MMA booster Luke Thomas

The king of ultimate fighting promotions, UFC, makes its local debut tonight at the Patriot Center. UFC boss Dana White says at least 7,000 tickets have already been sold for the show, which will be televised on Spike TV.

Luke Thomas calls the Fairfax card "arguably the most significant combat sports event since Tyson fought at what was once the MCI Center."

Thomas should be proud. The way I see it, nobody's as responsible for making DC an MMA stronghold, or for putting this area on Dana White's radar, as Thomas. But you'd have to get Thomas in a rear naked choke before he'd take proper credit for UFC's setting up shop here.

"I can't in good conscience take credit for the UFC's arrival," Thomas tells me. "They should pat themselves on the back."

Thomas, a Brookland resident, runs the popular MMA website, bloodyelbow.com, and was hosting an ultimate fighting radio show, MMA Nation, weekends on WJFK-FM long before the station went all-sports. I don't share Thomas's views about the level of artistry or science involved in ultimate fighting — to my lay eyes, it's light years behind boxing in those terms, and I've never gotten beyond the fact that the feature finishing move in MMA is called a "rear naked choke."

(AFTER THE JUMP: A gratuitous "human cockfighting" reference? Does somebody snowboarding for America make your butt water, too? Rink is rigged to keep Ovechkin and the Russkis from winning gold? Gratuitous Pete Townshend kiddie-porn reference? No "Pictures of Lily" at Super Bowl halftime? Reason #1047 why the media despises Dan Snyder? Et tu, Marv Albert?)

But if you listen to Thomas's radio show you know right away he believes everything he says. He'll be on WJFK with live broadcasts from the Patriot Center throughout the day today talking up the UFC card, and will host a post-fight show on the station. "It's the first time MMA has ever been covered by radio like this in the DC media market," Thomas says. "A true and powerful milestone."

Everything ain't rosy for MMA as UFC makes its local bow. The biggest star in the sport, heavyweight champ Brock Lesnar, bowed out with some sort of internal health problems that his camp is playing coy about late last year, just as he was taking UFC and the whole ultimate fighting realm further into the mainstream than it had ever gone. Lesnar will find out how long it'll be before he returns to the octagon, or if he ever will, this week.

Thomas, however, says MMA in general, and specifically around here, will survive with or without Lesnar.

"MMA is here to stay in DC," Thomas says. "And it's only going to get bigger."

John McCain probably won't be showing up in Fairfax. (Media man-law requires that every ultimate fighting piece include at least one reference to McCain's "human cockfighting" description of mixed martial arts from the last century.)

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Ultimate fighting isn't the only athletic endeavor I'm too old for. Check out this write up on the L.A. Times outdoors blog of the injuries suffered by snowboarder and Olympic hopeful Kevin Pearce:

Pearce had been training in the halfpipe at Park City, Utah, for this week's Olympics qualifier at Mammoth Mountain Ski Area, and was knocked unconscious when he caught his toe-side edge while landing a cab double cork.

Why, of course he caught his toe-side edge while landing a cab double cork! How else would the kid have been hurt other than from catching his toe-side edge while landing a cab double cork!

Good god, do I hate the Winter Olympics, where rich people land cab double corks for you and me and all of America! And now I learn that Olympic hockey, the only reason to put up with the whole nationalist shebang, will be diminished greatly this time around: Smaller, NHL-sized rinks will be used for the first time in Olympic history, the only point being to slow down the play and give the North American players a chance to hear their anthems in Vancouver next month.

On the traditional big rink, Alex Ovechkin and his Russian buddies — fellow Caps Alexander Semin and Semyon Varlamov and the most stocked Olympic squad since USA's Dream Team in basketball — would surely skate to gold.

As Al Michaels would say: DO YOU BELIEVE IN HOME COOKING!?!!?!

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And what about being bludgeoned by blurbs for the Who throughout Saturday's WRC-4 playoff broadcasts for the band's upcoming Super Bowl halftime gig? I'm surprised by the choice, since there are a whole lot pages in the Who songbook that, because of Pete Townshend's past foibles, and the recent protests those foibles inspired, he and Roger Daltrey won't be touching during their mini-set:

The Kids are Alright
Pictures of Lily
It's a Boy
I'm a Boy
It's Hard
Slip Kid
Little Billy
Young Man Blues
Imagine a Man
Cousin Kevin Model Child
A Legal Matter
When I Was a Boy
Real Good Looking Boy (Yes, the Who put out a song with that title AFTER Pete's wayward Net surfing, and threw it on their latest greatest hits package.)

I can't see how the Who can get offstage, however, without playing "See Me, Feel Me" – "touch me" references and all.

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The wondrous Norman Chad admits in today's Washington Post that his 2009 "Team of Destiny," the Detroit Lions, let him down: "They won one more game than the Rams," he wrote, "which is akin to having one more girlfriend than Harvey Fierstein.

Chad has, for years, averaged more laughs per column inch than anybody in newspapering. Why his genius isn't more celebrated by the Post and the rest of the world escapes me.

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Dan Snyder hates the media. The vicey versey's also true. From the New York Post's Phil Mushnick:

Marv Albert didn't call Westwood Radio's Giants at Redskins, Monday night, Dec. 21, because his deal allows him to miss some broadcasts, and he chooses to skip Skins' home games because club owner Dan Snyder put the visiting radio booths near the end zone, making accurate calls impossible. Snyder made luxury box seats out of the former radio booths.

