Sherdog.com’s Turkeys for 2005
Josh Gross Nov 24, 2005
Though it’s a bit late and traditions for the final Thursday in
November are pretty well established at this point, we here at
Sherdog.com would like to add a little something to the
festivities.
To the list that includes Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, the Lions and the Cowboys, the Skin’s Games, etc. … it’s time for another: the awarding of Sherdog.com’s Turkeys.
OK, sure, it’s cliché and silly and counterintuitive to the purpose
of Thanksgiving. But it’s also fun and a little mean spirited. And
for my money any truly worthwhile thing has elements of each.
We’ve scoured the headlines and gone through our notes to pick out five of the year’s most unforgettably obnoxious, ridiculous or just plain reprehensible moments. The work is done and five finalists for Sherdog.com’s inaugural Turkey award have been chosen. Don’t worry though, no one will leave empty handed.
In no particular order:
Eli Joslin (Pictures)
It’s true accomplishment when someone can take the biggest opportunity of his or her life and flush it down the toilet like yesterday’s burrito. Even more so when it’s done on national television. And that’s just what young Eli Joslin (Pictures), a heavyweight from Mariposa, Calif., did on the debut episode of TUF 2 in August.
Joining eight heavyweights in Las Vegas to pursue a dream of becoming the newest “Ultimate Fighter,” Joslin began having doubts about his place on the cast when he realized that taping a television show might actually require having cameras pointed in his direction.
Apparently, confused Eli’s anxiety grew and grew during his first few days in the fighter house. So much so that he just up and quit, much to the chagrin of TUF 2 coaches Rich Franklin (Pictures) and Matt Hughes (Pictures), as well as UFC president Dana White.
A delicious turkey with all the trimmings goes to Eli, though you can be sure if there’s a camera anywhere near, it won’t get eaten.
Honorable mention goes to Kenny Stevens (Pictures), who like Joslin quit on the debut of TUF II prior to fighting. At least Stevens tried before failing to make weight for his fight against Sam Morgan (Pictures).
Dana White & Tito Ortiz (Pictures)
You could probably pick just about anything involving White and/or Ortiz and award it a Turkey, but this one is a combo nomination, as these two peas in a pod take the prize for most dysfunctional relationship.
It’s really no wonder why the UFC boss and the former UFC light heavyweight champion (also a former Dana White client) can’t stand each other — they’re exactly alike. For almost nine months UFC fans were subjected to back-and-forth talk in the press from both men.
White called Ortiz every name in the book, and said things about him normal people wouldn’t wish upon their worst enemy. And Ortiz kept at his former boss with puzzling demands and even more puzzling metaphors.
And so their dysfunction evolved until which point White must’ve missed him so much (i.e. another promoter was about to scoop up the man White had invested millions of dollars in) that the two finally came together on a three-fight contract. Not only that, Ortiz was given the highest profile slot that can be bestowed upon a fighter in White’s stable: coach on the Ultimate Fighter reality series.
The meltdown that’s bound to occur sometime in the late summer of 2006 has most observers salivating like … well … it’s Thanksgiving. Until that happens, though, here’s to Ortiz and White sitting down to their bountiful Thanksgiving table and sharing in the cornucopia that is Zuffa’s success while dining on a lovely Sherdog.com Turkey.
Makes you all warm and fuzzy, doesn’t it?
KOTC
Don’t get us wrong, King of the Cage is a fine organization, but once in a while it tends to get a bit hyperbolic. Case in point, the “greatest” event since PT Barnum traveled this great country: KOTC “Payback.”
Headlined by a fight between two washout NFL players — Michael Westbrook and Jarrod Bunch — "Payback" attempted to do what no other mixed martial arts card had ever done before in North America: pass itself off Toughman as MMA.
Lost in the shuffle of some pretty good fights, “Payback” instead focused on the shameless part of the promotion: the NFL fight and a disastrous effort by Eric Esch (Pictures), aka “Butterbean.”
KOTC promoters promised unparalleled coverage among mainstream sports outlets. It got some, but hardly anything earth shattering. And promised highlights on ESPN’s SportsCenter never materialized. Though, truth be told, ESPN was on hand in Cleveland State University’s Convocation Center to witness the grand experiment of inexperienced former football players “fighting” in a cage.
