Jack Ascii

I am going to post for 30 straight days. Yep, guaranteed. I think I just heard someone somewhere say “bull#@$%”.  Anyway, here it goes. By the way, I don’t appreciate the lack of support here.

Subject A: The Ultimate Fighter Saturday night saw the latest season of “The Ultimate Fighter” get crowned. The winner was Amir Sadollah, who now, after the win, is undefeated (he’s 1-0). I watched all of his prelim fights this season and what stuck out in my mind about this guy is he never quits. He doesn’t appear to be a great striker, wrestler, of grappler and his cardio also seems to be suspect. What he is good at, though, is winning. I don’t think he’s going to be a world beater anytime soon, but I think he’s worth keeping an eye on. Also, the guy has the type of personality that should endear him to fans; very humble and somewhat insecure (not your typical mixed martial artist). Before his quarterfinal fight against Matt Brown, he said something like “of course I’m scared, I’m going to get in the ring with a trained killer”. For the record, he subbed Matt in the third round. Other not so flashy winners (past and present): Chauncey Phillips, Steve McNair, Bernard Hopkins, Lloyota Machida, and Bill Russell.

Topic 2: I picked up the Flobots “Fight with Tools” album this past week. Good good stuff. I pretty much left played the whole album 2 or 3 times this weekend while I finished painting my deck. I especially like “May Day”, “Handlebars”, and “Fight with Tools”. I was a big 311 fan back in the day, and these guys sound a great deal like 311 (and there’s nothing wrong with that). Give them a listen - as always they are on the shelves at your local iTunes store.I also picked up Iggy Pop’s remastered “Raw Power” album, and Joy Division’s “Closer”. Both are great great great albums that I need not comment on. If you don’t have these I suggest you put some pants on and go pick them up presently.

Item III:  Jen’s Pulver. I like Jens Pulver. He is one favorite mixed martial arts fighters. He is the everyman’s fighter - he’s not rich, and this is his chosen profession. A few weeks ago he suffered a tough loss to one of the best, if not the best, featherweight fighters in the world; Urijah “the California Kid” Faber. The fight was kinda like a passing of the torch, as Jen’s is arguably one of the best lightweight/featherweight fighters to ever lace them up. I hope the guy doesn’t retire any time soon. Even if he is relegated to a gatekeeper for Faber for the rest of his career, I don’t care. I just want to see him fight. Anyway, if you “Jens” find yourself somehow ending up on this page, I have a suggestion for you (granted, this is highly improbable and the chances of me winning the lottery are significantly greater). I think you need to change your intro music. Might I suggest “Gimme Danger” by Iggy Pop and the Stooges. 

D: Tiger Woods is done for the year. Many sportswriters are predicting that this will have a significant economic impact on the rest of the season (I concur). Here’s an interesting fact that I believe John Feinstein recently mentioned on some sports show I was listening to on Saturday. Prior to Tiger joining the tour, there were 17 millionaires. Now there are over 100. That’s pretty impressive. I think I also read that Tigers caddy makes more in prize money that most of the other tour players. This got me thinking, what other athletes would have the biggest impact on the economics  of their sport if they missed a season?

Basketball: Lebron James, Kobe Bryant, Dwayne Wade. I think it would take having all three miss the season to have a significant impact. We already have seen a season without Dwayne, and although I have no clue what impact it had on the NBA’s  bottom line, I gotta think the league still did well.

Football: Peyton Manning, Tom Brady, LT, Eli Manning, Randy Moss, Terrell Owens. As with basketball, I think it would take having all these guys miss the season to impact the NFL economic season. I think NFL fans are accustomed to seeing star players go down from time to time to have too significant of an impact on the NFL’s  economic outcome.

Baseball: The Yankees and Red Sox. I can’t really speak to baseball because I ussually don’t tune in until October anyway. If I didn’t have the Yankees to root against every year, I probably wouldn’t even watch in October either. 

One question I would really like to have answered is how much does sports (specifically professional basketball, football, ad baseball) contribute to the U.S.’s economy? If it’s significant, I wonder if anyone in any government agency thinks about this kind of stuff? 

Posted by Jack Ascii / Mixed Martial Arts and Music and Sports