Good pick up.

Having The Freedom To Fight in other organizations Is Key When Signing Somewhere. That Reason Alone Is Why We Will Never See Fedor In The UFC.

EliteXC Is Getting Better And Better although They Did Give My Boy Nick Diaz Troubles At The Last Event I Still Think They Are Right Up There With The UFC In Terms Of The Fighters Elite Has. They Got Slice , Melendez , Nick Diaz , Lawler , Sheilds , Fickett , Cung Lee , F.Shamrock , Antonio Sliva And Lots Of Other Really Good Fighters .

Nice to see he’ll still be able to fight in Australia. Watching this guy in the flesh is truly amazing.

..oh and i can’t believe you’ve put Kimbo first on that list sour diesel. For shame…

LOL .. I Know I Know.

This is our true Pride guy fighting in the EXC, so let’s see how he fairs then. I suspect that he, even w/o roids, will be the top of the class for sure. His takedowns are good, but his punching is great.

Lombard will be #3 as their star in the next year behind Kimbo/Silva.

Kimbo may very well soon be the biggest name in MMA & I think Hector has all the attributes to be right up there too in the CBS era of mma.

Justin

This is an awesome move by Elite XC. I really enjoy watching Hector fight

Hector Lombard does have a pretty exciting style of fighting. Because of Karo, alot of people “assume” that these Judo guys must win a lot of fights by decision. Although 4 of his last 6 wins have come via decision, he does hold 2 first round KO over that span. And we all thought that Roger Huerta had a buisy 2007, Hector fought 8 fights in 2007, going 7-0-1.

The bigger problem I have with Lombard at this time is that the 3 times that he took a step up in competition, he lost or came to a draw.. His two fights in PRIDE, Gegard Mousasi and Akihiro Gono, he lost. Kyle Noke, the Aussie fighter already in EliteXC, he fought to a draw. *It should be noted that GeGeorge Sotiropoulos (FYI, Mania, you have his name spelled wrong in the left nav, you have an “i” toward the end) who fights in the UFC fought Kyle Noke twice. The each won a fight by decision. George is a WW so he was the smaller fighter against Noke (MW). Lombard was the larger figher, but wasn’t able to pull of a win. Although, I suppose one decision win for each fighter is equivalent to a one fight draw between two fighters. What do you think?

Honestly, I wasn’t “too excited” about Hector Lombard signing with the UFC for that Karo fight – EliteXC should suit him perfectly, especially for now. I mean, I think that if there was truely “A Top Aussie Tighter” he would have some serious undefeated record with most fight ending rather quickly, as opposed to many decision victories. I say that, because the level of MMA competition in Australia is no where near that of the US, Canada, Japan, Brazil, Thailand. Although, Australia has been on the rise as of late, hence, we’ve seen an imflux of Aussia mma fighters coming to America.

EliteXC is being very smart by not making fighter sign exclusive contracts. That will allow them keep signing good fighters.

The UFC should at some point will have to give in and start allowing fighters more freedom or they Risk EliteXC becoming a real competitor to the UFC. In most cases, I think it wouldnt hurt the UFC too much to allow fighters to fight in different promotions. Take Hector for example:

If he were to fight in the UFC would people really care what happens in his CFC fights in Australia? I doubt it, only a handful of us will even know about it.

Maybe the UFC should consider making the contracts only exclusive in the USA. This would give foreign fighters a chance to showcase themselves in their home countries or in Japan while still crippling the groth of EliteXc. In addition they could add a clause in their contract that states, UFC champions muct forfeit their non exclusive rights while holding the UFC belt.

Would that really hurt the UFC? Doubt it

Will it make itself more attractive to top notch international free agents? Hell Yeah!

EliteXC is doing a good job signing these great fighters. Hopefully one day the UFC will realize cross promotion is the way to be.

the WW div. in EliteXC is starting to look pretty good.IMO J.Sheilds & D.Fickett are top 5 WW in MMA.Nick Diaz is still a top 10 WW IMO.
i agree with john about the contracts.

do all the elite xc fighters have non-exclusive contacts? i dont think so. that would mean the ufc could sign any of their fighters at ant time right, unless their already signed to a particular fight. i’ll bet jake sheilds,cung le, kimbo and most of their top guys are exclusive. shaw might co-promote these guys, but only w/ the ufc. what other big org is there? dream and world victory arent there yet. shaw probably only signed lombard non-exclusive cause he isn’t proven yet.

the WW div. in EliteXC is starting to look pretty good.IMO J.Sheilds & D.Fickett are top 5 WW in MMA.Nick Diaz is still a top 10 WW IMO.
i agree with john about the contracts.

Drew Fickett is a top 5 WW fighter? You’re tripping! He got dominated by Josh Koscheck for 4:30 and was going to lose a unanimous decision before that knee. He has lost to both Nick Diaz and Karo, and he is also clearly behind GSP, Jon Fitch, Matt Hughes, Jake Shields and Matt Serra. I think the UFC has a lot of other WW fighters (Koscheck, Sanchez, Davis, Alves)who would beat him more often than not as well.