#and it's all thanks to WME again

[wp100]

1500 Mythic+ rating hell yeah

[thearchercore]

omg… re: the charles like, i’m just giggling at how petty it is. (imo at least) this is a direct response to ferrari leaking the news about his contract negotiations, like a “hey look at how well max and i look together haha (threatening)” and i love it 😭😭😭 (again imo) its completely undeniable now that charles is using lestappen for leverage in his negotiations and im glad hes dispelling the no backbone rumours!!

thank u and everyone else involved for the lestappen gate tag btw! you have me fully onboard 🫶🫶

NO BUT LIKE -- the implications of this

you have to understand, charles likes to play subtle PR games. at the beginning of the year, the charles to merc rumours were emerging and he managed to respond by liking 3 separate tweets about staying with ferrari to shut them down.

now, fast forward to november, charles to rbr agenda is LOUD. ferrari is leaking information about contract negotiations to possibly (and dare i say unsuccessfully) increase public pressure on charles to renew his contract. they even mention in the leaks that he does not have many other options outside of ferrari which is a lie -- red bull publicly voiced interest in him and charles definitely works with multiple plans, so again, this is just them manipulating the narrative

after his crash on sunday, all eyes are on charles and what he says, what's his next move. and what does he do? likes a freaking lestappen edit on main. an edit where a clip of a ferrari car cuts into a clip of an rbr car. this ferrari -> red bull transition may be charles' way to hint at the current contract rumours.

and in a way it's genius, it's not too loud to get a call from ferrari pr to unlike it (like the previous tweets he had to unlike) but also gets the message across.

one thing about charles, he will be smart about his messaging online and we're just witnessing his first choice to speak up after sunday in his own way.

ALSO BEAR IN MIND -- charles is rn in LA for something regarding his WME contract, he's making moves faster like no one else atm

[saintmeghanmarkle]

I'm now utterly convinced MEGAN MARKLE IS ON THIS SUB. MY REASONING BELOW. by u/deedee50

I'm now utterly convinced MEGAN MARKLE IS ON THIS SUB. MY REASONING BELOW. Two days ago in a post a member stated they were scared, posting their thoughts on markle and hank trying to work their way back in. i tried to link to the posters and posts but it would'nt let me.Another poster posted this reply in the post.." I know so many of us, globally, are beyond exhausted of those two, but as a Texan, I am livid. The absolute NERVE she has of even crossing the state line is beyond me. Her heartless "pap walk" in Uvalde was heinous enough, but I recently saw the photographs of her checking the cameras with the photographers that SHE brought, to make sure they got "perfect shot**".** She did that several times. And while she did, she would move mourners out of her way, mourners including mothers who had just lost their child. She was at an elementary school. Disgusting does not begin to cover it**.** She has never reached out to Uvalde since the few hours she was there for her photo op. She has never done anything for the families of the victims (2 of the victims were not only teachers but also mothers), the survivors, the faculty or for the school itself. Absolutely vile."Now we have hank and skank visiting... Harry and Meghan were visiting Uvalde in Texas for a local event to support families who were affected by the mass shooting in particular the family of the teacher mentioned above.Co-incidence? could they have organised it in 2 days? BUT there were many other posts prior to that one , stating the same sentiment & feeling regarding her Uvalde visit, so is this visit part of her 99th re-launch to improve her popularity ratings. Does she read here to gather how the sinners feel about her and how to improve her image, after Uvalde I'm convinced she's lurking, even posting at times, as shes apparently prone to "putting the feelers out". Plus she had to pay to sit on that panel (or rather WME did). To play the victim again about being bullied on line, when they have called the sugars to thank them for their support, same sugars who told me they hope my cancer kills me soon. they're 20 plus abusive msgs i rec'd like that, showing the hypocrites they are. ty for reading everyone. Your opinion?​​​​ post link: https://ift.tt/AW8JfLp author: deedee50 submitted: March 10, 2024 at 01:46PM via SaintMeghanMarkle on Reddit disclaimer: all views + opinions expressed by the author of this post, as well as any comments and reblogs, are solely the author's own; they do not necessarily reflect the views of the administrator of this Tumblr blog. For entertainment only.

[mattnben-bennmatt]

Ben Affleck's interview w/ The Hollywood Reporter (10 October 2012)

Confessions of Ben Affleck

Argo's Oscar-baiting director, newly 40, talks about his career turnaround, how anxiety drives him, what Matt Damon's wife might think when he comes over, and what he emailed J. Lo.

By Stephen Galloway

On Aug. 15, Ben Affleck — Oscar-winning wunderkind of Good Will Hunting, other half of “Bennifer,” skyrocketing superstar who soared, sank and sizzled again thanks to his directing endeavors Gone Baby Gone and The Town — turned 40.

He celebrated with a dinner party thrown by his wife, Jennifer Garner, at their Pacific Palisades home, attended by a handful of close friends on the brink of middle age, including Matt Damon, his WME agent Patrick Whitesell and Disney production president Sean Bailey.

“It was not fun for me,” says Affleck of entering his fifth decade. “It’s this moment of bifurcation between youth and middle age. One wants to think of oneself as young. One does not want to think: ‘Wait a minute! How can I be halfway to death?’ ”

Halfway to death, perhaps, but sitting with him one late September morning at Santa Monica’s Hotel Casa del Mar, this actor-turned-director — the Hollywood embodiment of nine lives — seems anything but as he bristles with nervous energy, words spilling out of him about his roller-coaster past and glittering present.

“He’s gone to the top and then to the bottom and now to the top again,” says Damon, his friend since the two met as children. “He’s gotten the full measure of what this life in Hollywood can offer, and now he is comfortable with it.”

Nearly a decade after Affleck had one of the most ignominious falls in Hollywood history — thanks in part to Gigli and dubious PR stunts like kissing Jennifer Lopez‘s derriere in a music video — he has emerged, unexpectedly and almost suddenly, as one of the best directors of his generation. Warner Bros.’ Argo, an Iranian hostage drama that he helmed, is an early leader in the awards race. Set to open Oct. 12, it was called a “tight and tense political thriller” by THR‘s Todd McCarthy and has earned the kind of raves that once would have seemed impossible for the star of Armageddon.

All this is the hard-earned climax to a deeply considered shift Affleck embarked on eight years ago, when he set out his goals and determined never again to do work he was ashamed of. “I made the decision: ‘I’m never, ever, ever going to do anything where I don’t absolutely kill myself to get it right,’ ” he recalls.

Vanished is the man who dwelt on his deep insecurity when he and this reporter last sat down about five years ago. During that conversation, he admitted the Gone Baby Gone shoot had left him physically sick from stress. “I’m very insecure,” he said. “I’m human, just like anybody else.”

Vanished, too, is the tabloid pinata with his colorful love life, personal drama (including a stint in rehab) and career highs and lows. “I tried to ignore it as much as possible,” he says of the fuss. “There was only one way to handle a situation like that: Go straight through it.”

He addresses all this with an openness and even sweetness that would surprise those used to the more coiled figure onscreen. “I was shocked at how warm he is,” says Alan Arkin, who plays a Hollywood producer in Argo. “He’s got a great deal of warmth, and he’s not afraid to show it. He has a wonderfully open, youthful quality that you don’t see a lot in the characters he plays.”

Sitting by a window overlooking the Pacific, in jeans and a blue-checkered shirt, unshaven and sipping from a plastic cup of soda, with flecks of gray in his beard and a gold tooth he’s never bothered to replace, he has embraced the very doubts that once assailed him. “Anxiety is a kind of fuel that activates the fight-or-flight part of the brain in me,” he says. “It makes sure that a velociraptor isn’t around the corner and that you do as much as you possibly can to survive. Because Hollywood has a lot in common with Jurassic Park and its primeval-dinosaur universe.”

Affleck, the one-time party boy, now gets up at 6, goes to bed at 9 and has been married for seven years with three children (Violet, Seraphina and Samuel) under age 7. As he discusses married life, Garner, about to fly to New York, calls on his cell.

“Hey, love, are you on the plane?” he asks gently. “I’m in an interview right now, but I love you very much.” Then he quips that her trip is doubly traumatic for the actress, “First, ’cause she’s away from the kids, second, ’cause I’m in charge.”

She might have reason to worry, given how consumed Affleck is by work. “There are so many decisions to be made, and it’s more than you can get to each day,” he says. “There is this underlying anxiety not just about getting the movie done but getting it done really well. It keeps my head spinning — even when I am giving the kids a bath. I can be giving them a bath or feeding them, and sometimes they say, ‘Dad, pay attention!’ ”

When he’s not with his family, he’s at home working in a “sort of little office hut” or developing material through Pearl Street Productions, the Warners-based company he runs with Damon, who has remained a lodestar throughout the ups and downs and who now lives down the street from him. “We see each other almost too often,” laughs Affleck. “I wonder if his wife is thinking, ‘Is he really going to come over every night?’ “

When he’s on his own, he reads and consumes films avidly. He has just finished Laurence Gonzales‘ nonfiction book Surviving Survival, about how individuals cope with horrific incidents like being attacked by sharks; he also has been reading novelist Gillian Flynn‘s suspense drama Gone Girl and David Mitchell‘s Cloud Atlas.

Rather than watch television, he recently has immersed himself in a trip through some of the greatest films ever made — from the 2011 Mexican movie Miss Bala to director Victor Fleming‘s The Wizard of Oz and Gone With the Wind, which he viewed back-to-back — as if he wants to quench a raging thirst for the knowledge that will allow him to seize the ring within his grasp. He is intrigued to hear about Memo From David O. Selznick, a collection of the Gone With the Wind producer’s notes, and orders it immediately by phone after his interview.

He also spends time at a coastal getaway near Savannah, Ga., and in his New York apartment, where he expects to move with Garner when their kids have grown up. He plays poker on a regular basis with actor Hank Azaria and his Argo producer Grant Heslov. “It’s very, very psychological,” he explains of his attraction to the game. “It’s about weakness and strength and divining whether the other person is strong or weak.”

He goes skeet shooting and admits to owning several guns — which he has embraced since his wife faced a stalker.

“The stalker had been to our house many times and ultimately came to my children’s school and was arrested,” notes Affleck of Steven Burky, who was deemed insane in 2010 then placed in a mental ward and ordered to stay away from the Affleck family for 10 years. “It gave me a stronger sense of feeling protective about my family. There’s a lot of crazy, weird people out there. It’s an ugly world.”

Affleck has given up any notion of reforming it. After once being rumored to want a career in public office, he now says, “I loathe politics.” He supports President Obama but has not actively campaigned — partly because of his workload, partly because of his political disillusionment and partly because he is convinced the president will win the election despite the Oct. 3 debate. “I watched it backstage at Jimmy Kimmel,” he says. “It wasn’t his best performance. But I am still going to vote for him, and I am very, very confident he will win.”

As to his other interests: “Kids eat up that kind of hobby time,” he admits. “I used to ride motorcycles. I used to play basketball. And now basically I’m at home with them, or I work.”

The work itself will have its greatest test with Argo. Affleck was fresh off 2010’s The Town and in talks to helm another movie at Sony when Warners showed him Chris Terrio‘s script about real-life CIA operative Tony Mendez and his little-known plan to free six men and women who had fled the U.S. embassy in Tehran when it was seized in 1979. The escapees took refuge with two Canadian diplomats, and Mendez set about creating a phony Hollywood film, Argo (that title derives from a CIA in-joke — “Ah, go f– yourself” — though it is not presented that way in the movie), as a front to squirrel them out of the country.

The moment he read it, Affleck called Heslov and George Clooney, who had been developing the project through their Smoke House production company, “and I just launched into what my take was and didn’t stop talking for 45 minutes.”

Heslov and Clooney were sold.

“This film tonally is a very tricky piece, and he had very intelligent things to say about that,” recalls Heslov, describing the movie’s tightrope balance of comedy and suspense. “His idea was to push the thriller aspect a little more than we’d originally talked about. And he was right.”

Initially, Affleck had envisioned reworking the script himself, but the draft was so impressive and his relationship with Terrio so good that he allowed Terrio to make the changes. Together, they added a new opening that succinctly explains the Iranian revolution and how it led to the capture of more than 50 Americans, who would remain captive for 444 days within the embassy.

They also worked on redefining Affleck’s character, based on Mendez. “He was a little bit more broken in the draft that we got,” notes Affleck. “He was older, an alcoholic. And I changed that and made his personal stuff revolve more around his family and losing his marriage.” Ultimately, he says, that was “the wrong choice because I ended up cutting most of it out. I cut out six or seven minutes from the final film, which is a lot.”

Other characters were merged, and some situations simplified, which later would lead to complaints from former Canadian Ambassador Ken Taylor that his country hadn’t been given its due. Affleck addressed those concerns with a card at the end of the film that explains how the CIA plot complemented Canadian efforts, which he expands on in a long interview planned for the DVD.

In preparation for the movie, he flew to Maryland and met with Mendez, who took him to a bar that turned out to be a CIA hangout — the very hangout where agent-turned-spy Aldrich Ames had met some of his Soviet contacts. He was surprised how taciturn Mendez was. “He was extremely withdrawn and very unassuming,” says Affleck, adding that he only came to understand this when he saw the 2001 Errol Morris documentary about the operative, The Little Gray Man, showing how blandness was crucial to his work, allowing him to blend into alien environments.

With Mendez on board (joined by John Goodman as real-life Hollywood makeup man John Chambers, Bryan Cranston as a CIA staffer and Arkin as a fictionalized producer), the CIA opened its doors beyond anything Affleck had experienced when he’d worked with the agency on 2002’s Tom Clancy thriller The Sum of All Fears.

Invited to visit, he was astonished that “every hallway had a pretty elaborate lock on it, and every door had a lock, and there were no windows to see in any of the rooms, so everything was secure. Some of the offices had two computers at every desk, one with huge stickers that said: ‘This is connected to the Internet. No classified information.’ I wanted to use that, except there were no computers in 1979.”

He also was surprised how low-key the place seemed, even when he stepped into its holy of holies, the futuristic Operations Center, where supersecret material and personnel were whisked away before he arrived. His impression of inactivity changed two weeks later, “when they killed Osama bin Laden.”

Thanks to the CIA’s reverence for Mendez, Affleck received permission to shoot several sequences at the agency’s headquarters in Langley, Va. — though “that meant having the trucks show up at 2 in the morning, so they could all be searched down to the screw. I’ve shot in a prison, and the search they put you through was nothing like this.”

Most of the film, remarkably, was filmed in and around Los Angeles, with a Hancock Park mansion standing in for the Canadian ambassador’s residence, where the escapees hid out. (In reality, they were kept in two separate places in Tehran.) Zsa Zsa Gabor‘s home was used for the Hollywood producer’s (she was upstairs during shooting, but too sick to come down), and the Ontario International Airport, 35 miles east of L.A., substituted for Tehran’s.

A 65-day shoot began in California then relocated to Istanbul, Turkey, for a month. Affleck had hoped to use real-life Iranian immigrants in Turkey for all the crowd sequences but well into filming found that “we couldn’t get one person of Iranian descent who speaks Farsi to be in the movie because they’re all so terrified of what that would mean for their family back home. We were completely f–ed.”

(Some of those scenes later were re-staged in Los Angeles, where there are about a half-million Farsi speakers, says Affleck. They and the CGI shots that transformed signs in English gave the film a rare authenticity and allowed it to be made for a modest $44.5 million.)

Shooting in Istanbul had its challenges, especially when Affleck came down with the flu while still acting and directing. “He was really, really sick, with a fever, the whole thing, and he didn’t take a day off,” says Heslov. “At the worst point, he left a bit early, and he had to be feeling really terrible to do that.”

His enthusiasm was matched by the extras, who often numbered around 2,500 and occasionally got out of hand, especially once when Affleck was in his car. “People were yelling and chanting and throwing stuff and having fun — and it all sort of bled over,” he explains. “I was a little scared, although I tried to summon up that director’s arrogance. All the great directors, I think, are arrogant; so I thought, ‘This is the time when I get out the bullhorn and say, ‘Back off!’ ”

He didn’t, alas. “I must not be doing something right,” he jokes.

