Sunday, August 29, 2010

The Couture Collection



MMAClassics Presents Randy Couture’s Ultimate MMA DVD Collection at Couture DVDs.com

Venice, CA (PRWEB) August 23, 2010

MMAClassics, your source for exclusive and rare MMA content is pleased to announce the launch its new website CoutureDVDs.com. Dedicated to the many fans of America’s Ultimate Athlete, MMAClassics proudly presents the ‘Couture Collection’, a DVD set that includes five of its top selling MMA titles. All DVD titles exclusively feature MMA legend, Randy ‘The Natural’ Couture, co-star of last weekend’s top grossing Hollywood action film ‘The Expendables’ with Sylvester Stallone.

For the MMA newbie to the most rabid Randy supporter, the ‘Couture Collection’ will take you deep into the world of the America’s favorite martial artist. With over six intense hours of vintage MMA footage, featuring classic fights, an award winning documentary, technical combat instruction and a historical submission wrestling match this DVD set is a must have for any true MMA fan!

The ‘Couture Collection’ includes the following MMA DVD titles:

‘FIGHTER, a documentary’

‘Who’s Still Standing”

‘X-Training with Randy Couture’ Vol 1

‘X-Training with Randy Couture’ Vol 2

‘X-Mission’ Couture vs Jacare

Go inside the locker room with amazing up close and personal behind the scenes access to Randy along with a plethora of MMA superstars. From hard hitting training sessions to back stage antics these DVD's make you feel as if you a part of the UFC legends fight entourage.

To check out all of the ‘Couture Collection’ DVD trailers please go to CoutureDVDs.com.

Also included with your purchase of the ‘Couture Collection' is a 'FIGHTER' movie poster from the films' theatrical premiere at World Famous Mann's Chinese Theater in Hollywood, CA.

Available exclusively from MMAClassics at CoutureDVDs.com



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Monday, April 19, 2010

Dan Gable


"After this match Gable rededicated himself to become a World and Olympic freestyle wrestling champion, revenging his loss to Owings at the US Olympic trials. In 1976, after competitive life, Gable became head wrestling coach at the University of Iowa.

At Iowa, he formed a dynasty matched by none. From 1978 to 1986, the Hawkeyes won the NCAA title each year, a record nine in succession. Gable continued to coach the team until sabbatical after the 1997 season. His record in dual meets of 355-21-5 which included 15 NCAA titles and 21 straight Big Ten titles put Gable and Iowa on Sports Illustrated's 'Top 20 Sports Dynasties of the 20th Century'."





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Saturday, August 16, 2008

Wrestling Controversy

Beijing (AP) - The Olympic wrestling mat is red, yellow and blue, dynamic colors designed to give the athletes a vivid backdrop for their talents. It's that gray area outside the wrestling circle that discolors what its governing body proudly calls the world's oldest sport.

Some in the sport say it's one of the shadiest, too.

Backroom politicking, bribery, corruption, outlandish officiating, even threats of violence are routinely alleged in a sport that is little followed in most countries but, when noticed, seems to have as many bizarre story lines as WWE-style entertainment wrestling.

And when it happens at the Olympics, many unfamiliar with the sport are left wondering what in the world goes on in wrestling.

The most recent allegations came Thursday, when livid Swedish wrestler Ara Abrahamian walked off the medals podium and dropped his unwanted bronze medal for Greco-Roman 84 kilograms on the mat. Abrahamian blew up when a disputed penalty call wound up deciding his semifinal match against Italian Andrea Minguzzi, who went on to win the gold medal.

"I think the semifinals shows that FILA does not play fair," Abrahamian said, referring to wrestling's international governing body. "I don't deserve to lose. The system is corrupt."

His coach, Leo Myllar, was equally displeased, saying, "It's all politics, and it's all corrupt."

The International Olympic Committee is investigating, but only to determine if there should be disciplinary action against Abrahamian for his medal-stand exit.

What makes Swedish officials especially leery of this latest loss is that one of FILA's top vice presidents is Italian, and Minguzzi did nothing internationally - his average finish in five world-level championships was 27th - until he suddenly won his country's first Olympic wrestling gold in 20 years.

