Hershel Walker

[Iron_Eagle_76]

http://sports.yahoo.com/mma/news;_yl...nkie&type=lgns

You know, after reading this article I'm starting to think something has to give with all this smack talk and ridiculous banter going back and forth between White and other fighters. I feel it is bad for the sport. Thoughts?

[David Jamieson]

more insignificant trash talk.

should be more fight clubbish imo. less talk, more step up and no comments from teh peanut gallery promoters bench. lol

[BoulderDawg]

Hmmm.....Who cares.

Why is it that in legitimate pro sports you do not have people entering in their late forties?

I'm trying to imagine Walker back in the NFL. He's in good shape so he might actually last 4-5 plays however he would never get though an entire game. Also, it's just a fact of life that at 47 you are a lot slower than at 22.

[golgo]

Dana White is starting to remind me of Vince McMahon. Hopefully he doesn't turn the UFC into the next WWE.

[Pork Chop]

Dana White is starting to remind me of Vince McMahon. Hopefully he doesn't turn the UFC into the next WWE.

i don't see how he could do that
i mean it's not like he could build up a heel personality
like say draft a wwe champ and put him in title contention in his third or fourth fight....
dana's a putz
the only guys in the ufc i feel are even worth watching are:
wanderlei, vitor, shogun, anderson, machida
but i'll probably miss their fights coz i just can't stomach the ufc anymore

[MasterKiller]

He looks good for 47

[Syn7]

i don't see how he could do that
i mean it's not like he could build up a heel personality
like say draft a wwe champ and put him in title contention in his third or fourth fight....
dana's a putz
the only guys in the ufc i feel are even worth watching are:
wanderlei, vitor, shogun, anderson, machida
but i'll probably miss their fights coz i just can't stomach the ufc anymore

so i take it you like brazillian fighters then.... you sound like an old pride fan back when it was en vogue to diss ufc in favor of its japanese counterpart... not that pride wasnt fresh, but come on... i can name a handfull fighters in each wieght class in the ufc that are world class contenders... off the top of my head...

[Dragonzbane76]

ok it's not real clear on who he's fighting. Anyone know?

[sanjuro_ronin]

ok it's not real clear on who he's fighting. Anyone know?

Ahem...

Walker, the 1982 Heisman Trophy winner and two-time Pro Bowl competitor, will face an opponent to be announced in one of as many as five live, SHOWTIME® (10 p.m. ET/PT, delayed on the West Coast) televised bouts on the STRIKEFORCE card

Maybe it will be a ninja !!

[Dragonzbane76]

ah didn't see that.

thanks for the eyes

[MasterKiller]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-ouu...layer_embedded

Good interview with Herschel.

[Kevin73]

Why do people play into Dana's marketing strategy? Dana insults a fighter and then that fighter spends all his time talking about the UFC giving them free publicity and marketing, along with the impression of the average fan that the UFC is the top of the food chain.

It is hard to argue that when most of Strikeforces fighters were wash outs of the UFC.

[GeneChing]

I liked this article. There are plenty more...

Thu Jan 28, 2010 8:15 am EST
Walker embarrassed to be getting lion's share of attention
By Steve Cofield

It was a slam dunk for Strikeforce. In spite of being slammed by the sport's most influential personality, UFC president Dana White, Herschel Walker and Strikeforce appear to be a match made in PR heaven. The Pro Bowl is just days away in South Florida and Super Bowl 44 a week later, so a football legend like Walker is going to draw some attention. Especially at the age of 47, as he tries mixed martial arts.

Walker's presence turned out a solid crowd of media types at Strikeforce's workout day at American Top Team in Ft. Lauderdale. Walker was a bit surprised it was mostly for him and not the more established fighters:

"I'll say it's kind of embarrassing that I'm getting all this publicity when you have true fighters out there that can fight and do a lot of things," Walker told the Ft. Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel. "In some ways I'm happy to see it because I want to bring recognition to the sport. But I don't want to embarrass the sport. I'm going to go in there to fight."

As he's said many times already, this no publicity stunt for the NFL legend and 1982 Heisman Trophy winner. Walker even put aside his love of Santa Claus to make this trip to the cage:

"I gave up my Christmas, my New Year's and all that," he said. "And I love Santa Claus. To give that up, I had to be serious about it."

Walker makes his pro debut against Phoenix's Greg Nagy on the undercard of Strikeforce's event Saturday at the Bank Atlantic Center in Sunrise. Pro wrestler Bobby Lashley (pictured on the right) is also featured on the card along with female star Marloes Coenen (pictured with Frank Shamrock).

