The Top Ten WTF Moments of 2012

 

In this universe, items and scenarios are presented to us as an entire entity, unphased by civilization’s lack of understanding. Human understanding is not a requisite for something to sit firmly in this world and make your mind explode whenever you attempt to comprehend it. Sometimes objects will just leave you isolated, trapped in your prison of confusion with the only words coming from your mouth being: WTF. Occasionally, this phenomena happens in mixed martial arts, and when it does, every element of jaw-droppingness is still retained. Check out our list of The Top Ten WTF Moments of 2012, only at MiddleEasy.com

Brent Schermerhorn vs. Kaleo Gambill opened up January 21st 2012’s ProElite event in Honolulu, Hawaii — which technically shouldn’t be a part of the US since it’s so far away. You could fit like four Hawaiis inside Wyoming and no one would even notice. Actually, no one notices Wyoming anyway. Admit it, you don’t know anyone from Wyoming. No one does. It’s a state that exists because we were convinced that it did in high school geography class. Just type ‘Wyoming is’ in Google and wait for the array of common search terms that pop up. Wyoming isn’t even real.

In the ProElite bout, Schermerhorn caught Gambill with a well-placed left hook that rendered him unconscious at the 45-second mark in the first round. The truth is, Kaleo Gambill didn’t care that he was knocked out. Gambill’s unconscious body had the energy to taunt Brent Schermerhorn from the other side — a true first in MMA.

 

First it was Tim Kennedy slicing his toe off the morning of January 12th 2012 followed by an array of bone fragments surgically extracted from Mark Munoz’s elbow. Then, the picture of the nastiest cut of 2012 surfaced, compliments of an enormous amount of cojones from MMA pioneer Guy Mezger. Mike Russell from CagePotato did an excellent job transcribing Guy Mezger interview with Bob Carson on ‘Carson’s Corner,’ and Bas Rutten capped the epic story with an equally tremendous picture of Mezger’s sliced hand.

Apparently a guy was shoving a lady, Mezger attempted to the diffuse the situation but was rushed by the dude — who weighed about 155 lbs. Guy Mezger tossed him to the ground, the attacker got back to his feet and pulled a knife. Apparently Mezger didn’t see, and was stabbed in the hand but thought he blocked a punch. Mezger ended up knocking the guy out a total of three times before the cops stepped in. Here’s an excerpt from CagePotato regarding the altercation.

I didn’t see the knife. That’s the reason I got caught the way I did. I didn’t see the knife until… I mean, he had slashed me on the hand and I didn’t feel it. It’s not because I’m a tough guy, I just really seriously, honestly didn’t feel it. This is the most amazing thing because he sliced through three of my tendons [of my hand] and it never hurt. When I went to the emergency room, I was just trying to get in there and get out because my son had a soccer game and I didn’t want to miss it and I also had my company’s — my company that I own’s Christmas party. I was the only one in the emergency room and then a guy came in with an aneurysm, so I knew that I wasn’t going to get seen, so I said the nurse, ‘Hey, could you Steri-Strip this for me and I’ll come back tomorrow and get stitches?’ So they were like, ‘Okay, let’s look at it.’ When they were looking at it I saw my tendons and I was like, ‘Oh goodness,’ and I shot a photo of it on my phone,” he explained. “I called a surgeon buddy because his partner is one of the best hand surgeons in Texas and I thought I could see my tendon hanging out, so I sent him the picture and I was like, ‘Hey, can you get me an appointment?’ So I hadn’t even seen the emergency room doctor yet and I had an appointment with the best hand surgeon in Texas, and he said to go ahead and plan for surgery on Tuesday. So I was actually taken care of really well. It happened Sunday, Monday I got to see [the surgeon], Tuesday I had the surgery and I’ve been on the mend since then and they say I can expect a one hundred percent recovery.”

Alright guys, now for the picture. If you are eating, wait until your food has digested before you look at it. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

guy mezger's cut hand

 

On June 5th 2012 I received an email that Bob Sapp planned an audio-visual onslaught in response to Ariel Hewani’s interview with The Beast on The MMA Hour. I’m sure you’ve see the video a countless amount of times, but if you haven’t, here’s another complimentary link to the interview. While I still haven’t seen all three videos of Bob Sapp’s masterpiece entitled ‘Mindless Mouth of Ariel,’ I’ll let you guys give me a decent review of the video in the comment section below. I’m expecting a five-paragraph compare-and-contrast essay complete with intro and conclusion. You will be graded. Thank you.

