ProMMAnow.com Book Review: Xtreme Training

Thanks to the people at Victory Belt, I had an opportunity to review another book for ProMMAnow.com. This time, it was Xtreme Training by Randy Couture.

For the full review and information on purchasing the book, visit ProMMAnow.com.

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Pro MMA Now Book Review: Jackson's Mixed Martial Arts: The Ground Game

Thanks to the good folks at Victory Belt, I have had the opportunity to review another quality publications for the readers of Pro MMA Now and Previously Viewed. This latest release, Jackson's Mixed Martial Arts: The Ground Game, is another high quality instructional manual covering many aspects of the ground game in MMA.

To read my review, visit Pro MMA Now

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Crown of Vengeance Pre-Order Announcement, Book Synopsis, and Exclusive Images

My good friend Stephen Zimmer, author, filmmaker, a true modern day renaissance man, has given me an opportunity that I am honored to take advantage of. For those of you who may have missed it, Zimmer wrote The Exodus Gate, an excellent read and the first book in the epic fantasy series, The Rising Dawn Saga.

With plans to release the second book in the series in 2010, Zimmer has stayed busy with a book tour, multiple convention appearances, and signings, not to mention that he has authored a book in a completely new series, that can be pre-ordered now.

The opportunity that Zimmer has given me is to be one of a limited number of bloggers to release some exclusive information on the book as well the cover art (pictured to the right), and an exclusive image you won't see anywhere else (pictured after the jump). Each blogger chosen for this limited press release has been given a separate image.

For all of the information now available on the book and how to pre-order one of 100 very special limited edition copies, check after the jump.


First, enjoy this synopsis of Crown of Vengeance, the first book in the new series, Fires in Eden.

Begin an Epic Journey...

On a night that begins no different from any other, strange mists engulf
Janus Roland, Erika Laesig, Mershad Shahab, and several others going about their lives in a quiet midwestern town. When the mist dissipates, they
all find themselves looking up into the bright skies of a new, incredible
world.

Without explanation of why it has happened, or any notion of where they
are, they embark upon a grand adventure within the fantastical world of
Ave. Some find themselves in the lands of the Saxan Kingdom, while others
have emerged within the lands of the Onan, one of the tribes in the Five
Realms confederation.

Storms of war loom over both Saxany and the Five Realms, as invasion
forces mass under the inspiration of The Unifier, a mysterious,
captivating figure whose influence has swept across the surface of Ave
ever since His rise to power in the Gallean duchy of Avanor. It is a war
that will be fought in the skies, upon the seas, on land, and even in
places non-physical in nature.

A majestic, epic fantasy that begins many adventures and journeys across a
diverse and enthralling world, filled with races and creatures both
familiar and new, Crown of Vengeance lights the flame of the Fires in Eden
series, bringing to life a bold, far-ranging, and grand new venture within
the realms of fantasy literature.

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Also, here is all the info you'll need to pre-order the book and find more information on the book as well as the publisher and Zimmer himself.

Seventh Star Press proudly announces the release of Crown of Vengeance,
the first book in the new epic fantasy series Fires in Eden, by author
Stephen Zimmer (The Exodus Gate).

To commemorate the forthcoming release, publisher Seventh Star Press is
offering pre-order packages for Crown of Vengeance, including a very
special, limited edition hardcover version that is strictly limited to 100
copies.

To ensure full authenticity, the limited edition hardcover will be
hand-numbered and signed by Stephen Zimmer, and also signed by editor
Amanda DeBord and illustrator/cover artist Matt Perry. It will include an
extra illustration, and designation plate as a limited edition within the
book.

Both the limited edition hardcover and first edition trade paperback
pre-orders come with a special package of collectibles, including a
numbered set of art cards, a collectible set of 12 bookmarks, and a full
color poster of the cover art.

Information on the pre-ordering options can be found at the new site for
the Fires In Eden series, located at www.firesineden.com

For information on the publisher visit www.seventhstarpress.com, and for
the author visit www.stephenzimmer.com.