Before games in D.C., Giants' radio man Bob Papa has apologized to his audience for uncertain calls that are coming. "Our position is now low, end zone," Papa said, Friday. "It went from bad, to worse, to ridiculous."

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Photo by Darrow Montgomery

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Some cancellations to report:

First and worst: Boxer Jimmy Lange's scheduled July 25 fight in Greensboro, N.C., is off. A Lange spokesman told me over the weekend that the cancellation, first reported by the great local boxing clearinghouse boxingaroundthebeltway.com, came "out of the blue" after North Carolina  authorities refused to sanction Lange's opponent, Jimmy LeBlanc. Lange's camp surmises that LeBlanc's record (12–16–4, with 10 of the losses coming in his last 12 fights) had regulators fearing a mismatch with the former cast member of NBC's reality fight show, "The Contender." Lange, from Great Falls, had hoped to use the Greensboro bout, his first outside of Fairfax since gaining TV stardom, to expand his considerable fan base beyond the beltway.

And Bruce Smith's hometown of Virginia Beach has cancelled a festival to honor the former Redskins defensive end. The cancellation comes after Smith was convicted last week of DUI, following his franchise-record-breaking third drunk driving arrest in the last 12 years.

Also, there will be no Allen Iverson Celebrity Softball or Flag Football games around here this year. The former Georgetown star's events had been held for several years at Prince George's Stadium and attracted an impressive number of big-name sports celebs to our area. Iverson this year moved the party to the Tidewater region of Virginia, the stomping grounds, so to speak, of his youth. Iverson's three-day shindig, now called the CrossOver Celebrity Weekend, was thrown over the weekend.

Tom Sedlacek, a spokesman for Prince George's Stadium, says: "We were open to holding it here again this year, and kept dates open on our calendar, but apparently there was no interest from [Iverson] to do it here."

I wonder if Iverson let Josh Howard sing the National Anthem this year?

AFTER THE JUMP: Asian Bias™ resurfaces at OTHER U.S. Open? Brock Lesnar needs some time to heel? Dan Snyder vintage videotapes? ANOTHER Sean Taylor ode?

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Back to ignoring all that Post-Racial America talk: Turns out it's not just Congressional or the AT&T National that has an Asian Bias™! Yesterday's U.S. Women's Open golf championship had Eun Hee Ji banging home a long putt on the last hole to win by a stroke over Candie Kung. First round leader Na Yeon Choi fell to ninth. Defending champ Inbee Park managed 26th place. Past winners of the three-year-old AT&T National, remember, are KJ Choi, Anthony Kim and Tiger Woods. First rule of Journalism®: Three's a trend!

The LPGA Tour, unlike the men, tried to do something to eliminate its Asian Bias™ last season, in the process revealing a profound Anti-Asian Bias™ among the folks running the tour: Commissioner Carolyn Bivens briefly instituted an "English-only" policy after a meeting with South Korean players a year ago. Really! She did! I swear! It's one of the great sports stories of our time!

Bivens' Linguistic Cleansing™ scheme was scrapped almost as soon as the Liberal Media found out about it, and now as Cheap Seats Daily goes to press, she's about to be fired. Sic Semper Douchebaggius.

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My ultimate ultimate fighter, Brock Lesnar, retained the UFC heavyweight belt with an artless pounding of Frank Mir on Saturday night. Here's what LA Times' T.J. Simers wrote of the spectacle.

"But what does this say about us, people screaming with glee because blood is running down someone's face and he's still in there punching? What does it say about violence's voyeuristic appeal, the sight of someone being choked into unconsciousness reason for howling approval?

It's hard to believe public executions wouldn't do well. And just think of the reality TV show that's sitting there waiting to be done, instead of the weigh-in, the final meal.

When you watch something like UFC 100, there's really no reason to believe there are limits to what might entertain people."

Well, I would watch a street fight video before any highlight reel from any accepted sport. I'm not proud of that, but damn if it ain't true. But the Lesnar fight was boring until after he was done pounding Mir and told the crowd to fuck off, then told prime sponsor Bud Light to fuck off. Now THAT's entertainment!

Especially after UFC 100, anybody who likes MMA but sneers at pro wrestling is clearly of the douchebaggius genus.

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The Gazette reports that Rosecroft Raceway's bankrupt owners are proposing selling out to a guy who plans to make the racetrack a gambling center, with poker and other table games and, maybe, a little horse racing. Cheap Seats Daily has just set the odds of all this actually happening at 1,000,000,000-1.

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Hogs Haven posts some interviews with then-new owner Dan Snyder from 10 years ago. Watching them, and knowing how things turned out, is like listening to George Bush talk about the need to disarm Iraq in 2003.

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A fellow named Brooks J. DeGhetto is posting on Skins fan sites about "21 Sean," a song he wrote in tribute to Sean Taylor. The critic in me says the performance is Jim Morrison-meets-"A Mighty Wind" (sample lyric: "21 Sean your spirit carries on inside of me/Wherever you are you'll be a superstar, running free/You're running free for all to see, in burgundy/and gold." Ahem.) And the rest of me says: Enough with the tributes to a guy who had about the same number of good seasons as arrests. But it takes guts to put yourself out there like Mr. DeGhetto has here. Sean would like that.

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