Round 1

 

Round 2

 

Round 3

 

Yes, I browsed through pages of gay porn the night of February 27th 2012 just to verify that Dakota Cochrane, one of the thirty-two fighters that competed on The Ultimate Fighter Live (TUF 15) was also a gay porn star. I did this for all of you, and it was brutal. I live in Hollywood, California. There’s nothing wrong with homosexuality. In fact, I voted no on Prop 8, the California legislation that sought to ban same-sex marriage. Everyday I go to the gym on Sunset boulevard, I’m drowning in gayness and transsexuals. It’s just the way of life out here.

However, I dare any straight guy to analytically look at gay porn for the sole purpose of finding identifying marks to determine if a gay porn start is also an MMA fighter. Hell, I dare any straight guy just to look at gay porn. It’s mentally confusing. You don’t expect body parts to contort in that manner. It’s too much. I really need to get a girlfriend or something because I think my eyes were just traumatized. If you’re an above-average to mildly attractive female living in the Los Angeles area that can help me get over staring at gay porn for hours, then I may need your assistance.

Alright, on to the gayness.

Some of you may remember Dakota Cochrane from the beastly performance he put on against Jamie Varner last year at Titan Fighting Championships 20. He grabbed a convincing unanimous decision over the former WEC champion, which earned him a slot on The Ultimate Fighter Live. There’s also a guy that goes by the name of ‘Danny’ in the gay porn world, and from what I’ve been told by my neighbors, ‘he’s as impressive in bed as he is in the ring.’ I’m not even making this up, guys. If you turn off ‘Safe Search’ and Google ‘Danny,’ you will get an influx of pictures that are definitely NSFW.

If you’re still questioning if Dakota Cochrane is indeed ‘Danny,’ check out this picture from Victory Fighting Championship.

Notice the same left arm tattoo in both pictures. That’s him, or an incredibly accurate imposter.

The most important that you must realize is Dakota Cochrane is a bad ass fighter. Let’s forget the absolute mauling Dakota placed on Jamie Varner. The fact that Dakota Cochrane has done gay porn should not deter you from watching his progression through his MMA career. Not at all. In fact, we as a MMA community should embrace a current/former gay porn star into MMA. It’s time to expand the fanbase of this sport that we all love.

We need a guy like Dakota Cochrane in this sport. It’s time for a paradigm shift.

 

People say ‘I’ll see you in hell’ but in reality, I don’t want to see anyone in hell. I’ll see them in hell only if hell was constructed from those white sticks in ‘Fun Dip‘ candy packets. Then hell would be candy heaven and heaven would just be regular heaven. Let’s face it, if you had a choice to go to regular heaven or candy heaven, which one would you pick? If you’re a diabetic, then candy heaven would be candy hell. Regardless of which hell you end up going to, there’s a good chance Popek Rak will be there guarding the gates with some gargantuan pitchfork.

Some of you may remember Popek from his days in Cage Rage, and if you’re really into the Polish hip-hop scene, then you’ve heard some of his ‘horror-core’ rap when he released his 2008 album entitled ‘HeavyWeight.’ In July 2012 it appeared that Popek was in a dead-heat with Datsik on the ‘Who’s the craziest [expletive] from Eastern Europe’ marathon after he had facial scarification. For those that are unfamiliar with the body modification, it’s exactly what it sounds like. An artist intentionally slices a wide portion of skin in order to create a permanent scar, purely for aesthetic purposes.

Leave it to Popek to bring an entire camera crew to document the process of having someone cut slabs of skin of his face so that he can look even scarier than what he already does. He even got his eyes tattooed again, all in one astronomically painful session. Check out the video below, and be warned, it’s friggin’ disgusting.

 

For two weeks in January 2012, the MMA world operated under the supervision of JoshTheGod, Anonymous and S3rver.exe. It was as if we all inhabited some heavily visited EfNet IRC chatroom with mods that had complete control over our lives. Don’t worry, I won’t make fun of you for not understanding some nerd-injected reference. In fact, if you’re confused then I applaud your lack of understanding. It shows that you actually had a childhood when you were a kid. Back in high school, my Saturday nights heavily revolved around the amount of warez I could download from anonymous bots across IRC. I even dipped out of my senior prom just so that I could watch a Star Trek: Next Generation marathon with my pops while I combed the web for HERF blueprints.

Look, I never was laid in high school. My time was spent building macros for Ultima Online and attempting to hack websites. In a sense, I aspired to be like S3rver.exe, the 13-year-old that successfully hacked UFC upon Dana White’s request. Softpedia interviewed the teenage hacker to see what inspired him to deface UFC.com among a slew of other sites.

I started hacking when I was 11. Botnets and Rats inspired me and then a friend introduced me to SQL injection and other hacking stuff.

