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This week on the Frotcast, Ben is in Hawaii, so the ‘cast was the usual disorganized disaster it is when he’s gone. Things tend to go to sh*t when there aren’t any Jews around — just look at Spain after the 15th century. Nonetheless, we made the best of it with the lunatics running the asylum. I played the Three Stooges trailer for Bret and Brendan, and we brought on Ryan Harkness from Fightlinker, probably my favorite MMA site, and we talked all about The Ultimate Fighter finale, “adrenaline dumps,” Warrior, the cinematic canon of Hector Echavarria, Gina Carano, what the hell the deal is with Montreal (Ryan lives there), and plenty of other crap that had nothing to do with anything. We also read a few of your emails and voicemails.
EMAIL US, frotcast@gmail.com. SUBSCRIBE TO THIS MOTHER BITCH ON ITUNES. LEAVE US A VOICE MAIL: 415 275-0030.
Here’s a video-ish thing Tim made us for Brendan’s Willem Dafoe impression. It’s pretty nightmare-ish:
Nothing entertains me more than Steven Seagal’s wild claims, like having invented the front kick, or correctly predicting every UFC fight. But credit where credit’s due, he did get sort-of thanked by both Lyoto Machida and Anderson Silva, for sort of kinda teaching them a kick they mostly already knew. Recently, Seagal showed up to UFC 139 to watch Jon Jones, whom Seagal calls “a friend,” despite Jones declining Seagal’s offer to train him before the fight. I don’t want to take Seagal-Kun out of context, but he did repeat the “friend” thing like three times. Here’s a partial transcript of his interview with Ariel Helwani after the fight:
[answering Helwani's question about why Seagal was there] “These guys are my friends too, I’m just teachin em, but they’re my friends too.” Helwani: I noticed him [Jones] go for the front kick to the face there, did you see that as well? Seagal: Yeah, him and I did talk about that, but he… he… hasn’t, you know, he hasn’t learned it yet. [laughing] And I haven’t taught it. Helwani: When did you speak to him? Seagal: Uh, yesterday? Day before yesterday? Helwani: Wow, so you actually have a relationship with Jon Jones? Seagal: Well, he’s a kind of a friend. Helwani: How do you think Jones would match up against Anderson Silva? What do you think about that fight? Seagal: I don’t really want to see that fight. Because Anderson’s a close, close friend, and Jon’s a friend… I’d rather that they don’t fight.
With that in mind, here’s what Jon Jones told Jim Rome yesterday:
I realize many film blog-readers such as yourself probably don’t follow sweaty man-hugging as closely as I do, such that when I posted this picture of Steven Seagal at the weigh-ins for UFC 129 a few months back, many people thought it was Photoshopped. It was not. Trust me, thanks to teaching Anderson Silva a few (illegal) eye gouges and neck strikes, and eventually getting thanked in Lyoto Machida’s post-fight speech, Steven Seagal considers himself a UFC trainer, perhaps as fervently as he considers himself an honorary Russian or a blues musician. Seagal has been close to the Silva, Machida, and the Nogueira brothers’ Black House camp for some time now. None of them were fighting at UFC 135 on Saturday, but Seagal showed up anyway. He tried to talk to light heavyweight champ Jon Jones before the fight, but Jones declined out of respect to his trainers, Jones says. Luckily, Seagal was still on hand for a post-fight interview with Ariel Helwani (who tweeted that Seagal dictated the specific angle he be shot from), and it is a masterpiece of Steven Seagalyness.
Click to the 35-second mark to see one of my all-time favorite Seagal interview moments.
HELWANI: Was that how you expected the main even to go, Jon Jones submitting Rampage?
SEAGAL: (without a moment’s hesitation) Oh yeah. (scoffing) Definitely.
HELWANI: Really, why so?
SEAGAL: (flabbergasted that he could even be asked such a question) Uh, because I think I have a pretty good eye.
My God. Just look at his face as he answers that question. Have you ever seen such confidence?