[GeneChing]

Herschel Walker trades cleats for hard-hitting MMA
Tom FitzGerald, Chronicle Staff Writer
Sunday, January 23, 2011

(01-22) 21:16 PST -- Talk about a tough crowd. You wouldn't want to tangle with any of the guys working out at the American Kickboxing Academy in San Jose. The faint of heart would be encouraged to try the nearby fitness club.

It's also a young crowd. Most mixed martial arts fighters get out of the sport at around 35.

But one muscular fellow with a very familiar face is a novice in their midst. And he's 48.

In fact, Herschel Walker is getting ready for a televised fight. Yes, that Herschel Walker, the one who won the 1982 Heisman Trophy at Georgia, who played for the New Jersey Generals in the short-lived United States Football League and who made two Pro Bowls with the Dallas Cowboys before being dealt to the Minnesota Vikings in what was probably the most one-sided trade in NFL history.

He looks like he could still run over a safety. He weighs 217, a few pounds under his playing weight. He claims he ran a 4.39 in the 40 a year ago.

"I don't know if I could play every snap, but there's no doubt in my mind that I could help a team right now," he said after a workout for his Jan. 29 fight against Scott Carson on a Strikeforce show at HP Pavilion.

He wishes he could play for the Vikings again; he regrets that he was never able to show the team and its fans fully what he could do after he was acquired in 1989 for five players and six draft picks, which turned out to include Hall of Fame running back Emmitt Smith, five-time Pro Bowl safety Darren Woodson and defensive tackle Russell Maryland.

At an age when most former NFL players are trying to find their way out of sand traps, Walker is trying to punch, wrestle or kick somebody into submission and avoid the same. He scored a third-round TKO over Greg Nagy in his MMA debut a year ago. A scheduled fight in December was scrapped because he took an eight-stitch gash near his eye during a wrestling workout.

"It's the hardest training I've ever done in my life," he said. "In this world, you're going to get hit."

He's in this world strictly for the competition, he said. He knows he's way too long in the tooth to win a championship belt. "I've been very blessed because of my physical condition and mental condition," he said. "I want to show people, especially kids, that you can do anything if you're willing to work."

A decade ago, he had no desire to get into MMA. "It was like a Tough Man competition," he said. "I thought it was brutal. There were no weight classes or rules. But 10 years ago, they put in a lot of rules and regulations. I was in tae kwon do (with a fifth-degree black belt), and I fell in love with the sport."

He said he felt if he didn't try top-level MMA, he could no longer consider himself an elite athlete. You'd think that a person who rushed for 2,411 yards in a season (with the Generals) and 1,514 in another (with the Cowboys) wouldn't harbor doubts about his athleticism.

Winter Olympics

For Walker, though, there's always another hill to climb, the steeper the better. He got into bobsledding and, with pilot Brian Shimer, placed seventh in the two-man competition at the 1992 Winter Olympics in Albertville, France. He won back-to-back American Superstars competitions. He even danced with the Fort Worth Ballet.

Every day he does 1,000 to 1,500 sit-ups and 750 to 1,000 push-ups. That's a step down from the 3,500 daily sit-ups he used to do, but let's cut a guy who's nearly 50 a little slack.

He picked the San Jose gym because it was home to several elite MMA fighters. They don't take it easy on him. When he started training there in July, he says he told them, "If you don't think I can do this, let me know. I'm not going to embarrass MMA or this gym."

Trainer "Crazy Bob" Cook is impressed. "Obviously he's a world-class athlete, and he's doing his best to be a world-class fighter. It doesn't happen overnight. He's probably eight months into MMA training. Most fighters at the world-class level have 8 to 10 years into this type of training. But he's progressing very well."

Overcoming adversity

Taking the road less traveled is typical of Walker. He famously morphed from a pudgy 13-year-old with a speech impediment to a chiseled football/track stud in a few years. Aided by positive parents and siblings and the local library in Wrightsville, Ga., he also became a fine student along the way.

Life after football had some dips and turns. In 1999, he was diagnosed with dissociative identity disorder, also known as multiple personality disorder. Among the symptoms are depression, sudden unjustified anger and severe memory loss. He said he didn't remember the Heisman Trophy ceremony and doesn't remember most of the games he played at Georgia. In fact there were a lot of things he didn't remember, his then-wife, Cindy, used to tell him.