Basically, I started hacking because I saw many videos and news around the world about hacking and then I also wanted to learn. I made heaps of Internet friends and they taught me some tricks.

And I guess hacking is my type because I really like computers and I want to get a job in computing.

I have breached the Administrator of usa.gov yesterday. That was fun. I went through the directories and stuff. Me and my friend Sterlok breached the security.

Then I did a live deface on UFC.com and UFC.tv. The live deface was on Tinychat. I was sharing my screen and people were watching me deface.

Now I have XSS’ed OPOA, which is the Oakland Police website. I am going to release their stuff soon.

So those were really important to me.

Can’t wait for Morpheus to give this kid the red pill. He deserves it.

 

Before everyone starts their ‘Dude, WTF’ threads across MMA message boards, let me give you a brief rundown of what I believe Lorenzo Fertitta was thinking when he wrote this letter to Congressman Lamar Smith in support of the SOPA act that we at MiddleEasy are vehemently against.

Over the last decade, we witnessed online piracy literally dismantle the music industry. With the advent of Napster, college kids choked the bandwidth of their dorms downloading overrated albums from artists like ‘Ben Folds Five.’ Admit it, we all did. Granted, it’s tough to consider it ‘stealing’ when the items we took weren’t even tangible. The music industry knew sales were in a massive decline, so they did what any industry would do if they had a seemingly endless amount of money and K-1 level lawyers — attack the people that were engaging in peer-to-peer sharing. Little old ladies were being detained by the FBI, kids across America were being arrested after school for ‘stealing’ — it was just a giant mess. However, the detainment of citizens across the country only inspired more people to illegally download content and sparked a surge in new P2P technologies. The ‘iron fist’ approach backfired for the music industry, and they realized their approach must change. Production companies begin working with internet-based companies to deliver their product to the people that would normally just jack it from the internet. Those people were now presented with a method to digitally download music legally (and at a higher quality), and we saw entities like the ‘iTune store’ become a common staple in Western culture.

In the past, ZUFFA has attacked (and continues to attack) websites established for the sole purpose of broadcasting live UFC events which undeniably undercuts revenue that could have been earned during the show. No one should be surprised by this. UFC operates on primarily a PPV business model with most of their undisclosed income coming from cable/satellite providers at a moderately priced rate. Without revenue accumulated from this model, the UFC would be a local Las Vegas promotion with an extreme obsession with geometrical shapes. A multitude of unnamed websites have been established across the net to give viewers free and illegal access to live UFC events while having the audacity to spam their sites with ads — essentially making money off a product they stole.

That’s screwed up.

Pretend like you don’t have an annoying girlfriend and the lock on your car door works. Put yourself in Lorenzo Fertitta’s shoes, a guy that literally resurrected a company on life support, burned through an unimaginable amount of money and finally made the company into what you see today. Now imagine a few rogue sites dipping in your pockets and removing potential money that could have been created from a live UFC event. Sure it affects you (remember, you’re Lorenzo Fertitta in this example), but what about the entire underlying structure of the UFC? Fighter payouts (and bonuses) are lower. With less money, the overall production of UFC events are marginal at best. People will lose interest in a declining product and the sport we love will lose relevancy in the US. There would be no FOX deals. MMA fans would go through a steady bout of depression and eventually focus their energy in appreciating the fine aspects of rodeo as a sport.

By embracing Xbox 360 (and UFC.com) as a medium to deliver their product, the UFC has accepted that most people prefer to watch live events through digital means. That option is now present for potential consumers, and as we’ve seen with the music industry, it’s a smart move. However, Mr. Lorenzo Fertitta, please stop supporting SOPA/PIPA or any variation of it from now until the sun kills the earth. We understood you’re against piracy, and it makes complete sense that you are. But SOPA being the solution to stop piracy is like performing brain surgery with a medieval flail. It puts the fear of Dana White into rogue sites that stream UFC events, but it simultaneously robs the American people of our constitutional rights. SOPA is censorship. It’s a freedom suppressor with the ability to completely remove entire domains from being accessed by everyone in the United States — communist China style.

You know all of those slick YouTube highlight films created by phenomenal editors across the world which are aimed at increasing interest in the UFC product? Under SOPA, any site that posts these highlight videos (including MiddleEasy, The Underground, CagePotato and every other MMA message board you could think of) would be completely removed from the internet. We’re not talking about a few pages being deleted from the site. Not at all. SOPA would have the power to censor an entire domain name.