Not only is he convinced that he predicted the winner and the method of the fight, and not because of luck or a gut feeling, he KNOWS beyond the shadow of a doubt that his psychic martial arts powers make him an INFALLIBLE PROGNOSTICATOR. To the point that he is legitimately surprised that a person might have to ask how he could know such a thing. He scoffs sadly at Ariel Helwani as if to say, “Are my psychic abilities not obvious to all? Clearly I must be talking to a child.”
You know, we have a lot of fun with Steven Seagal. His unique physiological reactions, his inability to keep track of space and time, his ornate saddles, his sleeveless kimonos and songs about poonani. I could go on. For pages. But in all honesty, confidence this unshakeable is almost a superpower.
We’ve discussed her before, but to refresh your memory, George Lucas’s daughter, Amanda, is a jiu-jitsu purple belt training out of Fairtex and Gilbert Melendez’s gym here in San Francisco. She’s technically adopted, but I’m told George breast-fed her himself. Carrying a 1-1 pro MMA record going into Saturday’s fight with Hikaru Shinohara at DEEP 55 in Tokyo, she entered the ring to the Star Wars theme (chosen by her or the Japanese promoters, we don’t know), and pretty much dominated the fight after scoring an early takedown. And that wasn’t even the most interesting thing to happen.
After a few minutes of effective (not to mention HAWT) ground and pound, Lucas locks in a tight armbar at 9:02 of the video. Shinohara attempts a novel kick-to-the-face escape, but her corner inconsiderately throws in the towel to keep her from getting her arm broken. Shinohara immediately makes known her displeasure, shoving the ref before going back to her corner and punching her cornerman right in his Japanese face. Pff, chicks, man. I’m not a doctor, but I think it’s safe to assume that she was on her period.
But poor sportswomanship of her opponent aside, Lucas improves to 2-1, and while she may not have the heaviest hands in the world, she displayed impressive top control. Frankly, she looked like a chip off the old block if you’ve ever seen her dad on a racecar bed.
Here we have the trailer for The Great Fight, which will almost certainly go down as one of the greatest artistic creations of the last thousand years, perhaps million. It’s a film which flows from the idea, “Some autistic kids are savants. What this movie presupposes is, what if one was a savant at CAGE FIGHTING?”
As if that weren’t already the ultimate walk-off home run of a premise, it was directed by Sherri Kauk, the acclaimed, long-time camera operator on Mexico’s “Glam Girls”, and it stars both ROBERT LOGGIA and MARTIN KOVE. Who’s Martin Kove you ask? He’s John f*cking Kreese, that’s who, you ignorant motherf*cker.
From there, we meet a cop who breaks a guy’s wrist because he has a ponytail. Our suspicions that he’s a cop are confirmed in the very next title, which reads, “A Cop…” But before long, we’re meeting our protagonist. A kid introduced as “A student with some very special skills.”
Those special skills? NAMING ALL OF THE US STATE CAPITALS! INCREDIBLE! I haven’t been able to do that since sixth grade, so clearly we’re dealing with a very gifted individual, a Rain Man-like geography machine with a brain like a supercomputer, capable of memorizing UP TO FIFTY FACTS AT A TIME. But soon we found out that he has not only a gift, but a very special disorder. AUTISM. Specifically, the type of autism that makes a person nearly comatose like the characters in Awakenings, but with cerebral palsy hands. FEEL FREE TO BOUNCE A BASKETBALL OFF HIS HEAD, TOMMY, HE HAS AUTISM!
But as a wise movie starring Sylvester Stallone once told me, “Once you’re pushed, killin’s as easy as breathin’.” It is much the same with an autistic cage-fighting savant. You push him and he will beat you up in gym class, even if you are a trained MMA fighter who trains at a gym where the fighters spar in prison jumpsuits. And that’s when it happens. ROBERT F*CKING LOGGIA. This movie stars Robert Loggia, who growls his Robert Loggia growl at an autistic MMA prodigy in order to toughen him up. Game over. The Great Fight could go down as the best movie in history.
After the jump, my favorite TubeChop I’ve ever made.
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