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And finally, for the exclusive image of the character, "The Wanderer", at this time available only to readers of Previously Viewed:


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Thank you again to Stephen for allowing me to be a part of this release. I hope you all take advantage of this opportunity to pre-order what is sure to be another great work from Zimmer.

Enjoy.

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My New Writing Gig - PRO MMA

As I mentioned in my most recent post, FightTicker.com is shutting down effective this Saturday, September 26, 2009. However, I wanted to let you all know that my blogging will still continue. I have joined the top-notch staff over at PROMMA.info, an excellent MMA site.

More info after the jump.

PRO MMA is a great MMA site. I first ran into site President/Owner Jack Bratcher and site VP/Editor Denny Hodge at an XFC show in Knoxville. We had some good discussions that night on the XFC show and the state of MMA blogging and reporting. Then, I met PRO MMA staff writer Dusty Adams at an RFL show in Indiana. I'd planned on live blogging that show but when I arrived was asked to commentate. I jumped at the chance, but needed a second man to play the Joe Rogan to my Mike Goldberg (or vice versa). I happened to run into Dusty, there to cover the show for PRO MMA, so I asked if he'd like to give me a hand and we did an excellent job commentating the show (if I do say so myself).

When I learned that FightTicker might be shutting down, I started making inquiries with some sites who were looking for writers and with some sites who had previously contacted me about writing for them. Ultimately, I decided that PRO MMA would be the best fit for me, and I am really excited about this new opportunity.

I do have some things to learn in terms of posting format and other logistical issues but I am hitting the ground running.

I will continue to do the live coverage of all of the shows I normally go to, as well as provide you with the best in regional and national MMA news, commentary, product reviews, and original content. I have some great things in the works right now, including some previously announced product reviews including Brandon Quick's 3-DVD set called Fade to Black, and some great products recently sent to me by Victory Belt. Additionally, mine and Puddin's radio show, Cageside Seats, will be up and running full swing again in the very near future, after I sort out some of the technical details.

And that's just me - PRO MMA already has a number of great writers and big things are happening with the site, including a blog from TUF 10 competitor Justin Wren. Wren will be posting weekly updates on his experiences on TUF, and his first entry is already in the books. You can check that out here.

I'm really happy to be part of the PRO MMA crew. It's going to be a lot of fun and I'm looking forward to contributing what I can to PRO MMA's already strong staff.

-PreView

EDIT: I edited the article to correctly note that Cageside Seats is not just my radio show, but mine and Puddin's :)


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Exodus Gate News, Contests and New Promotion

The Exodus Gate, the first book in the Rising Dawn Saga, is one of the newest epic fantasy books on the market and now you have a chance to get your copy for free. A number of blogs are doing giveaways for the book - you can find those here and here, along with interviews with the author himself.

Additionally, I have received word from Zimmer that Seventh Star Press will be running a new promotion where buyers that send them a copy/scan/picture of their receipt from purchasing The Exodus Gate will receive a free set of seven glossy art cards and two bookmarks that were printed as special promotional materials for the book. For those of you in the Cincinnati, OH area, purchasing your copy just got easier, as the Cincy Joseph-Beth Booksellers is now carrying The Exodus Gate.

Check back for my review of The Exodus Gate as well as an interview with Zimmer.

For more info on Zimmer, including an inside look at his travels to various conventions and book signings, check out his blog, Fantastical Musings.

-PreView


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FightTicker.com: Interview With Blood in the Cage Author L. Jon Wertheim

A while ago, I posted my review of L. Jon Wertheim's Blood in the Cage. I was also fortunate enough to speak with Wertheim about a number of topics in the MMA world. What follows are the highlights from our interview. Wertheim really does a great job of putting things in perspective - in spite of how much we've all seen the sport grow, the difference in the popularity and marketability of the sport has changed a lot even in just the last few years. You can find Wertheim's first article on MMA, the one he speaks of giving him the idea to write the book, on SI.com.

FightTicker: First, why don’t you tell us a little bit about yourself?

