Williams Farm Update

As the sole street skater (as far as I could tell) at the meeting I still feel pretty good about what Team Pain is going to do at Williams Farm in Virginia Beach. At 20,000 square feet, there is plenty of room for giant vert bowls and fun street stuff. Tim Payne really impressed me as someone who really thinks about every aspect of a park from it's orientation and how the sun will be setting to what materials to use and how everything flows together. Preliminary plans where presented showing a long boomarang type shape creating a lot of space for continuous skating. There will be another design meeting in roughly three weeks where more detailed plans will be presented incorperating the input from this meeting. The main feature discussed was the bowl and snake run. The bowl will be 6, 8, and 11 feet deep, the snake run will go from small to big with hips and corners. The planned opening date is August 2012. Oh, and VB local, Joe Fernandez is working for Team Pain now and might be part of the crew building Williams Farm.

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Yamato-Damashii Diaries - Day 9: The Road Home

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In the wake of the March 11 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami, former Shooto heavyweight champion and Pride and UFC veteran Enson Inoue has been on a one-man charity mission, traveling to northeast Japan to directly help those in need.

For his next visit to the Tohoku region, MMA Fighting joined Inoue to document the journey and bring new light to the ongoing crisis in Japan.

On our last day we return to our respective homes, our trip into the heart of Fukushima is called off and Inoue reflects on why he is dedicating this part of his life to the people of Tohoku.

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Boxing promoter Lou DiBella working on Nick Diaz vs. Sergio Martinez

Fernando Vargas is out, now Cesar Gracie says Nick Diaz and company are working on a boxing match with Jeff Lacy. But there may be a new wildcard in this effort to get the Strikeforce 170-pound champion a boxing match. The talk of a crossover fight has piqued the interest of boxing promoter Lou DiBella.

DiBella told Yahoo! Sports' Kevin Iole that response from MMA fans via email and Twitter about the possibility of a Sergio Martinez-Diaz fight has been overwhelming. DiBella has embarked on a fact-finding mission to see if he can really match his star middleweight champ against Diaz.

Why would a top three pound-for-pound boxer waste his time fighting someone like Diaz, with little professional boxing experience? Sadly, DiBella can't find Martinez (47-2, 26 KOs) a top-notch opponent or a network to take the fight. Martinez is coming off one-sided victories where he dismantled and finished Paul Williams and Serhiy Zdinziruk. While they are plenty of intriguing fights out there at 154 and 160 for Martinez, nothing has materialized. HBO turned down a Martinez-Sebastian Zbik fight in lieu of Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. versus Zbik on June 4.

Diaz has long talked about wanting to box. He again complained about his MMA career during a postfight interview with HDNet following his victory over Paul Daley.

"They don't have anyone else for me to fight now. I'm better than all the guys they have," Diaz said. "The guys they have ranked above me, I'm sure they don't want to fight me. I don't see much of a future in this sport for me. I seriously don't."

Gracie told the network that Diaz wants to box, signed a deal to fight former world champion Fernando Vargas and was awaiting a response from Vargas' camp (0:35 mark). Now it looks like Vargas' comeback is in jeopardy because of undisclosed medical issues.

DiBella said he planned on reaching out to UFC president Dana White and Gracie to inquire about Diaz's ability to sign a boxing deal.

The television ideas for a possible Martinez-Diaz fight range anywhere from finding a spot on a cable television network to putting it on pay-per-view. Making the fight an eight-round exhibition is also a possibility.

As far as Diaz's MMA contract, Gracie said his fighter did not sign a special provisional deal with Zuffa. Gracie hasn't spoken to Strikeforce's Scott Coker about the topic.

"I don't even know how much in charge of things he is any more," Gracie said. "Ultimately, it's going to have to go through the UFC, so the only people to talk about it with would be them. What am I going to talk to Scott about? He doesn't own anything any more."

According to Gracie, Diaz's MMA contract has been "re-worked" and he's now free to box. Stay tuned on this one.

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Ultimate Fighter's Ramsey Nijem Talks Tension on Team Dos Santos

by Michael David SmithRamsey Nijem is a contestant on this season of the Ultimate Fighter.On this week's episode of The Ultimate Fighter, Junior dos Santos had some trouble in the ranks of his coaching staff, and he had to reprimand his assistant, Lew Polley, for pushing his fighters too hard in practice.

Ramsey Nijem, a member of Team Dos Santos, said in his weekly interview with MMAFighting.com that he was glad dos Santos said something, because Polley had been taking his intense coaching style to extreme lengths.

Nijem also discussed the new member of Team Dos Santos and this week's fight between Len Bentley and Ryan McGillivray, and he offered an interesting preview of his own (not quite) nude scene in next week's episode. The full interview is below.

 

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