I recently came across this site, unfortunately via some unrelenting spammer from Sherdog, but since I like to do some recreational gambling and the UFC in a partnership with Bodog has emptied my pockets (damn you, Marcus Davis), I decided to give it a shot anyway, cleverly bypassing the spammer's referral link and signing up directly.
How the site works is they give you $0.10 that you can bet with to start off, and you try to work your way up from that. You can cashout when you reach I think $10 or $20, and you'll always have 10 cents in your account, so no matter how many times you lose, you can always start over with 10 cents. On the "leaderboard" there seems to be a bunch of people with like $500, which is ridiculous until you take into account the number of referees the NBA employees (zing!).
They get most of their money from ads, and you can get an additional 25-100% on each bet by supposedly watching sponsored commercials. You'll have to click a few times until you get the max additional %, but with AdBlock I never see the commercials anyway, and just keep clicking until I get the max.
Anyway, I'm still stuck at $0.10. I've mainly been randomly picking 5-game MLB parlays since you can win like $5 from $0.10 if you pick all 5 correctly, but this is pretty hard to do. I'd recommend sticking with 2-3 game parlays. I think the highest I ever got was $0.75, which I tried to parlay into $20 but ended up back at $0.10.
If you refer people, you also get 5% of anything they win, which is what I assume the spammer was trying to do. Since I'm not a greedy bastard, and have no faith in anybody's ability to get up to even $5, I won't spam my referral link. If you want to try it, just click on the centsports banner.
This pleases the league like nothing else. Did they rig it? Obviously. How else do you explain the Spurs plane suddenly malfunctioning right after their game 7 win over New Orleans? I'm guessing David Stern made the call sometime in the third quarter, and Stu Jackson worked feverishly with a wrench to delay the plane for 10 hours. And, of course, Joey Crawford gets the call to ref the pivotal game 4. Not game 1 or game 2, since they were in LA and the Spurs were already tired from the plane "malfunction", the Lakers were likely gonna win anyway and didn't need any more divine Stern intervention. Game 3 obviously the Spurs would come back and win. Defending champs don't go out 4-0, so Stern wisely chose game 4 for Crawford, and the rest is history.
Of course hindsight if 20/20 and pretty much I'm still bitter that the Spurs lost since I chose them to go all the way, forgetting that it was an even year.
So who wins this year? The Celtics were the best team all season, Kobe was the best player all season. The Celtics have struggled in the playoffs, the Lakers have breezed through. There's no doubt it's the Year of the Mamba.
MMA made its debut on national TV Saturday with CBS's EliteXC show featuring Gina Carano and Kimbo Slice. Another huge step towards mainstream for MMA, if it wasn't already there.
Now most hardcore MMA fans would agree that this wasn't the best way to introduce Mixed Martial Arts to the world. Since PRIDE's Yakuza-laden implosion, UFC has been clearly the premiere MMA organization in the world, with no doubt the best fighters. It would've only made sense for this to be a UFC show. Which fighter should headline such a debut? Millions of fans worldwide could've watched Anderson Silva rearranging somebody's nose, Rampage Jackson rearranging somebody's spine, or BJ Penn painting the canvas red with somebody's blood, then licking it all up like the psycho vampire he is. Not really sure if that would've drawn in fans or made them vomit under the cushion of their couch, but at least it would've given them a realistic picture of what MMA is all about.
For whatever reason, Dana White only knows, EliteXC inked the first deal, and youtube sensation Kimbo Slice was chosen to be the vessel by which the general public was exposed to MMA.
Now I actually have nothing against Kimbo. He comes off as a humble, hard-working family man who just wants to get his bread. It's obvious he's no Fedor, but he's definitely more well-known and will probably draw more viewers. If EliteXC could put on a good show, it could definitely do wonders for the sport.
As it was, I don't know how the average person flipping through the channels felt, but as an MMA fan, I thought the production went terribly. Just real strange altogether. First of all, they wasted SO much time it was ridiculous. Is it really necessary to introduce each fighter twice back to back? I guess having Busta Rhymes there was good to draw in the MTV crowd, but running 45 minutes over definitely cannot be good, and the CBS execs could very well squash Kimbo, shave his beard, and take away his bread.
Anyway, there were a few fights I found very entertaining:
Nick Serra vs. Matt Makowski
Really I only wanted to see Nick because he's related to Matt. And I would've picked him to win on that fact alone. I mean he's got 50% of the same genes right? Unfortunately, he got completely demolished. One of the weirdest fights I've ever seen. Nick seriously looked like George McFly fighting the bullies in Back To The Future. His stance was exactly like that. He got minced by Muay Thai kicks, jumped up in the air landing on his ass in an attempt to pull guard, then finally just flopped over dead and refused to get up. Just an all-around hilarious spectacle.
