Your MMA Minor League Roundup, September 28th - 30th 2012

One of the great things about this series of tubes we're on is that results of mixed martial arts (MMA) contests from places far and wide are available instantaneously. Through the magic of streaming (sometimes even legal ones!), diehards like us can watch people who might not ever make even a scouting report fight journeymen who never amounted to anything.

Okay, maybe that isn't a great selling point, but you never know who the next great thing might be, and you'll already have seen them school some noob way back when.

I shall skip Bellator 74, as our man, Brian Hemminger, already covered it, but keeping here in the States, Xtreme Fighting Championships (the one based out of Florida) held their 20th event in Knoxville, Tennessee. The AXS TV network (formerly HDNet) broadcast the event live and viewers were treated to Michael Schiavello and Urijah Faber calling the action.

Minor programming note, The Voice announced who the next person in his upcoming interview series "The Voice Versus" would be, and it's none other than the master himself, Steven Segal.

Those of us that saw the seven fights on the televised card lucked into six finishes in an exciting night. Here are some highlights from guys that we might see moving up one day.

- It started with Nate Landwehr moving to 2-0 with a second round TKO over the now 6-2-1 Chris Wright. Wright took the fight on late notice and moved up from 135-pounds to keep Landwehr on the card and it showed. Wright was certainly game, but he was getting out-muscled. The best moment for Wright was when he nearly latched onto a sick little gogoplata from rubber guard. It was close, but no banana, and Landwehr survived all the other threats off his back to pound Wright out.

- Drew Kennedy survived an early blitz from Anthony Lemon to Rear Naked Choke him out near the end of the first.

- Joby Sanchez is a promising looking youngster who has a nice grappling game to supplement an successful amateur kickboxing career, a karate black belt and junior Olympics boxing success. Faber complimented Joby on his quick footwork, stating that it was reminiscent of Dominic Cruz. His opponent, Chris Dunn, hit a double, but Sanchez quickly scrambled and caught him in a triangle. Dunn defended poorly, as Faber pointed out well on the mic - you don't stack someone on a triangle, you posture up - the stack is to defend an armbar.

- Scott Holzman severely outclassed former Nick Newell victim, Chris Coggins, en route to an early GNP stoppage that was worthy of the GOOD NIGHT IRENE from Schiavello. Urijah Faber is not very comfortable on this side of the mic, as the post fight interview showed. Not everyone can be Joe Rogan.

Newell (the one-armed fighter, if you'd forgotten) will be headed to Team Alpha Male to train with Faber and the boys (and Tate) for his upcoming fight with Holzman.

Heading south to Brazil, there were a pair of organizations running this weekend, starting with Friday's Watch Out Combat Show 21 from Rio de Janiero. If there's one thing you can always count on in Brazilian sports, it's great names and nicknames, and WOCS did not fail to deliver. It also delivered a highlight reel KO and one of the nastiest heel hooks this side of Rousimar Palhares. Highlights:

- Bruno Robusto (see?) went buck-wild and obliterated Sergio Bomba in about 20 seconds with an 8-punch combo that ended with an uppercut KO. Bruno's post-fight celebration had Phil Baroni nodding in agreement, too.

- Alexandre Pulga showed off some slick BJJ (Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu) in taking out Felipe Alves. My notes from the fight read as follows: Pulga catches a kick from a firing Alves. Full guard. Pulga postures and Alves gets up. Another TD from Pulga, Alves up, Alves down. Half guard, side control... mount... all in like 15 seconds. Pulga working for a triangle as Alves scrambles, gets it, rolls and that's that. Triangle about 2 minutes in.

- The final highlight I'll mention is the aforementioned heel hook. Gustavo Ximu (pronounced sheemoo, for the record) just annihilated poor Ricardo Hulk's (see?) knee. Part of it was Hulk's own fault, as he seemed to screw up the defense and actually make it worse. I'll see if I can adequately paint a picture here: Ximu is on his back, with Hulk's right leg in a heel hook grip in his left armpit. Ximu's own right leg was way on the left side of H's body, and Hulk reached around and threw the left leg across his own waist to his right side. I think the leg moving across Hulk's body as he spun left tore his own knee.

Let's put it this way, when you're tapping to a leg lock while you're standing upright (ok, falling over), something's gone horribly wrong.

Keeping it in Brazil, Walid Ismael's Jungle Fight had it's 43rd card and there were a few things of note.

- The first is 18-year old American, Sean Peters went down into hostile territory and Overeem-style uber-kneed Carlos Rojas into a Lesnar-like fetal state. Bas Ruten is smiling at dah leevur shot.

- Ary Santos channeled his inner Nate Marquardt/Tekken character and button mashed his way to one of the most absurd finishes I've seen since Chan Sung Jung vs. Dustin Poirier. First, there was the front kick, Anderson-style, followed by a huge flurry of punches. Punches everywhere! Just when it looked like his opponent, Robert Fonseca, might live and circle out, Santos landed an enormous flying knee and Fonseca was out.

- The final prospect to look for would be Itamar Rosa. The young welterweight's now won 5 of his last 6 - including a win over former UFC fighter "Professor X" Xavier Foupa-Pokam - with a unanimous decision win over Kleber Silva. Silva took a hell of a beating and made it to the final bell (barely, his corner had to keep him upright and he didn't even make it to the center of the cage for the reading of the decision), but Rosa's on his way up.

The final stream of note involved the lesser emperor, Alexander Emelianenko, beating up on journeyman Konstantin Gluhov. In taking a unanimous decision, Aleks was able to hit cleaner, straighter punches and utilize good ground and pound to bloody Bluhov's face. Nothing else of note really happened on the televised card aside from a slick kneebar from Frenchman Gregory Babene.

There were a couple other events, including two Japanese organizations that did not stream their fights anywhere that I was able to find. No one of any real renown won at DEEP - Osaka Impact 2012, and Caol Uno continued his disappointing tail end of his career by falling to Shintaro Ishiwatari at Shooto - 10th Round.

EDIT: Just a couple hours after this was posted, I found this lovely little gem - Karo Parisyan fighting someone so obscure they don't even show up in ye olde Fight Finder: