy:

Josh "the Babyfaced Assassin" Barnett.  Tested positive for steroids twice.

Versus this guy:

Brett "the Grimm" Rogers.  I'm not sure if he thinks he's gonna tell fucked up fairy tales to his opponents or what, but that's his nickname.

Just a fun fact, Barnett takes professional wrestling matches in Japan a lot of the time.  As in the Japanese equivalent of WWE professional wrestling.  I'm not judging, I just find that funny.  On the complete opposite side of the coin, Brett Rogers used to work at a Sam's Club tire center.  Go blue collar guy!

Never mind.  He lost in the second round by arm triangle choke.  OH WELL!  On to the main event.  I already told you who was going to be in the main event, so here's some background:

Alistair Overeem is HIGHLY suspected of using 'roids since he's moved up from light heavyweight (205lb limit) to heavyweight (265lb limit) but he's never tested positive, and he's still winning everything.  He's won kickboxing tournaments, he's won MMA tournaments and belts and he's pretty much a badass, giant, scary Dutchman.

Fabricio Werdum is the first man to legitimately defeat Fedor Emilianenko, and he did it with a slick ass triangle choke.  He's won most of the highest level submission wrestling competitions available, and he's already beaten Overeem once.

Using the above defined decision tree about who to root for, I'm for Werdum.  That being said, I clearly think that Overeem is going to win but I'm pulling for the underdog.

Wow, that fight was pretty boring.  Overeem was pretty clearly with winner, but it wasn't what I've come to expect from Overeem.  Werdum kept pulling guard and not doing anywhere near enough to win the fight.  Oh well, it was still a fun night of fights.  Thanks for reading this nonsense and all the Dads out there have a Happy Father's Day!!!!!