e martë, 12 qershor 2007

Color Me Bad


Until recently, it had become pretty obvious who the target market for the UFC was just by looking at its fighters. 18-34. Male. Vanilla. Goatee. Tattoos. Tapout Beanie. You get the picture.

Lately, however, we've noticed that the UFC has begun to make use of the other colors on its palette and yesterday's UFN was no exception. By our count 7 of the 9 bouts included a fighter of color or different culture, which is something that we applaud, not from a political standpoint, but from a standpoint of wanting to see the best fighters in the octagon. You can't claim to have the best fighters and "world" champions when your pool of talent is limited to the northwest hemisphere. We will keep our fingers crossed for this trend to continue.

Of particular note, we were truly impressed by Brazilian product Thiago Tavares, who thoroughly dominated the very tough Jason Black during round one and then pulled off a beautiful triangle choke to close things out in round two. His stand up, wrestling and submissions all looked top-notch and we couldn't help but notice that he strikes an eerie resemblance to another young Brazilian phenom that burst onto the UFC scene 10 years ago. Hopefully in ten years we will not be asking ourselves where the "old Thiago" went.

Discuss this on Sherdog.

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