I can only assume what was going through Lorenzo Fertitta’s mind when he wrote this letter. He wanted to protect the interest of the UFC, but I’m assuming he wasn’t aware of the severe ramifications that SOPA could have instituted on the American people (and the world). Based on that logic, Lorenzo Fertitta should get a pass on this one — however, I could be completely wrong. Perhaps you should call me up, Lorenzo. Give MiddleEasy an exclusive interview on your stance on SOPA. I’m sure you can get my number from ZUFFA and I’m absolutely certain MMA fans that have supported the UFC for years would love to hear your stance.

Now check out Lorenzo Fertitta’s letter that was sent to Lamar Smith, the chief sponsor of SOPA, which expressed the UFC’s support of SOPA/PIPA. Oh, and to the readers out there — you’re not Lorenzo Fertitta anymore. That ended a few paragraphs ago. Now stop putting a down payment on the new Bugatti Grand Sport with money you no longer have. Sorry.

 

Rewind back to December 15th 2012 on the night of Bellator 84 — the promotion’s final event of the year. The season seven lightweight final was scheduled to take place inside the Horseshoe Casino nestled somewhere deep inside Hammond, Indiana. The bouts were set, all the fighters arrived — and a ‘higher authority’ intervened. Specifically, the ‘higher authority’ at the gaming commission.

In order to be accepted inside the Horseshoe Casino, one must be at least twenty-one years old. 15-2 Marcin Held was only twenty. According to an article from ESPN’s Josh Gross, Bjorn Rebney initially had a deal with the Horseshoe Casino to let Marcin Held fight inside the facility but at the last second it was overruled by a ‘higher authority’ inside the gaming commission. Here’s what Rebney said about the strange mishap.

“We thought we did everything necessary to ensure we covered all the bases and made a series of disclosures to the commission.”

An entire season of lightweight tournament fights literally discarded due to the last minute rule of a mysterious ‘higher authority.’ What a logistical bummer.

 

My god. What can be said about UFC 151 that hasn’t already been said about every nuclear disaster in recorded human history? You guys already know the story — Hendo vs. Jones was slated to headline the bout, Hendo dropped out and Dana White selected Chael Sonnen to be a replacement. Sonnen accepted the fight — and Jon Jones declined the fight under the guidance of his coach, Greg Jackson. Dana White was forced to make an executive action and cancel UFC 151 — a first in the promotion’s history.

Naturally, the MMA world was upset — and they vehemently expressed it on Twitter.

 

asd sad

My grandparents realized Russia was doomed in the 1970’s when they fled the continent. I never believed the entirety of their experiences of what it was like living in a communist country, but the more Russians I speak to, the more they mirror the same stories of widespread corruption, political uncertainty, and moral values equivalent to a pet rock. It makes it hard to believe that a calm, collected guy like Fedor ever made the sport of MMA popular in Russia considering that he doesn’t fit the criteria of a badass in any aspect of his personality, only in his power and dominance of the heavyweight division while he competed. While most political issues in Russia can be solved with Fedor’s right hand, not even the last emperor can fix this mess.

The latest controversy from the motherland comes in the form of an MMA fighter, Rasul Mirzaev, who was a Sambo world champion scheduled to fight in Bellator before being incarcerated approximately two years ago. He was recently freed from prison after being convicted of killing a student outside of a nightclub in Moscow. According to witnesses, it was a single punch that caused the victim to fall and bump his head on a drain cover. While it’s unclear whether the punch or the fall killed 19 year old Ivan Agafonov, murder charges were ultimately dropped in a series of trial delays and plea bargains. Mirzaev instead plead guilty to ‘death by negligence’ which carries a maximum two year prison term, thereby authorizing a release based on time already served.

Upon hearing the verdict, the victim’s mother subsequently suffered a heart attack while the victim’s father stormed out of the courtroom before the sentence was read out in its entirety. The case captivated Russia and continues to focus debates on relations between ethnic Russians and members of the North Caucasus, many of whom, including Mirzaev, have moved to Moscow since the time of the Soviet Union. Ethnic-Russian nationalists protested outside the court, several of whom were arrested for trying to sneak into the courtroom.

This marks another chapter of ethnic tensions escalating in Russia, and independent journalists are fearing reoccurring riots from this court ruling, similar to an incident that lacked adequate persecution from 2010; where a Russian soccer fan was killed by a member of the same ethnic group. Authorities are preemptively closing public squares and preparing for protests and possible hostile retaliation.

There’s much more to this story, but it’s probably going to unfold in the days to come. We’re not sure if he will still be eligible to compete in Bellator. He wouldn’t be the first person with a criminal record competing in MMA, but we doubt that parent company, Viacom, will undertake the PR nightmare of employing a convicted killer. For the sake of all our favorite Russian athletes, and humanity as a whole, we hope the violence doesn’t escalate any more than it already has.

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