Contrary to his image as a working-class “Southie” in Good Will Hunting, and later in The Town, Affleck, the elder of two sons (his brother Casey also is an actor), grew up in relative comfort in Cambridge, Mass. His mother, Chris, had been one of the original freedom riders who went into the Deep South during the 1960s to fight for civil rights. Both she and his father, Tim, were intellectuals who gave their son the middle name Geza after a Holocaust survivor they admired. (Affleck comes from Protestant stock but is agnostic.)

Damon — who was 10 when he met his 8-year-old near-neighbor Ben — remembers the cut-and-thrust of discussions in the Affleck home. “That dinner table was one of the funnest places to be growing up because of all the debates that went on — on any subject. You had to craft an argument and a good one to survive. Ben really honed his debating skills there. He’s not a guy you want to get in a debate with.”

Adds Affleck: “My mother taught public school, went to Harvard and then got her master’s there and taught fifth and sixth grade in a public school. My dad had a more working-class lifestyle. He didn’t go to college. He was an auto mechanic and a bartender and a janitor at Harvard.”

He also was an alcoholic, a predisposition Affleck inherited. “His life sort of hit the skids when I was in my teens,” he says. “It was difficult. When one’s parent is an alcoholic, it’s hard. It was a little scary and trying, but then he got sober when I was twentysomething, and he’s been sober ever since.”

The two maintain a cordial relationship, though they don’t see each other much, says Affleck. “My father has positional vertigo, and if he flies he gets really dizzy, so he has to drive out to California, which he does a couple times a year. We talk, but we e-mail mostly.”

The problems at home peaked when Affleck’s parents split before his teens and filtered into his life at the Cambridge Rindge and Latin School, where he sought refuge in plays, appearing as Damon’s son in Friedrich Durrenmatt‘s The Visit before both started auditioning for professional roles.

“I was a bit of a f–up,” he says. “I got really good grades until the last two years, and then I didn’t. I was having issues around my dad and my mom, and things just weren’t that stable — though that puts the responsibility on them, when really I just lost focus and stopped caring.”

While Damon went to Harvard, Affleck attended the University of Vermont, where he majored in Middle Eastern Affairs before switching to Los Angeles’ Occidental College, embarking on an acting career while he and Damon were roommates in Eagle Rock, an East Los Angeles neighborhood.

He found minor success with such films as 1992’s School Ties and 1993’s Dazed and Confused. But it was Good Will Hunting — the script Affleck and Damon sold to Castle Rock Entertainment for $600,000, which went to Miramax in turnaround — that made them stars. At the Oscars, they brought their moms and soon were double-dating with Gwyneth Paltrow (Affleck) and Winona Ryder (Damon). America was enchanted. With an Academy Award for best original screenplay, Affleck was a mere 25 years old and as hot as they get.

Then something went wrong. Instead of following Hunting with equally impressive material, Affleck chose roles in such action pictures as 1998’s Armageddon and 2001’s Pearl Harbor, while Damon starred in Saving Private Ryan. Partly, says Damon, this was because these were big breaks for a relative newcomer and partly because Affleck thought he could fix scripts that didn’t work — only to discover the director is the fixer.

His movie choices solidified a lightweight image that, combined with romantic escapades, made him perfect fodder for an exploding celebrity press. When he went from dating Paltrow to media-magnet Lopez (buying her a multicarat pink diamond ring, to boot), he no longer was just an actor — he was part of a phenomenon known as Bennifer (version one). Their Bentley rides, engagements, breakups-and-makeups were chronicled almost in real time. Affleck, who had risen to earn a reported $10 million to $15 million per picture, now was more infamous than famous.

“To watch the entire world have the totally wrong idea about somebody you care about and admire was painful, just as his friend,” says Damon. “I can’t imagine what it felt like to him. I remember Ben calling and saying: ‘I can sell magazines and not movies. I’m in the worst possible place I can be.’ “

Over the next few years, everything he had built came crashing down. He already had gone into rehab for unspecified causes in 2001; then came the disappointment of his superhero-in-tights spectacle Daredevil and the disaster of Gigli, the 2003 picture in which he starred with Lopez before their relationship collapsed.

“I went to rehab for being 29 and partying too much and not having a lot of boundaries and to clear my head and try to get some idea of who I wanted to be,” explains Affleck, declining to go into further detail. “It was more a ‘let me get myself straight,’ before it became a rite of passage.”

He stays in touch with Lopez, just as he does Paltrow and his high school girlfriend, Cheyenne Rothman. “We don’t have the kind of relationship where she relies on me for advice,” he says of J.Lo, “but we do have the kind of relationship where there’ll be an e-mail saying, ‘Oh, your movie looks great.’ I remember when she got American Idol. I said: ‘This was really smart. Good luck.’ I touch base. I respect her. I like her. She’s put up with some stuff that was unfair in her life, and I’m really pleased to see her successful.”

Despite the media onslaught, Affleck’s closest friends remained convinced his talent was supreme.

“What always struck me was how smart he is,” says his longtime agent Whitesell. “He had the biggest disconnect of anybody between the way the world saw him and the way he really is. We talked to each other and said, ‘It’s going to be a long road back, but we will get there.’ “

When Affleck took the risk of going behind the cameras with Gone — a mystery about two investigators tracking a missing 4-year-old girl, released by Miramax in the post-Harvey Weinstein era — Hollywood insiders were stunned that this apparent featherweight had such depth. But the movie still was perceived either as a fluke or too dark to make Affleck a candidate for bigger films. Only Warners executive Jeff Robinov pursued him with absolute conviction.

“Gone Baby Gone was not at all financially successful,” notes Affleck. “But Robinov brought me into his office and said: ‘I think you’re a hell of a filmmaker, actor. What do you want to do? Tell us, and we’ll do it.’ And I wasn’t having those meetings with every studio.”

Affleck opted for The Town, a $37 million drama that earned $92 million domestically. Its success shocked even cynics. The flameout, who had become a byword for has-been, was now one of Hollywood’s most promising directors.

Getting there was a direct result of the decision Affleck made around 2004.

“I was frustrated with the movies that I had done,” he explains. “I knew that I had something to offer. I said: ‘Here are the things I’d like to do: I want to direct movies, and I want to be in a movie that I’m enormously proud of. I want to have kids.’ I set out goals. It was a bold thing because when one is accustomed to falling short, as I had been, one becomes fearful of making predictions. But I did.”

Garner, whom he met on Daredevil, contributed to this thinking. “Jennifer played such a profound role in making me a better person,” says Affleck. “We don’t have a perfect marriage, but she inspired me; and finding myself in that marriage and having a child dovetailed with getting to be a little more mature.”

Asked what drew him to his wife, he considers. “She truly is kind,” he says. “She means no one any harm. She doesn’t have ill will for any person. She’s not competitive with other people. She’s not spiteful.” He laughs. “It’s one of those things where it becomes almost aggravating at times. Every time I go, ‘F– him!’ I see in her face that she just thinks that’s petty and small.”

Now Affleck is concentrating on the meaningful and large. He is developing a movie adaptation of Stephen King��s The Stand and plans to reteam with Damon on Whitey, the story of James Joseph “Whitey” Bulger Jr., a Boston crime figure who went on the run for 16 years before being captured outside his Santa Monica apartment in 2011. Affleck will direct, and Damon will star.

But other matters are beginning to weigh on him just as much as film. “One gets older,” he reflects, “and the things that you didn’t realize were absences in your life now feel like real vacancies.”

In November, he will make his seventh visit to the Democratic Republic of Congo, where bloody civil war has lasted 14 years (despite peace accords signed in 2003) and cost 5.4 million lives. It has become his abiding concern ever since “I came across this passage about how 10 times as many people have died in Congo in the wars since 1997 [as in Darfur] and was stunned that I didn’t know.”

The filmmaker first went there in 2007. “I saw terrible things,” he says. “You know: the amount of sexual-based violence against women; people suffering from preventable disease; child soldiers who needed to be integrated into society; children without schooling at all. So we started to get involved in those areas.”

Two years ago, he helped form the Eastern Congo Initiative, which provides developmental aid for local communities, working with farmers who grow cacao, among other activities.

Affleck’s commitment to Congo has not been risk-free. On one occasion, he was in a single-engine plane caught in a hailstorm, with a pilot who didn’t know his way. “We were flying through Sudan, and the hail was really banging up the plane. The pilot was saying he didn’t have enough fuel to fly back to Juba. I was terrified. It was the only time in my life where I really thought, deep in my heart, I might die.”

It’s a flash of the old insecurity that still remains, buried deep inside. He’s older, wiser, glowing in the gleam of his new film, but the fears and anxieties still have to be held at bay. Even in his work.

“Sometimes I get insecure about being a real director because I look at the great directors, and they have such command,” he says. “But maybe that keeps me critical of myself. Maybe it keeps me moving forward.”

[celticcrossanon]

Hi Celta! Thank you so much for all of the recent provocative and insightful readings. We appreciate the time, work, and expenditure of your personal energy that must be involved! For me, at least, they’ve been so helpful in deciphering some of the expected upheaval in the BRF since HLMTQ’s death and KC3’s accession.

Your reading about KC3’s desire for H’s return to the UK - alone - seems to be spot on. The Harkles are obviously in the separation/uncoupling stage. Imho it’s significant that in their recent PR (especially MM/WME’s), the media is calling him “Prince Harry” and her “Meghan Markle”…no more “Duke and Duchess of Sussex.” People mag (an MM mouthpiece) ID’d them this way for the Bey concert PR, and the celeb list screenshots for the LAFC/Beckham/Miami/Messi game the other night also listed them this way AND separated their names on the list lol. Previously, as we’ve all witnessed, if a media outlet used “Meghan Markle” rather than “Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex,” MM would have a meltdown and demand a correction w/in minutes loll!

And concerning the indications that KC3 will favor/promote H while undercutting W…well, probably so, but he/KC3 will do it to his regret. Recent polling in both the UK and the US have put William #1 in popularity. Methinks that the more KC3 manipulates negative PR toward William, the more W’s popularity will soar. And yes, the UK will never accept H’s return as a working royal! Again, Charles attempts this at his peril.

* 

Hi Nonny,

Thank you for the kind words. I am glad the readings are helpful. That is one of the reasons that I do them, to help us to understand events (the other reason is plain curiosity).

The different titles in their PR does seem significant. It indicates to me that they are building two separate brands, which could be because of a future divorce. I’m not sure about when the divorce will happen as the energy around it is very volatile and changes from day to day. Meghan seems to have chosen to build her brand as ‘Meghan Markle’ and not ‘The Duchess of Sussex’, which is a turn around for her (I also remember how adamant she was that everyone called her ‘Duchess’).

I agree with you about Harry, Prince William and King Charles. I would like to see Harry separated from Meghan and back in the UK and getting the help that he so clearly needs, but I think it will be tricky enough for King Charles to bring him back as a private family member, let alone anything else.

[louisisalarrie]

Hi! Let me start by saying that I am a follower of your blog because I enjoy your take on things. Not because I hate follow you like some people seem to do. With that said, I’m very excited you get to meet Louis on Sunday! How fun for you! But I have an honest question. Not one to argue with you or even question you. But something I’ve wrestled with myself. Since you know all of the lies we’ve been fed about F being his son, and you see the gaslighting that goes on regularly from Louis to his fans. Most recently, the infamous chicken parm tweet, how do you separate that as a fan of his? How do you get so excited to meet him without wanting to look him in the face and say please stop lying. Maybe it’s just me. I’m just having a hard time with him continuing to lie to us and scold us and then out of the other side of his mouth he says he has the most freedom he’s ever had. That just tells me he choosing to lie and use F for his gain. His gain means money and fans. I don’t know… again, not trying to judge you. Just trying to understand and figure out where my brain is. I hope you have a wonderful time at the show!

Hey anon! Thank you for the kind words. It’s perfectly normal to feel this way, and a lot of us have these moments as well! So don’t stress x

I think what’s important here overall is to remember that record labels, managers, everyone involved in Louis’ team make money from Louis’ fame and publicity too. It’s certainly not just louis, and a huuuuuge chunk of it goes towards them, particularly if he’s signed to a Global Deal which I imagine he would be. Remember how in one direction they were worked to the absolute bone? Barely having a break, nonstop touring, recording every second they could (a good example is that one scene from This Is Us where zayn was asleep for 10 minutes before he was woken up to record more vocals) and they were just kids. They signed a contract without a personal lawyer due to X Factor rules, were taken advantage of, and used as a money making machine for S*co and his bunch of monkeys. But I’m sure you’re already very aware of this, so let’s fast forward to 13 years down the track with this in mind…

Louis was roped into a wild stunt contract, also known as bbg, with a half assed promise of more freedom for him, a potential end result of him and harry coming out, and probably a bunch of other promises and opportunities thrown his way if he signed off on it. He received solo PR while still being in a band, meaning he had a bit of a safety blanket if the band broke up and wouldn’t immediately disappear from the public eye (like Liam did). And you know what? BBG was probably meant to go for a much shorter time than it has. I imagine the proposed stunt, and the alterations it’s had over the years, look pretty bloody different. But without going into too much detail on that stunt specifically, Louis is incredibly smart in the way he communicates with us. He does juuuuust enough to meet his contractual obligations. He knows what he can get away with. He knows his fandom is majority larries. He knows what we talk about and what we say.

The consequences if he didn’t sign this contract? Probably pretty dire, if I’m honest. When you have one of the biggest labels in the world (the other two are WME & Universal) throwing you a bone, it’s pretty hard to turn it down. These 3 labels (also known as The Big 3 in the industry) have a monopoly over the music industry and can make or break someone pretty damn quick. So I imagine he would’ve signed to cover his own ass and not lose his whole career, because he’s been manipulated into that. The music industry can be evil and brutal and it’s all about money. All about PR.

Particularly in this day and age where we are oversaturated with celebrities, media, etc., it’s hard to stand out from the crowd. The Big 3 are good at what they do, and that’s why they are The Big 3. They know how to do PR, they know how to write contracts and get artists to sign off on them, they know how to dangle carrots and make deals that benefit themselves greatly (oftentimes more than the artist). So being in louis’ position, it was more like he was coerced into it, if that makes sense?

Sorry, im tired from work and rambling now, but have you heard the phrase “separate the art from the artist”? It’s an interesting take that some people agree with, so they can enjoy that artist’s music while ignoring their faults/bad choices/problematic behaviour, because the music is what’s important. I don’t necessarily agree with that take, and I’m not gonna go down a rabbit hole on it, but I do think some fans do this with louis. And that helps them still enjoy the music, without getting involved in bbg or any other stunts, ya know? It helps to just think about the cutie happy wholesome louis that we know and love, and not his PR image. And that is absolutely fair enough, I just can’t do that because I know too much and I’ve been here for too long and I WILL see this through hahahah.

Okay now to actually answer your question, about me personally, of course I would want to tell him to leave his contract and get a better deal and come out with Harry and trust that his fans will still love him and he’ll still have a career, but that’s not possible. It’s not possible because I’d get throat punched by security, but it’s also not possible because that’s not realistic. He knows what we all say, and what we think of larry. He understands our frustration and can literally see it online every day. His hands are tied, until they’re not. And we can’t do anything about that. So it’s just about appreciating him and his music because we can’t control anything else.

So, just remember that he’s beautiful and sweet and caring, watch some old one direction videos/larry deep dives, and take a breath because we know him, and he’s not this asshole that his image has radically become.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Meet the new music boss, same as the old music boss

In his 2020 book MONOPOLIZED, David Dayen describes a curious and brutal dynamic of monopolies: they breed monopolies.

"Consumer welfare," the dominant strain of antitrust for the past 40 years, has treated monopolies as innocent until proven guilty.

https://pluralistic.net/2021/01/29/fractal-bullshit/#dayenu

Companies are allowed to merge with competitors and create vertical silos, so long as no one can prove that doing so has raised prices. The only acceptable proof are the mathematical models invented by pro-monopoly economists, who are the foremost builders of these models.

Strangely enough, these models always prove that the monopoly is good, actually: not harming "consumer welfare." All potential mergers will provably not result in increased prices. All post-merger price-increases are provably not due to the merger.

