Liam / Ben: UFC 74 Picks [Liam]

Heavyweight Championship: Randy Couture vs. Gabriel Gonzaga

Liam: I take Gonzaga to win this. In Randy's favor, he's never fought a stupid gameplan and I think Gabe Gonzaga is currently overhyped with regards to his "well-roundedness," but Randy just looks a little too frail and a little too scrawny to take on a fighter 16 years younger and 22 pounds heavier than him. Gonzaga's hands are slower, and subsequently I think he's open to lose it on his feet (decision, probably), but overall Gonzaga is the stronger and more solid package as a fighter; while in my opinion a better striker, Randy's true strength still remains his wrestling, and I don't think getting a highly-touted black belt BJJ Mundial champion on his back (even if he could manage to muscle him down) will do him much good. I see this ending with an old-man stumble from Randy, resulting in him being pinned against a cage wall, controlled and beaten into a ref stoppage by Gonzaga.

Gabe by ground-and-pound stoppage in the 1st.

Ben: As much love as I have for Randy for effectively retiring Tim Silvia, I can't see any way he wins this fight. Gonzaga simply does not go to decision. Dude finishes fights with such a vengeance, I think his manager must stash a gaggle of hookers in the dressing room before he heads out to the ring. Chillingly for Randy, his only chance would be to take this to decision. The Natural's striking is good, but not elite, and while he might get a takedown or two against GG, Gonzaga's BJJ is almost preposterously decorated. Just to add another layer of opacity to the dark cloud hovering over Randy's prospects, Gonzaga's shown a disturbing tendency to just knock fools out despite having arguably the strongest grappling credentials in the UFC. Finally, take a look at the challenger's initials. Telling. Good Game Randy.

Gonzaga by TKO, strikes on the ground, Rd. 3.

Welterweight: Georges St. Pierre vs. Josh Koscheck

Liam: Josh Koscheck may be a brilliant wrestler, but you don't finish fights with wrestling alone. Until proven otherwise KOS is a "decision fighter," and GSP is one of the single WORST people in all of MMA to be scored against in a 15-minute sampling of abilities. Wherever the fight goes, GSP is competent and prepared-- there's next to nobody in the world who's as well-rounded in all aspects of MMA as him. As a result, I think Josh Koscheck's "style matchup" card as being the biggest "rock" in the rock/paper/scissors trinity of wrestling/striking/jiu-jitsu is completely null and void. Even Koscheck's usual strength advantage is probably for naught here, as GSP has shown himself to be freakishly strong in many of his past fights (way stronger than Sean "The Muscle Shark" Sherk... who GSP out-wrestled, incidentally). I think one of the big reasons people are even imagining any sort of x-factor to the clear on-paper advantage GSP enjoys has to do with Matt Serra. People think GSP has no heart, that the guy he lost to is some kind of a mark. I think Matt Serra may be the single unluckiest and most underrated (great) fighter in all of the sport. Nobody talks about the fact that in his last UFC defeat Matt Serra very nearly knocked out Karo Parisyan in the EXACT same fashion he took out St. Pierre. This fight will truly be the litmus test for how far almuni of "The Ultimate Fighter" have come, and the measure of GSP's real fighting spirit, but I see GSP hurting KOS badly on a takedown attempt, using his size and reach to keep him down, and stopping him by ground-and-pound or a gimme submission.

GSP by submission (RNC) in the 2nd.

Ben: This fight strikes me as way less interesting as people think. GSP's skills overlap with no obvious gaps save a lack of viciousness--he's almost too clinical. Fortunately for GSP, Koscheck couldn't even muster some aggression against a sick and overrated Diego Sanchez. Kos has speed, but his striking is fairly conventional. He's also lacking Matt Hughes's retard strength and GSP's wrestling is too strong to imagine Kos might be able to lay and pray his way through this one. I see a couple fairly lackluster rounds before GSP lands a kick or knee to counter a Koscheck shot in the final round.

GSP by TKO in the 3rd.