In Athens, Abrahamian lost a similarly disputed decision to Russia's Aleksey Mishin, who won gold there but was upset by Minguzzi in Beijing, as was Abrahamian. After losing in Athens, Abrahamian wrote on his Web site, "The score was 1-1, and that means losing, in case you meet a Russian."

Abrahamian's 2004 loss was one reason former FILA board member Pelle Svensson of Sweden resigned, but only after he unsuccessfully attempted to institute measures to begin cleaning up the sport.

What is certain is if there is an Olympics, there will be allegations of misdeeds.

Svensson, a retired judge, complained Thursday during an interview with the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet that he was threatened - he wouldn't say by whom - following a post-Athens argument that left a Russian wrestling executive with a torn shirt.

In Atlanta, Iranian officials went ballistic after American Kurt Angle won a gold medal in a close, disputed match on his home mat. In Sydney, there were numerous quirky calls. In Athens, Olympic champion Buvaisar Saitiev of Russia and Belarus' Murad Gaidarov fought as they left the mat, so unhappy was Gaidarov at the officiating.

Americans aren't immune to FILA-related disputes, either. In the 2003 world freestyle championships - in New York, no less - Eric Guerrero was forcibly removed from the mat when he refused to leave after losing a disputed decision. Heavyweight Daniel Cormier, who is wrestling in Beijing, chased an Iranian wrestler around the mat and refused to shake the referee's hand when he lost.

And does this sound familiar? In Sydney, American Sammie Henson was so distraught at losing a gold medal he felt was stripped by a terrible call that he tossed his silver medal down a hallway.

The low-scoring sport's most visible problem is that many officiating calls are subjective and subtle moves and tiebreakers often decide winner and loser. A replay system allows a judge to review a referee's call, but there is no clear-cut rule when it should be used. It wasn't in Abrahamian's match.

In Beijing, it's obvious who runs amateur wrestling's big show.

FILA board members and executives sit in plush chairs beside huge displays of flowers a few feet off the mat, immediately behind the mat chairman and judge, and routinely talk among themselves.

Wrestling executives from other countries often stop by to talk, even as matches are going on, and mat giant Russia's higher-ups seem to be everywhere.

When FILA executive give their rare interviews, they merely praise the sport's virtues and refuse to be drawn into any discussion about alleged problems.

In Beijing, there are five more days of wrestling to go, and that means plenty of time for more controversy to erupt. And many who feel wronged probably won't be comforted by all those $100 displays of cut flowers toted matside every day.







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Friday, August 8, 2008



U.S. wrestler Dremiel Byers (right) gets up to some horseplay on the Great Wall with American legend Rulon Gardner.
John W. McDonough

