- « Fubar II. In theatres now. (***3/10)
- Ghost Whisperer Final Season. On DVD October 19th. (******6/10) »
Year: 2010
Genre: Sports, TV series
Country: United States
Language: English
Featuring: Alistair Overeem, Brett Rogers, Robbie Lawler, Babalu Sobral, Fedor Emelianenko, Fabricio Werdum, Cris Cyborg, Jan Finney
Run time: 5 hours, 33 minutes
DVD distributor: Paramount Home Entertainment
Midway through the second disc of the Strikeforce MMA set (out October 12th from Paramount Home Entertainment), Showtime TV takes a break midway through a fight to interview one of the female superstars of Strikeforce. Cris Cyborg is the middleweight womens’ champion. Her husband, Evangelista Cyborg, is going to be fighting in an upcoming bout on this same card. A few things bothered me about this. First of all, this is a DVD. You can cut out all the excessive stuff – interviews and back stories and pre-fight analysis, and get right to the actual fight. It would be very easy to do.
Second, her name (and her husband’s name) is Cyborg. They have clearly changed it from something else, because nobody, ever, has been actually named Cyborg. Furthermore – what this means is that the husband, Evangelista Cyborg, decided that rather than go by his real name, he was going to nickname himself after the T-1000 in Terminator 2. Or maybe he’s channeling Winona Ryder in Alien Resurrection. Either way, I hate nicknames like this in sports, because it makes everyone in the sport seem like a Hooters waitress or a stripper. I can go to Hooters and get chicken wings from Diamond and beer from Vanilla while I watch Cyborg take on Wolverine in the cage. Guh. The most irritating thing of all? Cris Cyborg took her husband’s name. Not his real name, his nickname. They are now the Cyborg family.
Susannah Collins is the sideline reporter for Strikeforce MMA, a hot chick who is there simply to provide some hot chickery, and while she is pretty good at her job, this was one of the worst interviews I have ever seen. The fact is, Cris Cyborg barely speaks English. At all. She knows only one phrase – “training hard”. So while Collins asks her about her husband’s upcoming match, she just says “training hard”. Does your husband come to you for training advice? “Yes, training hard”. What do you think of his chances? “No, training hard.” You have a fight coming up against a really tough opponent named…something or other…as she rises through the ranks of Strikeforce, how do you rate her as a fighter going into your match? “Oh, very much training hard.” The interview goes on. And on. And ON! Just pull the plug here! Or, don’t included it on the DVD – it makes for some very boring viewing!
But that’s the way of the Strikeforce MMA DVD. It’s just three events, exactly as broadcast on Showtime. One event in San Jose, one in St. Louis, and one in Los Angeles. The title fights are between Alistair Overeem and Brett Rogers, then Robbie Lawler and Babalu Sobral, then Fedor Emelianenko and Fabricio Werdum. I assume those names are known to fight fanatics, but I had heard of only two – Emelianenko and Lawler. Even then, I was only vaguely interested in their fights. I don’t mind watching great fights, but that’s all I want – show me the highlights. Show me the best fights. I really, really don’t care about the undercards to the title bouts, and I care even less about interviews with random people or shots of Herschel Walker in the crowd.
This, I feel, is the beauty of sports on DVD. I have a ton of boxing DVDs, because then I can sit down and watch the classic fights, over and over, without commercial interruptions or delays between rounds. I know how Ali-Frazier II is going to end, but I will watch the entire thing anyway. I’ve seen the Thrilla in Manilla maybe forty times. But I wouldn’t be putting it on if I had to skip over the interview with Zsa Zsa Gabor at ringside between the third and fourth round. So for fanatics of mixed martial arts, who simply have to have the Lawler-Sobral fight on DVD, I can see them rushing out to get this. But for the rest of us, with only a passing interest in MMA, there is just too much filler, and not enough great fights, to keep my interest.