Well kind of anyway. I spent most of my earlier years growing up in towns (that’s right, it’s a town not quite big enough to be a city!) with names like Cudal, Newbridge, Orange and Blayney. I know what it is like to have a home team to cheer for and not to have much else. That’s why having some Australian fighters in the UFC is such a big deal, well for me anyway.
Being abroad at the moment makes it hard to make a connection with some of the bigger fighters sometimes. Sure as I have stated before, I have my favourites but there really is nothing like cheering for one of your own. We once had Elvis Sinosic, who was famous for well, getting beaten up. He got a shot at the Light Heavyweight championship but he lost, he was one of the least successful mainstream fighters our great country produced but we supported him anyway.
The Ultimate Fighter has given us two more fighters to enter the mainstream fight scene of the UFC. We have George Sotiropoulos and Kyle Noke. Having two guys who are successful and damn well good at what they do will really help the fastest growing sport in the world enter more and more Australian homes. Now more then ever there are so many people embracing the sport, on Twitter you can find some Australian celebrities and sports personalities following MMA just like any other average fan, they get excited to see the Aussie boys get into the cage, just like anybody else.
George Sotiropoulos (@georgesots) was perhaps the closest we were going to get to a title shot in a long time, his performance (and the crowd!) at UFC 110 was awesome, having being there myself I know for a fact that he won so many new fans. It was disappointing to see him drop a win to Dennis Siver but that’s MMA, anything can happen. I hope he can get back on the winning track, I know that he could step into that cage and put on one hell of a fight against Edgar or Maynard, unfortunately though needs to prove himself again. It was only one loss in a so far awesome UFC career and I know Georgie will be bouncing back in a big way at UFC 132 when he takes on Rafael dos Anjos. 
Three wins in a row. That’s pretty much all you need to know about Kyle Noke http://twitter.com/#!/KyleNoke. He is one hell of an ambassador for the country in the UFC, just looking at his twitter feed makes me homesick as he talks about “footy” and meat pies. It’s great to have another TUF alum under our belt and it’s even better to see him keep on winning. Sure he didn’t win his season of TUF but he has proven that he can hang in the UFC. Unfortunately he is a middleweight and that means at some point if he wants to hold the gold he would have to face Anderson Silva. That’s no easy feat. If you aren’t too familiar with Kyle be sure to catch him on Twitter, he’s down to earth and defiantly a rising star.We love our home grown heroes and I for one can say that the second Kyle Noke’s next fight gets announced the twitterverse will be buzzing with guys like Rove McManus, Mark Geyer and Fox Sports News’ own Adam Curley giving our boy support.
Soon enough MMA will be big enough in Australia for us to have our own Ultimate Fighter series and I am sure some great talent just like George and Kyle will be unearthed. Already there is an expanding MMA scene in Australia, we already have a great up and coming MMA news site (www.allovermma.com) and there are many promotions putting on MMA fights throughout the country.
I for one cannot wait until the sport becomes as mainstream as it has become in America and the first big step is having our boys in the UFC get some gold around their waists.
No comments:
Post a Comment