Anyone who challenges these interpretations is derided for their ignorance of how these models work. Modern antitrust is a priesthood, and whenever a monopoly question arises, they slaughter an ox and read the future in its guts, which only they can interpret.

And strangely enough, the ox guts always favor monopoly.

Now, not *all* price-fixing can be waved away as unrelated to market concentration. In some cases, different companies in a sector will literally conspire to set prices, putting it down on paper.

When that happens, you don't need to make a model to show that price rises can be attributed to market power: you have the receipts.

This happens all the time. The record labels documented their CD price-rigging in the 90s, leading to a $67.3m settlement in 2002.

In 2012, the Big Six publishers colluded with Apple to raise ebook prices. They also put it in writing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Apple_Inc.

In most of these cases, the price-fixing is only part of the story. What's actually going on is more complicated: a cartel of manufacturers are conspiring not merely to raise prices, but to fight the predatory practices of a monopolist somewhere else in the supply-chain.

With the labels, it was big box retailers like Walmart. With the publishers, it was Amazon. These monopolists had cornered significant customer-bases for the cartels' products, and the monopolists were squeezing their suppliers for all they were worth - literally.

Here's where it gets funky. Remember that monopolies are innocent until proven guilty, and it's impossible to prove them guilty. If six publishers' CEOs conspire to raise ebook prices, that's illegal. It's collusion.

If one of those six buys two of the others - if Random House buys Penguin and Simon & Schuster - then the former CEOs of those companies (now heads of divisions in a single company) can do *exactly* the same thing with little fear of legal reprisals.

Antitrust law rewards monopolies and punishes cartels, so members of cartels merge until they have monopolies.

Which brings me back to David Dayen and his book MONOPOLIZED. The industry Dayen analyzes to demonstrate this phenomenon is US health care.

In Dayen's telling, the first salvo was the mergers-to-monopoly in pharma, producing the Big Pharma giants we have today. These massive, consolidated firm started to lean on their customers, notably hospitals, price-gouging them on medicine.

Individual hospitals were powerless against this pressure: a single hospital that refuses to buy cancer meds at jacked-up prices doesn't get lower prices, it gets dead cancer patients.

But if hospitals teamed up to demand lower prices, that would be illegal price-rigging.

However, if the hospitals all merged into giant chains, they'd be able to push back in two directions. First, they could demand lower prices on drugs from Big Pharma, and second, they could pass on high prices to the insurance sector, which was still decentralized.

Again, the health insurers were not capable of pushing back as individual firms. When all the health care in a single ZIP code is provided by one chain of clinics, hospitals and ERs, an insurer can't declare them all out-of-network - not if it wants to keep its customers.

But once the insurers merged to monopoly, they not only got to push back against hospital price-gouging - they also got to charge higher premiums and deductibles, and they didn't have to worry about losing customers, because there was nowhere to go.

This is really a story of shit flowing downhill - pharma pushes hospitals who push insurers, who push...us. The patients and the front-line health-care workers, from custodians and cafeteria workers to nurses and MDs.

Monopoly breeds monopoly, with each sector of the supply chain concentrating to defend itself against the other sectors, and to exert market power over those sectors that aren't yet monopolized. The only part of the chain that can't organize are workers and customers.

Historically, workers organized in unions to push back against these leveraged assaults on their rights, but the US has all but prohibited unionization.

The public historically organized through politicians who fought for them, but unlimited corporate campaign contributions have made such fights a distant memory.

And so every sector starts to look like health-care: monopolized at every level except for labor and customers.

Writing in Wired today, Ron Knox from the antimonopoly Institue for Local Self-Reliance describes how this dynamic is playing out in music, where the new bosses are all the same as the old bosses.

https://www.wired.com/story/opinion-big-music-needs-to-be-broken-up-to-save-the-industry/

It's not merely the Big Three labels colluding to rip off artists, it's also the tech partners who control distribution, notably Spotify and Youtube.

To the extent that merged-up behemoths like UMG exercise their monopoly power to get more from these digital partners, those excess gains are stolen from the musicians who earned them.

For example, big labels do minimum payout deals with Spotify specifying that millions are owed to them each quarter - but then they accept lower per-stream royalties for their music on Spotify. The result is that massive sums of those guaranteed payouts are "unattributed."

Unattributed revenues are not owed to any artist, so the label gets to keep that money. It's flat-out wage-theft, and it demonstrates the bankruptcy of hoping that a change in monopolists will make lives better for their workforces.

All things being equal, UMG would like to shift as many dollars as possible off of Spotify's balance sheet onto its own. But UMG will not, on its own, hand a single penny of that to the artists whose work generated those dollars

Which is why Knox says we have to break up all these giants - the labels and the digital distribution monopolists, including Youtube and Spotify and Apple and Amazon.

But, Knox points out, that will not be enough.

Because it's not just recording and distribution that are monopolized - it's also performance venues and ticketing (Ticketmaster/Live Nation) and radio (Iheartradio/Liberty Media), whose monopolists are rapacious wage-stealers and fraudsters.

The market can't and won't fix this. Take live performance venues: the vast majority of these are expected to fail thanks to the covid shutdowns. The private sector has a plan to bail them out: former WME exec Marc Geiger raised a vast warchest to buy them for pennies.

He will consolidate them into...a monopolist to push back against the Ticketmaster/Live Nation monopoly. If he pulls it off, he may succeed in shifting many millions from Live Nation's balance-sheet to his own. He will not give any of it to performers if he doesn't have to.

Knox's (correct) conclusion is that we have to have antimonopoly enforcement across the entire supply chain, not just in one or two sectors - from social media to recording to payments to venues to streaming to radio, we have to break them up.

And that might just happen. Two high-profile Biden appointees, Tim Wu and Lina Khan, are on the absolute vanguard of the new antimonopoly movement. Amy Klobuchar's (flawed) antitrust bill goes further than any initiative in years.

And most of all, the musicians aren't alone here. The fight they're fighting is just a part of the fight we're all in: not just every kind of artist, but doctors and patients, cabbies and riders, farmers and eaters.

Our fights have different technical characteristics and different structural remedies particular to those characteristics, but they are, fundamentally, the same fight.

The fight against monopolies.

[nicolekidman-lies]

“Other Hollywood industry leaders Farrow talked to didn't keep quiet about the subject of his investigation — in the case of director-producer Brett Ratner, it may have been because he also had something to hide, Farrow wrote.

When Farrow talked to Ratner, he said Ratner told him that he may know of a woman who had a bad experience with Weinstein, but Farrow noted that he sounded jittery.

Also, despite Ratner saying he wouldn't tell Weinstein about his conversation with Farrow, he reportedly called Weinstein soon after and told him anyways.

Six women later accused Ratner of sexual harassment. A representative for Ratner didn't immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.”

“The list also includes RatPac-Dune producer Brett Ratner, who has also been accused of sexual assault by multiple women in the wake of the Weinstein scandal, causing Warner Bros. to rethink their producing deal with his studio. Ratner has denied all allegations. In Farrow’s second report about Weinstein’s “army of spies,” he describes how agents would contact people targeted by Weinstein, giving false names and recording their conversations in order to get dirt on those they feared might be about to go on the record.”

“Meanwhile, Mnuchin’s former RatPac-Dune principal Ratner announced on Feb. 4 that he has acquired Jaime Rogozinski’s life rights and is developing a film and podcast about the founder of Reddit’s WallStreetBets. The move raised eyebrows around town given that in November 2017, Ratner was accused of sexual misconduct by six women in a Los Angeles Times story, prompting Warners to sever its relationship with him and WME to drop him as a client.

Separately, a woman accused Ratner of rape in a Facebook post, which he denied (he sued the accuser for defamation, and both sides eventually dropped their claims). He also has been accused of facilitating the sexual abuse of Charlotte Kirk in ongoing litigation involving the actress and a group of Hollywood power brokers.

But Ratner has a new publicist, crisis guru Howard Bragman, and has been quietly funding projects and filmmakers he believes in and is working on several documentaries. “Brett never left. He was working all this time,” says Bragman, who wouldn’t name the projects. “He just chose to be low-profile.”

Though Ratner and Mnuchin’s names are surfacing again in Hollywood at the same time, the two have no plans to team in the future. Adds Bragman: “Ratner and Mnuchin remain friendly, but have no business relationship since their Warners funding deal ended.””

[electro-kins]

∞༺♡ 1,000+ editing contest winners!! ♡༻✧

hii hii cuties!! aa thank you so much to everyone who entered <3 EVERYONE'S EDITS were so amazing, you're all so talented ♪(๑ᴖ◡ᴖ๑)♪ it was so hard to decide on the winners ö here they are under the cut!! (i added little notes next to each winner's entri hehe)

1st place - @kin-of-the-sheep

her first and second entry ; THE STIMBOARD OMG?? it's everything i love in one edit... AND it has my vibes exactly!! it made me so happy, especially seeing you included my melody and melogender in the middle :] literally perfect mwah /p DON'T GET wME STARTED ON HOW LOVELY THE ICONS WERE... THANK U FOR ENTERING!! (๑>◡<๑)

2nd place - @primrose-rondo

his first entry ; YOU EDITED SUCH A PRETTY MOODBOARD BESTIE <3 ada x emily x demi has been on my mind all the time recently hehe, it made me so happy seeing you edited them together!! i love the aesthetics you chose for each character + the way you placed them on the moodboards so cool to me!! thank u for entering *\(^o^)/*

3rd place - @wistful-sakura-dreams

their first entry ; the romantic academia and lovecore aesthetic with monika is so perfect!! it fits her so well + the way you edit is gorgeous!! aaahhfsn thank u sm for entering :]

4th place - @dicefloweredits

clouds first ; YOUR LISA STIMBOARD was so lovely!! all the colors went perfectly together + THE MAKEUP STIMS were pretty!! love your edits, tysm for entering (๑˃̵ᴗ˂̵)

congratulations to the winners!! <33 you can send all your prizes in my inbox or dm me everything, whatever is easier for you ∩^ω^∩ you can find the original post here + my carrd if you need!! thank you all again for entering hehe.

[airasora]

Hi! I hope this isn't too much of a bother, but do you have any tutorials tips tricks etc for editing? I want to try my hand at it, but I have no clue where to even begin, and I've only ever edited photos -even that was years and years ago. Any help is super appreciated! Also, if you could send me a message when you have requests open again, it'd be great because I'm likely to miss it and I don't wanna send inopportune requests. You're one of my top 3 favorite editors btw!

First of all, thank you so much for the compliment! It means a lot to me that people enjoy my work as sharing stories and creative content is one of my all time favorite hobbies <3

Second of all, I'm afraid I won't be able to message anyone if I ever "open" requests because I simply wouldn't be able to remember everyone who has ever asked me to do that. I also don't have requests open very often, and I have requests from more than a few years ago still waiting for me... So, I'm sorry, but I won't be able to do that 😅 But I appreciate your considertion so, so much ❤️

Third of all, to answer your actual question. I have always, and will always, suggest any new aspiring editors to learn how their editing programs work before jumping straight into actual editing.

This means figuring out what program you'd prefer

- Sony vegas, premiere cut, etc. are all popular editing programs that are semi-beginner friendly

Adobe After Effects is one of the most common editing programs for any editing community, BUT it's anything but beginner friendly. There is a lot going on, a million effects and possibilities, and that would probably be too overwhelming for someone if they've never done editing before.

When you've figured out what editing program you'd prefer, then it's time to find those tutorials on YouTube, and I really do recommend YouTube for that sort of thing. Reading about editing is much harder than seeing someone doing it. Start by just playing around with your program, get familiar with it and figure out where everything is and just take baby steps first. Jumping straight into advanced editing would just make the process slower.

I've worked with sony vegas for well over a decade, and AAE for about 5 years, so I do have some tutorials about both programs.

This link should direct you to my "Tutorials and WME" playlist, so you can take a look at some of the videos.

But I've actually been planning on doing a sort of "ask me about editing" type of livestream where the participants can ask questions about editing, and if they've seen something they want to learn how to do, I could do my best to show how it's done.

So keep an eye out for when I post a livestream for when I want to do my "editing class" livestream xD

[growinstablog]

How YouTube and Instagram stars are adapting their businesses as the coronavirus impacts the influencer-marketing industry

Welcome to this week’s Influencer Dashboard newsletter!

This is Amanda Perelli, writing to you from my desk at home, and here’s an update on what’s new in the business of influencers and creators.

First off, I’m lucky enough to be able to work from home, and I hope all of you are healthy and staying safe!

This week, my colleague Dan Whateley and I caught up with several creators across YouTube and Instagram, along with industry experts, on how they are adjusting their businesses to continue to make a living during the coronavirus pandemic and the resulting economic turmoil.

As many brand deals stall, influencers are starting to switch up their strategies, focusing on long-term bets like direct-to-consumer businesses or alternative revenue streams like consulting, teaching, and coaching.

“Our entire company is at a standstill at the moment and I don’t really know when jobs or campaigns will happen again in the next month,” said Audree Kate Lopez, a fashion stylist, consultant, and influencer with nearly 30,000 followers on Instagram.

Lopez said during this downtime she is focusing on getting organized internally and creating content at home that she normally doesn’t have time to do.

And the influencer-marketing firm Sapphire Apps told Dan that it’s no longer conducting photo shoots with influencers for brand campaigns, instead turning to animation and user-generated content filmed by influencers at home that’s then edited by the Sapphire team afterwards. (.)

You can read most of the articles here . And if this is your first time reading Influencer Dashboard, .

More industry updates on the impact of the coronavirus pandemic:

FaZe Clan is a multimillion-dollar gaming organization focused on esports and video content creation.

Kevin spoke to Vera Salamone, FaZe Clan’s director of talent, and Erik Anderson, FaZe Clan’s head of esports, on what FaZe Clan looks for in new recruits.

Anderson said FaZe is constantly recruiting on a global scale to find the best players to represent the team.

“I don’t want to have to call a guy to wake him up to get him to and play video games as his career,” Anderson said. “I want someone that’s hungry to go and compete at a high level and understands that they’re in a really amazing place to do that.”

.

For a YouTube creator, joining “Google Preferred” – the company’s top-tier monetization category – means you’ve made it.

Dan spoke to creators like Remi Cruz, a YouTube star who posts DIYs, cooking tutorials, and makeup and fashion videos for her 2.5 million subscribers, and other individuals familiar with how Google Preferred works to learn more about the company’s secretive program.

Google Preferred videos tend to make more money because they command higher CPMs (cost per thousand views) than YouTube’s standard AdSense (biddable pre-roll, mid-roll, and post-roll) monetization, according to multiple sources who spoke to Business Insider.

“In the beginning with Google Preferred, it definitely boosted [revenue],” Cruz noted. “But since then I think it’s been climbing depending on the quarter that I’m in.”

But how do you get into the program? Dan has the inside details.

.

TikTok has become one of the most popular apps among Gen Zers and brands are looking to leverage the massive reach its creators have.

I spoke with an influencer talent manager and a digital agent about some of the metrics they see brands paying attention to in 2020 on TikTok.

“On TikTok, it doesn’t matter how many followers you have, that’s not the main metric of success,” said David White, head of influencer management at Whalar Stars. “It’s all about how many views you’re getting.”

From a branding perspective, TikTok is good for its volume of impressions and reach, and Instagram is the place to drive sales, said Alex Devlin from WME.

.

What else happened on BI Prime this week:

Here’s what else we’re reading:

Thanks for reading! Send me your tips, comments, or questions: aperelli@businessinsider.com.

.

https://growinsta.xyz/how-youtube-and-instagram-stars-are-adapting-their-businesses-as-the-coronavirus-impacts-the-influencer-marketing-industry/

[rickhorrow]

10 To Watch : Mayor’s Edition 72219

RICK HORROW’S  TOP 10 SPORTS/BIZ/TECH/PHILANTHROPY ISSUES FOR THE WEEK OF JULY 22 : MAYOR’S EDITION

with Reed Weber

Shane Lowry pocketed a cool $1.935 million for winning The Open Championship. He also netted thousands of new fans, and helped to unify Ireland through his sport. The affable Lowry, who came oh-so-close to winning the 2016 U.S. Open before blowing a four-shot lead to winner Dustin Johnson, has career earnings of close to $19 million, and his win on Sunday will almost certainly also include a bonus from primary sponsors Immedis and Banc of Ireland. However, the 2019 Open could potentially make an even bigger cultural mark. "This is the beginning of the Open taking its place as the Open and moving around the world…In my lifetime it is possible to see it being played in the Netherlands or maybe Australia," two-time winner of the Claret Jug Padraig Harrington shared with the Irish Times regarding Royal Portrush serving as a catalyst to take the major around the globe. Lowry is certain to be the face of Irish golf in the yearlong run up to the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo, especially as colleague Rory McIlroy struggles with his big-stage game.

Major League Baseball could allow for sponsorship patches on its teams’ uniforms within three years, the league confirmed to SportsBusiness Journal. The success of the NBA decision to allow jersey branding, which brings in an average $7 million a year per team, has reportedly created “considerable interest” for MLB teams to follow suit. Van Wagner Sports & Entertainment confirmed to SBJ that it had been approached by MLB franchises for evaluations of the potential new inventory. The Excel sports agency, which worked on multiple NBA patch deals, also revealed that it had received inquiries from “curious” teams regarding the marketplace. “We’re examining the patch, but clearly we have things to work through first,” MLB EVP Noah Garden told SBJ. “I’d say it’s inevitable down the road, but certainly not immediate. This is something that requires a fairly long runway.” The new patch sponsorships would require the approval of the MLBPA as part of the next collective bargaining agreement, but MLB’s current uniform deal with Nike reportedly includes provision for uniform patches. Van Wagner estimated that deals could be worth $6-$8 million, with select high-profile teams able to secure more.

A 22% minority stake in the Oklahoma City Thunder has been put up for sale, according to Bloomberg. The team share was previously owned by late oilman Aubrey McClendon, who passed away in a car crash in 2016. McClendon’s 22% ownership stake has reportedly been held by his estate since his death. The Thunder are worth $1.475 billion, according to Forbes, which would value a 22% stake in the team at around $324.5 million. However, Bloomberg’s report added that a value for McClendon’s stake could be discounted because it comes with voting rights but little else. The share does not come with representation on the board or any decision-making authority. The Thunder are controlled by Clay Bennett, whose Professional Basketball Club investment group purchased the Seattle Supersonics in 2006 before moving the franchise to Oklahoma City ahead of the 2008-2009 season. Likely also for sale soon: The multi-million dollar estate former Thunder star Russell Westbrook just completed in Oklahoma City suburb Nichols Hills – although there’s no yard sign up just yet. OKC residents continue to appear supportive of the star point guard even though he left the franchise, as the city is dotted with “Thank You Russell Westbrook” signs. 

LeBron James’ agent starts a sports division at major Hollywood firm. United Talent Agency, one of the leading representation firms in Hollywood, has joined with the agent for nearly two dozen NBA stars, Rich Paul, to create a sports division for the entertainment company. Paul, who most famously represents James under his Klutch Sports Group banner, was named the head of UTA Sports. The alliance calls for Klutch, with Paul as chief executive, to operate as United Talent’s sports division while retaining its own branding. Klutch’s deal with UTA was initiated by the investment adviser Paul Wachter, who helped broker Fenway Sports Group’s 2002 purchase of EPL club Liverpool, as well as James’ lifetime deal with Nike. UTA, which restricted itself to off-the-field sports business until now, said it needs Paul’s muscle as it moves into direct competition with the established sports divisions at its primary rivals in Hollywood: CAA and WME. For years, Paul’s achievements were often dismissed as a natural by-product of his close relationship with James, who was still a teenager when they became friends. Today he is a force to be reckoned with, not just in sports, but now in entertainment.

MLS’ Fire to pay $65.5 million to move matches. According to JohnWallStreet, MLS’ Chicago Fire Soccer Club, ranked last in home attendance (averaging 11,417 per game), will amend their SeatGeek Stadium lease to allow for future home games to be played “in other Chicagoland sports venues.” Majority owner Andrew Hauptman believes moving games from the Village of Bridgeview to downtown Chicago will give the club “the opportunity to play [in front of] more fans than ever.” The Fire reportedly plan to play home games at Soldier Field next season. Chicago Fire SC is paying $65.5 million to get out of their existing lease. The organization will pay the Village $10 million upfront and make an additional $5 million donation to upgrade sporting facilities around the stadium. The $50.5 million balance will be paid in $3.5 million annual increments through 2036. Hauptman is paying $30 million more to move the team's home matches than he paid to acquire the club in 2007. But with expansion franchises now selling for $200 million, even with the buyout – and the $70+ million he’s lost over the last seven years – he will likely come out ahead.

X Games Minneapolis 2019 is set for August 1-4 at U.S. Bank Stadium, and ESPN is putting the finishing touches on its sponsor roster. This year, Wendy’s is joining returning sponsors Hotels.com, Monster Energy, Nexcar First Aid Products, Pacifico, SoFi, The Real Cost, and Harley-Davidson. Geico will once again serve as the official music stage sponsor. The sponsorship packages include a media presence within the 18 hours of coverage scheduled on ESPN, ESPN2, ABC, and the ESPN App, as well as content creation and on-site activation at the event. The Tokyo Olympics are now one year out, and those Games will feature more extreme sports than ever before, including new entrants sport climbing and surfing joining skateboarding, BMX racing, and other X Games staples. With that in mind, it is highly likely that the upcoming X Games Minneapolis will see a bigger viewing audience as well as the expanded sponsor roster.

REI looks to bolster environmental and outdoor journalism. According to PR Newswire, REI Co-op will debut its own print magazine this fall, as well as a new partnership to channel matching funds directly to local, nonprofit newsrooms covering crucial issues facing the outdoors. The 81-year-old retailer will retire its full-price mail-order catalog in favor of their print magazine, Uncommon Path, published by Hearst Magazines in collaboration with an in-house team of journalists and editors at REI. Uncommon Path will be available at all 155 REI stores and in select newsstands nationwide starting this fall. The purpose of the switch to magazines is to inspire a life outdoors by supporting compelling storytelling – both REI’s own channels and by supporting independent nonprofit journalists in communities across the country. The retailer is also announcing a new partnership with NewsMatch, a nationwide campaign to strengthen local journalism to help bolster climate change coverage and make people more conscious of life outdoors.

Yahoo! Sports starts NFL short-form series “Play It Forward.” According to Deadline, “Play It Forward” has two 11-minute episodes each week on Mondays and Thursdays for eight weeks across the off-season and feature the likes of Antonio Brown, Adrian Peterson, and Desean Jackson. The show will give viewers a glimpse into the players’ rise to the top and the ways they give back to the people who have supported them along the way. “Play it Forward” is produced by Bright Bay Creative, the nascent production company run by former Ice Road Truckers producer Brandon Killion and his wife Jill, in association with Complex Networks. The philanthropy isn’t necessarily on a non-profit level, but it shows the difference players can make in individual’s lives off the field.

Texas Rangers slugger Joey Gallo discovers his off-field power to help dogs find homes. According to the MLBPA’s Infield Chatter on Twitter, Joey Gallo has overcome his childhood fear of dogs and teamed up with Operation Kindness to find homes for the original no-kill animal shelter in North Texas. By harnessing his image and posing next to animals from the shelter, Gallo posted photos of some of the shelter’s dogs on social media and saw an immediate response. Within an hour of posting photos with the adoptable dogs, Operation Kindness had found homes for the animals. Gallo has also owned his own Labrador Retriever named Ranger for four years and plans to continue his philanthropic efforts as he says the best part about being an athlete is the stage to “promote good in the world.”

The fifth annual Mixed Doubles Charity Classic is ready to fight opioid abuse. According to the York Dispatch, the Charity Classic at the Country Club of York has the goal of raising money to fight drug abuse that has plagued the USA and specifically New York. In previous years, the event has raised more than $100,000 for charity, including $65,000 raised last year for the York Opioid Collaborative. The fifth annual tournament is sponsored by UPMC Health Plan and will again benefit that same cause which “seeks to reduce opioid deaths in York County,” according to the non-profit’s website. The tournament features high quality tennis players including Jenni Goodling and has a total purse of $5,000 for the winners. A total of 16 teams are lined up to compete. New York saw 172 overdose deaths from opioids in 2018 and has seen a reduction to just 36 so far in 2019 thanks to the awareness around the crisis which has been aided by charities and media events such as the Mixed Doubles Charity Classic.

[bapakharyoso]

A six-month-old hair brand called Insert Name Here [1] — which vends wigs, extensions, and hair pieces on the web — has clinched a seven-figure annual run-rate after being founded in November. Social influencers, its three founders say, have been formative to the startup’s success. And the three founders know a thing or two about social influencers.

Insert Name Here (INH) is looking to follow in the footsteps of socially savvy stalwarts like clothing retailer Fashion Nova [2] and ColourPop Cosmetics [3] , where two of INH’s co-founders — Jordynn Wynn and Sharon Pak — were the first two employees.

A six-month-old hair brand called Insert Name Here [1]— which vends wigs, extensions, and hair pieces on the web — has clinched a seven-figure annual run-rate after being founded in November. Social influencers, its three founders say, have been formative to the startup’s success. And the three founders know a thing or two about social influencers.

Insert Name Here (INH) is looking to follow in the footsteps of socially savvy stalwarts like clothing retailer Fashion Nova[2] and ColourPop Cosmetics[3], where two of INH’s co-founders — Jordynn Wynn and Sharon Pak — were the first two employees.

Wynn and Pak helped ColourPop become a major player in today’s beauty industry[4] — thanks in no small part to its mastery of Instagram. Early on, for instance, ColourPop latched onto viral hashtags to amass hordes of followers, sponsored influencer posts, and eventually forged full-fledged product collabs with the likes of Bretman Rock[5], Amanda Steele[6], Zoe Sugg, Eva Gutowski[7][8], and Kathleen Lights.

Today, Wynn and Pak — alongside INH’s third founder, Kevin Gould, a serial entrepreneur and digital vet in his own right — are hoping to trod a similar path in the hair category. Despite the fact that there has been some momentum in the space — twin YouTube stars Niki and Gabi DeMartino[9] and trans beauty vlogger Nikita Dragun have all launched hair extension collabs with a competitor called Bellami — the trio still saw a vast opportunity.

“We thought it was an incredibly stagnant industry that lacked a strong digital presence and social community,” Gould tells Tubefilter. While color cosmetics may be somewhat saturated, Gould says hair is still a wide open lane.

The company’s name is a nod to the fact that hair accessories have a transformative ability to turn wearers into whoever they want to be. And thus far it’s self-funded. Gould says that there are no current plans to take on outside funding, and the fact that INH is built on their own capital and time commitments forces them to be more disciplined.

While Wynn and Pak ascended at ColourPop, Gould got his start 10 years ago in the mailroom at talent agency WME. He then went on to become an early investor and founding partner at Beautycon[10] – which hosts festivals for beauty influencers across the globe – before becoming an angel investor with a handful of other startups, including Jukin Media and Draft Kings. Today, he is the founder of Kombo Ventures[11] — another digital media startup that operates separately from INH.

For its part, Kombo serves as a talent management company for YouTube stars like SSSniperWolf[12] and Alex Lange[13]; furnishes a digital strategy agency for Fortune 500 companies; and is also working to incubate its own influencer-led brands (the first of which, Gould says will debut later this summer with a big name in the digital space).

Gould isn’t the only one moonlighting with another venture: Wynn is still employed by ColourPop, while Pak serves as the marketing director at another beauty brand called Il Makiage.

An Approachable Ethos

INH officially launched last November after the trio remarked that Gen Z and millennial shoppers were becoming increasingly interested in extensions and wigs, though prices for hair accessories were traditionally sky-high. INH’s best seller, on the other hand, is the Miya Ponytail[14] — an attachable piece priced at $45 that’s made from Japanese fibers and can be heat-styled and washed (but not dyed). The company also vends 100% human hair extensions[15], ranging in price from $195 to $220 per set, depending on their length.

On top of an accessible pricing model, INH is also seeking to hone an approachable ethos by sharing hair tutorials and inspiration for those who are unfamiliar with fake hair use.

The company has nabbed 29,000 followers on Instagram[16], where its account shares user-generated tutorials and other eye-catching looks — many of which are sourced from the #INHBabe hashtag[17]. INH also shares video tutorials[18] on its website as well as other how-to content on a dedicated blog[19].

Kathleen Lights wearing the company’s ‘Zooey’ bangs, $79.

During their time at ColourPop, Pak[20] and Wynn[21] built substantial Instagram followings on their personal accounts — to the tune of 74,300 and 73,300 followers, respectively. And in addition to using their channels[22]to promote INH[23], they are also amplifying INH’s own presence with their proclivity for snackable posts and keen ability to weed through the influencer space, carefully selecting partners that align with its values.

“We did not attach one big influencer to launch INH,” Gould says. “Instead, we are leveraging support across the board.”

To date, the brand’s Instagram account has featured names like YouTube star Kathleen Lights[24] (who counts 2.1 million followers on Instagram and is pictured above), model-entrepreneur Arianny Celeste[25] (3.1 million followers), and Twitch star Hailie Barber[26] (337,000 Instagram followers). The next step, Gould says, will be to team with a major influencer on an INH product collab — though the nascent company is still exploring options, with no names firmly in play.

At the end of the day, however, Gould says that having a masterful Instagram strategy isn’t the only factor in launching a consumer brand, given the saturation of social platforms today.

“Instagram is still an incredibly important part of the template, but now, more than ever before, founders need to understand data on the back-end as well as all of the other elements of the marketing mix, including email acquisition, text messaging, and targeted advertising,” Gould says. “It was only because of our collective backgrounds and experiences that we were able to launch and scale so quickly.”

References

^Insert Name Here (inhhair.com)

^Fashion Nova (www.instagram.com)

^ColourPop Cosmetics (www.instagram.com)

^major player in today’s beauty industry (fashionista.com)

^Bretman Rock (www.tubefilter.com)

^Amanda Steele (www.tubefilter.com)

^Zoe Sugg (www.tubefilter.com)

^Eva Gutowski (www.tubefilter.com)

^Niki and Gabi DeMartino (www.tubefilter.com)

^Beautycon (www.tubefilter.com)

^Kombo Ventures (www.komboventures.com)

^SSSniperWolf (www.youtube.com)

^Alex Lange (www.youtube.com)

^Miya Ponytail (inhhair.com)

^100% human hair extensions (inhhair.com)

^29,000 followers on Instagram (www.instagram.com)

^#INHBabe hashtag (www.instagram.com)

^video tutorials (inhhair.com)

^dedicated blog (inhhair.com)

^Pak (www.instagram.com)

^Wynn (www.instagram.com)

^using their channels (www.instagram.com)

^to promote INH (www.instagram.com)

^names like YouTube star Kathleen Lights (www.instagram.com)

^model-entrepreneur Arianny Celeste (www.instagram.com)

^Hailie Barber (www.instagram.com)

PAGE 2

[homedevises]

25 Common Misconceptions About The True Story Of The Garden Of Eden | the true story of the garden of eden

EXCLUSIVE: DeVon Franklin, the ambassador abaft faith-based films like Miracles from Heaven, The Star, and the forthcoming Breakthrough, has teamed with Fox Ancestors for a live-action/ CGI agreeable aberration on the adventure of the Garden of Eden, the biblical paradise alien in the book of Genesis. The Garden will chase how the aboriginal animals and bodies ascertain the acceptation of friendship, community, and accord in a apple that is absolutely new.

The blur is based on a angle by Michael Weiss and Greg Ostrin.

“Most of us apperceive a adaptation of the adventure of the Garden of Eden, but never afore has this adventure been told in such a different way and it’s the aboriginal time we accept the technology to see this adventure appear to activity like never before,” said Franklin, who holds an all-embracing accord at Fox via his Franklin Entertainment bank forth with blur and television ambassador Karen A. Hamilton.

Zahra Phillips is authoritative the activity for Franklin Entertainment, while Vanessa Morrison and Nate Hopper are administering assembly on the studio’s behalf.