He checked himself into a psychiatric hospital in Southern California for a month's stay. "I had an anger problem," he said. "If I had not gotten help, I might have hurt myself or someone else."

He responded to treatment and threw himself into his company, Renaissance Man Food Services, which he calls his "chicken company." It employs about 600, he said. He got out of the management of the firm, at least temporarily, when he entered MMA.

"People think this sport is more brutal than football or boxing," he said. "It's not. In this sport, if you get knocked down, the referee is stopping it right away. Or a guy can tap out. In football, guys get concussions or spinal injuries - that's brutal.

"In boxing when a guy gets knocked down, his brain hits the back of his skull. He's still woozy when he gets up. He gets a standing eight-count, and the fight goes on. Is that not more brutal than this sport? I don't know why everyone's so afraid of this sport."
MMA card

What: Strikeforce mixed martial arts

Who: Welterweight champion Nick Diaz vs. Evangelista Cyborg; middleweight champion Jacare Souza vs. Robbie Lawler; heavyweight Herschel Walker vs. Scott Carson; and others

Where: HP Pavilion

When: Jan. 29 (Saturday), 7 p.m. (nine non-televised fights begin at 4:30 p.m.)

TV: Showtime, 10 p.m. (delayed on West Coast)

Tickets: Ticketmaster.com, Strikeforce.com,

(800) 745-3000.

I've started a STRIKEFORCE: Diaz vs Cyborg, as I'll be there.

[GeneChing]

65 articles on the newsfeed today.

Jeff Wagenheim>INSIDE MMA
Walker's Strikeforce fight no stunt

Herschel Walker needs no introduction, but I'll give him one anyway, in case you've forgotten about all he's done in sports or aren't old enough to fully grasp his legacy. That second possibility is certainly feasible for some in the youngish fan base of mixed martial arts, considering that the 48-year-old won his Heisman Trophy 29 years ago and had his Pro Bowl seasons way back in 1987 and 1988, which may or may not have been during the NFL's leather-helmet era.

And it's not like the former running back's pursuit of MMA is his second career in sports. It's more like his fourth or fifth. In the 1992 Winter Olympics, he represented the United States in the two-man bobsled, finishing seventh. Before that, he tried to win a spot on the U.S. track team for the Summer Games, running sprint relays. He's also trained in Tae Kwon Do for 33 years, and is a fifth-degree black belt in that discipline. It was that practice that led to Walker's latest career, which he will continue on Saturday night when he fights Scott Carson in a heavyweight bout on the undercard of Strikeforce: Diaz vs. Cyborg in San Jose, Calif.

Although it's just the second pro fight for Walker, his high-profile past makes him the biggest drawing card even for an event featuring two title fights. Hard-core MMA fans are probably more interested in seeing Nick Diaz defend his welterweight title against Evangelista "Cyborg" Santos and middleweight champ Ronaldo "Jacare" Souza put his belt on the line against Robbie Lawler. Others are more intrigued by another relative Strikeforce newcomer, Roger Gracie, a member of the first family of Brazilian jiu-jitsu, who has transitioned from a much-decorated career in submission grappling to a 3-0 start in MMA. But for the mass mainstream audience that Strikeforce and Showtime hope to attract to the 10 p.m. ET telecast, Walker is the man.

Because of that, some call Walker's MMA career a sideshow. In fact, just last Friday a sports columnist for The Oregonian likened Walker to Eddie Gaedel, baseball's 3-foot-7 walking publicity stunt from the 1950s, as well as the insufferable Tonya Harding and her money-grabbing jab at celebrity boxing. These are foolish comparisons. Mainstream sports are littered with self-serving sideshows, from LeBron James' The Decision to Mark McGwire and his steroid-era baseball brethren denying everything to, well, every moment of every day in Terrell Owens' daily life. Herschel Walker is no attention junkie. You might think his MMA career is a joke, but he isn't laughing.

"If you think I'm a gimmick, you can come to A.K.A. and roll with me any time," Walker said during a Strikeforce media conference call on Monday, ostensibly speaking to any fighters who doubt he's in this game for the right reasons. "I'm not afraid to roll with anyone."

The A.K.A. he refers to, of course, is American Kickboxing Academy, one of the elite camps in the MMA world, home base of the best heavyweight in the world, Cain Velasquez. When Walker rolls, he rolls with the best. That alone is justification for Strikeforce and Showtime putting a spotlight on him. True, he wouldn't be fighting on national TV if his name wasn't Herschel Walker. But that's not his fault. He puts in the work.

