Two-time Olympic judo gold medalist Kayla Harrison will make her professional mixed martial arts debut in February for the Professional Fighters League, formerly known as the World Series of Fighting, according to the Los Angeles Times' Lance Pugmire and MMAFighting.com's Dave Meltzer.
Harrison, 26, won gold medals in the 78-kilogram weight class at the 2012 and 2016 Olympics.
Harrison signed with the World Series of Fighting in October 2016 and agreed to join the promotion as a commentator and brand ambassador as she transitioned into the world of MMA.
However, Harrison was adamant all along that she would hone her chops and eventually make her way into the cage.
"I’ve been boxing and doing jiu-jitsu and all that, and the biggest thing for me, really, is that I miss competing," Harrison told USA Today at the time. "I miss fighting on the highest stages of the world, and the World Series of Fighting really gave me a great opportunity."
In April, Harrison told Pugmire that if she committed to fighting professionally, she would do everything in her power to emerge as one of the sport's most dominant forces.
"I'm just focused on training hard for six months and then re-evaluate and see where I am," she said at the time. "If I choose to do MMA after this, my goal is to be the best at it. And I want to be where the best fighters are."
Harrison's first opponent has yet to be announced.
One of mixed martial arts dirtiest fighters was suspended for two years and fined $40,000 (plus attorney general's fees) for holding a submission too long earlier this year.
Rousimar Palhares, the fireplug former welterweight champion for World Series of Fighting, went before the Nevada State Athletic Commission during a Thursday meeting to answer for an incident during his August 1 title defense against Jake Shields.
Bleacher Report was in attendance at the meeting.
Palhares, a fighter with a history of holding fight-ending submissions despite repeated pleas from referees governing his bouts, did the same thing against Shields. Palhares secured a kimura on Shields in the third round, and referee Steve Mazzagatti stepped in to stop the fight. But Palhares did not immediately relinquish the submission, and Mazzagatti—who testified during Thursday’s hearing—said it took him six or seven taps on Palhares before the fighter let go.
WSOF stripped him of the championship and suspended him indefinitely, while the Nevada commission issued a temporary suspension until Thursday's disciplinary hearing could take place. Palhares appeared before the commission live from Brazil via a Skype video conference call. He appeared without legal representation but was accompanied by manager Alex Davis.
Prior to the August bout, NSAC executive director Bob Bennett approached Mazzagatti and expressed his concern with Palhares’ history of holding submissions too long. He wanted to make sure Mazzagatti clearly explained the rules to the fighter. And so Mazzagatti went in Palhares’ locker room prior to the fight and, according to the official, used both verbal and physical tactics to slowly explain the rules to Palhares. During this meeting, Palhares expressed concern that Shields might use a “false tap” to cheat his way out of submissions, but Mazzagatti assured him that he would only stop the fight with good reason.
On Thursday, Mazzagatti said that Palhares “clearly” held the submission far past the point when he attempted to stop the fight.
“It was absolutely unsportsmanlike conduct,” Mazzagatti said.
Also testifying was WSOF President Ray Sefo, who repeated Mazzagatti’s belief that the act was totally unsportsmanlike. And Davis called famed referee John McCarthy to testify as an expert witness in the hopes that he would be able to point out that Mazzagatti was in an incorrect position to stop the fight. Instead, McCarthy broke down the mechanics of refereeing while watching a replay of the fight and noted that he believes Palhares is a nice person, but he exhibits a total disregard for the safety of his opponents.
Palhares said it was not his intention to hurt Shields but just to win the fight. He also said he could not see Mazzagatti and thought it was Shields somehow kneeing him in the back, a claim that seems largely preposterous upon repeated viewing of the video evidence.
New NSAC Commissioner Michon Martin asked Palhares about the 2012 incident in Australia when he was suspended for failing a post-fight drug test after a loss to Hector Lombard. She then asked Palhares if that was the only incident in his career where he has been punished for an infraction. Palhares said that yes, it was.
The problem: It was not the first time. Palhares had been suspended for 90 days after a 2010 incident in which he held a submission too long against Tomasz Drwal. After being repeatedly questioned by Martin, Palhares suddenly recalled his first suspension. He also denied being given a verbal reprimand by California athletic commissioner Andy Foster for holding a kneebar too long against Jon Fitch last year.
During closed deliberations, Commissioner Pat Lundvall said that the response of promoters to Palhares' actions informed the seriousness of the offenses that were before them. Palhares had been released by the UFC and stripped and suspended by World Series of Fighting.
But Lundvall said that because they have never seen a case of this nature in front of the commission, she could not recommend the most severe punishment—this despite handing out a five-year suspension to Nick Diaz last month for marijuana usage. Perhaps the public backlash to the strong Diaz sentencing made the NSAC gun-shy. The other commissioners agreed with Lundvall and passed the sentence unanimously.
On March 17, 1986, Stacey Newell was on the operating table, as pregnant as it gets.
She’d had an ultrasound six months earlier, but technology being what it was almost 30 years ago, she didn’t exactly have a clear picture of what to expect. Which is to say she didn't know anything. She didn’t even know the sex of the baby that was about to be removed from her womb via cesarean section. Everything was going to be a surprise, and that was just fine with her.
The doctor made his incisions. A short time later, he gently pulled a living, breathing baby from her belly.
“It’s a boy,” the doctor exclaimed.
A boy, she thought. This is great.
