Chris Leben isn’t a bad fighter. Really, he isn’t. He has some very quality wins in his career. Patrick Cote, Jorge Rivera, and Mike Swick are wins of which a guy can be proud. This isn’t to say that Leben is the greatest fighter on earth or anything, but he’s a darn good little MMArtist.

Anderson Silva made him look like he didn’t belong inside the octagon.

Chris Leben can take a shot, as is evidenced by damn near every fight he’s ever been in, so he shouldn’t have gone down so quickly. But, really, Leben had little to say in the matter. It wasn’t just that Silva hit him hard, he his him with pinpoint accuracy. Seemingly every punch was dead-on, and by the time Chris could react, another fist was there to meet him.

Rarely do you see such one-sided beatings in the world of combat sports, but it happened on Wednesday. UFC Middleweight champion, Rich Franklin, should be concerned, because the Brazilian striker, in less than one minute, served notice to everyone. Silva announced to the UFC community, “I’m here and I’m a serious threat to Rich Franklin.”

***

Last Saturday, in Chicago Ridge, I saw the Ring of Honor show. I missed the last event they ran due to illness, so I was quite excited to see North America’s top indy promotion once again. Mostly, I was stoked (as the kids say) to see KENTA in action. It was a once in a lifetime opportunity and I’m sure I’ll always remember it as such. KENTA and Austin Aries had a tremendous match, highlighted by KENTA leaping to the top rope and delivering a falcon arrow in one fell swoop. It was perfect, beautiful, and artistic.

The rest of the card was solid and I can really appreciate the progress ROH has made in the past few years. It’s no longer a collection of great workers putting on great matches. These days, there’s a little bit of everything. Bryan Danielson provides an old-school heel shtick, the CZW-ROH feud is fun, and then there’s Samoa Joe. I saw Joe once before, taking on Christopher Daniels, but for my money, his match against Delirious was better. It was mostly comedy and Joe made it work. He picked his spots, gave Delirious just enough that people legitimately believed he might pin the “half-breed” himself, and the finished it off with a muscle buster. It was refreshing because it tells me that the ROH crew is beginning to understand that not every match needs to be a main-event caliber contest. By slowing the tempo earlier in the night, ROH kept the crowd fresh throughout and by the end, rather than feeling like you were in a marathon, you left thinking, “What a great night.”

And, yes, anytime you announce one of the referees as being “Mike Coughlin” I’m going to give the show a thumbs up!

***

PRIDE returns in a few days with the next round of the open weight grand prix. Todd Martin and I ran down the card last week, and you can find the column elsewhere (including in the members’ only archives of my work at f4wonline.com), so I won’t go into detail on the actual matches. But it’s kind of sad that the show is receiving almost no attention. From the Yakuza-scandal (which, frankly, I don’t think is turning off anyone in the States), to more importantly, the meteoric rise of the UFC in the past year, PRIDE just doesn’t seem important anymore. It’ll likely be a good show, and I suspect one or two matches will be incredible, but it’s more of an afterthought than anything.

And if I was the WFA that would have me worried. If PRIDE, with years of building their brand, and a stacked card from top to bottom, can’t get people talking, how is an upstart promotion going to? I’m glad a few fighters are going to get a decent pay day, but unless something drastically changes, I don’t think the WFA is going to be anything but a money-pit.

***

Don’t worry though, I’m sure sherdog.com will be happy to cover the WFA or really anyone in competition with the UFC. Once again, the website is crying foul about the UFC and its media relations. For some time now, sherdog has been video-taping the UFC weigh-ins and then posting the video on its site. For whatever reason the UFC decided they didn’t want this to happen anymore, so as the weigh-ins were winding down, according to sherdog, UFC asked them to stop filming. The Zuffa owned company didn’t ask sherdog to leave, they just asked them to not video-tape the event. Sherdog wrote, “This is the first time the UFC has prevented Sherdog.com from covering an open-to-the public event.” That’s not entirely accurate. The UFC simply stopped them from VIDEO-TAPING it, so far as I can tell, they didn’t kick the UFC out. Sherdog’s “staff” was still allowed to sit and take notes like everyone else.

This isn’t to say the UFC is necessarily right in what they did. The more open the company, usually the better (long-term). Letting sherdog video-tape the weigh-ins isn’t a big deal, but it’s their show, more or less. Hey, I’d let them video it all they want, but it’s not my call. When I own the multi-million dollar MMA company, it’ll be run differently. But complaining about being denied video access is, well, lame.

Sherdog made a story out of itself, not the event. Big deal, the UFC isn’t playing nice, that’s the breaks in the journalism business. You don’t see the New York Times writing an editorial every time someone doesn’t help an investigation. No, they just “nut up” and work harder.

But, then again, it isn’t as if sherdog has been all that relevant in the fight world anyway. They were one of the last outlets to cover PRIDE losing their TV deal. A major story, with potentially huge long-term ramifications, and the website had nothing – NOTHING – on it.

I’ve got nothing personally against sherdog, really, I don’t. They’ve got some fine writers over there and I imagine a few of them probably are embarrassed at the behavior of a select few. Sherdog laments that the UFC hasn’t issued them press credentials lately. I wonder why…

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