Who Are You Cheering For???

When asked why you would support a sports team, many people would cite family tradition or location as big reasons. If you picked a team because they won all the time you would be a jerk, or worse a Yankees fan. Other times it’s some more intangible reason like team colors or attitude, like being a Raiders fan. When it comes to fighters, all of the above reasons also seem to hold true, but people are often more forgiving of a bandwagoner in MMA than in a team sport. Most of the time Favorite equals Greatest (Georges St. Pierre, Anderson Silva, BJ Penn, Megumi Fujii), and people too easily forget the glory days of a fighter after a tough loss, demand to see an endless string of victories, or come to believe some type of super human hype (Brock Lesnar) before they say they really like a new fighter.

I, on the other hand, find great joy in cheering for the underdog (Hitomi Akano vs Cyborg), the nerd (Roxanne Modafferi, Shinya Aoki), the crazy person (Jason Mayhem Miller), the quiet guy (Fedor), the heroic suffer (Yuki Nakai, Sakuraba vs Smirnovas, Galesic), or the unique stylist (Cung Le, Machida, Sakuraba). Often one fight will make me a die hard fan, add a cool back story, and I will be a fan forever (Hideo Tokoro).

So who am I cheering for? The previous names are all fighters I cheer for, but many of them are already pretty popular and they can all be considered great fighters. So the question is, who do I cheer for despite the fact they are not (YET) a great or very good fighter? Who do I, for some intangible reason, put my best wishes behind?

Answer: Shizuka Sugiyama!!!

Why am I cheering for this almost unknown female Japanese Zendokai Karateka MMA fighter, who supposedly was born in New York and likes rugby?

Is it simply because she’s cute? No.

Is it because she has a funny t-shirt or makes funny faces? Maybe.

Is it simply because her haircuts always seem to  grab my attention? Quite possibly, yes.

Or is it because she seems to have a lot of fun and is genuinely happy with life, especially when she wins ? Definitely, yes!

Pancake Landing will do its best to become the English language HQ for everything Sugiyama. In the meantime, check out more info about Sugi at her blog.

Dream/Strikeforce Alliance

My very first post on this blog was a pregame analysis of what in my mind would have been the greatest heavyweight MMA fight of the post Pride FC generation. Sadly, Josh Barnett failed a steroid test for the third time in his career, all of which he disputes. I can’t help but feel that a person is more likely to win the lottery than have three false positives. I hate throwing Josh under the bus, but I feel like I, as a fan, have been.

But this article is not about Barnett, my disappointment, my attempt to hold off declarations of guilt, or even the death of Affliction and their affection with the devil of diverse MMA, the UFC. No, this article is about the new hope that has come from these seemingly dark times; the alliance between Dream and Strikeforce. Read more »