But then the operating room went silent—the kind of uncomfortable silence when everybody in the room except you is in on the bad news, and everyone is trying to figure out how to tell you or shrinking within him or herself so as to not be the person who actually has to tell you in the first place.
“What’s wrong?” Stacey asked.
At first, nobody responded, maintaining the silence that was growing deafening with every passing second. Stacey felt a flash of panic. Was the baby OK?
She asked again, this time in a louder voice: “What’s wrong?” Nobody responded, so she began yelling, repeatedly asking what was wrong. Why was nobody answering her?
Finally, a nurse spoke in a timid voice.
“There’s something wrong with his hand,” she said.
Stacey yelled at the doctors and nurses to hand her baby over. When they did, she unwrapped the blanket he'd been swaddled in and looked at his hand. Only, there wasn’t a hand.
The baby that she would name Nick was born with a congenital amputation of his left arm, which ends just below his elbow. Of all the ways to lose a limb by amputation, the congenital variety is the least common. It is caused by blood clots forming in the fetus while in utero, or from something called amniotic band syndrome, where fibrous bands form and constrict a fetus’ limbs so greatly that they either fail to develop or fall off before childbirth.
When Stacey saw her son, she says, there was no dismay. Because of the C-section, he was missing the cone-shaped head that often happens during a vaginal birth. He had a full head of hair. He opened his eyes and looked into the eyes of his mother, and there was nothing but pure, gracious and immediate love, just like nearly every other childbirth since the dawn of history.
But for the first 24 hours after Nick’s birth, Stacey tormented herself. She wondered if she’d done anything wrong that led to Nick’s disability.
“I thought, 'Oh my god, did I do something wrong during the pregnancy that led to this? Why me?” she says.
But then natural instinct kicked in.
“I just knew that it was going to be OK. We’ll figure this out,” she says.
She didn’t figure it out immediately, and things were not easy. Stacey says that Nick's father was absent and that she raised her son on her own. Just the two of them, she says, until Nick's father came back when Nick started getting some positive press later in life. And while Nick says that is true—that his mother did raise him on his own—he says that his father has been a bigger presence in his life for the past 15 years than perhaps his mother will allow, and that the only amount of press he'd received when his father came back was "maybe one story in the newspaper."
On her own, Stacey couldn't exactly teach Nick how to do things, because Nick had one hand and Stacey had two and it's hard to teach someone how to do something when you can't really understand how they view the world. She could tie her arm behind her back and try to teach him with one hand, but what good did that do? Not much, it turned out, so she opted for a different approach.
What Stacey realized, and this was a big moment, was that she wasn't really going to be able to teach Nick much of anything. So she didn't. She allowed him to find his way, allowed him to fall and pick himself up again and again.
"My mom was a little worried about kids picking on me. I had a prosthetic hand when I was very young, but I didn’t like it," Nick says. "I got rid of it very young, maybe three or four years old."
Stacey would attend parent support groups at the hospital, but they were awful because everyone else was miserable and angry at the world. And why wouldn't they be? They had a kid who was born with a disability and now they were forced to alter their lives to accommodate everything. Accommodating for the unexpected is often a difficult task.
But Stacey didn't want the fact that Nick had one hand when he should have had two to dictate their lives. She decided early on that she would treat him like any other kid, which is to say that his handicap would not be a handicap in their household.
"There’s nothing wrong with my kid. Is he different? Yes. But that’s OK," she says. "I didn’t treat him any differently. I don't know if I would say I was harder on him, but he had to learn to do it for himself. I can’t follow him around and teach him. Some people shelter their kids. I just didn't."
And so she created an environment of normalcy. The two of them did everything together. Nick was a massive fan of the World Wrestling Federation, so she would pack him up in the car and drive him to events whenever Vince McMahon's traveling circus came through Connecticut or New York City.
He began playing sports at an early age, beginning with soccer. "You don't need two hands to play soccer," Nick says.
Then he started playing baseball, mostly because he fell in love with Yankees pitcher Jim Abbott, who was born without a right hand and yet somehow made it to the big leagues, where he appeared constantly on Nick's television set at home. Here, for the first time, was someone just like Nick, who was playing professional sports at the highest level despite missing a hand.
"He was the only guy I knew who had one hand. I was able to see him on TV," Nick says. "It was just cool seeing someone else who was like me, even though I didn’t emphasize myself being different from everyone else, this guy was out there doing it."
Stacey was right there every step of the way, cheering Nick along, a firebrand for her son.
"People would be f--king staring at my kid and I'd tell them to go to hell," she says with a laugh.
Nick's first year in baseball was a struggle, but by his second year in, he began making the travel and all-star teams. But as he neared eighth grade, an issue began to spring up. Having one hand instead of two didn't really bother him. The problem was his size.
"I was so small. I was playing baseball in eighth grade and weighed 85 pounds. There were guys who were my age playing at 140," he says. "It wasn’t that my timing wasn’t good. I was just too small to play at a competitive level. It had nothing to do with having one hand."
With baseball out of the way, Nick turned his attention to another sport. He and his friend were avid watchers of the WWF and would put on scripted wrestling matches in the backyard. One day, his buddy came around and said he was going to join the high school wrestling team.
"I was like, yeah, I’ll do that too," he says with a laugh. "He and I, we would just wrestle each other. We had no idea what we were doing."
At the end of his first day of wrestling practice, Stacey pulled into the parking lot to pick him up. Nick shuffled to the car and got in. He was battered and bruised.
"It was so hard. I was crying because everyone beat me up," Nick says. "I thought I was going to do better than what I did. It wasn’t what I planned."
Nick told Stacey he was going to quit the wrestling team after one day.
"No, you are not," she replied.
"I'd listened to that kid constantly say he couldn't wait to get to high school so he could wrestle. He said it all the time. And on that first day, he's sitting there, tired and all of 98 pounds, and he said he wasn't going back," she says.
"She told me I had to finish the season," Nick says. "I wasn't necessarily successful, but I learned a tough lesson to not quit just because things are rough."
Nick didn't win all of his matches, but he finished out the wrestling season. The next year, he returned. He learned to grip things with what remained of his left arm. He trained continuously in the offseason, developing a hobby that soon grew into an obsession.
"I've never been the guy who just shows up and is instantly good at something. I'm the guy who shows up to the gym first and leaves last," he says.
And so he did, day after day and week after week.
Never again, in high school or in college wrestling, did Nick Newell have a losing season.
It was during high school that a friend invited Nick over to his house. The friend was buying an Ultimate Fighting Championship pay-per-view, and he asked if Nick wanted to hang out and watch the fights. Nick had never watched MMA before—he didn't even really know what it was—but when he found out that the main event would feature former WWF star Ken Shamrock taking on Tito Ortiz, Nick agreed to come over.
"I liked Ken because he was the WWF intercontinental champion," Nick recalls. "So I watched him versus Tito in their first fight. It was the first time I ever watched MMA. I thought, 'This is kinda cool.' But I didn’t really understand what was going on."
That date, the one that would ultimately set Nick toward a path that would define his adulthood, was November 22, 2002. He did not watch any fights for almost three years afterward, until his friend invited him over to watch Shamrock take on Kazushi Sakuraba at Pride 30: Fully Loaded. He watched, but he still wasn't a fan.
After finishing at Jonathan Law High School, Nick moved on to Western New England College in Springfield, Massachusetts. A member of his collegiate wrestling team had a few fights under his belt, and together they began watching the UFC's new reality series, The Ultimate Fighter. Nick immediately gained some interest in fighting but not for the sake of stepping in the cage and competing. He just wanted to learn how to defend himself.
"I wanted to learn how to fight. I wanted to learn how to throw punches and kicks in case someone tried to mess with me," he says.
He found Jeremy Libiszewski, a Springfield trainer, near the end of 2005, and began working with him. Just as he was about to graduate from college, Newell decided to take his first amateur fight. His mom was not enthused by the idea, but she stuck by him, because that's just what she did.
"I'd just paid for four years of college," she says. She and Nick's stepfather told him they would support whatever he wanted to do, but that he also needed to get a job. So Nick went out and got a job working for the History Channel, and then he would go train at night, after the din of the day wore off.
"It’s not something a mother would choose for their kid," Stacey says.
From the early days, Nick's venture into mixed martial arts was not viewed all that kindly by everyone. A one-armed kid doing wrestling? That was one thing. But to put him in a cage and let him get punched in the face by an opponent? Well, that just feels plain wrong. It resonates deep down in that part of all of us where something resides that is at once mercy and pity.
Those feelings extended to Nick's potential opponents in the early days, too. Even as he began winning amateur fights—and proving that his one arm was going to be enough to beat a lot of dudes with two arms—he experienced issues with his opponents. Namely, he and Libiszewski had trouble finding people of a similar skill level to take fights with him.
And people turned down fights because, what if they lost to him? What if they lost to the kid with one arm? Then they, a perfectly fine human being with two arms, would be known as That Fighter Who Lost to the One-Arm Kid, and that didn't fly. Not with a lot of them.
One time, an opponent accepted a fight and then flat-out refused to show up at the weigh-in. Just wouldn't come. Call it what you will, but the kid just decided he didn't want to fight the kid with one arm, after all. That's the kind of thing Nick dealt with on an almost-daily basis when starting out.
Nick was finally able to get six brave souls to face him, and he ran up an amateur record of 5-1. By 2009, it was time to turn to the professional ranks, and he quickly ran his record out to 5-0 by fighting exclusively in the Massachusetts area, never going too far from what he'd always known.
After his fourth straight win by submission, Nick signed deals with both Shark Fights and Xtreme Fighting Championship.
Now, Shark Fights was a fight company (properly relegated to mixed martial arts lore at this point, and rightly so) located out in Amarillo, Texas. This was a fight promotion that—and I am not kidding about this—tried to book a fight between Kazushi Sakuraba and Rickson Gracie. In 2009. So it's no surprise that Shark Fights CEO Brent Medley took one look at Newell and decided he'd bring some good attention to his company.
Nick was scheduled to make his Shark Fights debut on September 10, 2011, in Independence, Missouri. But Nick was injured and forced off the card, so his next step up the ladder had to wait until December, when he would make his debut for XFC. The card was XFC: Tribute, and the Tribute portion was dedicated to Newell's friend Abi Mestre. Nick and Abi, teammates at Jeremy's school, tried out for XFC together, and they both made it, and then Mestre died in a motorcycle accident.
And you can imagine that making your debut in a big-ish fight promotion under such circumstances was probably quite difficult, but Nick did just that, and he won by submission. Again. After that win, he started to get a little bit of media attention. There were more cameras present. After he won his next two fights (and the XFC Lightweight Championship), he decided it was time for a bigger step up in competition, saying that he would only face ex-UFC fighters under the XFC banner from this point forward.