How ESPN didn’t lead its Emmy-award winning broadcast that February night with KOTC highlights, we’ll never know. This Thanksgiving, KOTC gets the biggest, juiciest most wonderful Turkey of all time*. It’s well deserved boys. Keep up the great work!
*Sherdog.com cannot guarantee the size or juiciness of promised Turkey.
Mainstream Media
While we bow our heads and pray that someday we may be considered as wise and important as our mainstream media big brothers, we can’t let ‘em get away with everything. So, Time and Sports Illustrated … and just about everyone else, listen here: GET THE STORY RIGHT, WOULD YOU!
I digress.
Let’s get a few things straight: Dana White and the boys at Zuffa had as much to do with the making of mixed martial arts rules as we know them today as the Sherdog.com staff had in creating Magnum Condoms.
For those of you still confused (and it’s not the easiest metaphor to get), that basically means that Dana and Co. had nothing to do with MMA rules in New Jersey, which promoted sanctioned MMA before Zuffa was anything more than a word thrown around by street kids in Naples, or anywhere else for that matter.
And that’s no crime, that’s just the truth. YET, bastions of journalism like Time and SI, which in 2005 ran feature stories on the UFC, purported it was Zuffa that came along and saved all of us from ourselves. Apparently, MMA would be the pastime of drug addicts and pedophiles if it wasn’t for the philanthropic company based in the Nevada desert.
Furthermore, numerous daily newspapers in this country have written similar pieces without, it seems, checking their facts. No wonder the UFC prefers this brand of reporting to media that actually knows what it’s talking about.
Two roasted Guinea Pigs are to be sent to Time and SI with the note, “Enjoy these wonderful Thanksgiving Turkeys, as even though they look and taste nothing like turkey, this message is surely enough to convince you otherwise. Now eat up.”
Rafiel Torre
A break from the levity. There’s hardly a situation where it would be less appropriate to make light of something. Rafiel Torre took someone’s life, and for those, like myself, who knew the man, it’s still chilling.
The former PRIDE broadcaster was found guilty of murder in August, using a technique he’d trained during his time in the gym. Think of it. Utterly Disgusting.
We like to think of MMA as an island, where what we do leaves the outside world unaffected. But as the sport grows, this just simply isn’t reality. It’s both fortunate and amazing that Torre’s trial did not garner more national media coverage.
If there’s a “bad guy” on the list, it’s Torre, whose turkey will most surely be canned — just like him.
To the list that includes Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, the Lions and the Cowboys, the Skin’s Games, etc. … it’s time for another: the awarding of Sherdog.com’s Turkeys.
Advertisement
We’ve scoured the headlines and gone through our notes to pick out five of the year’s most unforgettably obnoxious, ridiculous or just plain reprehensible moments. The work is done and five finalists for Sherdog.com’s inaugural Turkey award have been chosen. Don’t worry though, no one will leave empty handed.
Oh, and you’re picking the winner.
In no particular order:
Eli Joslin (Pictures)
It’s true accomplishment when someone can take the biggest opportunity of his or her life and flush it down the toilet like yesterday’s burrito. Even more so when it’s done on national television. And that’s just what young Eli Joslin (Pictures), a heavyweight from Mariposa, Calif., did on the debut episode of TUF 2 in August.
Joining eight heavyweights in Las Vegas to pursue a dream of becoming the newest “Ultimate Fighter,” Joslin began having doubts about his place on the cast when he realized that taping a television show might actually require having cameras pointed in his direction.
Apparently, confused Eli’s anxiety grew and grew during his first few days in the fighter house. So much so that he just up and quit, much to the chagrin of TUF 2 coaches Rich Franklin (Pictures) and Matt Hughes (Pictures), as well as UFC president Dana White.
A delicious turkey with all the trimmings goes to Eli, though you can be sure if there’s a camera anywhere near, it won’t get eaten.
Honorable mention goes to Kenny Stevens (Pictures), who like Joslin quit on the debut of TUF II prior to fighting. At least Stevens tried before failing to make weight for his fight against Sam Morgan (Pictures).
Dana White & Tito Ortiz (Pictures)
You could probably pick just about anything involving White and/or Ortiz and award it a Turkey, but this one is a combo nomination, as these two peas in a pod take the prize for most dysfunctional relationship.
It’s really no wonder why the UFC boss and the former UFC light heavyweight champion (also a former Dana White client) can’t stand each other — they’re exactly alike. For almost nine months UFC fans were subjected to back-and-forth talk in the press from both men.