Franklin, who additionally is a preacher, author, and motivational speaker, is repped by Hansen, Jacobson, Teller, Hoberman, and WME.

Weiss and Ostrin are both repped by Avenue 220, Original Artists, and Hung Entertainment Group.  The due wrote the pilot for Zombie VS. Gladiators for Amazon Studios as able-bodied as the amalgam ancestors blur Hip Hop for Sony Pictures Animation.

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[valeriebielbooks]

July Writers’ Forum

In my journey through the steps of independent publishing, refining my writing skills, and most recently completing a successful agent search, I’ve come across some excellent information, tips, tools, and shortcuts that I think would be beneficial to any writer. Once a month, I’ll share the “best of” information and news from the publishing industry as well as feature other authors and writing instructors with tips to share. I am incredibly thankful for the assistance and advice given to me from writing and publishing professionals and am happy pay that forward. On a professional level, I also use my publicity and editorial skills to aid other authors through my company Lost Lake Press.

Happy 100th Blogiversary to me! This is my 100th blog post since beginning the Three Rs: Reading, wRiting, and Roaming in 2014.

Book Events

I am not sure if Sherman Alexie had any upcoming book tour stops here in Wisconsin. I know he was here for the Untitled Town Book Fest in Green Bay this spring. Please take a moment to read his note about the heartbreaking reasons he has decided to stop his book tour.  

He was promoting You Don't Have to Say You Love Me -- a memoir mostly about his relationship with his late mother, Lillian Alexie. It's available in both hardcover and Kindle or wherever you prefer to shop for books. (Alexie is best known for his middle-grade novel The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian.)

Bookish Happenings for August

Books & Company at 1039 Summit Avenue in Oconomowoc is getting creative with a Return to Hogwarts Party on August 24 from 6:30 to 8:00 pm . . . trivia, refreshments, games etc…  Looks like fun! Learn more at:  http://www.booksco.com/event/back-hogwarts-party-thursday-august-24-630-pm

Mystery to Me Bookstore at 1863 Monroe Street in Madison has a great schedule of events for August:

Wednesday, August 9 at 6 pm Lesley Kagen will be speaking at the Sun Prairie Public Library. Kagen is a bestselling and award-winning Wisconsin author who will discuss her career as a writer, actress, and voice talent followed by a book signing. (Books sold by Mystery to Me.)   Free and open to the public.

Thursday, August 10 at 7 pm at the store Allyson K. Abbott and Vickie Fee will be talking about their new installments in their cozy mystery series: A Toast to Murder by Allyson K. Abbott and One Fete in the Grave by Vickie Fee. (RSVP via the Eventbrite link on the store’s website below.)

Sunday, August 13 at 6:30 pm Craig Johnson (of Longmire fame) will visit the store. He’ll discuss his new book, The Western Star, to be released September 5. (Special bookplates are available for those who preorder the book for the author to sign that evening.)

Friday, August 25 at 7 pm William Kent Krueger will discuss his latest pulse-pounding thriller, Sulfur Springs. This event also has a rsvp set up on Eventbrite at the store’s website.

https://www.mysterytomebooks.com/events

Please let me know of any upcoming book releases or events that you’d like featured in the Writers’ Forum!

Featured Subject

Don’t Miss Out on Affiliate Marketing

If you have ever felt like there’s no way you’re ever going to learn everything you ought to know about the publishing world, join the crowd. I had one such moment a few weeks ago when I learned about affiliate link marketing. (Some of you I am sure are shaking your heads at this and asking, “How did she not know about this?” Trust me. I asked myself the same thing.)

So, for those of you who need a quick tutorial, I am here to save the day!

Here’s how Wikipedia defines Affiliate Marketing: . . . (It) is a marketing practice in which a business rewards one or more affiliates for each visitor or customer brought about by the affiliate’s own marketing efforts.

What does this mean?

If you have links to your own products (or other products) on your blog or website you should be using an affiliate link which gives you a small fee for each purchase made by clicking through that link from your page or blog. You don’t get paid much, but if you already have purchase links to your books on your website, what do you have to lose by making sure these are affiliate links that pay you a small percentage on top of your book royalty. And you don’t have to stop there, many products are available for affiliate linkage. There’s a nice article about how this works on a blog by Melissa Culbertson.

At the moment, I’ve only created Amazon affiliate links—so that’s what I’ve focused on here. For the step-by-step process in how to become an Amazon Associate (the first step in being able to create these links), read this “Savvy Book Marketer” post. Once Amazon sends you your Associate acceptance email, this article from “Untethered Income” will help you successfully build (and test) product links.

This is a good start, but all of your book links ought to be affiliate links. Nearly every online retailer has a program, you just need the diligence to set them up.

Pre-Publication Information

Best Book Covers of 2016

The Design Observer released its winners of the 50 Best Book Covers of 2016. This may be especially helpful for reference if you are at the beginning of your cover design process. The only downside to this list is that the genre is not listed. Some are obvious, but others would require some research. There are a number of great contests out there to see which book covers are considered the best of the best. Definitely do some genre-specific internet searches to see what’s working best for the type of book you write BEFORE you finalize your cover.

The Pro-Bono Marketing Staff Every Self-Published Author Has at Their Fingertips

I have to admit that the reason I clicked on this Book Designer article by Eva Lesko Natiello was my reaction that I had somehow missed out on something. What the heck??  

I knew better, of course, but it got me to click. This article is a witty take on how elements of book design and promotion can serve as the hardest-working parts of a successful publishing venture. For instance, she lists your Book Cover as the Senior V.P. of Sales and your Meta Data/Book Description as your Senior V.P. of Marketing. Read the full article here.

Using Keywords to your Advantage in your Book Description

As you set up your book description (particularly on KPD/Kindle) you get to pick two book categories and then seven keywords. If you are savvy when choosing those keywords, you can leverage them to give you access to more than your two main book categories. But you have to know the right words to choose for other categories where your book might fit! A 2013 article from Jennifer Bresnick served as my original guide to this and a new article from Melinda Clayton at Indies Unlimited addresses this same topic.

Using my first novel as an example, I chose these two main categories for my young adult fantasy novel based on Celtic mythology:

·        Juvenile Fiction > Fantasy & Magic

·        Juvenile Fiction > Legends, Myths, Fables > Other

Then I added these keywords: Teen & Young Adult, Paranormal, Celtic, Coming of Age, Historical, Ireland, Romance

Those keywords have allowed my book to not only be ranked and searchable under the two main categories but the book has also been listed under Coming of Age and Paranormal & Urban Fantasy even though those aren’t either of the two main categories. The articles take a deeper look at this subject.

When to Publish Your Book

And just when you think your book should come out in time for Christmas sales, think again . . . The BookBaby blog walks through the best months for release, depending on your topic.

Agents Tell It Like They See It!

If you want to listen in on agents being extremely candid about the book industry, check out this discussionfeaturing Jodi Reamer (Writers House), Kim Witherspoon (Inkwell Management), Robert Gottlieb (Trident Media), Sloan Harris (ICM), Eric Simonoff (WME), and Christy Fletcher (Fletcher & Company) on the “Publishing . . . And Other Forms of Insanity” blog.

Post-Publication

My Failed WATTPAD Experiment

I had hoped that the free reader platform, Wattpad, would be a springboard to more fans and more sales. Unfortunately, the Wattpad Success Story proved elusive for me. I detail my experience and what I did right and wrong here.

Promoting your YA Novel

Another article from Book Baby this month gives tips on promoting your young adult novel through different types of social media . . . there’s some expected advice about Facebook, Twitter, Goodreads, and Pinterest, but what was new to me were the tips about promoting via Reddit. I have one more thing on my list now--which might be good after my Wattpad fail.

Audio Books

Anne R. Allen has an excellent interview with an Audible/ACX narrator that gives inside info on getting your book recorded, so you don’t miss out on the fastest growing book market.

BUT I’M SO TIRED

I’ve thrown a lot at you today from a lot of different directions. Even if you’re not ready to use all of this advice immediately, you might be thinking, “I’m so tired!” or “There’s too much to do!” We all feel that way at least some of the time. Book writing is hard, but I think book marketing is even more difficult.  Judith Briles on The Book Designer website recognizes this and talks us through our “marketing fatigue”. She acknowledges the hard work that is required to be successful and gives encouragements to keep us moving in the right direction!

Happy Reading & Writing, Valerie  

[writingsubmissions]

