posted by Large

Pascal’s wager is a suggestion posed by the French philosopher Blaise Pascal that even though the existence of God cannot be determined through reason, a person should wager as though God exists, because so living has everything to gain, and nothing to lose.

posted by Ariel Helwani

Here’s what you need to know about last weekend’s UFC 99 event:

1) Marcus Davis looked tentative against Dan Hardy. He lost their grudge match, and is still upset about it. He would like a rematch. Not sure what it’s in it for Hardy, though.

2) Caol Uno’s return to the UFC didn’t go as planned. He was too focused on taking Spencer Fisher down and was unsuccessful in doing so.

3) Mike Swick blew by Ben Saunders. He’s now 9-1 in the UFC, and itching for a title shot. One more big victory (Matt Hughes?) and he just may get it.

4) Mirko Cro Cop returned, eye-poked, won and then went back to Japan. Is it fair to compare this whole situation to the Carlos Boozer-Gordon Gund debacle from 2004? It’s pretty darn close.

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(For another take on the Cotto/Clottey drama, I bring you a piece from our man Shoefly, who sees fit to hit Josh Clottey when he’s down – L)

posted by Shoefly

I scored the Cotto/Clottey fight for Clottey 114-113, but I’m glad he lost. I found the whole thing sort of sick and depressing, like a slow-motion car accident or one of those science shows where they show you the details of the digestive system.

To be fair to Josh Clottey , and I won’t be after this , he probably did deserve to win that fight on points, and I think if he had committed the fouls Cotto did (the body slam, the blatant rabbit punch, the low blows) he would have had points deducted. Still, I have no sympathy for him, even when considering the egregious 116-111 card which had him winning only four rounds.

Joshua Clottey deserved to lose because he fought like a loser. He deserved to lose because he’s a natural second-best, taking over the mantle from the previous title-holder Luis Collazo as the ‘hard-luck story of his generation.” But the truth is… it’s not a matter of luck.

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posted by Large

I can’t believe what I’m reading, in the recaps and opinion pieces at other boxing sites and in the comments here at the Mas. What the hell were people watching last night that they can conclude after that fight that, ‘Cotto has lost it, Cotto isn’t that good, Cotto is still haunted by Margarito”?

To all of these people drawing these conclusions, I have a question: DID YOU NOT SEE THE CRATER OF A CUT OVER COTTO’S LEFT EYE THAT HE FOUGHT WITH FOR NINE FUCKING ROUNDS? JESUS!

To me, the cut essentially invalidates the fight and the result, period. It probably should have been stopped – that might have been in the better interest of both parties. Clottey is right to call for a rematch, and he’ll never get it, which is a shame, although he would have had his rematch if he’d manned up and gone out there and conclusively won those last three rounds, so he’s left to think about that when he’s fighting some up-and-comer on Friday Night Fights in November.

I’ll get to the decision later. It’s definitely debatable. But it was clear to me that Cotto would have been well within his rights to opt out of that fight at any point after the third round. Fights have been justifiably stopped for much lesser cuts. It also was clear to me that around the seventh round, when it was obvious that the cut was not going to stop pouring blood into his eye and making him all but defenseless to right hands, when even the announcers were starting to say, ‘man, they should probably stop this thing”… if the fight had been stopped then, Cotto would have had an indisputable lead on the scorecards. You can debate whether he deserved that decision after 12, but there is no debate that he was up after seven.

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posted by Large

Cotto’s approach tomorrow night will be everything, to my mind. I’ve mentioned this in the comments to my previous Cotto/Clottey post. Clottey has been seriously underrated by the oddsmakers and the media in this thing. He is one stalwart, hard-punching, iron-jawed, nastyass son of a bitch. He gave hell to Margarito and he spanked Zab like a baby and now he’s facing the biggest moment of his career. Cotto definitely has his work cut out for him if he wants to stay on that superstar train that possibly makes a future stop in Pacquiao Land, also known as Cash Money Town.

The best path to victory for Cotto against Clottey already has been intimated by insiders and pundits , the circular, in-and-out type of slash-and-burn ring generalship that made him look like the reincarnation of Ray Leonard for about five rounds of the Margarito fight. This approach seems like such a natural way for Cotto to go about fighting Clottey that even Clottey himself is talking about it. ‘If he runs like he did against Margarito,” Clottey said recently, ‘then there is going to be a problem for him, because I’m not going to allow him to run away from me, you understand?”

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posted by Ariel Helwani

The UFC returns tomorrow with another pay-per-view offering, and this time they’re coming at us from Germany for the very first time. Ja! Danke, Herr Dana. Remember, kids, you can catch the pay-per-view live at 3 PM ET / 12 PM PT instead of the usual 10 PM ET / 7 PM PT start time (if you are a creature of habit, you can also order it then, too).

This may be the best European card in the history of the UFC, with a guaranteed six fights airing on the pay-per-view. Here are my picks (betting lines courtesy of Bodoglife.com):

Proceed with caution pick: Cain Velasquez (-180) over Cheick Kongo (+145)
Kongo’s striking skills are better than Velasquez’s, but his ground game definitely isn’t. Heath Herring put out the blueprint as to how to defeat Kongo at UFC 82: Take him down and smother him. I don’t think Velasquez will lay and pray, but I think he will be able to impose his will on the Frenchman on the ground, while coasting to a unanimous decision victory.