L. Jon Wertheim: I write for Sports Illustrated, and have been for a while, and the story with this is that a couple years ago is that I told my editors I wanted to look into this MMA phenomenon and it was a whole lot of fun to work on and I came back and just sort of thought to myself, “There’s just so much material here – why not spin this into a book?” That’s pretty much how the book got started.

FT: Was there a defining moment or a particular fight that really made you say to yourself you wanted to take a look into MMA?

Wertheim: I didn’t really know much about this sport at all. I went to a UFC event in Houston, I went out to Bettendorf, Iowa to the Militech camp and I went to some amateur shows and Renzo Gracie’s gym – I don’t know if there was one defining moment. One of the first fights I saw was Roger Huerta vs. Leonard Garcia, and it was just an insane fight. It was so gripping and I told someone afterwards that I don’t think I’ve ever felt that alive. I enjoyed talking to the guys, and Dana was a trip, and this gave me eighteen or nineteen pages of material to work with and even after that I just sort of said to myself that I could just keep going and going with this stuff.

FT: Why Pat Militech?

Wertheim: We sort of hit it off to begin with and I sort of wanted to talk about who had gotten in there to help it [MMA] get where it was. The other thing is that these characters change so fast. I would tell the story where I asked someone – at this point exactly two years ago, who were the biggest names, who were the five biggest fighters? The answer I got was, Chuck [Liddell], Randy [Couture], Tito [Ortiz], Rich Franklin and Matt Hughes. And if you look at the scene right now, Randy may have fought for the last time, Tito is out of the organization, Chuck is kind of off the radar a bit. I wanted to pick a guy to base this on who I knew would still have some relevance when the book came out, so I figured with Pat, he’s working, he’s in there training guys and I didn’t have to worry that he’d be hot at the time, lose two UFC fights and suddenly get cut.

FT: The first image you throw at readers is of an offer made to you that I don’t think many people would want to take – Jens Pulver offered to break your nose to help you better understand what the fighters go through – what was the first thought that went through your mind when he offered to do that?

Wertheim: I wanted to be sure he was kidding [Laughs]. He sort of had a smile on his face, but these guys are a little different from me and you. Broken bones and lumps and bruises – they have a different approach to them than I have [Laughs].

FT: Why did you choose to start with that image?

Wertheim: I wanted to start with a bang, and you know, I knew he was sort of half-kidding, but he would’ve done it. Part of the book was just to explain the sport, but I also wanted to give people a chance – one question that always came up was “Who would do this, what kind of guy would be a cage fighter for a living?” I wanted to explain what breed of cat we were dealing with here.

FT: In the book you highlighted the fact that a number of the UFC fighters are highly educated or had various jobs one might not associate with fighters (i.e. Rich Franklin being a former math teacher), and I know these facts often surprise people – what are some of the things that surprised you when you were doing your research?

Wertheim: That was one thing – that people in the general public think a guy who fights in a cage for a living must be in there wearing an ankle monitor with his parole officer there waiting for him to get done – but the quality of guys overall, it’s probably higher than any other sport I’ve dealt with. Something else that struck me is these are some badass guys, but a lot of them were really sort of sensitive and fragile. There’s a real sort of fragile nature to a lot of these guys. Just physically they’re on a completely different level, and then you talk to them and a lot of them are kind of emotionally damaged. As strong as some of these guys were physically, a lot of them were insecure almost, a completely different person when they weren’t fighting.

FT: You interacted with a lot of different people in the industry. Besides a love for the fight game, did you see any other common denominator between the people involved with the sport?

Wertheim: A lot of these guys have similar sensibilities, but I think that something else that surprises people is there is a real diversity to the sport. The guy who came up through brazilian jiu jitsu is completely different than Randy Couture who came up an All-American wrestler who is different than GSP who is French-Canadian. A lot of these guys came from damaged homes, but not all of them. A lot of these guys wrestled in college, but not all of them. I think it’s [the diversity] is something that really helps the sport. Like with NBA players or boxing, it seems like the fighters have the same story over and over. But a guy like Roger Huerta is a guy that has a completely different story from a guy like Rampage. They’re black, white, American, foreign, and that’s something that helps the sport, it’s pretty diverse.