XFC perhaps thought Nick was bluffing and booked him in a title defense against Scott Holtzman, a fighter who most certainly had not been in the UFC (though, ironically enough, that's where he currently is). But Nick stuck to his guns and refused to defend his title, and XFC stripped him of the belt. It eventually cut him loose, and in August 2013, Nick signed with World Series of Fighting.
Today, Nick is preparing to face Tom Marcellino on Saturday's WSOF card. It's happening at the Foxwoods Casino, a sprawling complex in the middle of a massive forest not too far from where Nick has spent the majority of his life. It's a bit of a home game for him and a chance to start putting together another winning streak after WSOF lightweight champion Justin Gaethje broke his first one last summer.
It was Nick's first-ever mixed martial arts loss, and it wasn't easy for his mother to see. She doesn't really like watching him fight in person. For starters, the production teams always wants to show the concerned mother's face on television.
How will she react? Is she worried about her son (who has one hand) getting hurt in the cage? Let us all watch these emotions unfold on her face in real time!
"I know this sounds horrible. But I’m not worried about him getting hurt. I want him to achieve his goals," Stacey says. "But I don't like that they want to show my face while I'm watching the fights."
Nick is in a relationship with Danielle Walsh. She is a speech pathologist, and they have been together for roughly 18 months. Being with Nick has been a learning experience for her. Oftentimes she'll say things to him that, after the fact, make her gasp. Things like "did you wash your hands?" Things that are part of everyday life, things you don't really mean anything by, that could maybe offend someone like Nick.
"He’s not the guy to jump on anything like that, when he knows people don’t mean anything by it," Walsh says. "He’s so easygoing. You don’t have to watch what you say."
Nick, she says, is among the most compassionate people she has ever met. If you only know Nick from outside the cage, there is probably no way you'd ever imagine that he's a street fighter. In fact, she says, one aspect of Nick's personality perfectly illustrates what kind of person he is, even though she fears she'll get in trouble for saying it.
"He'll hate that I'm saying this, but I look at him dealing with our cats and he’s always worried about them. He’s so caring," Walsh says. "He probably doesn’t show that. He has to give off a tough personality because of what he does. But he’s very compassionate and thoughtful. He doesn’t want to hurt people’s feelings."
They are good together, Nick and Danielle. There might be a future there, though they don't really discuss it. They've gone to a lot of weddings together, and she finds that Nick enjoys critiquing the ceremonies, as though to say he might be able to do it better if and when that time comes.
"I don’t push it, though. We haven’t been together too long," she says with a laugh."We’re living together. It's going well. I’m still young."
On Saturday, Nick steps back in the cage to defy the odds once more, though he has defied the odds for so long that it seems routine. Marcellino is not a pushover by any means, but Nick has constantly refined each aspect of his game to the point where it is hard to imagine many people outside of the very best WSOF has to offer even offering him much competition.
That's actually a neat thing. Just as Nick idolized Jim Abbott and his exhilarating conquering of disabilities and societal biases, so too is Nick doing the same for an entire generation of children who, born with one hand, are looking for inspiration that they can do and be the same things that the others around them are. He receives emails from parents all over the world and responds in a way that others could not when he was growing up.
And the thing about this is that it's all he's ever known. He didn't lose his hand in an accident or in a war. He does not have the kind of phantom pains associated with losing limbs, because the limb was never really lost; it just wasn't there. He came into the world without it, and so what he has is not a disability at all. It's just Nick.
"It’s how I’ve always been. If you ask me if I’d be better with two hands, well, I don’t know," Nick says. "Would I be able to do things better? I don’t know. I’ve never had two hands."
Jeremy Botter writes about mixed martial arts for Bleacher Report. Follow him on Twitter.
When Jon Fitch had surgery to address the torn rotator cuff of his right shoulder in early 2011, he was handed a prescription for pain medicine. As a professional fighter, Fitch was quite used to handling pain in its many permutations; it was, after all, the one guarantee of his job. But something about this treatment didn't sit right with him. His mind immediately traveled back into time.
Years earlier, in 2007, his friend and fellow fighter Eric Wray died in what Fitch says was a prescription pill overdose. The thought troubled him greatly, but like most post-surgery patients, he gave in to the hurt and took the medicine. It was a decision he soon regretted; the medication that was supposed to dull his pain instead left him feeling dehydrated and stiff and generally horrible. He threw away what was left in the bottle and instead applied for and received a medical marijuana card in his then home state of California.
In doing so, he was no different than the hundreds of thousands who had done the same there. In publicly proclaiming his use, however, he was very different, because he is a professional athlete.
Marijuana use is common in professional sports. In 2012, former NFL star Lomas Brown claimed at least 50 percent of NFL players smoke, and a New York Times story in 1997 once estimated that 60-70 percent of NBA players did the same. While there have never been any similar polls conducted for MMA, UFC announcer Joe Rogan recently voiced his educated opinion that the majority of athletes within that promotion are marijuana users.
Despite that kind of circumstantial evidence, active athletes largely stay mum on the subject. Why? Perhaps because even though attitudes have begun to shift, the public continues to look negatively upon use. As recently as last year, a poll jointly conducted by HBO Sports and Marist College showed that 64 percent of sports fans believe marijuana should remain banned by leagues.
After years of using medical marijuana silently, however, Fitch has become the rare public advocate who makes his living as a professional athlete. For years, Fitch (26-7-1, 1 no contest) held down a spot as one of the top five welterweight mixed martial artists, once boasting a 16-fight win streak en route to a UFC title shot against George St-Pierre.
