[Froggy Canuck]

I hope this hasn't yet been posted (yes I used the search function), but here's an article from this Saturday's Ottawa Citizen on the UFC/TUF/MMA...

Pretty decent article with a few blanket statements, but the author seems at least to have done some basic research. It's not the best I've seen, but certainly not the worst (i.e. see other threads under "newspaper article").

Anywho, the article also featured a huge picture of GSP. I'm missing the last part of the article, but it basically states that MMA is here to stay and talks a bit about some Canadians in MMA, including GSP...

Here goes:

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PUBLICATION: The Ottawa Citizen
DATE: 2006.04.08
EDITION: Final
SECTION: Style Weekly: Television
PAGE: K1 / Front
COLUMN: Sports
BYLINE: Mark Anderson

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Ultimate fighting is here, and it's not taking any guff

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Don't get me wrong: I like a good punch to the head as much as the next guy. That said, there's something vaguely off-putting about watching two guys beat the living tar out of each other in the no-holds-barred spectacle that is the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC).

It may have to do with the age-old dictum that you don't hit a man when he's down -- especially with forearm smashes to the face. If you're going to watch UFC -- aka mixed martial arts -- you're going to have to set such dainty quibbles aside because, contrary to what your mamma or the Marquis of Queensbury may have taught you, getting an opponent on his back and repeatedly pounding his face with fists or forearms is an excellent strategy. They even have a name for it: the "ground and pound."

Another approved strategy is choking. Yet another might be the application of various wrestling holds designed to rip shoulders from their sockets or break limbs. An old-fashioned roundhouse kick or knee to the head, with or without a spray of blood, can also end a bout in flash.

For the casual viewer, most UFC bouts have the look of particularly nasty street brawls, graceless and rule-less battles to the finish. The gladiatorial atmosphere is only helped by the "ring," a chain link fence-enclosed octagon where the fighters conduct their grizzly business.

More seasoned viewers, however, quickly realize there's a great deal more strategy involved than first meets the eye. Indeed, the vast array of martial art disciplines available to the combatants -- boxing, kickboxing, karate, judo, jujitsu, Brazilian jujitsu, kung fu, Greco-Roman and freestyle wrestling -- means there is, if anything, more science involved in UFC bouts than there is in the so-called sweet science of straight-up boxing.

There's also more history behind mixed martial arts fighting than might be implied by the relatively recent phenomenon of the UFC. The origins go back a full 80 years, when a form of mixed martial arts known as Vale Tudo (literally "anything goes") emerged as an underground sport in Brazil, percolating along in relative obscurity for decades.

In the early 1990s, a group of American promoters latched onto the idea of pitting the top proponents of various martial arts against one another, as a means of settling the age-old argument of which discipline is most effective in hand-to-hand combat. With this in mind, the Ultimate Fighting Championship was organized as a single tournament in 1993. Its immediate success as a spectator sport drove a wave of interest in mixed martial arts, first in Brazil, then Japan, and finally the U.S.

In 2001, the UFC was re-organized under the new ownership of Zuffa, LLC, complete with new rules prohibiting some of the more egregious and dangerous practices -- head butting, eye gouging, biting, clawing, stomping, trachea or clavicle grabbing, and the ever-popular groin attack -- as well as a full suite of weight classes and rankings, standardized rounds (three of five minutes), mandatory drug testing and the requirement of State Athletic Commission approval in New Jersey, Nevada, Florida and Louisiana.

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The Ultimate Fighter, today, 10 p.m., Spike TV UFC Unleashed, Monday, April 10, 9 pm, Spike TV Ultimate Fighting Championship, Andrei Arlovski vs. Tim Sylvia, April 15, 10 p.m., Pay Per View