UFC 211 Preview

WHAT'S HAPPENING: *Well, the Fight Night card from Nashville was pretty weird, though moreso in retrospect, since enough impressive performances were peppered throughout the card that things never really dragged all that much, despite some clear lowlights on the card. The main event between Cub Swanson and Artem Lobov wasn't one of those lowlights, but it was pretty weird, and I'm not exactly sure how to feel about it, since Lobov hung in there for twenty-five minutes and actually looked kind of good at times, considering. Swanson was clearly the better fighter, but Lobov threw a bunch of volume and whenever it looked like Swanson was finally ramping things up to put Lobov away, the Irish-Russian would land some solid blows and gain back a bit of momentum. So this fight really did more for Lobov than for Swanson - while there seemed to be some momentum behind Swanson after that fight of the year contender over Doo Ho Choi, not being able to put away Lobov just sort of confirms that Swanson's sort of the best of the non-contenders rather than someone who can provide a challenge for the belt. Meanwhile, this probably took Lobov from, say, a guy who should be a gatekeeper to stay in the UFC from someone who can be a gatekeeper for actual prospects - though I worry an impressive performance here means, given his friendship with Conor McGregor, that we're going to see Lobov in undeserved big fights from here on out. *And the co-main was a little from column A, a little from column B when it comes to combining an impressive performance with some weirdness. Al Iaquinta pretty much picked up where he left off, knocking out Diego Sanchez in about a minute and a half (side-note - while Sanchez has been more offensively potent than he has been in a while, his chin being so done means he should probably retire pretty much immediately, even though he won't), and then after the fight seemed more interested in plugging his real estate business rather than any future fights, so...yeah. Iaquinta's already openly feuding with UFC management again and, while not outright retiring again, doesn't seem like he'll be fighting again anytime soon - but more on that a bit further down. *Let's address all the impressive performances first, led by Mike Perry, who's quickly becoming a problematic fave. Perry's essentially the human embodiment of Florida and sort of a garbage person, but he can crack - he was having some trouble early on with Jake Ellenberger, but as soon as Perry got into a groove, it was all over in brutal fashion, as Perry got into the clinch and destroyed Ellenberger with an elbow that made for one of the scariest knockouts of 2017. And then he breakdanced. This guy. Joe Lauzon and Stevie Ray had one of the best fights of the night - Lauzon exposed the main flaw in Ray's game, taking him down and dominating things on the ground in the first round, but the longtime vet tired out and from there Ray pretty much took over, turning things around and dominating the third round on the feet. Ray got the decision win and gave a pretty charismatic post-fight interview after the fact, and he's already booked for a fight against Paul Felder in his native Scotland that should be a firecracker of a bout. On the undercard, Mexico's Brandon Moreno is quickly rising up the ranks at flyweight once more - Tennessee native Dustin Ortiz was doing quite well controlling him with wrestling and clinch-work, but Moreno nailed one big kick and then immediately jumped onto the fight-ending choke. Moreno's exciting and has a ton of charisma, and he should be given some pretty big fights next to see how far he can take this, even though this probably sadly ends with him being rushed into a fight with Demetrious Johnson due to a lack of other options. And the other two impressive performances kicked off the card, as rugged welterweight Bryan Barberena scored an uncharacteristic first-round knockout over Joe Proctor, and a fun flyweight sprint to open the show saw Team Alpha Male product Hector Sandoval knock out Matt Schnell with some hammerfists on the ground. *And then there was the rest of the card. There were two more fights that were alright - Ovince St. Preux got back on track, tapping out Marcos Rogerio de Lima as soon as de Lima gassed, and Tennessee's Scott Holtzman got a workmanlike win over Michael McBride to stay afloat - and then a few absolute stinkers. I suppose the best of that bunch was Danielle Taylor beating Jessica Penne at strawweight - this was Penne's best performance since one-sided beatdowns at the hands of Joanna Jedrzejczyk and Jessica Andrade, who square off for the title on Saturday - but Taylor's slowly starting to figure out how to make her style work in the UFC. Taylor's absolutely tiny and packs a bunch of power, so she just sort of circles at a distance and divebombs in with combinations, which threw Penne off enough that she was able to win a narrow decision. A bantamweight fight between John Dodson and Eddie Wineland was the huge disappointment on the card, as this was the worst of Dodson - he was just too fast for Wineland to do much of anything, so Dodson just sort of did just enough to coast to a boring victory, pretty much undoing all the gains he had done in looking fairly aggressive since moving up to 135. Thales Leites and Sam Alvey was another bad fight - Leites injured Alvey's ankle fairly early on with some leg kicks, which prevented Alvey from effectively pressuring and just let Leites coast to an ugly win. And Alexis Davis and Cindy Dandois had just a gong show of a fight at women's bantamweight - Dandois is a talented submission artist, so the scrambles on the ground weren't that bad, but she got exposed as, by far, the worst striker in the UFC here and the whole thing was just uncomfortably bad to watch. Ick. *So, yeah, Al Iaquinta. Apparently the reason he seemed so unenthused after his fight is that according to him, after seeing Ellenberger get knocked out so brutally on the monitors backstage, Iaquinta pretty much reconsidered if this whole fighting thing was worth the effort, and almost left the arena. And then things went completely to hell after Iaquinta wasn't awarded a post-fight bonus (though, admittedly, Perry and Moreno were probably the right choices), as Iaquinta cursed out the UFC, management, and has pretty much been going off on Twitter in the weeks since, declaring himself President of the UFC and throwing barbs at Dana White and guys like Sage Northcutt. The whole thing essentially stems back to Iaquinta being on bonus probation (which nobody realized was a thing until Iaquinta brought it up) from a number of incidents, like Iaquinta trashing a hotel room and skipping out on a fighters' meeting in Las Vegas, though Iaquinta claims he told the company about the latter in advance. But the real messiness came when Iaquinta needed knee surgery - Iaquinta claimed it was chronic and dated back to his days on TUF, and thus should be covered by the UFC's insurance policy, but UFC (or, according to them, the insurers) pushed back, and things got really messy from there. An unnamed UFC official who is almost surely Dana White tried to throw Iaquinta under the bus this past week, saying that he didn't even thank UFC or the doctors once he got the surgery, which...really, we're going there? Anyway, it's not like anyone on either side of this argument is consistent, so we'll probably see Iaquinta back in the cage at some point, but right now, it's a mess. *And speaking of messes when it comes to fighter relations, Anderson Silva's UFC 212 fight turned into a bit of a disaster, and now it's off. About a week ago, Silva came out and said that he wanted an interim title fight with Yoel Romero on the card, or else he would retire. Apparently UFC had offered him a bunch of different opponents that Silva all turned down - Luke Rockhold was confirmed as one, and the latest rumor was Ovince St. Preux at a 195-pound catchweight for some reason - so it's not all their fault, but they decided not to give in to Silva's demands, and now it appears he's off the card, though him retiring still seems fairly unlikely. Middleweight's just become a mess, particularly with Georges St. Pierre filming a (frankly uninspiring) callout video of Michael Bisping that says he's ready to fight him...sometime after October, which one assumes will be UFC's return to Madison Square Garden in November. So we have to wait even longer for a fight nobody really wants to see beyond it being GSP's return, and we're getting a belt with a ton of contenders held up in the process, causing an absolute chaos in a division. Great. For better or for worse, this'll probably be the long-lasting influence of Conor McGregor - as the guy who showed fighters their own worth and how to get paid. Add in the rise of McGregor happening just as UFC ownership cashed out and showed that the promoters are, in fact, not the friend of the fighters, and it's just been a toxic combination for fighter relations at a time when UFC needs big fights to happen. Sigh. *Ronda Rousey and Travis Browne have apparently gotten engaged. Hopefully it goes better than Browne's last marriage. *ESPN laid off about a hundred employees a few weeks back, as it looks like the sports bubble is finally bursting, which should have some effects on UFC business. WME-IMG bought the company at a premium, assuming a few different things - one, that buyrates would stay at their current levels thanks to Conor McGregor and Ronda Rousey (whoops), and cashing it on UFC's next TV rights deal. Live sports are still the big ticket items in the cable world, since they're one of the few DVR-proof things out there, but as more and more people live without cable, it's making a lot of these expensive long-term deals somewhat untenable. When UFC's deal with Fox comes due at the end of next year, they'll still be the biggest property on the market, but it's unclear now what that's worth - UFC banked that they'd be able to be the last big property to get a TV deal before the bubble burst, but instead it looks like they'll be the first one to get a deal under this new landscape. They may still get bigger money out of the deal - maybe even enough to eventually shift UFC's big money source from pay-per-view to TV rights fees - but if ESPN can't pony up the cash, it'll be tough to ignite a bidding war that can cause a huge windfall for the new ownership. *TUF 26 has a point! UFC is officially adding women's flyweight, which I have mixed feelings about - on the one hand, it's the women's division to add, since there's a bunch of talent currently on the roster and available from Invicta, even if Bellator has gotten a bit of a head start, but on the other, at a time when the belts are getting rapidly devalued, adding yet another championship is probably an iffy move. But TUF 20, crowning the first women's strawweight champion, was a pretty great season, so hopefully TUF 26 does the same thing to get 125 off to a good start. *Miguel Torres retired, ending what's probably going to wind up being an underrated and somewhat forgotten career given how suddenly he dropped off the radar. Urijah Faber gets all the credit for starring in WEC and basically making weight classes under 155 viable, but Torres was right there with him, reigning over bantamweight while Faber reigned over featherweight. There was always talk of a dream match between the two, but it never materialized after Faber lost his title to Mike Brown. After winning an instant classic over Takeya Mizugaki, Torres suddenly went from champion to out of the title picture, losing his title in a shocking knockout loss to Brian Bowles, then getting tapped out by Joseph Benavidez for only his second and third losses in a forty-fight MMA career. Then came his UFC career, which frankly wasn't much - his most notable fights were losses to Demetrious Johnson and Michael McDonald, the latter in an obvious attempt to make a name for a talented prospect, and then Torres got cut for a misguided tweet about a "rape van" that was honestly almost too unfunny to really be offensive, particularly given that other UFC fighters have said or done much worse. But even though the reason was kind of eh, UFC cut him at the right time, since Torres signed with WSOF and washed out of it soon after, then just kind of bummed it around his native Indiana and the occasional fight in Asia before calling it a career. Farewell to one of the best mullets in the game. *Things got a bit weird between Brian Stann and Cris Cyborg - essentially, in a radio interview, Stann seemingly confirmed a lot of the whispers going around about Cyborg - that she basically never really made a good faith effort to try and cut down to 135, as her and UFC both agreed to, and a lot of the stuff about her ditching promotional stuff that UFC would throw her way, then complain about how UFC doesn't promote her. In response, Cyborg (or whoever runs her Twitter account - probably her boyfriend/manager Ray Elbe) posted a thing about Stann not liking Brazilians because he got knocked out by Wanderlei Silva, which...not the best look going after the war hero there. *Let's do some quick hits to finish things up. UFC finally signed former WSOF lightweight champ Justin Gaethje, who immediately becomes one of the best action fighters on the roster. It'll be interesting to see how they book him - they could easily throw him right into the fire, but it'll be interesting to see how Gaethje's all-offense no-defense style plays with a step up in competition. Kelvin Gastelum has been suspended for a few months and had his win over Vitor Belfort overturned to a no contest after failing a pot test. The fact that this happened, but Belfort was never flagged while fighting in Brazil, just kind of makes you laugh, then cry. Frank Mir got the full two-year suspension for doping stemming from his March 2016 loss to Mark Hunt - Mir's excuse that it must have been tainted meat or something fell apart once USADA improved their technology and was able to see that samples going back a few months before also tested positive for the drug in question - whoops. Former bantamweight champ Renan Barao is dropping back down to 135 after a two-fight experience at featherweight. And Paige VanZant posted a sexy video on Twitter to sell some Reebok stuff, and then everyone basically got all weird about it and shamed her into taking it down, because that is what MMA fans and humans do. ------ BOOKINGS: *Not a ton of big stuff, save three title fights seemingly getting confirmed for July...kind of. It looks like the long-awaited Jon Jones/Daniel Cormier rematch is a go for UFC 214, which is in Anaheim at the tail end of June - the ball was previously in Jones's court if he wanted that fight or a tune-up match, but he's apparently chose to get his title back as soon as possible. Apparently the co-main of that fight will be Cris Cyborg against...somebody. Women's featherweight champ Germaine de Randamie is apparently going through some issues - there's the ongoing saga of her hand injury, plus apparently she has some problems involving fighting while serving as a police officer in her native Netherlands, so there's apparently the option that UFC may sign Invicta champ Megan Anderson and we get an interim title fight in a three-person division. And the women's bantamweight title fight between Amanda Nunes and Valentina Shevchenko, a rematch of the bout that got Nunes the title shot, is taking place on the big UFC 213 show after a few false starts - hell, given how things are shaping up, it may actually wind up being the main event. *Let's go event by event! UFC 212 has apparently lost Anderson Silva, so instead it'll get the retirement fight of Vitor Belfort, who takes on Nate Marquardt in what could conceivably be a retirement fight for both. Belfort's apparently training with Tristar in Montreal for this camp, which comes absolutely out of nowhere, but hey, Vitor's gonna Vitor. That card also adds a few undercard fights - bantamweights Iuri Alcantara and Felipe Arantes square off in a weird fight to make, given that it's a rematch and Alcantara is coming off a big win over Luke Sanders, while Arantes is coming off a loss, and action welterweight Luan Chagas returns to take on British vet Jim Wallhead, who showed little in his UFC debut this past September. *The Oklahoma City card weirdly hasn't gotten any additional fights, but a few undercard bouts have been added to the other June cards from Auckland and Singapore. Auckland adds three bouts - local fighter Luke Jumeau makes his debut against Dominique Steele, who after facing Court McGee in Utah, is apparently slotted as the guy who has to fly in and take on the hometown fighter. Also, Brazilian prospect Warlley Alves looks to rebound against Japanese vet Kiichi Kunimoto, returning from a two-plus-year layoff, and France's Thibault Gouti did in fact apparently negotiate another UFC fight in exchange for fighting an opponent who missed weight, as he takes his 0-3 record to New Zealand against "The Other" Dong Hyun Kim. As for Singapore, Jingliang Li, the one decent Chinese fighter UFC has been able to find, has re-signed with the promotion and will take on Quebec's Jonathan Meunier. Though, sadly, the Auckland card just apparently lost a big name, as Joseph Benavidez has announced he's hurt and out of his fight against Australian favorite Ben Nguyen. The hope was this was just something minor, which could clear the way for Benavidez, the deserving contender, to just get a third shot at Demetrious Johnson instead, but apparently it's an ACL tear that will keep Benavidez out of action for quite a while, which is fairly shitty. *The TUF 25 finale, which takes place the day before UFC 213, has added a bunch of fights, though nothing that figures to be too prominent on the card. The best of the bunch is probably British prospect Marc Diakiese, who's quickly establishing himself as maybe the rising lightweight to watch, taking on Drakkar Klose, who had a successful UFC debut over Devin Powell in January. Past that, we have Steve Bosse and Jared Cannonier squaring off in a battle of light heavyweight bangers, Angela Hill taking on Ashley Yoder at strawweight, Jessica Eye looking to stay afloat in UFC against debuting top prospect Aspen Ladd, and vets Ed Herman and C.B. Dollaway squaring off at light heavyweight. *Speaking of UFC 213, it added a few fights - past some stuff that was already rumored but just got officially announced, and the Nunes/Shevchenko fight mentioned above, Anthony Pettis and Jim Miller square off in a really fun fight between name lightweights, as Pettis looks to have a successful return to the division he was once champion of. Plus Thiago Santos and Gerald Meerschaert square off at middleweight in a pretty solid striker-versus-grappler match. *The card from Glasgow has had by far the most stuff announced, though no big fights yet - though I suppose there's a chance they put Stevie Ray, probably the best Scottish fighter in the promotion, against Paul Felder in the co-main event slot based off local interest. Past that bout, there's some fun stuff - light heavyweight Paul Craig, the only other Scot announced thus far for the card, takes on Khalil Rountree in a pretty neat grappler/striker fight. Both of UFC's Welsh fighters return - top bantamweight prospect Brett Johns gets a tough test in Canada's Mitch Gagnon, and Jack Marshman takes on Ryan Janes in what should be a fun middleweight bout. Ireland's Neil Seery will hopefully finally have his retirement fight, as it's fallen through twice, when he faces rising Brazilian Alexandre Pantoja. England's Mark Godbeer takes on Justin Willis at heavyweight, action welterweights Danny Roberts and Bobby Nash square off, and Conor McGregor teammate Charlie Ward is also on the card, as UFC continues to search for someone he can beat - so step right up British kickboxer Galore Bofando, if that is your real name. *And that leaves the Fox card from Long Island, which only has one fight confirmed thus far, and it's an awesome one, between top bantamweight prospects Jimmie Rivera and Thomas Almeida in what should be an excellent bit of violence. Past that, local boy Chris Wade takes on Jersey's Frankie Perez at lightweight, and rumored light heavyweight bout between Gian Villante and Steve Bosse was half-right - Bosse is instead facing Jared Cannonier in Vegas, as mentioned, and Villante is instead taking on Patrick Cummins, in a fight originally scheduled for the Albany card this past December. *Oh, and UFC announced one more location for a card in 2017, as the promotion will be making their debut in Edmonton on September 9th, for UFC 216. ----- ROSTER CUTS: 1) Scott Askham (14-4 overall, 2-4 UFC, last fought 3/18/17, L vs. Brad Scott): There's really not a ton to say about Askham, as the Doncaster native wound up being a fine fighter, if a bit of a disappointing prospect. Askham came up as one of the best prospects in England who could do a little bit of everything, so there was some hype behind him when he debuted, but he just wound up being sort of an average fighter everywhere once he got to the UFC level. He handled lower-level guys like Antonio dos Santos and Chris Dempsey rather easily, but most of his fights were just kind of fun, if completely unmemorable affairs, that in a few cases easily could've gone either way. Askham's still just 28, and UFC still cares about England, so a return wouldn't be shocking, but if not, there's a solid career on the European circuit waiting for him. 2) Joe Proctor (11-5 overall, 4-4 UFC, last fought 4/22/17, L vs. Bryan Barberena): UFC