‘Dog of the night: Caol Uno (+170) over Spencer Fisher (-210)
This may just be the nostalgia talking, but I am really psyched to see Uno come back to the UFC after a five-and-a-half-year hiatus (that’s Uno hitting the mitts with Freddie Roach at the Wild Card on the left). Fisher is quite an underrated fighter, and this should be a great standup battle, but what the hell, I like Uno via second round TKO.

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posted by Ariel Helwani

Last weekend’s MMA double bill certainly lived up to the hype (plus, it was free, so that’s always a good thing). A few days removed from the action, here are my award winners.

Biggest upset: Brett Rogers def. Andrei Arlovski , Round 1, :22

Shame on me for not even giving ‘The Grim” a puncher’s chance against the knockout-prone Arlovski. Throw in the fact that Arlovski has been spending way too much time at the Wild Card Gym in Los Angeles focusing on a potential boxing career, and also that this fight was put together three weeks ago and Rogers has a huge chip on his shoulder due to feeling overlooked and disrespected by the MMA community, and this fight had all the makings of an upset. Of course, I thought Arlovski would smoke Rogers simply due to his experience. Shows how much I know. Perhaps Arlovski forgot what it feels like to be punched with those tiny four-ounce gloves? Regardless, after back-to-back knockout losses, Arlovski quickly has moved from one of the top three heavyweights in the world to a non-factor. Oh, and that boxing debut he had planned for June 27? It’s now postponed due to the fact that he has been placed on medical suspension. Well done, sir.

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posted by Large

Masians, let’s gear up the machine.

I’m not going to prognosticate today , I’ll leave that for the traditional Friday piece. All I want to say at the moment is this: How is it possible that Josh Clottey is almost a 3-1 underdog in his fight with Miguel Cotto on Saturday? Last I checked I was seeing Cotto at -350 and Clottey at +275 across the board.

Have the oddsmakers lost their minds? Or do they know something we don’t know? Because all I know going into this in terms of intangibles is that Cotto and his career-long trainer (and lifelong uncle) were last seen throwing punches and cinder blocks at each other in Puerto Rico, and following that meltdown, Cotto hired his nutritionist to be his trainer, or to put it another way, he hired nobody as his trainer.

Can Cotto handle turmoil in his corner? No doubt. The word was that he and his uncle weren’t speaking to each other before the Margarito fight last summer, and we all know how that turned out. Cotto lost, yes, but he fought an unbelievable fight, and in retrospect we now also have to wonder if a big part of the reason he succumbed to Margarito’s onslaught was that he was getting hammered all night with hand-anvils.

So things have been sketchy with his team before, and he’s gone into the ring and fought like a superhero. But let us still admit that it is never an ideal circumstance to be surrounded by drama when heading into what promises to be a punishing test of your wherewithal.

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posted by Ariel Helwani

This weekend is a huge one for mixed martial arts with “Strikeforce: Lawler vs. Shields” on Saturday night (Showtime) and “WEC: Faber vs. Brown 2″ on Sunday night (Versus).

I feel like I’ve been talking/writing about both of these events forever, and have quite a bit of work to show for it. Here are a few links to help get you ready for what should be a fun weekend of fighting.

Strikeforce

• Joe Riggs goes off on Jake Shields…
• … And Jake Shields responds
• Andrei Arlovski still can’t get over his loss to Fedor
• Robbie Lawler isn’t thrilled with having to fight at a catchweight
• It’s now or never for Phil Baroni

WEC

• Faber wants to beat Brown up
• Mike Brown: The evolving champion
• Grispi prepares to end Pulver’s career
• Cub Swanson faces a must-win situation
• Jens Pulver wants nothing to do with Jose Aldo
• Manny Gamburyan: new home, new weight class, new beginning
• James Krause has nothing to lose on Sunday night

posted by Large

Masians, I realize I’m a little late on this news, but I finally got around to watching Cintron/Angulo last night (didn’t bother with Berto/Urango – if anyone wants to convince me that I need to watch this fight, feel free to give it a go, but until I hear otherwise, what with Reggie Large and all, time is scarce in Large Land) and I want to tell you something up front , I scored it a draw. Because I think the scoring in this thing was a little bogus on the whole, let me give you a look at my full card:

A – C

10-9
9-10
9-10
9-10
10-9
9-10
9-10
10-9
10-9
9-10
10-9
10-9

There were only a few rounds that I thought could have gone the other way , the first, in which Cintron was more active but Angulo, to my eyes, was more effective, and the tenth, which was a close round in which I thought Cintron’s work-rate tipped it for him but where I wouldn’t argue much if you told me you had it for Angulo based on pure aggression.

As you see, in that I had each guy winning one of what I saw as the two debatable rounds, I’m effectively saying that this thing was a draw, period. I admit that I was shocked by what I was seeing, because based on the reports I’d read I expected to see Cintron pull a Hopkins to Angulo’s Pavlik. That’s the way the fight got written, and how it got scored by the judges as well, 116-112 on all three cards.

I don’t know what fight they were watching, either the judges or the various internet pundits who drank their Kool-Aid (and that reminds me, never did we discuss here at the Mas the question of Floyd Sr. and his pitcher of Kool-Aid… one of the funnier, more bizarre little vignettes in 24/7 history… but I digress).

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