White called Ortiz every name in the book, and said things about him normal people wouldn’t wish upon their worst enemy. And Ortiz kept at his former boss with puzzling demands and even more puzzling metaphors.
And so their dysfunction evolved until which point White must’ve missed him so much (i.e. another promoter was about to scoop up the man White had invested millions of dollars in) that the two finally came together on a three-fight contract. Not only that, Ortiz was given the highest profile slot that can be bestowed upon a fighter in White’s stable: coach on the Ultimate Fighter reality series.
The meltdown that’s bound to occur sometime in the late summer of 2006 has most observers salivating like … well … it’s Thanksgiving. Until that happens, though, here’s to Ortiz and White sitting down to their bountiful Thanksgiving table and sharing in the cornucopia that is Zuffa’s success while dining on a lovely Sherdog.com Turkey.
Makes you all warm and fuzzy, doesn’t it?
KOTC
Don’t get us wrong, King of the Cage is a fine organization, but once in a while it tends to get a bit hyperbolic. Case in point, the “greatest” event since PT Barnum traveled this great country: KOTC “Payback.”
Headlined by a fight between two washout NFL players — Michael Westbrook and Jarrod Bunch — "Payback" attempted to do what no other mixed martial arts card had ever done before in North America: pass itself off Toughman as MMA.
Lost in the shuffle of some pretty good fights, “Payback” instead focused on the shameless part of the promotion: the NFL fight and a disastrous effort by Eric Esch (Pictures), aka “Butterbean.”
KOTC promoters promised unparalleled coverage among mainstream sports outlets. It got some, but hardly anything earth shattering. And promised highlights on ESPN’s SportsCenter never materialized. Though, truth be told, ESPN was on hand in Cleveland State University’s Convocation Center to witness the grand experiment of inexperienced former football players “fighting” in a cage.
How ESPN didn’t lead its Emmy-award winning broadcast that February night with KOTC highlights, we’ll never know. This Thanksgiving, KOTC gets the biggest, juiciest most wonderful Turkey of all time*. It’s well deserved boys. Keep up the great work!
*Sherdog.com cannot guarantee the size or juiciness of promised Turkey.
Mainstream Media
While we bow our heads and pray that someday we may be considered as wise and important as our mainstream media big brothers, we can’t let ‘em get away with everything. So, Time and Sports Illustrated … and just about everyone else, listen here: GET THE STORY RIGHT, WOULD YOU!
I digress.
Let’s get a few things straight: Dana White and the boys at Zuffa had as much to do with the making of mixed martial arts rules as we know them today as the Sherdog.com staff had in creating Magnum Condoms.
For those of you still confused (and it’s not the easiest metaphor to get), that basically means that Dana and Co. had nothing to do with MMA rules in New Jersey, which promoted sanctioned MMA before Zuffa was anything more than a word thrown around by street kids in Naples, or anywhere else for that matter.
And that’s no crime, that’s just the truth. YET, bastions of journalism like Time and SI, which in 2005 ran feature stories on the UFC, purported it was Zuffa that came along and saved all of us from ourselves. Apparently, MMA would be the pastime of drug addicts and pedophiles if it wasn’t for the philanthropic company based in the Nevada desert.
Furthermore, numerous daily newspapers in this country have written similar pieces without, it seems, checking their facts. No wonder the UFC prefers this brand of reporting to media that actually knows what it’s talking about.
Two roasted Guinea Pigs are to be sent to Time and SI with the note, “Enjoy these wonderful Thanksgiving Turkeys, as even though they look and taste nothing like turkey, this message is surely enough to convince you otherwise. Now eat up.”
Rafiel Torre
A break from the levity. There’s hardly a situation where it would be less appropriate to make light of something. Rafiel Torre took someone’s life, and for those, like myself, who knew the man, it’s still chilling.
The former PRIDE broadcaster was found guilty of murder in August, using a technique he’d trained during his time in the gym. Think of it. Utterly Disgusting.
We like to think of MMA as an island, where what we do leaves the outside world unaffected. But as the sport grows, this just simply isn’t reality. It’s both fortunate and amazing that Torre’s trial did not garner more national media coverage.
If there’s a “bad guy” on the list, it’s Torre, whose turkey will most surely be canned — just like him.