Lightweight: Roger Huerta vs. Alberto Crane

Liam: Huerta versus another UFC newcomer. I think Roger Huerta is overrated and begging to lose, but I don't think an octagon first-timer will be the one to make it happen. Apparently Crane has some ground game, but I don't think we'll be seeing him use it other than defensively; say, trying for a submission when Huerta over-extends himself in an attempt to finish the fight after winning a standing exchange.
Huerta is too active and aggressive on his feet to allow his opponent opportunities to take the initiative and shoot for a takedown-- in addition, as I said before I don't think Huerta will take this fight down unless baited by a hurt opponent. As usual, Huerta will impose a stand-up fight and out-work his opponent (his general M.O.) to win by decision.

Huerta by unanimous decision in the 3rd.

Lightweight: Joe Stevenson vs. Kurt Pellegrino

Liam: I won't lie, I had to watch tapes on Kurt "Batman" Pellegrino... he seems a very aggressive and explosive fighter, but he's also surprisingly technical-- there's a calculated edge to his wildness you don't generally see in the younger and more "physical" fighters. This being said, Joe Stevenson will beat him. Joe Stevenson has an almost unworkably compact and low-centered build as a ground fighter, he's prodigiously talented, and his composure in a fight is incredible. I think Stevenson is the future of the lightweight division, and I see him becoming extremely dominant in a few years. Still, I think this will be a war, fought largely in the clinch and in guard... but eventually Stevenson will get the sub.

Stevenson by submission in the 2nd.


Middleweight: Kendall Grove vs. Patrick Cote

Liam: I don't know much about Patrick Cote other than he comes from the Loiseau / St. Pierre high-kicking rat pack, and he's supposed to be a good striker. I watched one of his fights and he seems like a decently heavy-handed hitter, but unless he can really get inside the pocket and unload on Grove I don't think he has a shot here. Kendall Grove's natural build and aggression are already a good platform for him as a fighter (185 lbs, 6'6" or something), but he's been improving by leaps and bounds in his tenure as a UFC known/marquis-level fighter. Training with both Team Punishment and Xtreme Couture have paid huge dividends for Grove, and Cote just doesn't have enough to offer in his own development as a fighter to compete. Kendall can stop him in the first or wear him down into the third. This ends with a standing TKO or a fancy Cobra-Kai choke on the ground, Kendall's favor.

Kendall Grove by TKO in the 3rd.

kicks for guns

I also learned that running shoes in England are called "trainers."

Whore's Pasta [Ben]

The trick to pasta puttanesca is adding way more anchovies than you think you need. You can bust this out in 15-20 minutes, it's dirt cheap, and it will always be good. My version is pretty standard. Add it to your arsenal and fire liberally in any situation where you would have normally poured Ragu over noodles:

Saute half a chopped onion, a bunch of minced/pressed garlic, and red pepper flakes in olive oil. When they start getting a bit translucent, add anchovies. Be very liberal with the fishes; use at least one of those little flat tins, and mash it up with a fork. Saute a bit longer and add a can of peeled diced tomatoes (one of those bigger ones, not soup sized). When all that starts boiling, add capers and chopped black olive. Keep the heat up until you reduce the sauce to thick chunky goodness.

Pour this over pasta (the water for which you should have started boiling--with lots of salt--around the time you threw the onions in the pan) and grate on a heap of parmesan. Yes, grate. Throw away that shit that comes in the shiny green can and get a good hunk. It'll last forever in the fridge because it was already aged at least a year and a half.

Now you're eating like a prostitute!

extras [Liam]

-There should be a standard in the pizza-making-and-delivering industry that you're transparent and upfront about ingredient availability. Of all the heinous ways to get burned on things in life, purchasing a "deluxe" pizza sight-unseen from someone and having it arrive minus an advertised ingredient is one of the most insidious.

Things Luigi at the pizzeria knows about you from the get-go when your phone it in:
1-You're too lazy to cook your food.
2-You're too lazy to go out and buy your food.
3-You combine being static with ingesting a billion calories, a good portion of which is probably derived from recombined meat byproducts.

