http://msn.foxsports.com/boxing/story/5827748
The Weekly Tapout: Imagine this
Dave Doyle / FOXSports.com
Posted: 31 minutes ago
At a high-intensity event like a big Ultimate Fighting Championship card, aggressive music is the norm. With few exceptions, the fighters tend to enter the octagon to the sounds of their favorite thrash ****l or hardcore hip-hop artists.
Then there's "The Snowman" Jeff Monson. The No. 1 contender to the UFC heavyweight championship stunned the audience at UFC 61 at Mandalay Bay by coming out to his match against Anthony Perosh to the sounds of
Imagine by John Lennon.
"I wanted to give the fans something to think about," said Monson, an American Top Team-affiliated fighter based out of Olympia, WA.
"That song reflects everything I believe in. I believe in peace on earth and I want to see everyone learn to get along."
Odd beliefs for a fighter? Perhaps. But then, not every combatant has tattoos of a Soviet hammer and sickle and an anarchy symbol, either.
After the music stopped playing at UFC 61, Monson methodically picked apart Perosh. Known primarily as a grappler — he's a former Brazilian Abu Dhabi champion —
Monson won with his standup and striking, hitting a big knee and knocking Perosh down with an uppercut before going into his ground-and-pound and scoring a tapout at 2:41 of the first round.
"The fight went a little differently than I was expecting," said Monson. "He's a jiu-jistu guy, so I was expecting more of a ground battle. But you gotta learn to adapt to the situation, so I took my shots where I could and it worked."
Monson's win over Perosh was his
16th in a row. His last loss was a decision against Forrest Griffin in 2002.
Monson was a light heavyweight at the time, and
he knows that at 5-foot-9 and 240 pounds, he's going to give up height, weight and reach to champion Tim Sylvia, who's 6-foot-8.
"I'm ready for my shot," said Monson. "I've watched Tim Sylvia and he's a tremendous opponent who deserves to be the champ,
but I think my strengths mesh well with him. I'm going to give him a battle. Don't count me out."
The Sylvia-Monson match is tentatively scheduled for UFC 65 in November.
UFC's next Ultimate Fight Night card set
While the bulk of the attention in UFC is on the big UFC 62 event at Mandalay Bay on Aug. 26 (featuring Chuck Liddell's light heavyweight title defense against Babalu Sobral), the promotion has also finalized its next Ultimate Fight Night special at Red Rock Casino in Las Vegas on Aug. 17.
The main event features a welterweight showdown between Diego Sanchez and Karo Parisyan, with the winner in line for the next title shot after September's Matt Hughes-Georges St. Pierre fight in Anaheim.
Sanchez won the middleweight division of the Ultimate Fighter season two and has been undefeated as a welterweight since, with his most recent win a unanimous decision over John Alessio at UFC 60.
Parisyan, who is 23-3 for his career, worked his way up to a shot at Hughes last year, but suffered a torn quadriceps muscle in training and had to pull out. Parisyan, a student of the legendary "Judo" Gene LaBell, returned to the octagon at UFC 59 and looked tremendous in an aggressive victory over Australian Nick Thompson.
"Diego is a tough guy," Parisyan told UFC.com. "People say things about him because he came off the show, but I've always said it doesn't matter where he came from, he's a tough guy, he's undefeated, and he's proven himself."
Other fights of note on the show include a couple matchups for fighters in need of momentum. Middleweight Chris Leben, who was rocked by Anderson Silva in June, takes on Brazilian Jorge Santiago. And welterweight Joe Riggs will look to bounce back from his first-round submission loss to Mike Swick at UFC 60 with a non-televised matchup against Jason von Flue.
Here and there
One of the most consistently successful smaller MMA promotions has been the SportFighting group based in New Jersey. Their next show is on Saturday, Aug. 19 at the Mennen Arena in Morristown, N.J. Main event is a heavyweight title fight between Tom Muller of the Serra/Longo Competition Team and the American Top Team's Petrus Walker. For more information, check out their web site.
How's this for scary? Brock Lesnar, the former NCAA heavyweight wrestling champion who quit the WWE for an
unsuccessful attempt at an NFL career, has hooked up with Miletich Fighting Systems in Iowa, home of UFC champs Tim Sylvia and Matt Hughes. If Lesnar is serious about MMA, we could have a monster on our hands soon.
The live gate numbers are in for UFC 61. There were 9,999 paid admissions (11,167 in attendance) for a gate of
$3,350,775. This makes UFC 61 the
second highest-grossing show in UFC history, behind February's Chuck Liddell-Randy Couture match, also at Mandalay Bay, which drew $3,382,400.
Dave Doyle is an editor for FOXSports.com.