FT: You spent some time on the book on the history of the UFC and the rise of the UFC, and you acknowledged that during the “dark” days, it was the hardcore fans prowling the internet who did more than anyone to keep the sport alive and the UFC alive – in these days, as someone who has written about the sport – what percentage of MMA news do you think is on the internet versus the print media?

Wertheim: By and large, I still think it’s a sport that – it’s not a sport that the New York Times has a section on. I don’t think any newspapers do [have a section devoted entirely to MMA]. This is a sport that lives and breathes on the internet.

FT: Having made that statement, do you think it’s odd the UFC won’t credential websites for press passes at events?

Wertheim: Yeah, and I wrote about that in the book, about how the internet is really what saved this sport, and then I went to some of these fights and there were even very few [print media] guys [covering the event a few years ago] and that’s a little strange. I guess the UFC figures the websites are going to cover it anyway, but it’s still a little hard to figure out.

FT: You wrote about how, as the UFC has grown, they’ve signed some bigger name sponsors. However, a lot of people still refer to the sport of MMA as being in its infancy – how do you think the sponsor scene is going to change as the sport continues to grow?

Wertheim: That’s a good question. It’s going to keep growing. It’s going to be interesting to see what’s going on with whether the fighters are going to start demanding extra things [from sponsors] but it’s only going to keep growing. Even in the few years I’ve really been following it closely, in the beginning there wasn’t Harley-Davidson and sponsors like that a few years ago. Even though the sport is being de-mystified, there are still people that say, “Oh, mixed martial arts, isn’t that the sport where people die in the cage?” or “Is that real?” But I think gradually people are going to take to the sport even more.

FT: Given that, do you think that even with the expanded growth and more sponsorships and more televised fights and network deals, do you think MMA as a whole will ever get to the point where you don’t see shows hosted in these back rooms and strip clubs anymore? Do you think all the shows are going to take on a more professional appearance like the UFC does?

Wertheim: There’s always a buck to me made, and you still need a feeder system. Like if you go to an NBA minor league game, that’s really the equivalent of one of the MMA strip club shows. I think those are always going to be there. As long as there is a buck to be made, I think that’s only going to continue, to be honest.

FT: Over the last couple seasons of The Ultimate Fighter, there has been some criticism that in spite of what it does for the athletes’ exposure and the chance to get in the UFC, that the show has taken a downturn when it comes to actual content. Do you think that TUF is still more a positive than a negative for the sport?

Wertheim: There are only so many variations of the show you can do. But I think it’s good to kind of pump the pay-per-views and the fighters. Everybody knows who Josh Koscheck is now. I think maybe they need to figure out a way to spice up the show a little bit, but I think the show has done a lot for the sport.

FT: Do you still watch TUF?

Wertheim: I don’t [Laughs]. Once you realize what’s going on – everybody has seen Dana swear – I don’t know how much more they can do with it.

FightTicker: You've written books on various sports like basketball, tennis, and pool. What kind of different challenges did you face writing a book on MMA?

Wertheim: That’s a good question, because in some ways it’s hard because I wrote a book about tennis, and that’s a sport I’ve covered, so with this, I was really trying to get up to speed on a lot of this stuff. But something that was easy [with mma] was that everybody was cool to deal with. If you want to talk to Randy [Couture], you talk to Randy [laughs]. Everybody was so easy to deal with, so open and honest, you’re not running through agents and that junk. It was a little tricky just because I didn’t initially know that much about the sport. Somebody would mention Gary Goodridge and I had to google him to figure out what it was, but it was very nice to work on a project where everybody was pretty accessible.

FT: When you told your colleagues you were going to write a book about mma, how did they react to that?

Wertheim: It was two years ago, and it [mma] has come a long way since then, but a reaction I got a lot was, “You’re writing a book about what?” And the people asking me this are mainstream sports journalists. It kind of gave me the sense that despite what Dana says, the sport still has a way to go. There were people from major TV networks asking if they [the fighters] used props. I think mma has come a long way, but there are still an awful lot of people who don’t differentiate it from something like a Toughman Competition.

