Well, I was finally able to take in my first MMA event this weekend in Vancouverat Rogers Arena, UFC 131. There were some great fights on the card such as Sam Stout sending Yves Edwards on a express trip to nap land with Mr. Canvas in the 2nd round was deserving of knockout of the night, and Shane Carwin hanging tough with Junior Santos even though his face was horribly mangled showed the heart that he has. Now, I was thinking about doing your standard recap of the event but there’s so many already online.
Rogers Arena was absolutely sold out; fans going nuts and looking at the fact that A) Kenny Florian wore a Boston Bruins to the weigh-ins on Friday, and B) the fans were chanting go Canucks all night at Rogers Arena shows that the reason why Canada has embraced MMA so much is that we have been bread for it through hockey! InCanadawe have been fed hockey fights for decades upon decades, with games on CBC and other networks with games on and when live hockey is not on what do we watch? Don Cherry’s rock em sock em videos! YAY!! In the over 20 Don Cherry films, there’s always about 10 minutes devoted to just fights, (ex: Domi vs. Probert, Probert vs Craig Coxe) and we’ve sat and just soaked it all in. It works the opposite too with hockey embracing MMA, Ed Jovanovski was at UFC 131 Saturday night, former NHL enforcer Donald Brasher made his MMA debut last week beating Mathieu Bergeron in 21 seconds in Quebec and Flyers tough guy Dan Carcillo has his own t-shirt with the MMA Company Jakt apparel, not a shock at all that some of the toughest guys to play in the NHL are into MMA, I mean its quite easy for guys like Carcillo and Jovanovski to relate to many guys in the UFC, fighting in close quarters for years and just trading bombs with another hulking beast.
It will only get bigger in Canada, with cards in Vancouver, Montreal, and Toronto you know that the UFC will want to further expand with events in other cities, its already been rumored with possible cards in Edmonton and Calgary some time in the future. At the end of the day, were embracing two hard sports in which you need heart (a strong chin helps to if you don’t like watching the back of your eyelids after getting drilled with a right hand) to be successful in, and what’s better than that?
That’s all for now I’m Avry and I’m out!
As always folks tune into my show, Avry’s Sports Show on http://ustream.tv/channel/avryofedmonton Tuesday nights at 6PM Mountain time.
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