UFC 113-Revenge of Shogun?

Let's take a look at the main card for UFC 113 on Saturday May 8th in Montreal.

Alan Belcher v. Patrick Cote

Which Alan Belcher will we see? Is Patrick Cote healthy and ready to fight? Ah, these rhetorical, and cheesy Sportscenter lead-in questions, work well for the start of a blog. Thanks for humoring me. :)

Alan Belcher has been a fighter on the brink for awhile now. With a 6-4 record in the UFC and wins over good-but-not-great opponents like Dennis Kang and Wilson Gouveia, Belcher has long been viewed as a talent that's just on the outside of the title contender fringe. For sure, Belcher is a gifted striker and he has shown improvement in his ground game on a consistent basis. But for all the focus on "signature wins" on a fighter's resume, it's really the "signature winning streaks" that matter. Twice Belcher has won two fights in a row inside the Octagon only to lose in his next bout. With this fight, though, he will have a shot to make it 3 out of 4 over quality opponents.

No piece of data drives home the importance of winning streaks more than simply looking at Belcher's opponent, Patrick Cote. Cote has a bizarre record (4-5) in the UFC, if only because he lost his first 4 fights, then won his next 4 fights before Anderson Silva used the dark side of the force to destroy Cote's knee. The immediate thought is that Cote has faced tougher competition. In reality, though Cote has losses to Tito Ortiz and Chris Leben as experience, he has only one signature win, a split decision over now 170 lb Ricardo Almeida, on his resume.

Keys For Alan Belcher

Belcher is the faster, more athletic, versatile striker. He should circle away from Cote's power right hand and mix up his strikes to keep Cote off balance. Although Cote is not a dominating wrestler, Belcher should avoid the cage where he can be roughed up and the pace of the fight can be slowed. The biggest key for Alan Belcher, though, is to show up ready to fight for 3 rounds. Belcher can be dominating at times, but at other times he looks disinterested and tired.

Keys For Patrick Cote

Cote has excellent punching power and a solid chin. He should look to crowd Alan Belcher and prevent him from setting his feet to punch. Cote must close the distance anytime Belcher kicks and generally turn the fight ugly. Although the fight on the ground may be even, Cote would do well to mix in an occasional takedown to set up those hard overhand rights. Cote must also be careful not to get caught early in the fight, when nerves a ring rust may play a factor.

Prediction

The variables (Cote's knee, Belcher's inconsistency) make this a tough fight to call. In the end, though, Cote's power will nullify Belcher's speed. Cote by TKO in round 2.

Kimbo Slice v. Matt Mitrione

I won't bore you with the particulars of this one. Kimbo is a hard puncher, but that's it. Matt is a good athlete who showed some moxie on The Ultimate Fighter. I'm pulling for Matt here (since he's an Indy native and former teammate of mine).

Josh Koscheck v. Paul Daley

If there's one thing I'll never understand, its the preference of excellent wrestlers to try to learn the completely foreign language of striking instead of the mostly foreign language of submissions. Josh Koscheck has long been a top contender at 170 lbs. As soon as a new face (Anthony Johnson) comes up to challenge that status, Koscheck usually dispatches of them quickly and remains. He'll have that same challenge here against the very dangerous Paul Daley.

The answer here seems simple to me. Take Paul Daley down, wear him out and rough him up, go for the submission finish. Whether Koscheck will do that or not remains to be seen. To me, that's the difference between Josh Koscheck and, 170 lb king, Georges St. Pierre: Koscheck allows ego to get in the way of making the fight easy for himself.

Keys For Paul Daley

Paul Daley has won two fights in a row, but this is a major step up. He must guard against getting blitzed early by Koscheck's speed and power. Daley must cut off Koscheck's movement (instead of following him). As he cuts him off, he should look to land quick sharp punches and not look too long for the KO. Daley must have his best sprawl ready and make Koscheck pay dearly for every takedown attempt. In sum, either Daley has to land one big shot or have the fight of his life to win.

