Just over two years since his last fight, Mark "The Hammer" Coleman officially retired from mixed martial arts this week. The 48-year-old mixed-style pioneer, a brutal force when he was at his best, will be remembered as one of the most influential heavyweights this demanding sport has produced.
On July 11, 2012, Chris Weidman defeated top middleweight contender Mark Munoz without so much as absorbing a single significant strike in six and a half minutes of fight time. It was a headlining spot, and he made the most of it.
Marijuana isn’t a performance-enhancing drug, you say? Try running that nonsense by any guitarist in a jam band. All that noodling is backlit by something, brother. In MMA, though, marijuana doesn’t enhance fight night performance.
Here are five things about the week in mixed martial arts that stand out to me. Aldo-Edgar back on Reaction was muted on the news that Jose Aldo and Frankie Edgar were signed to fight Super Bowl weekend in Las Vegas.
Now that Anderson Silva has done away with Stephan Bonnar, a perfunctory matter that he handled with the usual play-action legerdemain, we can go back to disagreeing with his finicky taste in opponents.
RIO DE JANEIRO -- It's obvious Stephan Bonnar was blithely ignorant of Anderson Silva's plans for him. The American light heavyweight thought he was going to Brazil for a fair fight. In reality, Silva was using him as an unwitting victim in a new stage of his career.
RIO DE JANEIRO -- As mixed martial arts fighters approach superstar status, a shift is taking place in their relationship with the media. Middleweight king Anderson Silva, who returns once more to 205 pounds in this weekend's UFC 153 main event against Stephan Bonnar, is one of the high-profile fighters setting a new trend.
Editor's note: Anderson Silva's story is published on ESPN.com courtesy of the UFC. I'm happy to be two days away from fighting Stephan Bonnar here in Rio in the main event of UFC 153. I didn't think I would be fighting again in 2012, but when my friend and UFC featherweight champion Jose Aldo was hurt and had to fall off the card, I agreed to step in to fight as a light heavyweight.
Somebody recently stated that, yes, Stephan Bonnar was indeed just like "Rocky IV." The twist? He strikes an uncanny resemblance to Apollo Creed. Now that’s just clever. And it wouldn’t be nearly as funny if that didn’t come closer to the situational feel here.
Eleven months ago, Dana White had it oh so easy. The two best heavyweights in mixed martial arts, one loss between them, vying for a belt during UFC's network television debut? The worst salesman could have sold Cain Velasquez and Junior dos Santos to the public, and, to his credit, the charismatic UFC president essentially admitted as much.
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