brought the axe down pretty quickly on Proctor, given that he just lost on the Nashville card. The Boston native is sort of the American version of Askham, in that he was a jack of all trades, master of none type that never really had any standout performances, but was usually good for a fun fight and could handle guys that didn't really belong on the UFC roster. With some better matchmaking, Proctor easily could've kept hanging around, but Magomed Mustafaev and Bryan Barberena were two tough asks, so it's not a surprise Proctor lost two straight and then got cut. ----- UPCOMING UFC SHOWS: 5/28 - UFC Fight Night 109 - Stockholm, Sweden - Alexander Gustafsson vs. Glover Teixeira 6/3 - UFC 212 - Rio De Janeiro, Brazil - Jose Aldo ( c ) vs. Max Holloway (ic), Claudia Gadelha vs. Karolina Kowalkiewicz, Vitor Belfort vs. Nate Marquardt 6/10 - UFC Fight Night 110 - Auckland, New Zealand - Mark Hunt vs. Derrick Lewis, Derek Brunson vs. Daniel Kelly 6/17 - UFC Fight Night 111 - Singapore, Singapore - Bethe Correia vs. Holly Holm, Colby Covington vs. Dong Hyun Kim, Rafael dos Anjos vs. Tarec Saffiedine 6/25 - UFC Fight Night 112 - Oklahoma City, OK - Michael Chiesa vs. Kevin Lee, B.J. Penn vs. Dennis Siver, Tim Boetsch vs. Johny Hendricks, Ilir Latifi vs. Antonio Rogerio Nogueira 7/7 - TUF 25 Finale - Las Vegas, NV - Brad Tavares vs. Elias Theodorou, Steve Bosse vs. Jared Cannonier 7/8 - UFC 213 - Las Vegas, NV - Cody Garbrandt ( c ) vs. T.J. Dillashaw, Amanda Nunes ( c ) vs. Valentina Shevchenko, Donald Cerrone vs. Robbie Lawler, Alistair Overeem vs. Fabricio Werdum 7/16 - UFC Fight Night 113 - Glasgow, Scotland - Paul Felder vs. Stevie Ray 7/22 - UFC on Fox 25 - Uniondale, NY - Chan Sung Jung vs. Ricardo Lamas, Thomas Almeida vs. Jimmie Rivera 7/29 - UFC 214 - Anaheim, CA - Daniel Cormier ( c ) vs. Jon Jones ----- UFC 211 - May 13, 2017 - American Airlines Center - Dallas, Texas Well, this is a pleasant surprise. It's been kind of a blah year thus far in UFC, and I'm not exactly sure why the company decided to make this May card such a big one, but it's amazingly seemingly held together, and the results are fairly ridiculous. Not only do we get two title fights, there's six fights here that could easily headline a card themselves, fairly consistent with when UFC really goes out of their way to stack a card huge. And this card isn't just stacked in quality, but also quantity - they've tried it a few times over the years, but this might be the card where UFC puts on 14 fights, which would be the most since UFC 2. Crazy stuff, in pretty much every aspect, so sit back and enjoy the ride. MAIN CARD (Pay-Per-View - 10:00 PM ET): Heavyweight Championship: ( C ) Stipe Miocic vs. (#4) Junior dos Santos Women's Strawweight Championship: ( C ) Joanna Jedrzejczyk vs. (#3) Jessica Andrade Welterweight: (#3) Demian Maia vs. (#5) Jorge Masvidal Featherweight: (#2) Frankie Edgar vs. (#7) Yair Rodriguez Flyweight: (#2) Henry Cejudo vs. (#6) Sergio Pettis PRELIMINARY CARD (FX - 8:00 PM ET): Lightweight: (#3) Eddie Alvarez vs. (#9) Dustin Poirier Featherweight: Jason Knight vs. Chas Skelly Middleweight: (#9) Krzysztof Jotko vs. Dave Branch Lightweight: Polo Reyes vs. James Vick PRELIMINARY CARD (UFC Fight Pass - 6:00 PM ET): Women's Strawweight: (#12) Jessica Aguilar vs. Cortney Casey Featherweight: Jared Gordon vs. Michel Quinones Heavyweight: Rashad Coulter vs. Chase Sherman Featherweight: Enrique Barzola vs. Gabriel Benitez Light Heavyweight: Gadzhimurad Antigulov vs. Joachim Christensen THE RUNDOWN: Stipe Miocic (16-2 overall, 10-2 UFC) vs. Junior dos Santos (18-4 overall, 12-3 UFC): For as much of an aging mess that the heavyweight division has become, title fights in the division as still pretty fun, and this should be no exception, particularly since these have already squared off in a really fun fight back in late 2014, which saw dos Santos get a narrow victory. That was the last loss for Cleveland's Stipe Miocic, who's been a pretty neat little story as he's ascended towards the title. Although he was pretty much always regarded as a top prospect at heavyweight, I don't think I was alone when I didn't really see a championship-level ceiling for Miocic as he rose up the ranks, and a 2012 knockout loss to Stefan Struve, of all people, seemingly cemented that. But Miocic plugged away, improving with win after win, and after narrowly losing that first war against dos Santos, he pretty much turned into a knockout machine, laying a beatdown on Mark Hunt and obliterating Andrei Arlovski before heading down to Brazil and unseating Fabricio Werdum in his own hometown. And Miocic's first title defense over Alistair Overeem was a pretty great moment - Miocic has been embraced by his hometown since winning the title in a city starved for championships (though the Cavaliers did soon overshadow that, though Miocic did take part in their championship parade), so UFC decided to run a card in Cleveland built around Miocic, and after a crazy brawl, the hometown crowd got sent home happy after Miocic scored the first-round KO. Since then, it's been kind of a mess finding Miocic a challenger - Cain Velasquez is always hurt, Fabricio Werdum is feuding with management at the moment, so UFC decided to go with the last guy to beat Miocic, and so Junior dos Santos gets the shot. It's been a weird few years for dos Santos, who seemingly cemented himself as the best heavyweight on the planet after a 64-second knockout of Cain Velasquez on UFC's debut on Fox, all the way back in 2011. But Velasquez absolutely dominated the next two fights of the trilogy, with the last fight being such a beatdown that many worried it was going to shorten dos Santos's career. And for a while, those people looked like they were right - the Brazilian took over a year to return for his fight with Miocic, in which he took a ton of damage, and then after another year-long layoff, dos Santos returned and got brutally knocked out by Overeem, the first clean KO loss of his career. It looked like dos Santos was rapidly falling from the ranks of the elite, so of course things turned completely around with his next fight, as dos Santos pretty much put on a virtuoso performance in keeping Ben Rothwell at bay for five rounds, suddenly re-establishing himself as a top contender. UFC tried to book a few fights for JDS in the interim, most notably a February fight with Struve that fell through, so as things have shaken out, dos Santos has gone through another year-plus layoff before fighting here. And this should be another fun one, as pretty much all dos Santos fights are - the challenger's as pure of a boxer as you'll find, and combine that with his takedown defense and the power that heavyweight brings, and you'll almost always get a fun chess match, if not just an outright slugfest. And though Miocic came up the ranks advertised as sort of a boxer-wrestler, he's also relied much more on the former in recent years, sparking fights into brawls for however briefly they last. As with pretty much all heavyweight fights, this is more or less an outright coin flip, given the fact that either can knock the other out at any second, and that their first fight was so close. I'll slightly favor Miocic - while dos Santos's win over Rothwell was a pretty excellent rebound performance, the former champ does look somewhat physically diminished from his peak before that last Velasquez fight, just in terms of athleticism and speed. And while I know "MMA math" doesn't really work like this, Miocic's only improved since their first fight, and when faced with a slower dos Santos, that should be more than enough to make up the difference in the rematch. I do expect a pretty great striking match, though I think Miocic will take over at some point, and in his last few fights once Miocic gets rolling, he pretty much hasn't given up the momentum. So I'll say things do roll downhill enough for Miocic to get the finish, and I'll say it comes via third-round knockout. Joanna Jedrzejczyk (13-0 overall, 7-0 UFC) vs. Jessica Andrade (16-5 overall, 7-3 UFC): Joanna Jedrzejczyk has pretty much dominated the strawweight division since UFC launched it in 2014, but this should be excellent, as Jessica Andrade may be her toughest test yet. Jedrzejczyk was an interesting prospect when UFC signed her, given her excellent muay thai background, but after a controversial decision win over Claudia Gadelha, most figured that inaugural champion Carla Esparza would be able to neutralize the striker and take her to the ground. Nope - despite just three months in between fights, Jedrzejczyk showed suddenly improved takedown defense, more or less annihilating the champ to take the belt, and then followed that up on another quick turnaround to absolutely beat the piss out of Jessica Penne, turning the challenger into a bloody mess in one of the more one-sided title fights you'll ever see. Since then, Jedrzejczyk's reign hasn't been quite as brutal, but no less dominant, with three clear decision wins - her rematch with Gadelha was an absolute war that pretty much confirmed Gadelha as the second-best fighter in the division, but Valerie Letourneau and Karolina Kowalkiewicz weren't really able to accomplish much against the champion. But now, we get something completely different in Jessica Andrade, who might be the biggest powerhouse in the strawweight division. Andrade came into UFC as a raw and young bantamweight, and was a frustrating prospect - she could excel pretty much everywhere, but was fairly undersized, and in fights against Marion Reneau and Raquel Pennington, she was seemingly cruising to a win before leaving herself open for a fight-ending submission. After that Pennington loss, Andrade announced she'd be moving down to strawweight, which was a bit surprising - Andrade seemed to be too stocky and muscular to cut much more weight, so there was some worry that Andrade would just drain herself and be ineffective in her new weight class. But thus far, the results have been excellent - she ran through Penne, then dominated Joanne Calderwood as soon as she got things to the ground, and her last fight against Angela Hill was a fun, but one-sided striking match against a tough opponent. Andrade poses a really tough fight for Jedrzejczyk - Gadelha has by far had the most success against the champion, mostly using her power and wrestling skill to just neutralize the champ for a few rounds, and that seems like a gameplan that Andrade can borrow a lot from, plus it's unclear if Andrade will gas as badly as Gadelha did come the later rounds. And on top of that, unlike Gadelha, Andrade has thudding power - she's not a one-hitter quitter (and I struggle to think of any strawweight that is), but Andrade's punches cause damage, and she's more than capable of hurting and overwhelming pretty much any opponent. Still, I'll favor the champ to get the win, even though I have surprisingly little confidence in the pick for such a dominant champion - I'm honestly not really sure how Jedrzejczyk will dissuade Andrade from wading in and throwing sledgehammers, which gives me pause, but I trust Jedrzejczyk's striking and length to keep Andrade at bay, at least somewhat, and pretty much just win rounds. In fact, I could see this looking a lot like the Gadelha fight, where the champion has to survive early, but either through Andrade exhausting or Jedrzejczyk adjusting, Jedrzejczyk wins the back half of the fight to take the nod. Anyway, this is a uniquely tough fight for Jedrzejczyk, but I'll take her by decision, even if, honestly, a shocking first- or second-round upset finish wouldn't surprise me all that much. Demian Maia (24-6 overall, 18-6 UFC) vs. Jorge Masvidal (32-11 overall, 9-4 UFC, 5-1 Strikeforce, 2-1 Bellator): Well, it wouldn't be a major UFC card in 2017 without a guy who's earned a title shot being forced into a tricky fight. Like Jacare Souza before him, Demian Maia probably should have been fighting for a title rather than fighting a rising contender, but he's somehow wound up on the outside looking in, between Tyron Woodley and Stephen Thompson fighting to a draw mucking things up, combined with UFC's complete lack of enthusiasm in giving Maia a title shot. I can see why some people might consider Maia's style boring - I believe it's Jordan Breen I'm stealing this from, but someone put it best when they described Maia's approach as a "citizen's arrest" style of fighting, but I think the fanbase has evolved enough that Maia's seen as sort of an entertaining throwback. Maia's creeping up on forty years old, but since cutting down to welterweight, he's been absolutely excellent and one of the best jiu-jitsu practitioners in the history of the sport - Maia's not just an excellent submission artist, but an excellent wrestler, and fight after fight, opponent after opponent, Maia just takes his opponents down and goes to work, even schooling guys as high-level as fellow BJJ ace Gunnar Nelson. He made Neil Magny look like an amateur, he dominated Matt Brown, and his last fight may have been the most impressive of all, as a dangerous fight with Carlos Condit turned into Maia immediately getting a takedown, working for a choke, and finishing one of the divisional elite in just a shade under two minutes. Ridiculous stuff. That seemingly earned Maia a winner at the Woodley/Thompson winner, and may have if there actually was a winner of that fight, but instead UFC forced him to keep busy and put him against Jorge Masvidal, who's no prospect, but is suddenly a rising contender. Masvidal's always been a fascinating character, as he came up in the same Miami backyard brawling circuit that birthed Kimbo Slice, but became legit and made a name for himself as a top lightweight fighting around the world, before landing in UFC about a decade into his career. But Masvidal has always been a frustrating talent - he's got solid boxing, wrestling, and grappling, but he became most notorious for his tendency to coast; maybe it's that old street fight mindset that causes Masvidal to focus more on surviving rather than winning rounds, but Masvidal can be winning a fight or various exchanges and then just take his foot off the gas pedal, making him kind of the king of narrow decision losses that a bunch of people felt he won. A loss in that fashion to Al Iaquinta was apparently one too many for Masvidal, and he decided the solution was to move up to welterweight, where things, for a while, were mostly the same - after a quick win over Cezar Ferreira (who looked horrible in his one fight cutting down to 170), Masvidal once again gave up narrow decision losses to Benson Henderson and Lorenz Larkin. But Masvidal's suddenly turned things around, tightening up his boxing and flashing a ton more power - I'm not really sure wins over Ross Pearson and Jake Ellenberger are worth much nowadays, but Masvidal was dominating those fights, and then Masvidal earned the biggest win of his career, obliterating Donald Cerrone for a second-round knockout this past January in Denver. Cerrone looked to be cruising to a welterweight title shot of his own, but Masvidal pretty much stole his spot, and should be an interesting test for Maia. Like a lot of Maia fights, this is a pretty binary in terms of results - while the Brazilian has improved a ton on the feet, he'll still get dominated if this stays standing, and while Masvidal is a surprisingly savvy grappler, Maia's chewed up and spit out much better guys whenever he's taken them to the ground. A finish could come at any time - either Maia by submission or Masvidal by knockout, and even if it doesn't, this probably comes down to each guy dominating in their phase, and just adding up at the end whether more of the fight took place on the feet or on the mat. While this reeks of another Jacare/Whittaker fight, where a deserving contender just gets knocked off thanks to UFC's promotional machinations, I'll have some faith and go with Maia to win this since, even at 39 years old, I frankly trust him a lot more - while Masvidal looked good against Pearson and Ellenberger, neither of those wins really impress me, and it's only the Cerrone knockout - which, admittedly, was a great performance - that suggests that Masvidal can hang at this level of top contender. But given the inconsistency of Masvidal's career, and that Maia's just on a roll of taking everyone down and dominating them, I'll go out on a bit of a limb and say that Maia pretty much duplicates the Condit performance, controlling a dangerous foe and slowly working towards a first-round submission. Though, admittedly, this could go in the complete opposite direction. Frankie Edgar (21-5-1 overall, 15-5-1 UFC) vs. Yair Rodriguez (10-1 overall, 6-0 UFC): It's pretty crazy that less than two years ago, there was a question if UFC was rushing Yair Rodriguez by putting their prized Mexican prospect against Charles Rosa - now, the question is if Rodriguez can beat an all-time great and make himself a championship contender, and a lot of people think he can. Rodriguez honestly wasn't even obviously the best prospect on season one of TUF: Latin America, but he joined his castmates in getting really good, really fast as soon as they all received UFC-level pay and training, with Rodriguez suddenly becoming UFC's biggest native star in a country with huge potential. Wins over guys like Rosa, Daniel Hooker, and Andre Fili - the last by highlight-reel switch kick knockout - showed Rodriguez to be a ridiculous athlete with an unorthodox striking style, somewhat similar to peak Anthony Pettis, but it was his five-round main event win over Alex Caceres that really drove home that Rodriguez is something special. It's not as if Caceres himself is an amazing win, as he's a talented, but inconsistent vet, but Rodriguez showed off a ridiculous combination of athleticism and cardio, fighting five rounds using his high-power, high-pace style, at elevation, and barely flagging over the course of the fight. After that was a win over B.J. Penn, which, the less said the better - Penn was just too physically outmatched for the fight to be anything but a blowout - and now Rodriguez gets thrown into the deep end against Frankie Edgar, who's probably one of the pound-for-pound greats of all time. Edgar first made his name unseating Penn for the lightweight title in a huge upset all the way back in 2010, and he's been regarded as an elite fighter ever since; there was his amazing pair of title defense against Gray Maynard, and then two narrow losses to Benson Henderson, either of which (particularly the second) you could've made the case that Edgar won. But rather than stick at lightweight, Edgar decided to cut down to 145, and the results have been fairly outstanding. Sure, Jose Aldo has turned him back twice - first in Edgar's debut in the division, and then in a shockingly one-sided fight that further cemented Aldo as an all-time great back at UFC 200 - but other than that, Edgar has pretty much wrecked all comers. Cub Swanson's career-best run towards the belt instead turned into Edgar beating him down for twenty-five minutes, Chad Mendes got knocked out in just two and a half minutes, and even if his last win over Jeremy Stephens was classic Edgar, getting in some trouble before fighting through the damage to win, the Jersey native doesn't really show any signs of slipping out of the elite. Still, it'll be fascinating just to see how Edgar handles someone as physically gifted as Rodriguez, who even past all his speed and cardio, also might be bigger than anyone Edgar has even faced at lightweight. And while guys like Mendes and Stephens also have knockout power - though Edgar's as good as anyone at recovering from damage - Rodriguez's unorthodox kicking game and tendency to throw out crazy combinations is also probably unlike anything Edgar has ever seen. Still, I have faith in Edgar to pull it out, even though I doubt it'll be easy - while Rodriguez is a ridiculous prospect who's making a charge towards a title sooner rather than later, his best wins at this point are inconsistent journeymen Fili and Caceres, and Edgar's toughness, veteran savvy, and just all-around good game is too much of a step up for me to have a ton of faith in picking Rodriguez to win. But again, I do think it'll be tough - while the obvious route would be for Edgar to just take Rodriguez down to neutralize and maul him like he did to, say, Swanson, Rodriguez has shown a pretty slick submission game that should keep Edgar honest, on top of having that speed and athleticism edge. Add in the fact that this is a three-round fight, and I could see the argument that Rodriguez is able to outquick Edgar for most of the fight, hit some crazy shots from a distance, and basically do enough before Edgar is able to adjust like he can in a five-round fight. Still, I'll go the opposite route, say Edgar mostly makes this ugly, taking things to the clinch and the ground - even if he's unable to keep Rodriguez there for long stretches of time - and earns a close decision. Still an excellent fight, though, and it speaks to how quickly Rodriguez has improved that we're even at this point just two and a half years into his UFC career. Henry Cejudo (10-2 overall, 4-2 UFC) vs. Sergio Pettis (15-2 overall, 6-2 UFC): Flyweight's a bit of a jumble - you have Demetrious Johnson, then Joseph Benavidez, then seemingly everyone through number three to number twenty can knock each other off - but it does make for a bunch of fun fights, and this is no exception. Henry Cejudo's had a bit of a strange run - a former Olympic gold medalist in wrestling at just 21 years old, Cejudo immediately became