Keys for Josh Koscheck

All Josh Koscheck has to do is shoot and take Paul Daley down. From there his superior grappling will frustrate and stifle any offense from Daley. Koscheck must remain disciplined in his game plan. At some point, he must learn to leave his ego outside the cage and play to his strengths.

Prediction

Barring a one-punch KO from Daley, Koscheck will dominate the fight and win a lop-sided decision.

Lyoto Machida v. Mauricio "Shogun" Rua

I could go on and on for days about the scoring in their first fight. At the end of the day though, Shogun may have controlled the pace and landed more strikes, but he fought a very conservative fight with a decision win in mind. That is a difficult plan to execute when fighting a great champion like Machida. Anytime you leave that many very close rounds to the judges, danger ensues.

The same compelling match-up characteristics exist for this fight. At their best, this fight pits Shogun's offensive genius against Machida defensive wizardry. While fighters can perform quite differently from night to night, there are a few interesting things to take away from their first fight:

1) Shogun's speed seemed to bother Machida. In Machida's other fights, anytime someone attacked him, he countered effortlessly and stymied any offense. But Shogun was able to beat him to the punch often and win several exchanges. Machida talked of having trouble finding his timing, but it is hard to find timing when you are constantly punching second to a quick fighter like Shogun.

2) Shogun landed leg kicks nearly at will. Although the punch stat numbers showed Shogun landed more strikes, some observers noted that most of his strikes were leg kicks (somehow less valuable?). While the judges may placed a reduced value on a solid leg kick over a punch, those are still a viable offensive option for Shogun that Machida will have to make adjustments too for this fight.

3) Machida now has a great reputation. Why does this matter? Watching Shogun fight over the years has lent itself to many laid out fighters in the wake of his hurricane attacks. He often attacks relentlessly, wearing his opponents down and crushing them with the volume of his strikes. Yet, even though he didn't appear tired, he struggled to pull the trigger on many combinations against Machida. One can only assume that Machida counter striking and power are to blame.

4) Even with all the things that went "right" for Shogun, he still lost. So he has to do something different, or at least a lot more of the same.

Keys for Shogun

Shogun can do well with executing a similar game plan to the first fight with only minor tweaks. He must throw more combinations and explode when he has Machida near the fence and standing with his feet parallel. This is a bad habit of Machida's and Shogun should look to exploit it. Shogun also has vastly under-rated takedowns that he chains with combinations very well. He should look to score some points and keep Machida guessing by throwing in a couple.

Keys for Machida

Machida must stay away from the fence. Shogun really didn't land a lot of solid punches in the first fight, but the ones he did came when Machida slowed his movement and got near the fence. He must also attack more himself and put Shogun on the retreat. Great offensive fighters like Shogun often struggle when they are forced backwards for short stretches. Machida also must defend those leg kicks. Instead of checking them, he should look to step through them and land a straight right hand to keep Shogun from sitting down on his kicks.

Predicition

This is a great fight between two great fighters. If styles make fights, then this should be another great one. I am predicting the (minor) upset. Shogun by 3rd round TKO.

Pay No Attention to the Man Behind the Curtain

Goldman Sachs...waiting......I know, I know. Who in the hell is Goldman Sachs? Is that a person? A business?

Goldman Sachs is one of the shadowy figures that you hear about in passing related to the so-called "Great Recession." They are an investment bank on Wall Street. You may not have heard of them because they don't do traditional deposit banking like the ones that you use regularly. Why are they important? Why does Congress regularly call Goldman's CEO Lloyd Blankfein to testify about his company's role in nearly making the world burn? Let's start with the story of Goldman Sachs itself.

Goldman's rise and history is well-chronicled by Matt Tabbi in Rolling Stone. Here's my general synopsis for you: Goldman Sachs was founded in 1869 and more or less survived as a "normal" small investment bank in Manhattan. They lended money to small businesses and made money on repayment. All was well. Then in the 1920's Goldman realized it was in the small pond of investments.