Recently, his success rate has dipped a bit, going 2-3 in his last five fights, but he's still among the best 170-pounders on the World Series of Fighting roster, facing Yushin Okami this Saturday in a matchup that will send the winner to a title bout. He's also one of the lead plaintiffs in an ongoing antitrust lawsuit against the UFC and a crusader for a professional fighters association.
But Fitch didn't decide to publicly endorse medical marijuana—to become an "activist," as he puts it—until he revealed his use to his parents. Despite their initial concern, they have come to accept his decision.
"I think that's why it's really important for people like me to speak out in favor of it," he said. "You can be successful, you can be a good parent, you can be a good husband and person. You can do all of these good and positive things and still use cannabis. It's not heroin. It's not any of these horrible things that people can be doing."
There wasn't an exact moment in time where all of these thoughts coalesced in his mind.
During his days as a student-athlete at Purdue University, Fitch slowly came to the realization that he bore responsibility for his own education. Then slowly, over the last few years, as he married and started a family—he's the father of two—he spent less time entertaining himself and more time researching topics that interested him.
"If we don't know something nowadays in this world of information, it's a choice," he said. "You choose not to be informed. You literally only have to look to your cellphone and be willing to ask questions and have a critical mind in order to teach yourself."
Fitch had dabbled in marijuana as a recreational user since his college days, but it was when he began to read about the war on drugs launched by President Richard Nixon in the 1970s that he examined many of the long-held beliefs about the drug and learned about its alternative uses over a period dating back centuries.
In the intervening time between his friend's death and his injury, he'd learned plenty about prescription dangers, so when traditional medicine made him queasy, embracing an alternative one was an easy step. After his shoulder healed, Fitch continued to use medical marijuana for various ailments.
"Pain relief is a big one," he said. "When you're in a combat sport, a physical sport like this, pain relief is important. You're going to be able to train better when you're not as sore. I don't want to go into medical things that I have, because I think people's medical histories are their own personal business, but I have certain issues I still need to medicate for. But also, just therapeutically, I think it's a good therapeutic technique. I'll medicate and get a deep-tissue massage and that helps. I get a much higher level of relaxation in order to get the massage, and the knots and the pesky things that I'm having problems with are relieved much easier."
Fitch recently ramped up his public advocacy in the wake of Nick Diaz's five-year suspension at the hands of the Nevada Athletic Commission, calling the penalty "asinine" and "ridiculous," while slamming Big Pharma.
Despite growing acceptance of medical marijuana, its use is still banned by many athletic commissions, or levels must be kept below a certain threshold. To ensure his compliance, Fitch usually stops his treatment between four and eight weeks prior to his fight, even though he believes he can clear out his system in about half that time. Unfortunately, that often coincides with the most grueling part of training camp.
"The time you need it the most, you're kind of forcing yourself not to have it," he said. "It kind of sucks."
Pain management and career longevity remain complex topics.
In early 2015, it was reported that Fitch failed a test due to elevated testosterone levels. On the advice of his attorney, Fitch declined comment on the adverse result that brought him a brief suspension, instead focusing his optimism on the changing views on marijuana. Despite their excessive punishment of Diaz, for example, the Nevada commission at least raised the threshold from 50 ng/ml to 150 ng/ml, putting it in line with the World Anti-Doping Agency limit. Many commissions, however, don't have the same transparency in the process, leaving athletes to guess at their testing programs and procedures.
Wary of facing the same scrutiny that Diaz has, Fitch has never filed for a therapeutic usage exemption, but his time of staying silent on the topic is over. It took many years for this "brainwashing" to permeate society, but mores are shifting. Notable people can shape the dialogue.
"Prescription pills, they're dangerous," he said. "They're just dangerous. You find the right strain for what you need with the medical cannabis, you're going to be way better. And if you decide to stop and you need to be free of medicine, you can stop cold turkey and you'll be fine. You're not going to go into some kind of shakes or withdrawal symptoms. You might be crabby for one or two days, and that's it."
At 37 years old, Fitch has no thoughts of retirement and still harbors championship dreams. "Feather in the cap" type of stuff, he calls it. A win over Okami on Saturday will move him one step closer to realizing that elusive goal, but there are other pursuits he finds value in, other causes that he feels are worth fighting for.
"I'm getting to the point where I'm just so sick of this nonsense, better to take an activist role and proactively speak in support of legalized marijuana," he said. "It's asinine. There's literally zero evidence to show it's harmful in any way. People try to compare it to alcohol but there's no comparison. Better to compare it to caffeine. It's closer to caffeine, but caffeine's actually much more dangerous. Sugar is more dangerous than marijuana."
All quotes obtained firsthand unless otherwise noted.
Apparently it wasn't enough for Phoenix Jones to get his first win for World Series of Fighting. He says he had to stop a violent crime in the streets, too.
About a day after Jones—real name Ben Fodor—submitted Roberto Young at WSOF 23 to run his professional record to 6-1, the self-styled real-life super hero says he noticed a man being pistol-whipped early Sunday morning in his native Seattle and intervened to stop a brutal assault.