a blue-chip prospect as soon as he entered MMA, but the early portions of his career were marred with a bunch of questions about his dedication and his ability to make flyweight, as he missed weight a bunch of times and was forced to make his UFC debut at bantamweight. But Cejudo got his head on straight, and after a few wins, was pretty much rushed into a title fight with Johnson - a lot of people thought that Cejudo's Olympic wrestling pedigree and rapidly improving striking meant he could be the guy to finally unseat Johnson, so it was sort of deflating when Mighty Mouse went out there and obliterated Cejudo with some knees in the clinch in a shade under three minutes. Still, Cejudo recovered quite nicely, looking excellent in his last fight against Benavidez, which wound up being a decision loss that easily could've gone either way. This all leaves Cejudo in a pretty weird place - he's probably still the best bet to beat Johnson if you look a year or two out, and he's proven himself to be either the second- or third-best guy in the division, but his upward mobility in the division is fairly limited after those two losses, and at age 30, he's a bit older than you'd expect, even though he's still rapidly improving. But anyway, this is all moot if Cejudo doesn't get past Sergio Pettis, the young brother of former UFC champion Anthony. Pettis the younger was tabbed as a top prospect upon his debut, as he ran through smaller circuits while still a teenager, but he's not his brother, for better or for worse. While Anthony developed a style based off single, explosive strikes, Sergio's just a fairly solid, meat-and-potatoes striker and wrestler. And while Anthony pretty much burst onto the scene and charged towards the WEC lightweight title, Sergio's rise has been much more in fits and starts - while he's looked solid in every fight, losses to Alex Caceres and Ryan Benoit showed that Pettis can both leave himself defensively open and doesn't react well if he gets nailed, as both losses were "come-from-ahead" affairs. But Pettis continues to slowly move up the ladder, notching the biggest win of his career over John Moraga in January, and at just 23, he should be a concern at 125 for years to come. Still, I don't really see what Pettis can offer Cejudo here - for as flawed as Anthony's game has been recently, if Sergio was a more dynamic athlete with one-shot power, I'd at least give him a chance to hit something and finish Cejudo. But Sergio just breaks his opponents down, and, well, I don't see that happening - Cejudo is obviously the better wrestler and should be able to dictate where the fight takes place, and he's also the better boxer, and frankly, still might be the guy improving more from fight to fight. It's not like Cejudo's a particularly dynamic finisher either, so this is almost surely going to a decision, and while I don't expect this to ever really be a blowout, it should be pretty clear from the jump that Cejudo is the better fighter as he wins round after round. Eddie Alvarez (28-5 overall, 3-2 UFC, 9-1 Bellator) vs. Dustin Poirier (21-5 overall, 13-4 UFC, 1-1 WEC): It's been a long, strange trip for Eddie Alvarez - he spent years fighting around the world and establishing himself as one of the top action lightweights in the world before becoming a bit of a star in Bellator, who pretty much tried to build around him as they were finding their footing while replacing UFC on Spike. But things sort of went to hell once Alvarez tried to sign with UFC - Bellator used some contract matching provisions to try and keep him with the promotion, and Alvarez wound up missing out on an instant UFC title shot against Benson Henderson as things descended into a messy legal battle that threatened the prime of Alvarez's career. But things eventually worked out - thanks to a bunch of negotiations and Bjorn Rebney's ouster from Bellator, Alvarez eventually wound up winning back the Bellator lightweight title and then leaving the promotion as champ, finally signing with UFC in mid-2014. But Donald Cerrone beat Alvarez via close, but clear decision in Alvarez's debut, which was pretty deflating - it looked like Alvarez had pretty much missed out on his chance for glory in UFC, and had gotten to the promotion just a little too late. But things turned around pretty quickly after that - after wins over Gilbert Melendez and Anthony Pettis that went against type, seeing Alvarez fight smart and use wrestling rather than try to excite the crowd, Alvarez managed to shockingly upset Rafael dos Anjos last July to become UFC champion, and then somewhat improbably wound up headlining UFC's debut in Madison Square Garden against Conor McGregor. Admittedly, that fight went horribly for Alvarez, as McGregor dominated before getting a second-round knockout, but still, it was nice to at least see Alvarez get a big stage for once, as well as earning the big paycheck his entire career had been building towards. So, well, now what? Alvarez is probably still in the decline phase of his career, but he's got a bunch of fun fights left in a deep division, and Alvarez facing off against Dustin Poirier should be pretty awesome. Poirier's been one of UFC's most reliable action fighters since his debut back in 2011, and after stalling out a bit at featherweight (once again, thanks to McGregor), Poirier decided to move up to lightweight about two years ago. And the results have been pretty excellent - by draining himself less, Poirier has been able to lay on even more volume, and show even more power, and his whole game has clicked together at about the same time. There's the improved striking - even beyond just the physical improvements, Poirier's shown some better strategy - and he's gone back to relying on his grappling when needed, as he scored a big upset win over Joe Duffy to kick off 2016 mostly by using wrestling and submissions. Poirier probably does still have a clear ceiling - his one loss at lightweight, a quick knockout to Michael Johnson, showed that he still leaves himself defensively open on the feet, and his last win over Jim Miller showed that Poirier can still, against better judgement, be lured into a brawl - but if the Louisiana native settles in as a perennial top-ten lightweight and fight of the night contender here on out, there are worse fates. It's a hard one for me to call, particularly since I probably underrate Alvarez, but I do favor Poirier in terms of speed and volume, and think he should be able to win rounds. Still, Poirier's defensive issues give he pause - Jim Miller was able to clip him, and Alvarez showed against dos Anjos that he can still be a dangerous counter-striker, so I could easily see a scenario where Poirier gets over-aggressive and Alvarez just clocks him, either ending the fight or turning the tide of the bout for good. But Alvarez probably won't be able to use his wrestling as a safety valve like he did against Melendez and Pettis, given Poirier's submission skills, so what the hell - I'll take Poirier by decision in what hopefully winds up being Alvarez's best fight (if not performance) in UFC to date. Jason Knight (17-2 overall, 3-1 UFC) vs. Chas Skelly (17-2 overall, 6-2 UFC, 3-0 Bellator): A really excellent fight here between two of the more interesting talents bubbling under the top fifteen at featherweight. Mississippi's Jason Knight, an Alan Belcher protege, had a fairly forgettable UFC debut in a loss to Tatsuya Kawajiri, but established himself as a prospect to watch in pretty short order. Knight came in advertised as more of a submission fighter, and he's flashed those skills, but a majority of his success has come as a pressure striker, overwhelming his opponents with volume and trash-talking, like some sort of long-lost Diaz cousin. (Related: This caused me to coin the nickname "Hick Diaz" for Knight, which has stuck, which still makes me laugh and is super-weird. But he apparently doesn't like the nickname. Please don't hurt me, Mr. Knight.) In his last fight, Knight more or less handled Alex Caceres, who's quickly becoming a benchmark to see if featherweight prospects are decent, finally flashing those BJJ skills for most of the second round and scoring a rear-naked choke victory. There was some thought this would get Knight a shot at someone in the top fifteen, but instead he gets another interesting fighter putting it all together in Chas Skelly. Skelly's game is fairly straight-ahead, but successful, as he's probably the most exciting example of the grinder archetype out there - his game is pretty much predicated on taking his opponents down at will, which he's mostly done, but rather than lay and pray, Skelly mostly tries to go for some submissions, and had a bunch of success in doing so. Skelly already got a shot to break into the top fifteen against fellow grinder Darren Elkins, but Elkins turned away another prospect as he does, so Skelly decided to change camps and go to Henri Hooft, who's been working on Skelly's striking. And the results have been fairly solid - admittedly, you can't glean much from Skelly's win over Maximo Blanco, where he used a running flying karate kick and a choke to win in just nineteen seconds, but Skelly looked much improved in pretty much taking apart Chris Gruetzemacher this past February. It's a hard fight to call, but I'll favor Skelly - as impressive as Knight has looked in his recent performances, I just have flashbacks to that Kawajiri fight, where Kawajiri was pretty much able to hold Knight down and control him for three rounds. Admittedly, Skelly favors submissions over control, particularly compared to Kawajiri, but I can easily see a fight where Skelly dictates where things take place and wins rounds, even though Knight is quite comfortable off of his back and able to keep things quite entertaining. So I'll take Skelly to win a decision, although as with a lot of this card, it's a fun fight that could go either way. Krzysztof Jotko (19-1 overall, 6-1 UFC) vs. Dave Branch (20-3 overall, 2-2 UFC, 2-0 Bellator): Well, good for Dave Branch that he found his way back to the UFC. A New York City native and Renzo Gracie protege, Branch came into UFC fairly raw and had a fairly nothing first run with the company in 2010-11, most notable for Gerald Harris knocking him out with a slam in his UFC debut. But Branch eventually wound up in the fledgling World Series of Fighting an excelled from there, winning both their middleweight and light heavyweight belts and beating solid UFC vets like Yushin Okami, Vinny Magalhaes, and Jesse Taylor. It was a pretty solid deal - Branch's fights weren't particularly exciting, but he got some notoriety and was getting paid six figures per fight - but with the writing on the wall as WSOF collapsed, Branch finally makes his return to UFC here, and gets thrown right into the top ten against Poland's Krzysztof Jotko. Jotko looked like he'd just fall right into the morass of random European middleweights that UFC has a bunch of, particularly after an early loss to Magnus Cedenblad, but since then Jotko has been stringing together wins, most notably getting a big one over former contender Thales Leites this past November. Like Branch, Jotko's fights haven't really been all that fun, focusing on clinch-work and wrestling with some janky striking thrown in, even if he did have enough power to knock out Tamdan McCrory, but it's effective, as he's been able to control most of his foes. While the winner will probably get a pretty big fight next, as middleweight starts to turn itself over, this pretty much figures to be kind of a boring fifteen minutes of wrestling and grappling. And as impressive as Branch's WSOF run has been, Jotko has been looking more impressive and doing so at a higher level, so I'll favor the Pole to get the nod. Polo Reyes (7-3 overall, 3-0 UFC) vs. James Vick (10-1 overall, 6-1 UFC): A solid lightweight bout here, even as UFC once again seemingly doesn't know what to do with James Vick - though, oh well, it'll be fun. Vick's a strange fighter who's had a strange career - he's a 6'3" lightweight, which is absolutely ridiculous, and UFC's spent most of his tenure having him knock other prospects down the ladder rather than moving up it himself; essentially, the first few years of Vick's UFC career would see him beat a talented prospect, get hurt, be out of action for about a year, and then return to beat another prospect, get hurt, and repeat the whole process over. But since last year, Vick has finally been fighting rather frequently, and finally got a shot at a big opponent, even if it didn't go so well, as Beneil Dariush brutally knocked him out in the first round. But after a win over Abel Trujillo to rebound, Vick's kind of back where he started, facing a talented, fun prospect that he's probably going to beat. Meanwhile, Polo Reyes showed little on season two of TUF: Latin America - even as his castmates built him up as the toughest fighter in the house - but he's probably been the standout of the cast since they've all started in the UFC proper. Reyes's fight at UFC 199 against "The Other" Dong Hyun Kim was the rare deep prelim to wind up as one of the best fights of the year, and outside of that Reyes has established himself as a fun knockout artist and Mexican fan favorite. Still, he should be out of his depth here - Reyes struggled a bit with Jason Novelli in his last fight, and Novelli's outside of the UFC, while Vick is about a top-twenty fighter in a deep division. I just see Vick's length, which he's increasingly learning how to use, giving Reyes a ton of trouble and mostly keeping him at bay - there's also a pretty likely chance that Vick gets a submission if they start grappling at any point, between Vick's long limbs and skill on the mat and the fact that Reyes hasn't really shown a ton there. But Vick mostly gets his subs when opponents dive in for takedowns, and Reyes is about as pure a boxer as there is, so I just see this being a clear decision win for Vick, with Reyes hopefully being able to do enough to keep things interesting. Jessica Aguilar (19-5 overall, 0-1 UFC, 5-1 Bellator) vs. Cortney Casey (6-4 overall, 2-3 UFC): A really solid strawweight fight here, as it should show what Jessica Aguilar has left going forward. Aguilar's an interesting case - thanks to wins over Megumi Fujii and Carla Esparza, she was pretty much the consensus best strawweight in the world just four or so years ago, but wound up signing with World Series of Fighting right before UFC launched the division and signed pretty much all her potential opponents. After both sides agreed to part ways, Aguilar did finally make her UFC debut in 2015, but wasn't able to accomplish much against Claudia Gadelha - which isn't really an indictment, given that Gadelha's the obvious second-best woman in the division - and tore her ACL while training for her next fight. So at 35 and coming off a major injury, this is kind of surprisingly already a make-or-break fight against Cortney Casey, who's settling in as sort of a fun action fighter. I was glad UFC kept her around after losing her first two UFC fights - against Joanne Calderwood in Scotland and Seohee Ham in South Korea, both tough asks - since they were both the best fights on their respective card, and she rewarded the company's patience, running through Cristina Stanciu before scoring a big upset win over Randa Markos. Like Aguilar, she fought Gadelha in her next fight, and like Aguilar, she wasn't able to accomplish much, but Casey is big, athletic, and aggressive, so even if there's probably not a championship-level ceiling, she's one of the more exciting fighters to watch in an interesting division. It's a hard one to call, particularly since Aguilar's sort of a question mark coming off the injury - I've always worried a bit that women's MMA may be evolving a bit past her as younger, better athletes go into a sport that now has some viability, so while she's probably still the much better technical fighter, I'll say that Casey's physical talents are too much for her and Casey earns the decision. Jared Gordon (12-1 overall) vs. Michel Quinones (8-1 overall, 0-1 Bellator): This should be a fun fight between two debuting featherweights. Queens's Jared Gordon is the latest prospect off of Dana White's "Lookin' For A Fight" - he's an exciting fighter with an interesting backstory, dealing with drug addiction and multiple relapses and near-death experiences, so of course what Dana White focused on on the show was Gordon's lack of personality, because Dana White doesn't really know how to make people excited to see fighters anymore. But anyway. So Gordon makes his debut against Michel Quinones, a Florida native who was slated to fight on the Halifax card in February before getting hurt - watching some tape on Quinones, he's a fairly solid kickboxer who prefers to circle and sort of peck away at his opponents. You'd think this would lead to giving up rounds, but in what I've watched, he's precise enough to still cause damage and get knockouts, so, hey, it works. Meanwhile, there's little useful stuff on Gordon out there - there's a few highlight reels where he obviously looks good, but he's mostly fought for promotions behind paywalls, so I'm mostly relying on those highlights, where he looks like an aggressive and imposing boxer-grappler that can cause some damage as he moves up the ranks. I'm sure there are some flaws in Gordon's game that'll soon become apparent, and you can probably make a lot of money betting against fighters Dana White discovers, but based off hype and what little I've seen, I'll take Gordon via decision with pretty much no confidence. Rashad Coulter (8-1 overall, 1-0 Bellator) vs. Chase Sherman (9-3 overall, 0-2 UFC): This was originally supposed to be Germany's Jarjis Danho taking on Ukraine's Dmitry Poberezhets - a weird fit geographically for a card in Dallas - but thanks to injuries, it's now something more appropriate, as Dallas's own Rashad Coulter takes on Mississippi's Chase Sherman. There were some decent hopes for Sherman as he came into UFC this summer - he's a former football player for Delta State, so he has some athleticism, and he's young for the division - but he's been pretty much all potential and no production thus far in two UFC fights. Sherman fights kind of like fellow Alan Belcher protege Jason Knight, mostly striking with a ton of trash talking and machismo, but his defense hasn't really come around yet, which is a problem at heavyweight. Meanwhile, Coulter's sort of your standard UFC heavyweight signing - already well into his thirties, and a big dude with a ton of knockouts on his record and not much else. Sherman should have a clear edge in athleticism, but I don't really see anything that prevents Coulter from scoring another first-round KO, so that's my pick here, though as always, never make a pick in a heavyweight fight with any sort of confidence. Enrique Barzola (12-3-1 overall, 2-1 UFC) vs. Gabriel Benitez (19-5 overall, 3-1 UFC): A fun fight here between two TUF: Latin America alums. Gabriel Benitez was probably the consensus favorite to win season one of TUF: Latin America, and definitely left the most impression of anyone on the show personality-wise, as he's quite charismatic and got a ton of camera time. He wound up falling short in the semi-finals of the season, and Yair Rodriguez wound up being the potential superstar of the cast, but Benitez has wound up being a pretty fun mid-level action fighter when he's healthy, with some surprising wins over guys like Clay Collard and Sam Sicilia. He faces TUF: Latin America season two winner Enrique Barzola, who's probably the best fighter going out of Peru, which has more of a MMA scene then you'd think. Barzola was a surprise winner of the season, but despite being at some physical disadvantages, he's proven to be a tough wrestler with a ton of cardio, and enough janky striking to survive against lower-level opponents on the roster. But Benitez figures to be Barzola's toughest test to date, and while I could see a scenario where Barzola just takes Benitez down and controls most of the fight, I expect Benitez to win a striking match via decision that should be pretty fun. Gadzhimurad Antigulov (19-4 overall, 1-0 UFC) vs. Joachim Christensen (14-4 overall, 1-1 UFC): This is a weird fight for Dallas - Joachim Christensen's one of the few Danish fighters left on the roster, and the card in two weeks was initially supposed to be in Copenhagen, so I guess when those plans fell through they put that fight here, but I'm surprised they didn't just put it on what became a card in Stockholm rather than make it fight number fourteen on this card. Anyway, Christensen's shown to be a solid enough light heavyweight in his two UFC fights, even though his ceiling is fairly low - while he's a decent kickboxer with enough grappling to be dangerous, he's not particularly athletic and almost forty, so he just figures to be sort of a gatekeeper going forward. Meanwhile, Antigulov's an intriguing talent in a thin division that needs it - he's an aggressive bowling ball of a dude who just looks to take his opponents down immediately and then either get a ground-and-pound stoppage or the submission, the latter of which he did in his UFC debut against Marcos Rogerio de Lima. I'm not sure he'll ever be a championship-level fighter, but the state of the division is enough that those skills can probably get him close to the top ten. Anyway, I don't really see Christensen being able to stop Antigulov from what he's going to try and do, so my call is for the Russian to get a first round stoppage, likely by ground-and-pound TKO.