In general, ordering a pizza is admitting that one lacks the hard-wired killer instinct to go forth and chase down sustenance. As such, the threat of retribution never really enters the equation for Luigi the pizza guy. He could probably get away with throwing a hot bag of ingredients at me and telling me he was out of crust.

Case in point: I'm sitting next to a half "all-meat" / half "greek style" pizza with no bacon on the meat side and no kalamata black olives on the greek side. This basically reduces the thing to an over-produced supreme pizza. And I'm fucking BLOGGING about it.

Well-played, sir. Well-played indeed.


-How did sausage pull so far ahead of bacon in the field of popular pizza toppings? I realize that garden-variety fennel and pork sausage is an Italian mainstay, but cured and thin-sliced meats are a big deal too. And the best things about Pepperoni (king of the pizza toppings), namely its saltiness, oiliness and its tendency to crisp up and curl on the edges-- these are things bacon does better than anything! Yet while sausage is granted pizza-headlining clout, bacon is available only in the most overzealously meat-heavy pizzas in the company of every other product you can kill out of a pig, cow or raccoon. It's an unfortunate thing.

(As a final thought, it must be the fault of the tomato sauce. Bacon gets along famously with cheese. Bread's dry and absorbent qualities complement bacon's greasiness and strong flavor gracefully and unobtrusively. Tomato sauce, though? Tomato sauce never heard of bacon. Tomato sauce and italian sausage go back for days though, and when the call comes in for a headlining meat product, I'm sure the sauce phones in a referral for its boy the sausage every damn time. Fuckin' tomato sauce. Pesto and ranch got your number any time they want, and they're both down with the bacon like you wouldn't believe)

Aaaaand that's time. Hands off the keyboard. Hitting the post button. Happy August everyone!

Windbreaker, cont'd [Liam]

Here's the first thing about owning a weatherproof or semi-weatherproof jacket: it's way too easy to write one into the coordination-exempt category otherwise exclusively occupied by jeans.
Logically that exception seems like it should fly, and there are totally excusable situations-- "I'm a kid and my parents buy my soon-to-be-outgrown wardrobe" heads the list; but circumstance aside there's no aesthetic support whatsoever for the "windbreaker smash" move when assembling an outfit. Jeans are an anomaly both in their general uniformity of color and texture, and their overwhelming prevalence in the American wardrobe. In the subjective realm of one's own closet it might seem that the "go-to jacket" constitutes a similar backbone-- but visually, to the world outside, it's just a big over-shirt that doesn't match anything else you're wearing.

Having recently re-welcomed a waterproof jacket back into my life, I'm quite familiar with the pulls of such a garment. For one, it has zippered pockets for EVERYTHING. This thing I bought is iPod and Cellphone ready, with a little hole to run my headphones through, in case I couldn't manage with the traditional all-purpose single opening for my pocket. There's cool plastic shit hanging off all the zippers, and the designer's own name is readable on the metal part instead of "YKK." In addition, if I were suddenly rained upon, peed upon or attacked with a garden hose wearing any jacket from my closet, this would be the most impervious to damage. It looks quite good sitting on a hanger by itself, where the light blue of the inner collar and the dark navy of the outer shell can contrast one another beautifully, free of human entanglements. As a stand-alone display piece, it's a beautifully coordinated and craftily designed thing. It glows with promise coming off the rack, and while being wrapped up and hung up in the closet. During the honeymoon phase of garment ownership, it may even receive the benefit of being paired up with the cream of the laundry crop-- select shirts, sweaters and/or sweatshirts that when available do complement it perfectly.
So what's the problem? The problem doesn't happen until later on when you're the owner of such a jacket, you're rushing out the door, it's (stop!) hampertime in the laundry department, and the practicality of the windbreaker supercedes locating a piece of outerwear that can mitigate some of the discrediting effects of your bright red highschool-era band shirt. Just like that you're one step away from a plastic lunchbox and a pair of L.A. Gears, and the lynchpin for the entire fiasco is that sleek and practical wind-breaking jacket.