Just stopped a murder on Capitol Hill @KIRO7Seattle @KING5Seattle @jasonrantz plain clothes patrol
— Phoenix Jones (@ThePhoenixJones) September 20, 2015
According to video footage provided in a report from John Morgan of MMA Junkie, Jones told Seattle police officers he saw a man hitting another man in the head outside a music venue. He says he chose to intervene after realizing the attacker was holding a pistol:
In the middle of the fight, I saw a man start striking overhand to another man’s face. At that point, I got closer and saw that he had a gun in his hand. He was pistol-whipping a person. The man fell down and tried to get up, and two other people started stomping his face...He gets up, and the guy comes back with the gun. At that point, I came through, and I hit the suspect with the gun, and he went down, and the gun came out. I took off. My friend Nate took off with me.
In the ensuing chaos, Jones says he pursued one of the men he thought was among the group of assailants, and later identified him to police. He subsequently identified other men he thought were assailants to the police as well.
All in all, a fairly eventful weekend, even for a guy like Jones, who's probably pretty accustomed to action-packed weekends.
"I’ve dealt with guns so many times, and I’ve dealt with so many weird scenarios like this that I’m not really in as much danger as people would assume," he said in the video. "I was willing to gamble on that.”
Jones first came to national prominence in 2011, when his vigilante-style crime-fighting ways began to be widely documented in his native Seattle. Fodor, who when in his full Phoenix Jones persona often wears a mask and costume while patrolling the streets, lost his WSOF debut in April, a decision loss to Emmanuel Walo.
The Nevada State Athletic Commission handed out some discipline to a California MMA fighter at their Monday hearing.
No, we're not talking about Nick Diaz.
Welterweight Jake Shields received 50 hours of community service for his role in a controversial August fight at World Series of Fighting 22. In that fight, Shields' opponent, Rousimar Palhares, apparently gouged Shields' eyes and held a dangerous kimura submission after the tapout en route to a third-round submission victory.
After Shields lost and Palhares relinquished the hold, Shields punched Palhares. That was the action that led to the NSAC's community-service sentence.
The news was reported Monday by several media outlets, including Steven Marrocco of MMA Junkie. According to that report, Shields told the commission:
I think [Palhares' actions go] far beyond just holding the submission too long. Throughout the second round, he repeatedly took his thumbs and gouged my eyes. I was winning up until that point. By the third round, I couldn’t see; my eyes were gouged out. I was completely frustrated, and I’m asking for some leniency.
Based on the fact that Shields (31-8-1-1) was not fined or suspended, it appears the NSAC granted that lenience.
Jake Shields given 50 hours of community service as punishment. No fine and no suspension.
— Bloody Elbow (@BloodyElbow) September 14, 2015
Palhares (18-6) also was scheduled to appear at Monday's hearing, but he received a continuance because his wife is pregnant, according to the MMA Junkie report. Palhares will appear at a later date.
Palhares has an extended track record of endangering fighters by holding submission moves a bit longer than necessary—which is all it takes to cause injury in the case of a high-risk jiu-jitsu hold. In 2013, UFC officials banned Palhares from the Octagon for these behaviors.
After public furor from both fighters and fans in the wake of WSOF 22, World Series of Fighting officials stripped Palhares of his welterweight title and suspended him indefinitely.
Shields is a training teammate of Diaz, whose hearing made big news Monday when the commission suspended Diaz for five years and fined him $165,000 for failing multiple drug tests because of marijuana use, per Marrocco. Lawyers for Diaz have indicated they plan to appeal the NSAC's decision.
Few tears were shed for Rousimar Palhares on Tuesday, as the talented but troubled grappler was stripped of his World Series of Fighting welterweight title and suspended indefinitely, pending an athletic commission inquiry.
At this late and sorry point in the action, the only person in MMA still drying their eyes over Palhares is Jake Shields.
And that’s for very different reasons.
It was Palhares’ abuse of Shields last Saturday at WSOF 22 that proved the last straw for his fight company bosses—and maybe the final deathblow to his long, strange career too.
As WSOF President Ray Sefo told MMA Junkie’s Steven Marrocco, the organization will await a verdict from the Nevada State Athletic Commission before it decides what to do with the now former champion:
We don’t know if they’re going to suspend him for life, or they’re going to suspend him for a year. After that investigation is done, and the commission comes to a decision, we would obviously make another decision pending that.
Palhares’ refusal to immediately relinquish the kimura submission he used to notch a third-round victory over Shields probably wasn’t egregious enough to warrant MMA’s version of the death penalty.
At least not on its own.
At least not if anyone else had done it.
The 35-year-old Brazilian jiu-jitsu master’s sordid history with holding onto submissions too long and occasionally injuring his opponents, however, turned a misdemeanor offense into Palhares’ third strike.
Or, like, his ninth strike, depending on how closely you want to examine the guy’s career.
Also, there were the eye gouges.
That was a new wrinkle in Palhares’ bag of dirty tricks.
Shields said Palhares repeatedly raked his face and poked him in the eyes throughout their 12-minute main event bout. All told, the former Strkeforce champion estimated Palhares gouged him eight times, and that referee Steve Mazzagatti warned him but refused to penalize Palhares for the repeated fouls.
“I kept telling Mazzagatti, ‘Hey, look at the eye-gouges.’ And he wasn’t just saying anything about it,” Shields said after the fight, via MMA Junkie’s Dann Stupp and George Garcia. “It wasn’t once, twice. It was at least eight times. In over 40 fights, never once has anyone ever done that to me…what he did was absolutely blatant cheating.”
