MassMMA 2008 Superlatives

2008 was once again a great year for local MMA. More and more fighters from this area are making an impact on the National/World stage, and the local shows seem to be finding the stars of tomorrow at a much higher rate than in previous years. 2008 was one of the busiest years we’ve seen, and picking the winners was very tough this year.

Here are the awards for this year:

I decided to start with Rookie of the year, mostly because this guy could have won just about every award on here. Jon Jones set the local scene on fire. This time last year, he was yet to make his pro debut, and now he’s still undefeated, has a win in the UFC and is fighting Stephan Bonnar on the main card of a UFC PPV. You really can’t have a better Rookie year than he had.

Our fighter of the year is Nate Kittredge. This time last year there was a debate as to who the areas best 185er is, and many thought it was either Nate or Justin Torrey. Like it or not, I think Nate put that debate to bed. Justin took the year off, and Nate had a huge KO win over Lance Everson, a TKO win over Rigo Dominicci and then went on to beat Gladiator Santos. I’m not sure how there is much of a debate anymore. Nate had three big wins over very, very tough guys, and he solidified his spot atop the local rankings.

Runner up for fighter of the year is Ken Stone. He also had a strong year, and managed to stay super busy, even though nobody wants to fight him. He’s now 7-0 with only 1 opponent making it to the second round. If his body kick KO that he had in NJ was up here, it may have won KO of the year.

Our fight team of the year is Renzo Gracie NH. They had fighters like John Benoit and Dan Bonnell go 4-0, as well as guys like Matt Smith, Woody Weatherby, Chris Grandmaison and Justin Homsey win fights this year. The thing that really separated them from the rest of the teams out there is how busy they were. It seemed all year long we were seeing guys from Renzo NH win, and most of their fights ended with a slick sub or a big KO.

Our Runner up for fight team of the year is Team Link. They have some higher profile fighters than Renzo NH, but they simply weren’t busy enough. They have some studs like Ricardo Funch, Karn Gregorian, Vaca Moreno, Gladiator Santos and several others, but they all seem to take 1-2 fights per year, and while they were as dominant in the ring as Renzo NH, if they were a little more active, this may have been their award.

Our Fight of the year was a toss up. We literally couldn’t decide and it wasn’t fair to just pick one over the other, because both fights were awesome. Will Kerr vs. Marc Stevens, and Tony Leate vs. Corey Peterson are the two fights we liked the most. While there were a ton of wars this year on several different shows, these two wars were both in big title fights with some hype coming in. If you didn’t see the fights, go buy the dvd..it’s worth the $20.

I didn’t see either Sub that is getting recognition in our Submission of the year category, and I can’t even find official record of them, but if Greg said it happened, it likely did because Greg knows everything. Oz Pariser wins Sub of the year for the gogo plata he pulled (I have no idea which fight) and Bill Jones is the runner up for his Kimura. Anyone have video of either to post?

KO of year:

Brutal category to try and pick a winner in. We had a big KO fro Calvin Kattar over Kevin Roddy that looked a lot like BJ Penn vs. Uno the first time they fought. We also had a big head kick KO from Jose Lopez, and Mike Flores also had a brutal one punch KO over Josh Spearman in their first fight.

However, the winner of our KO of the year is Nate Kittredge for his big KO over Lance Everson. Lance is a very tough guy to stop, let alone KO, and Nate made it look easy. I know there is video of that floating around. Our Runner up was Jon Jones’ huge KO over the previously undefeated Parker Porter. Parker had shown a granite chin in his early fights, but Jon landed a bomb of a right hand and Parker dropped like he got shot.

Last but not least, the biggest heart award goes to Dan O’Keefe. He took a beating for almost two rounds against Garth Krane, but never quit and kept coming, and was able to end the fight by very late KO. Our runner up in this category goes to Justin Homsey for his fight with John Franchi. Franchi looked to be the early leader for KO of the year about 10 seconds into their fight. Justin fell as hard as Nate Quarry did against Rich Franklin, but when he hit the mat, he woke up, and kept fighting. Not only did he survive the round, he made a fight out of it. While Franchi later won the fight by second round TKO, seeing Homsey as hurt as he was early in the round, get up off the mat and fight his balls off was incredible.

I know I said biggest heart was our last award, but I wrote this late at night and forgot to give out the Upset of the Year award, which goes to Dan Bonnell for his stunning 19 second TKO over Joe Cushman. Some will argue that it wasn’t THAT big of an upset, because Dan was on a 3 fighting winning streak and stylistically, it was a very good fight, but if you go back to Sept of 2007 and the first WCF event, Joe Cushman was the main event winner, and Dan Bonnell was 1-4 and fought a war in which his decision win brought him up to 2-4. Fast forward to the following Sept, and Dan was 4-4 and taking a HUGE step up in competition. While many of us thought it was going to be a great fight, the majority thought this was an easy win for Cushman, and it was hard to argue that. Bonnell’s big TKO shocked even his biggest supporters, and was without a doubt the most shocking thing we saw all year.

I also want to take a minute to talk about my favorite moment of the year, possibly our “biggest” moment of the year. Joe Lauzon and Kenny Florian shared a billboard in Times Square advertising their UFC Fight Night 13 Main Event fight. Take a minute to think about that. Two guys we watched from their very first amateur fight, and two guys we spent years talking about on the internet…saying “you better watch this guy, he’ll be in the UFC someday.” Not only did two of our favorite local fighters make it to the UFC, they were fighting each other in the main event with the winner taking a step closer to a title shot. It was truly amazing to see those two on a billboard together.