Bobby Lashley pummels his way to stardom by beating Bob Sapp
Published by Zach Arnold on June 29th, 2009 in Current Events

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Heading into Saturday’s night fight between Bob Sapp and Bobby Lashley, Lashley was a -600 favorite at the sportsbooks. Sapp was +400. By the time Lashley got done with him, bettors were probably wondering how the hell Lashley was only a -600 favorite.

In predictable fashion in Mississippi, Lashley took down Sapp immediately and pummeled him for a couple of minutes before Sapp quit. Sapp has quit before and lost various battles, but Lashley did his work in such a no-nonsense fashion. Sure, there were ample opportunities for Lashley to apply a heel hook on Sapp and get a quicker tap-out. However, Bobby is learning on the job and getting a win over Sapp helped boost his name value. How much so? On Google News, Lashley was one of the ten most-searched named on their search engine. Lashley… on an independent MMA show… was one of the 10 most searched people online. In a news climate featuring the death of Michael Jackson, Governor Mark Sanford having an affair with an Argentina woman, and political turmoil in Iran, Bobby Lashley somehow has managed to capture major interest online despite being a novice in MMA.

There will be plenty of people who will attribute Lashley’s name value purely due to his WWE run where he was associated with Donald Trump at Wrestlemania. However, Lashley is just the latest ex-WWE star who has made the conversion to MMA and has actually improved his name value as a fighter. McMahon handcuffed Lashley in a world where scriptwriters tell wrestlers what to say. When Lashley isn’t handcuffed in this format, he comes off as a very intelligent, likeable, smart gentleman who people want to really root for. MMA also gives Lashley some cache, some credibility with wrestling fans who look at him and go, wow, this guy really is legitimate after all, he’s an ass-kicker. Vince McMahon’s lost a few steps in terms of the marketing department as far as building credible wrestlers is concerned. This, combined with ridiculous scriptwriting, has led talents like Brock Lesnar (UFC Heavyweight champion) and Bobby Lashley into the MMA world. The training is brutal, but the actual fighting is not so bad on their bodies when compared to working 3-4 days a week in hard wrestling matches.

Lesnar and Lashley are the two biggest examples of wrestlers who have escaped the WWE ring and managed to become mega-stars in MMA. This, no doubt, drives McMahon nuts. However, he hasn’t learned why these two men have become successful in real fighting and what lessons he should be learning from it.

After his easy win over Sapp on Saturday night, Lashley’s road to entering UFC is becoming crystal clear. He has all the star quality that a promoter could want, plus he’s likeable and willing to do more PR than perhaps Lesnar is interested in doing. Lashley is also becoming one of the latest African-American stars in MMA, a sport that will soon feature the most high-profile match-up in MMA ever between two Black fighters — Quinton “Rampage” Jackson and Rashad Evans.

Lashley does MMA training when he is preparing for fights, but not reportedly when he is off in Colorado when he is with his family. So, American Top Team is booking him for several upcoming fights and ATT is slowly but surely building Bobby’s skill-set up. By the time ATT has Lashley prepared in a year or two, he will immdiately become a big threat in UFC. His strength, combined with fantastic amateur wrestling skills and a growing submission game make him an ultra dangerous athlete.

The public is noticing what is going on with Bobby Lashley. I suspect Dana White is, too, despite his denials earlier in the week that he wasn’t going to watch Lashley’s fight against Sapp.

An ugly MMA referee performance upstages Gilbert Yvel’s big win over Pedro Rizzo

Gilbert Yvel has had a long, strange road in the MMA world. I remember watching him in the mid-90s when he was in RINGS and also doing Free Fight events in Holland. Yvel has always been a powerful striker and has often spoiled the best-laid plans. Just ask Josh Barnett, who had some difficulty putting him away at the last Affliction show.

Yvel, in the semi-main event of Saturday’s Ultimate Chaos show, faced another famous striker in Pedro Rizzo. As the case with strikers who take a lot of punishment, as they get older their reflexes start to deterioriate. Things start slowing down. Unfortunately for Rizzo, he got caught and caught in a big way.

Rizzo initially got top position on Yvel and just started raining a flurry of elbows on him. Yvel looked to be in trouble. The elbows looked questionable in terms of legality. However, in the words of Colonel Bob Sheridan on the telecast, “As long as you can get away with it, let it fly.”

Unfortunately, those words came into play… but for Yvel, not Rizzo.

Gilbert somehow was able to stand back up on his feet after Rizzo’s elbow onslaught and unleashed several punches in the stand-up game, then tagged Rizzo with a left high-kick, and unfortunately things got worse from there for Pedro. Down on the mat, Yvel tagged Rizzo with about five different shots to the head and knocked him out. The referee, whose name wasn’t listed on the television broadcast (it sounded like his name was Larry Engle according to the PA announcer), watched Yvel drop too many bombs on the helpless Rizzo before stopping the fight. Rizzo has a history of taking some brutal punishment, so having a referee jump in right away would have helped matters here. Rizzo was able to stand up on his own power after a few minutes, but the talk of the fight afterwards was the refereeing.

Poor officiating has been a hot-button topic this year, especially with Dana White’s grudge against Las Vegas-based Steve Mazzagatti. There have been plenty of criticisms against Herb Dean, Mario Yamasaki, and Yves Lavigne. The one name that hasn’t been mentioned is Big John McCarthy, whose reputation seemingly grows in stature as the days go by and more new faces in the referee landscape start popping up and getting involved in questionable situations.

In some respects, the production values and the atmosphere of Ultimate Chaos reminded me of watching an old Ultimate telecast… from Denver in 1993.