The NSAC will now take up Palhares’ case. At least in the immediate aftermath of the bout there seems to be widespread hope in MMA circles that the commission will throw the book at him:
If the NSAC cares to look, it’ll find no shortage of evidence that Palhares walks on the outskirts of the rules. Some 11 years and 24 fights into his MMA career, it also seems unlikely that he’s ever going to change.
Viewed with the benefit of hindsight, nearly every submission he’s ever scored during his high-profile run through the UFC and WSOF went on for an uncomfortably long time.
First it was Ivan Salaverry at UFC 84, then Lucio Linhares at UFC 107 and Tomasz Drwal at UFC 111. That last one netted Palhares a 90-day suspension from the New Jersey State Athletic Control Board for holding a heel hook submission too long.
After that, it was David Branch, Mike Massenzio and Mike Pierce before the UFC finally fired him.
With his UFC walking papers in hand, Palhares shipped out to WSOF, oddly buoyed by a wave of media scrutiny that dubbed him too scary for the Octagon. Once ensconced in the smaller promotion, he injured Steve Carl, tapped Jon Fitch and then made a mess of things against Shields.
Once you consider the entire, ugly resume, the NSAC would seem well within its bounds if it felt like imposing a lifetime ban.
But that would be a sad end for Palhares, if for no other reason than he might just be the best pure submission fighter in all of MMA. Back-to-back tapouts of guys like Fitch and Shields—who are both renowned for their durability and being difficult to submit, specifically—is an amazing accomplishment in and of itself.
After a serviceable career at middleweight, Palhares is 4-0 since dropping to welterweight in October 2013. All of those are submission victories and three of them came in the first round.
If a lengthy suspension does indeed come down, there will be no way to know how good Palhares might’ve been at 170 pounds, the accolades he might have piled up or how much money he might’ve made.
Unfortunately, his talents have long been overshadowed by his inability to play by the rules. Aside from his difficulty following a referee’s instructions, Palhares tested positive for elevated levels of testosterone after his loss to Hector Lombard in late 2012. Just in case you were looking for more reasons to dislike the guy.
On Tuesday, UFC fighter and submission specialist Joe Lauzon added his voice to the chorus against Palhares. Lauzon produced a video comparing his own reaction time at letting go of submissions to Palhares’. In what came as a surprise to absolutely no one, Palhares’ reactions were significantly slower.
“I think it’s bad, I think he’s being dangerous,” Lauzon said (h/t MMA Junkie). “I love jiu-jitsu, I think it’s awesome, but for me the best thing about jiu-jitsu is the respect that’s shown...beating people but giving them the chance to stop and tap before there’s real damage done.”
What Lauzon touches on here is a key point not only when it comes to Palhares, but also in the nature of mixed martial arts itself.
The tap is sacred. Following the referee’s orders is imperative. These two things aren’t just part of the sport, they are the sport. They are the simple acts that separate MMA from men brawling in barrooms, back alleys and parking lots.
We have a set of rules we all agree to follow, and adhering to them is the very thing that allows MMA to be more than just a sport of great violence. At its best, it can be a sport of great beauty. The rules are what make it possible for MMA to transcend much of its own violence, to elevate it and to be the sort of thing people are willing to shell out $60 to watch on pay-per-view.
If you don’t follow the rules, all of that is undone. The whole thing falls apart. We lapse back into the chaos that reigned during the sport’s early days. When that happens, then we are who they said we were those years ago—thugs, barbarians and criminals.
Palhares may soon have to learn a hard lesson about what it means to forget the rules. If the NSAC decides he belongs in one of those three last categories, almost no one will feel sorry for him.
Update:
Rousimar Palhares and his WSOF 22 opponent, Jake Shields, have been issued temporary suspensions by the Nevada State Athletic Commission, per MMAMania.com. An official date for their hearing has not yet been set, but the earliest opportunity for all parties would be September 13.
---End of Update---
Rousimar Palhares is no longer the World Series of Fighting welterweight champion. The announcement came via WSOF President Ray Sefo who appeared on Tuesday's edition of The MMA Hour.
In regard to the eye gouges that Palhares inflicted on Jake Shields, Sefo said (h/t Marc Raimondi of MMAFighting.com), "Not only did he do it once or twice, he did it numerous times. And he was warned by the referee on four different occasions."
Sefo went on to tell The MMA Hour host Ariel Helwani that their organization will wait on a possible suspension from the Nevada Athletic Commission before deciding how long their stripped champ will be kept out.
This comes as little surprise. Immediately after the event, WSOF matchmaker Ali Abdelaziz was visibly downtrodden while explaining that the Nevada State Athletic Commission was withholding Palhares' win bonus, a sign of what is likely an impending punishment. This was followed by an ominous tweet on Monday, hinting at the announcement to come.
Watched the fight with Shields & Palhares. Palhares did gouge Jakes eyes & held the sub longer than needed. Ray will make announcement Tues
— Ali Abdelaziz (@AliAbdelaziz00) August 3, 2015
Palhares scored a controversial submission win over MMA veteran Shields on Saturday. Shields dominated the first two rounds using his strong grappling, with Palhares' only defense coming in the form of alleged scratching at Shields' eyes. When the bell sounded for the third, however, Shields was visibly tired. Repeated takedown attempts eventually led to a beautiful sweep into a kimura from Palhares.
Shields would quickly tap, but Palhares would continue torquing his arm as referee Steve Mazzagatti attempted to end the fight.