FT: Along the way, did you have any doubts that this book was something you’d be able to parlay into a success or were you more concerned with doing it for your own edification, to inform yourself and others?

Wertheim: I think the publisher knew there was a market there, and it may not be what the 55 year old reader would like, but there was a demographic [for it]. It was hard, because I wanted to kind of write a mainstream book, and write it so the average sports fan could get a feel for what the sport was about. But I also didn’t want it to be all John McCain, human cockfighting – I wanted to make it so your readers could get something out of it. But I didn’t want it to be so specific, just talking about who triangle’d whom in UFC 11. It was sort of a balance between writing a mainstream book and also making it interesting enough so that the guy who had just been watching UFC could still get it.

FT: You used a lot of different quotations to open the chapters in the book, from Hemingway to Lao Tzu, Bruce Lee, Dana White, Sugar Ray Leonard – why did you want to start each chapter of the book with a quotation?

Wertheim: It was really a device to show different aspects of combat and fighting and competition. One thing I wanted to do with the book was just kind of clear up some of the misconceptions [about MMA]. You can like it or you can hate it, but I wanted to make the point that it’s legitimate competition. It’s not as barbaric as people might think it is.

FT: One of the topics that has been big in MMA news as of late is the fight to pass MMA legislation in New York. One of its biggest opponents, Assemblyman Bob Reilly has made some statements that MMA is more dangerous than boxing and football. Taking a sport like boxing versus MMA – do you think one is necessarily more violent than the other?

Wertheim: I think you can’t sanction boxing and not sanction MMA. I think boxing is so much worse. I think the promoters are more abusive, the fighters have harder lives afterward. Say what you will about the guys in MMA, but they’re not taking 30 minutes of non-stop headshots. They can take each other down and grapple, and with boxing you just stand there and eat leather. If you don’t like and you don’t want to see it sanctioned, that’s fine, but you can’t sanction boxing and not sanction MMA.

FT: A logistical question – the book was mainly about Militech – why the picture of Liddell in the front?

Wertheim: The author doesn’t always pick the cover [Laughs]. They [the editors] thought it [the picture of Liddell] was an arresting image.

FT: In the press packet I read through for Blood in the Cage, David Mamet is quoted as saying “As Voltaire said, ‘That’s why they invented the squeegee’”. What do you think Mamet was trying to convey with that?

Wertheim: He’s a big MMA guy, and I think he was thinking, “People bleed, it’s a part of life.”

FT: Do you have any other plans to write another book on MMA?

Wertheim: I just finished a tennis book, actually, going back to my roots a little bit. I don’t have any immediate plans to do it, but I wouldn’t be adverse to that.

FT: If people could only take away one thing from Blood in the Cage, what would you want it to be?

Wertheim: I think it depends on who the reader is. My big thing is, not everyone is going to like it [MMA], I understand that. But at least have the facts. At least understand what it is, and that’s what I was trying to do with the book. It’s [MMA] not for everyone and it’s always going to be controversial and have its critics, but I just wanted to clear up some misconceptions, what it is, what it isn’t, and you see where I stand on this. It’s here to stay, it’s not a fad, it’s not the XFL, it’s not something that we’re not going to know what it is in two years. If you don’t like it, fine, but at least know what you’re talking about.

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Wertheim was a great guy to talk to, and I really enjoyed Blood in the Cage. For a guy who claimed to have only picked up the sport a few years ago, I think he gave readers a fair and honest portrayal of the sport and one of its legends.

-PreView

(Originally posted on FightTicker.com)

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Stephen Zimmer at Joseph-Beth Bookstore in Lexington on Friday

From author Stephen Zimmer:

My first bookstore signing takes place this Friday evening at Joseph-Beth Booksellers in Lexington for The Exodus Gate from 7-9 pm. Those who already have a signed copy,bring it out and I will add a special inscription on another page to commemorate this night.

Come on out and say hi, and don't feel a need to buy the book. I'd love to just see some friendly faces to share this occasion with.