They opened themselves up as a trading company at $100/share on the market. Then they bought all their own shares and sold them to the public at $104/share. Essentially making $4/share. They took that profit and formed a new "trust" (ironic name indeed) called the Shenandoah Corp. They sold those shares and formed another trust called Blue Ridge Corp. In essence, Blue Ridge was Goldman, so was Shenandoah, and so was Goldman itself. It was a nearly endless pyramid of bullshit. The problem, of course, is that none of those corporations were real. It is simply borrowing money using borrowed money as collateral. When the public tried to sell its shares and collect cash, well there was no cash. The cash was a myth. It was magic. It was borrowing on borrowing. Maybe you remember reading about the bank runs during The Depression where people went to the bank to pull out their money and found, no doubt to their great surprise, that there money wasn't there. Anyone? Bueller? This was, in part, what led to the stock market crash of 1929 and The Great Depression.

Now, you can read Tabbi's article to learn more about Goldman's wonderful skill at sinking an entire economy. But let's talk today. What does Goldman actually do? According to their website they are a "financial advisor, lender, investor, and asset manager." They give companies information about what to buy and sell and how to manage their money. Furthermore, they invest on their own behalf when they like. I want you to let those two points sink in real deep, they are important. Goldman gives governments and corporations advice on what to buy and sell on the market, and also buys and sells for itself.

Now, The Great Recession had many causes. But let's talk about mortgage securities. In short, mortgage securities are bets that a person will pay their mortgage. They organize large numbers of mortgages into pools and then investment banks, among others, buy these securities. In doing so, they are betting that most of the people in that pool will pay their mortgage. If they don't, the investor loses out. Mortgage-backed-securities are priced, generally, by assessing default risk and interest rate exposure (risk of losing money based on interest rate adjustments). So here's another important point: investors buy mortgage securities based on many things, but two chief factors are the risk that the homeowner pays their mortgage and the risk that interest rate changes might cause them to lose money.

Goldman's job is to assess that risk, among many other types of risk, and give the client a recommendation as to whether or not to buy. Furthermore, insurance giant AIG might issue a credit default swap, basically an insurance policy that "guarantees" the investor will still get paid even if the mortgage security ends up being a horrible investment. The government announced today that it is charging Goldman with fraud. Now, if you have followed this crisis at all, you will know that this is the best news since the first caveman drove in from the dregs, plugged a toaster in the wall and bought a bag of bread. He made toast. Google it. Goldman has been accused in the media over and over by many different people of wrongdoing. However, the SEC has been very slow in actually filing charges. But what did Goldman do?

Goldman was clever on several fronts. First, they gave advice to investors that they should buy certain securities and then bet against them in the market. They also suggested AIG give default swaps for securities that Goldman knew were poor bets. So remember my important point #1 from above: Goldman gives advice to investors about what they should buy or sell, and sometimes buy and sells for itself. In this case, Goldman gave advice and then did the opposite. This is illegal and is the definition of fraud. Further investigation has suggested that Goldman may have performed fraudulant acts in Greece's pursuit of inclusion in the Euro. If you have paid attention, Greece is now in a huge debt hole. Greece's story, however, is a story for another day.

Now all this, ahem, naughty behavior left Goldman and other banks scrambling for cash when a huge number of people with a $50,000 income couldn't pay their $250,000 mortgage. So we bailed Goldman out. The purpose here isn't to debate whether banks should be bailed out or not. Just understand that if banks sank into the abyss, businesses would have no one to borrow from. They need to borrow folks. So we gave Wall Street banks some cash to loan. Goldman was clever enough (remember that W.'s Secretary of the Treasury, Henry Paulson, was a former Goldman CEO) to use their bailout money to buy treasury bonds. They then kindly sold those bonds back to us for a nice profit. Matt Tabbi also outlines this here.

I'm sure conservatives will cry and whine about regulating Wall Street more. I'm also sure that they are either completely crooked, or too dumb to understand that they are falling for the sales pitch a bit too easily. Many industries, pharmaceutical companies for instance, face strong regulation and still post profits well into the billions. Wall Street would be no different. However, strong regulation can help prevent this type of bullshit from happening again.