"I'm in better shape now," he said, "than I was in my early 20s playing football."

Ah, football. Walker never quite escapes from his glorious past, especially at this time of year, with the NFL playoffs reaching their climax. Who does he like in the Super Bowl?

"I'm going to pick Pittsburgh," he said. "I think it's going to be a great game. Both teams are playing great."

Perhaps Walker will break down some X's and O's when he's on this week's Inside the NFL on Showtime (premieres Wednesday at 9 p.m. ET).

Walker would love to be a trail blazer for NFL players.

"I've always tried to tell players that they should be training in some kind of MMA during the offseason," he said. "It would help them a great deal." From a running back's stiff-arm to a lineman's hand-to-hand battling, he said, "everything you do in MMA is almost correlated to what you do in football."

Any chance of him following his own advice, then, and using this MMA training to buff the tarnish off his own football skills?

"Who knows? At 50 I may try for football again to show people I can do that," said Walker. "I want to be the George Foreman of football."
Going, going, gone

There were some exciting exchanges during the UFC Fight for the Troops 2 event on Saturday night, but the most heart-stirring moments of the Spike telecast were the short features on soldiers who've sustained traumatic brain injuries while serving their country. We'll soon know how effective those touching profiles were in prompting viewers to go to fightforthetroops.com and make a contribution to the Intrepid Fallen Heroes Fund, which supports soldiers severely injured in combat and the families of those lost to the war.

The last time the UFC held a Fight for the Troops fundraising event, it generated $4 million. MMAFighting.com reported that $600,000 was donated during Saturday's fights, but as of Monday, donations were still coming in.

The online auction is over, however, and it got the fundraising effort off to a nice start, raising more than $150,000. The bulk of that came in bidding for a UFC custom Camaro, which after 14 bids was won for $101,000.

That might seem like a lot to pay for a car, even a Camaro souped up with a 650-horsepower engine and 2,000-watt sound system, but it's actually a bargain. The only other time the UFC auctioned off a custom Camaro for charity, it sold for $350,000.

Still, looking at a picture of the sleek, black car online, I saw an opportunity missed. Instead of customizing the ride with subtle touches such as seats fashioned from the same leather as UFC fight gloves, they should have just splashed a big UFC logo on the hood. Sure, it's tacky. But what guy wouldn't pay a bundle for the assurance that no matter what he does behind the wheel, he never, ever has to worry about being the victim of road rage? ("I know that car just cut me off, honey, but did you see that logo? It could be Cain Velasquez or Mauricio 'Shogun' Rua driving that Camaro! No way I'm honking the horn.")

Also, I had to wonder if another prized auction item, a private training session with Randy Couture and Forrest Griffin, might have generated more than the wonderful $11,100 it did if Spike hadn't aired, as part of its Saturday afternoon pre-fight programming, a UFC Unleashed episode featuring Griffin being schooled, toyed with and KO'd by Anderson Silva. Couldn't Spike have instead aired Forrest's first fight with Stephan Bonnar or his big wins over Quinton "Rampage" Jackson or Rua, in the name of charity?
All the news that's fit to print

Thumbing through my local newspaper on Saturday morning after breakfast, I came to USA Weekend, the Parade-like weekly magazine supplement that's stuffed into hundreds of daily papers around the country along with the Target circular and supermarket coupons. I opened to a regular feature called "Birthday Buzz," and listed right there with Neil Diamond (who was 70 years old on Monday), Wayne Gretzky (50 on Wednesday) and Oprah Winfrey (57 on Saturday) was none other than Tito Ortiz, who turned 36 on Sunday.

A sign that MMA has made it to the mainstream? Perhaps.

Then again, the next thing I did was grab the same newspaper's sports section to take look at the weekend TV listings. For Saturday, I found a Celtics game and Bruins game (I live in New England), around 10,000 college basketball games, Australian Open tennis, two minor golf tournaments, HBO boxing, English Premier League soccer, even a rad snowboarding/freestyle skiing event. What I didn't find was UFC Fight for the Troops 2.

Now, I understand why the UFC is nowhere to be found in newspaper listings when the event is on pay-per-view. But Saturday's fights were on Spike. I've seen Strikeforce cards on Showtime and even CBS similarly ignored. What, Evan Dunham vs. Melvin Guillard wasn't as worthy of a listing as the crucial Arkansas-Little Rock vs. Florida Atlantic hoops game?

continued