Joseph-Beth Booksellers is an incredible place, and I have bought books there since their very first version of the store at Lexington Green. It is simply amazing to think that my first bookstore signing will be at this incredible store.

Word has it that my editor Amanda DeBord and my illustrator Matthew Perry will both be hanging out as well.

For more information on The Exodus Gate, please feel free to visit www.seventhstarpress.com

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I'll soon be posting my review of Zimmer's book The Exodus Gate as well as an interview with the man himself. If you're in Lexington, KY on Friday night, make sure to check out the book signing.

-PreView

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FightTicker.com Book Review: BLOOD IN THE CAGE by L. Jon Wertheim

When offered an opportunity to review L. Jon Wertheim’s BLOOD IN THE CAGE: Mixed Martial Arts, Pat Miletich, and the Furious Rise of the UFC for FightTicker, I jumped at the chance. I’ve only had the opportunity to read a few MMA books, including FightTicker.com’s own Dave Mayeda’s Fighting for Acceptance, and as a reader of everything from Dante to Peanuts to Tolkien to Palahniuk, I’ve been happy to see that more and more books with my favorite sport as the main topic are getting out there. I also had a chance to interview Wertheim after reading his book – look for the interview in the next few days.

Blood in the Cage is not Wertheim’s first book, but it is his first (and at this point, only) book on MMA. Given Wertheim’s history as a sportswriter for Sports Illustrated and the fact that he had previously written books about women’s tennis, basketball, and pool, I was interested to see the perspective with which he would approach the fundamentally different sport of MMA.

Here’s a blurb from the press packet that accompanied the book:


In BLOOD IN THE CAGE: Mixed Martial Arts, Pat Miletich, and the Furious Rise of the UFC, the veteran sportswriter L. Jon Wertheim peers through the chain-link Octagon “to deliver the first honest journalism about mixed martial arts” (Jeff MacGregor, author of Sunday Monday). Offering the first inside account of this sensational new sport, as seen through the lens of its pioneer Pat Miletich, “the patron saint of badass,” Wertheim reveals how the six-time UFC champion has single-handedly transformed a gritty Iowa town – where he currently runs the most famous MMA training school in the world – into an unlikely hotbed for his sport. Miletich has also transformed many an average Joe into a walking weapon of mass destruction.


The first thing that struck me about Blood in the Cage was the quote that Wertheim used to open the book. From Ernest Hemingway’s Death in the Afternoon, it is a lengthy quotation but it bears repeating here because it truly sets the stage for the book:

There is always danger, and I should try not to defend it now, only to tell honestly the things I have found true about it. To do this I must be altogether frank, or try to be, and if those who read this decide with disgust that it is written by someone who lacks their fineness of feeling, I can only plead that this may be true. But whoever reads this can only truly make a judgment when he has seen the things that are spoken of and knows truly what their reactions to them would be.

Immediately after the quotation from this iconic author, readers are confronted with another equally powerful image – that of Jen “Lil Evil” Pulver’s fist in front of Wertheim’s face accompanied by an offer from Pulver to bust Wertheim’s nose, to help him gain a better appreciation of what fighters go through. Wertheim did not accept Pulver’s offer, but it’s clear from his book that taking the punch was not necessary for him to accurately portray fighters’ struggles and triumphs.
Wertheim’s book is filled with these sort of dichotomous images – a quotation from Lao Tzu opens one chapter while one from Vince Lombardi opens another. Nearly every chapter is opened the same way, featuring sayings from such figures as Bruce Lee, Sugar Ray Leonard, Dana White and movies such as Fight Club and Predator. The brutality of bar fights alongside the grace of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, the glitz and glamor of the UFC alongside small regional promotions held in local strip clubs.

Blood in the Cage really does live up to its subtitle as well – it thoroughly discusses mixed martial arts, Pat Miletich and the furious rise of the UFC; however, Wertheim doesn’t simply section it into separate parts where you read about MMA, then Pat Miletich, then the UFC, but he works them together in such a way that readers can get a sense of the history of the three of them developing together, with a focus on Miletich.