I, for one, hope Goldman burns in effigy before us all. I hope that everyone knows who they are and that they, along with JP Morgan and all those other rotten companies, get fined and get hurt. I feel bad for the honest employees of those companies. They will be hurt too, and that's a shame. But fear not employees. Hopefully soon we will remove your completely crooked, if not inept, leadership. Maybe if we search high and low we will find some people who are honest and care about you too. For all the talk about governments oppressing and controlling people, think about this. Before this post, some of you may not have even known Goldman existed. You wouldn't know that they are over 140 years old. You may never hear of them again until the next bailout and crisis. But know that they control things. They lobby and try to find ways to screw you and me every single day. The difference between they and government is, at least, we can vote the government out.

The Mis-Information of the Educated

"Dissent is the highest form of patriotism."-Howard Zinn

"Obamacare discourages innovation." said a co-worker of mine today to my surprise. Reading or listening to Fox News will give you the impression that "real-main-street" Americans are against the bill and the only socialist pigs who are for it reside in ivory towers eating Bon-Bons and laughing at Conan O'Brien's new "Self-Pleasuring Panda". We watch The Daily Show and The Colbert Report and are described by Bill O'Reilly as "stoned slackers". We are elitists that trumpet our credentials in academia as if that gives us a right to dictate life to those less educated. By proxy, the other side is the opposite. They are hard working folks. They put '-cha' on the end of their words (i.e. gotcha and betcha). They listen to Rush Limbaugh for "truth" and understand exactly what the country is thinking and feeling. Presumably because they believe they are the country. Nevermind that this type of "there are two types of people in the world..." thinking is dividing the country deeply.

This lady didn't fit the mold. She works at a large pharmaceutical company. She is extremely educated; in fact she has her ivory dripping Ph.D. I'm not sure, however, if the likes Bon-Bons. She was upset that the new health care bill would remove the incentive for pharmaceutical companies to develop new drugs. "Companies exist to make money. They have to make that money to develop the next drug." Fine with me. I don't dispute either fact. The surprise hit me because Big Pharma, the lobbying group for the largest pharmaceutical companies in the US, endorsed the health care bill. Newspapers and websites from The Wall Street Journal to The Huffington Post agreed at least on the Big Pharma's support. Pharmaceutical companies successfully lobbied to increase their patent rights to 12 years for specific types of compounds. They were also successful in defeating an initiative to allow cheaper medications to be imported from abroad. The reality of her viewpoint hit me a helluva lot harder than this guy. She noted that the Canadian pharmaceutical industry had "lost all of the research and development." I would dispute that they are hurting too bad after seeing the Canadian division of Pfizer's $2.228 billion profit last year. "People will pay for erectile dysfunction or baldness medication, but they won't pay $10/month for cholesterol medication," she emphatically stated.

That last statement says so much about the current health care debate. At the end of the day, Americans just aren't sure about paying for someone else to be lazy and stoned on their couch. I get that it goes against our moral fabric, and rightfully so, to pay for some guy to eat potato chips and watch porn while we toil away at work to pay for his lazy ass. But is this what is really going on? Such sociological questions have murky answers at best, but let's give it the old anecdotal story treatment. My grandfather suffered a heart attack a few years back. He retired from Chrysler, and at least until the next screw up, has relatively good health care coverage. Without it, he'd be paying several hundred dollars a month for medications. One medication, he says, is over $200/month. Could this be the crux of our problem in talking about health care reform? Regardless of your agreement or disagreement with this specific bill, I get the feeling that many still feel reform itself isn't needed at all. Could it be that people, even very educated and intelligent people, are so in the dark about the realities of life for so many Americans that they just don't see the need for reform? Or, perhaps, they never took the time to learn because they were so concerned with Sarah Palin's death-panels.

Remarkably, conservatives are able to use buzz words like "death panels" to invoke a certain fear. This fear is really powerful because it causes people to act against their self-interest AND the interest of those immediately around them. The health care bill will close the moronic Medicare Part D "doughnut hole", and yet elderly people in my own family believed the bill was set up to kill them off as efficiently as possible.