BEIJING -- Dremiel Byers doesn't flinch easily. The man is an Army supply sergeant and was a world champion super heavyweight in Greco Roman wrestling in 2002. He is 6 feet, 264 pounds of guts and granite. But on Thursday, the man had met his match.
"Ain't doing all these stairs," Byers insisted. Give the man a pass. In 4,000 miles of slopes, valleys, cuts and edges, there are too many to count on the Great Wall of China, much less climb.
The U.S. Greco-Roman wrestling team scaled, joshed and at times even grappled on the Great Wall here on Thursday. Even lifts and bumps and chest bumps against its belly couldn't shake its foundations. All day, the Great Wall got the better of the great athletes, whether they were in mid-workout or just snapping photos like other tourists. As one set of inclines revealed another, Byers created a mini-faucet by scrunching the bottom roll of his shirt to wring it out.
"How many people had to build this thing?" he asked. Teammates jumped in with guesses.
"A hundred thousand?" asked Spenser Mango, an Olympic rookie.
"More than a million," asserted Brad Vering, a team veteran.
From the sixth century B.C., more than two million men were said to have died building the Wall and more than one million patrolled its interior at once to fend off northern invaders. It has become a sort of group bonding tradition for many of the Olympic teams to break the training monotony with a day of sightseeing. If it has some sort of practical connection to the sport, so much the better.
"I used to think if we'd keep these guys isolated, they'd be better able to keep their focus," says Steve Fraser, the Greco head coach who in 1984 became the first U.S. wrestler to win Olympic gold in Greco. "But I see the benefits of something like this as long as they make it to bed on time, have their meals, get that good training in. It's good to get out, good for camaraderie and team spirit. It'll help us compete. And there's something about warriors protecting their land from the enemy that draws connections to wrestlers."
Fraser's team has been on a roll these last few years, winning the world team title in '07. It's hard to argue with his formula. Other bonding sites have included Dracula's Castle in Romania, the Coliseum in Rome and the Parthenon in Athens, but the snapshots from Thursday's trip were especially memorable.
As the wrestlers left their bus, they began passing the gauntlet of souvenir-hawkers at the base of one entrance, shouting their greetings. A large donkey trailed part of the group, staring up at Rulon Gardner, the 2000 Olympic champ who is now an NBC analyst. "That's a big ass, right there," said Gardner, who has had ample chance to use the line during his days as a Wyoming farm boy.
On one end of a walkway, Jake Deitchler was negotiating a better deal on a hand-woven bamboo horn hat. On another, Tim Taylor, Byers' primary training partner, was gingerly posing on the back of a camel. "Don't buck," Byers shouted. "I need him."
The wrestlers were clearly better suited for mats. Training partner Willie Madison played a game of hacky sack. T.C. Dantzler gave up after trying to catch a butterfly that insisted on fluttering just out of his grasp. "I'm a city kid," said Dantzler, who grew up outside Chicago. "What do I know about butterflies?" A smiley round gentleman asked Gardner and Byers to pose with him, as the team broke into chants of "Buddha" and "Butterbean."
It was a first trip for all of the squad's members, including coach Brandon Paulson. "It's been like a fantasy place to me, too," Paulson said. "Until you see it for yourself, you don't know what it will be like."
Start with this: It is steep. Wrestlers climb stairs at the end of workouts all the time. Coaches regularly try to faze their athletes by sending them to the tops of high school gyms and even university stadiums. This was different. Stairs on the wall alternate from steep and frequent to narrow and long. The terrain is sometimes straight, sometimes twisting.
Wrestlers who were accustomed to jogging up and down with a certain detached ease had to look at their feet and grab the wall's sides as they increased the pace. Shon Lewis, the head coach of the U.S. Army's World Class Athlete Program, was looking over the side. "The Mongols really think they'd attack this place?" he said, scanning the vastness.
Some wrestlers started grappling, mostly to snap photos, others to release energy. Gardner and Byers, longtime rivals and still friends, traded moves. Madison later one upped Mango and roared, "a reverse lift on the Great Wall" somewhere into Manchurian wilderness.
"The thing that gets me in a place like this is not just the warrior mind set, but the history," Vering said. "It's majestic. I think there could have been these great battles where we were standing today. Think about how this place broke men down and built them up. We're trying to do the same thing."




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Monday, June 16, 2008

One of the great ones




Who is the legendary American wrestler in the photos above? And which man is it? Click here to find out.




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Wrestling & MMA



Click here to read an interesting story about MMA and wrestling.



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Sunday, June 1, 2008

Mockery?



Click here to read an article about Kimbo Slice and the debut of MMA fighting on network TV.


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Friday, May 23, 2008

Frank Trigg stars in "Who's Still Standing?"





See wrestler Frank Trigg's bloody, bone-crushing brawl against jiu jitsu black belt Jean-Jacques Machado in Who's Still Standing? This newly released DVD is the greatest MMA fight compilation of all time. It contains these historic match-ups in their entirety:

Couture vs. Inoue
Shamrock vs. Inoue
Trigg vs. Machado
Paulson vs. Newton
Henderson vs. DeSouza
Sato vs. Lewis
Pederneiras vs. Sato
Erikson vs. Randleman

Buy Who's Still Standing? at MMAClassics.com or Amazon.com now!




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The real "Million Dollar Baby"



Click here to read about boxer Maureen Shea.



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NHB Women!



Click here to check out their downloads!



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