Wertheim covers nearly every aspect of Miletich’s life from his childhood to one of his last appearances as a coach in the now-defunct International Fight League. The coverage isn’t misleading – Wertheim writing reflects Miletich’s style – tough, no-nonsense, and with a fierce sense of competition alongside a huge amount of respect for the sport.

The longer that I have been a fan of MMA, the more I enjoy the backstories. I like hearing about the struggles fighters face trying to get to a good payday while trying to get respect. I like covering the local events and meeting the fighters and seeing the kind of training they do. I like seeing the dedication they put in, and I even like seeing and reading about the dark times and the problems fighters face, the rivalries (friendly or not) between different fight teams; the proverbial downside of it all, because these things give me a greater respect for the sport and the men and women participating in it. This background information and the things we don’t see on the TV shows and Pay-Per-View events are what truly set the scene for events. Blood in the Cage gives readers all of this. Granted, it is mainly with Pat Miletich or one of his fighters as the centerpiece of the stories, but Miletich’s history in the sport allows him to share some things that even hardcore fans might not know about. Additionally, Wertheim writes of his experiences with other fighters, both inside and outside the Miletich camp. Add that to Wertheim’s strong research and readers can learn even more inside information – again, things we don’t see on TV.

Take, for example, some things about Wertheim wrote about The Ultimate Fighter reality show. Before quoting Dana White’s infamous “Do you want to be a fu**ing fighter” speech in its entirety, Wertheim wrote about how this speech was due, at least in part, to the fact that word had gotten to the contestants that fighters on the NBC show “The Contender” were being paid $25,000 per fight while the TUF guys were not being paid anything. Obviously they were not happy about this. This prompted White to institute the $5,000 win fee for a KO or submission. Maybe some of you knew this – I did not. Or take Mikey Burnett’s head-first battle with one of the doors in the house – as Wertheim stated, “Never once was it mentioned that his father had died that night.”

With regard to Miletich’s TUF connection, I was also not aware that Miletich was in talks to be a coach on the third season of TUF, but White’s pseudo-reconciliation with Tito Ortiz put a stop to that which ultimately put a stop to Miletich’s dealings with the UFC. Wertheim also recounts various what speaks of as possibly the “mother of all street fights”, involving Tito Ortiz, Lee Murray, Chuck Liddell, Tony Fryklund, that all started because Fryklund mistook one of Ortiz’s friends drunkenly hugging Miletich as an attack.

In addition to this great inside information, Wertheim gives credit where credit is due to MMA websites, for fueling interest in the sport and keeping the UFC alive during the “dark years”. In my interview with Wertheim he even went as far as to admit that he was confused by the UFC’s refusal to credential websites as members of the press corps for events in spite of the fact that the internet carries the vast majority of MMA news.

Wertheim made sure that Blood in the Cage is accessible to all levels of fans – the hardcore, the mainstream and the newbies. He even went as far as to include a glossary of commonly used terms as well as the UFC Rules.

If I had a complaint about the book, it’s that I thought it ended too soon – not that it randomly cut off in the middle of something, but only that I wanted more. However, as the story of MMA continues to develop everyday, I recognize that one can only write about so much, and Wertheim covered a lot.

I do not want to go into too much detail about the content because I hope all of you will take some time and read the book. Wertheim clearly put a lot into it and I would be doing both him and the book a disservice by giving too much away.

I highly recommend Blood in the Cage not only to MMA fans, but also to those who claim to dislike the sport and guys like Bob Reilly (the NY assemblyman opposed to MMA legislation) because it presents an honest assessment of the sport, one of its biggest names, and the preeminent league. I recommend it not only because it often portrays the sport in the positive light in which it deserves to be portrayed but also because of realistic approach Wertheim takes in writing about it. A description of MMA from one of Wertheim’s novelist friends also serves as an appropriate description for Wertheim’s book - “It’s complete deconstruction, a stripping away of all pretense. It’s the real thing.”

You can purchase Blood in the Cage here.

-PreView

(Originally posted on FightTicker.com)


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