Listen folks, don't believe the bullshit. Glenn Beck doesn't really give a damn. He doesn't really cry on the air. The people with the money are spending lots of it to ensure that you believe they are looking out for you. The CEO of Lilly Corp struggled through a $20 million salary last year (which included only a 44% raise from the year before) even though the company was cutting 5500 jobs. When asked about it on his blog, he could only state that he asked for no raise and the board of directors decide what he gets paid. I'm not sure what's worse, that he thinks we are dumb enough to believe that he reluctantly accepted a $8.8 million dollar raise or that a group of idiots felt that it was warranted when the company is cutting 5500 jobs.

These are the people who are crying foul when Obama suggests regulation of banks or forming consumer advocacy boards. These are the people who tell you, and all their employees, that the country is against health care reform. If I put a piece of blue paper in my pocket and tell everyone in the world that it is yellow. Then I poll everyone and they overwhelmingly say it is yellow. Well, that doesn't make that piece of paper any less blue now does it. Don't believe the bullshit. The bill may not be perfect, but it is good for you and me.

Let's Stop the Debate

Other than the affairs of Tiger Woods, and maybe the hair-styles of Kate Gosselin, nothing gets Americans more hot under the collar than National Defense. It's a dogma as old as the parties themselves: Republicans are who you want on your side during a fight. Hell, everyone knows the Democrats are the pussies who talk about global warming and have tiny-balls that only serve subsidize health care for the poor. It's true! Democrats don't want us to keep score in t-ball. Democrats want to eliminate the embarrassment and sheer physical damage of getting put out in dodge-ball. In fact, Democrats would be happy if we all sat around a campfire making S'mores (if you have to ask what a S'more is...stop reading. You're killing me Smalls.) and singing Jack Johnson songs. The fires were stoked to hell-ish proportions this week as President Obama signed a treaty with Russia to limit both countries' nuclear arsenal. The treaty included a devastating 33% cut to our nuclear weapons cache, bringing us to pansy-loving level of 1550 weapons. Or just enough to destroy the Earth several times over. Sarah Palin, as usual, is totally correct when she said, "no administration in America's history, I think, would ever have considered such a step." So when I read the following quotes I knew they could only be the radical ramblings of our socialist left-wing President:

“We must never stop our efforts to reduce the weapons of war.”

“A nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought”

“It would be fine with me if we eliminated all nuclear weapons”

"I call upon the scientific community in our country, those who gave us nuclear weapons, to turn their great talents now to the cause of mankind and world peace: to give us the means of rendering these nuclear weapons impotent and obsolete."

Ah yes! Those pie-in-the-sky, idealistic, or as Rudy Giuliani put it, "a dream of the left for 60 years", gaffes demonstrate the lack of a realistic understanding of world affairs by President Reagan. Wait?! What!?! President Ronald Reagan? The man who conservatives regard as the founder of their movement?

A man so important that even Rush Limbaugh said, "If conservatism is dead, and if the Reagan era is dead, then I assume that this means the Declaration of Independence is dead as well, that the era of the Declaration has come and gone." Was Sarah Palin wrong? Have other, and not just any other, administrations considered and even put into practice such absurd steps?

I don't say these things simply to poop in the punchbowl of conservatives, my real problem is with the consistent effort by conservatives to avoid a debate at all. President Obama moved to limit our potential use of nuclear weapons as well this week by declaring that we wouldn't use a nuke to blow the hell out of anyone who attacked us with something other than a nuke, provided they were a complying country within the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. In those cases, we would simply blow the hell out of them with some other method, or as Defense Secretary Gates put it, "a conventional military response." It is important to note that Iran and North Korea, two of the three primary 'evil-doers', are not in compliance with the non-proliferation treaty. Therefore, they still get to stare down the proverbial gun-barrel of our nuclear shotgun for the foreseeable future.

The reaction of such conservative stalwarts as Michelle Bachman, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh and Sarah Palin would make you believe that President Obama banged Russian President Dmitriy Medvedev in the broom closet of the oval office. By the way, there's no evidence that he did.

Anyway, these types of rants and raves serve two purposes: cloud and hide real debate, and scare the living shit out of every American. The real question is, though, when will conservatives stop trying to simply scare initiatives out of Washington, and start trying to govern the nation with some good ideas of their own? And by that, I mean good ideas other than "no".