Rousimar Palhares vs. Jake Shields #WSOF22 Palhares fight ends in controversy as always https://t.co/C5uwlyyS8i
— ZombieProphet (@ZProphet_MMA) August 2, 2015
It's familiar territory for Palhares. Toquinho was cut from the UFC following multiple instances of holding onto submissions too long. Even before joining the UFC, however, he had already built up a reputation as a dirty fighter (Warning: NSFW Language) in both MMA and Brazilian jiu-jitsu competitions.
Where Palhares goes from here will likely be contingent on whatever punishment is handed down to him. If he is banned from the sport for any prolonged period of time and released from WSOF, he will likely be forced into international promotions. Keep an eye out for more developments over the next week..
Who can say what goes through Rousimar Palhares' mind?
In moments such as the one Saturday night, when Palhares again held a submission too long, who can say what the man is thinking? Who can say if he is thinking anything at all?
I have long since given up trying to figure out what makes Palhares tick. It is devastatingly clear that if not for his recurring place in the center of controversy, Palhares would be one of the more incredible stories in mixed martial arts: A man who does one thing and does it well, even when facing men with similar skill sets and aptitudes.
Even accomplished opponents such as Jake Shields know exactly what Palhares will attempt once the cage door closes. And still, he does it. On Saturday, Shields—one of the very best and heaviest grapplers in mixed martial arts—fought a nearly perfect fight, and yet he found himself tapping out to the hulking Brazilian submission artist.
But it was this moment, as it has so many other times, that doomed Palhares. It was this moment that made us overlook how he got there, and it instead forced us to once again focus on what he did once he arrived.
It was here that Palhares lived up to his reputation as the single dirtiest fighter in mixed martial arts.
That's how it usually goes, anyway. Palhares secures a submission, his opponent taps and Palhares continues to crank away. This time it wasn't his dreaded kneebar; it was a kimura. Even when referee Steve Mazagatti grabbed Palhares to signal the end of the fight, Palhares continued cranking away, as though trying to rip Shields' arm from its socket.
The total time between Mazagatti touching Palhares and the Brazilian releasing the hold was just under two seconds. But when Palhares is involved, those two seconds feel like an eternity.
And I'm sure they felt like an eternity to Shields, who began his frantic tapping long before Mazagatti—a space cadet of a referee confined to working lower-tier mixed martial arts events only because he is far and away the worst referee in a sport filled to overflowing with them—finally decided that Shields' tapping was an indication that he should maybe stop the fight.
We can talk about Palhares holding submissions too long because, put simply, that's what he does. He was suspended for doing it one time and then fired from his UFC deal when he did it again. We've heard him speak of contrition. Those around him have pushed the idea that he sought counseling to help figure out why he acts the way he does. And yet here we are, in 2015, and Palhares is still being the same terrifying and yet despicable fighter he has been for the past few years.
But the submission wasn't the worst part of Saturday night in Vegas. No, that came earlier, when Palhares clearly and repeatedly attempted to gouge Shields in the eyes using his thumbs. It caused Shields to audibly yell, "Ref! What the f--k?!"
There have been many rule changes over the years in mixed martial arts, but eye gouging? That has never once been a part of the sport.
And in employing such a tactic, Palhares showed that he's beyond sadistic. He is beyond reprehensible. It is clear that he isn't going to change his ways even with suspensions, fines and a possible firing hanging over his head.
Maybe he can't change his ways. Perhaps it isn't a conscious decision at all, but rather it's a part of his core that can't be mended, stripped away or fixed. Maybe this is who Palhares is. Maybe it's who he'll always be, no matter how many jobs he loses or how many dollars he's forced to pay to athletic commissions.
At this point, however, it shouldn't be up to him. Regardless of what you think of the submission being held too long—and compared to his previous controversies, perhaps this one wasn't so bad—his repeated attempts to gouge Shields' eyes is something that needs to be dealt with.
The vaunted Nevada State Athletic Commission is quickly morphing itself into an agency that comes down hard on cheaters. Soon, drug failures will be hit with suspensions ranging from two years to a lifetime banishment from the sport. Rightly so. PEDs have long given cheaters a potentially harmful advantage over their opponents, and it is long past time they were dealt with appropriately.
But if PED users are harshly punished for attempting to cheat their way to wins, then what of a man who pushes his thumbs into his opponent's eyes? Shields went to the hospital with blurry vision last night. One look at his face this morning tells the story. Palhares' revolting act appeared to do the damage.
In late 2014, my colleague, Jonathan Snowden, took a look at Palhares' history of holding submissions too long after the Brazilian once again found himself at the center of controversy after submitting Jon Fitch:
But it didn't quite cross over into straight-up assault. It was gray—a color that has come to define the Brazilian's career.
It was a win that served two purposes. It established Palhares, arguably, as a legitimate contender for the title of "best welterweight in the world." But it also likely reaffirmed the UFC's decision to leave him on the outside looking in. Some fighters, even in a sport like MMA, are just too dangerous for something that's ultimately just a game.
It is difficult to say someone should be forever banished from making a living wage. And if we were looking at a first-time offense here, I believe Palhares might deserve a little bit of leniency. But this is not a first offense. It is not even a second offense. Palhares shows a repeated pattern of going above and beyond in his attempts to hurt people, even far beyond what is acceptable in such a brutal sport.
And then you throw in the fact that he's adding new wrinkles to his game with eye gouges? He is not getting better. He is getting worse. The time to make excuses for Palhares is over.
It is time to put him on the sidelines, permanently.