Gina Carano vs. Kaitlin Young
I don't think I'm sexist at all, but I'm not really a fan of women's MMA. Seeing guys beat up seems somewhat normal in today's society. Seeing women get beat up, you feel like someone oughta go to jail. Although I don't find the WNBA too appealing either, even though I know WNBA players could own most pick-up gyms in the country. Anyway, the fight was actually pretty good. Gina can never make weight, but she's a pretty good fighter. As is Kaitlin Young. They traded bombs, and neither really seem fazed. I know I would've been out cold from some of those shots. I agree with the stoppage here. Young was getting overwhelmed and her eye looked really bad.
Robbie Lawler vs. Scott Smith
Best fight of the night. I've always had the impression that Lawler had a Colossus-esque glass jaw ever since I saw him get KO'd by a Nick Diaz jab, but he seems to take shots well. The crowd kept booing, which was ridiculous since there was so much action. I thought Smith was done after he grimaced and fell back into the cage from the body shot, but he usually wins when this happens, as his cornerman Pete Sell can attest to. Finger-in-the-eye no-decision wasn't a good ending, but it was a good fight either way.
Kimbo Slice vs. James Thompson
I put $12 on Kimbo to win $2 to make me feel better in case Kimbo won, since I was rooting against him just to see how Gary Shaw would react, but still found myself rooting against him and my $12. The ref-ing was just horrendous this fight. I thought Big Dan Miragliotta was the second coming of Big John McCarthy, and even though I know he works for the athletic commision and not EliteXC, it still seemed like he was on Gary Shaw's payroll. A standup from side control after only about 20 seconds, allowing Kimbo to not intelligently defend himself for over a minute, and finally stopping the fight with Thompson still standing.
Overall, the entire show and especially Kimbo looked pretty bad. No cardio, no highly touted punching power, and of course no ground game. He got his bread, but maybe more bread than he deserved.
Anyway, I just realized who the perfect choice would be to introduce MMA to the public. Not Kimbo, not Penn, not Anderson, or even Fedor.
The 100% best choice would be GSP. Super nice guy, gentleman, doesn't brutalize guys too badly, cool-looking spinning back kicks, and of course, the sexy accent. And after the fight, we could have UFC uber-groupie Mandy Moore run in, followed by her buddy Minka Kelly, and kiss GSP on national television. That would definitely legitimize and popularize the sport.
My first post has to be about my new obsession: Mixed Martial Arts, or MMA. This is supposedly the fastest growing sport in the world, and I'm being swept up in the wave like everybody else. What's the source of this popularity? I think a lot of the MMA crowd is made up of people who have trickled over from boxing. Those in the boxing industry'll deny this, but the truth is they did this to themselves with their own greed. Most sports are at least half-decently run, but boxing is a total mess. Unscrupulous promoters, corrupt organizations, and greedy fighters single-handedly ruined the sport. Instead of seeing who was the best, it became all about making money. Interestingly enough, it is actually possible to do both at the same time (see MLB, NFL, NBA). It's like if the Cavs decided they wouldn't play the Spurs this year because they knew they'd lose, so they demanded $1 billion to continue the series, then formed a new World Basketball Organization and declared themselves champions. This is basically what boxing's become, so many fans have turned to MMA.
In terms of organization, MMA is already light-years ahead of boxing, especially with UFC's acquisition of PRIDE. The fighters will usually fight whoever the matchmakers decide, and although guys can still duck and price themselves out, this is much much much less common. This is probably why so few MMA guys are undefeated, since you can't just pick out guys you know you can beat. One thing I would like to see though is more weight classes, especially at the lower weights like in boxing.
In terms of entertainment value, MMA is much more exciting than boxing. Boxing was about seeing who "the baddest man on the planet" was. Watching Tyson KO everybody's ass in the ring, you thought this guy would be the ultimate bodyguard. He could beat the crap out of anybody he wanted to. Who knew that if he had tried to steal puny Royce Gracie's lunch money, he probably would've been rear naked choked, kimura'd, and armbarred into "bolivion".
That's not to say that MMA fighters are king of the jungle either. Reality is, the baddest man on the planet is probably some pudgy guy who's mastered eye-gouging, groin smashing, and sinking his teeth into flesh. Maybe this'll be the sport of the future, and we'll have announcers going, "He's going for the eye-gouge! It's deep! It's deep!" ... "Oh no! He left his groin open! Crucial rookie mistake!" ... "He's got vicious grab-and-bite!" I mean, look at Tyson vs. Holyfield. Who won the title? Who was the better boxer? Holyfield. But who really won? Tyson - he walked away with two intact ears.
MMA is safer than boxing though despite the knee and elbow strikes, since you don't sustain hundreds of blows to the head, leading to brain injury and death, and many fights simply end in submission tapouts. Like Dana White keeps saying, "There has never been a death or serious injury in the UFC." Unfortunately I can't picture a scenario where the next-generation biting, eye-gouging, and testicle-crushing sport will be safer than MMA, so MMA might be as good as it gets.
This will be me blogging primarily using the sports cortex of my brain, which has grown to enormous size, overtaking all other areas and resulting in me being unable to retain any of the information I've been "learning" in college.
