Mixed martial arts (MMA) fighting pits masters of every kind of combat - street fighting, sumo, judo - in matches broadcast around the world. This book chronicles the turbulent history of MMA fighting from its inception in the Greek Olympic Games, through its glorification in Japan to its growing popularity as an American sport. Through personal interviews with legendary fighters, Krauss offers a detailed look into that world of absolute intensity, the MMA - a world of honour, vendettas, and drunken back-alley scraps.
?"Did you see the big fight this weekend?" The question used to be about boxing matches, when the giants of the fight world were Mike Tyson and Roy Jones. Now fans are leaving the sweet science in droves for the combat sport of the future: mixed martial arts (MMA).
MMA has drawn millions on cable and network television, as well as out-performed professional wrestling and boxing on pay-per-view. Fans are attracted to the sport, but unlike boxing (where strategy and technique are limited to using both your left and right hands), an MMA fight can be surprisingly complicated.
The MMA Encyclopedia puts the fighters, the facts, and the fundamentals of the world's fastest growing sport at your fingertips as the definitive reference guide to mixed martial arts. The encyclopedia will break the MMA language barrier for those who don't know a wristlock from a wristwatch, while at the same time offering perspective and analysis that will entertain the hardcore fan who already has the basics down pat. With three appendices that detail the results of every MMA fight in history, this the ultimate reference book for the ultimate sport.
?In the 1950s, in Las Vegas, a businessmen's conglomerate dominating a $25 million-a-year sports industry hid their illegal practices from the U.S. Department of Justice until they were caught. The sport that privileged cold hard cash over honest competition was professional wrestling, and the conspirators were members of the famed National Wrestling Alliance.
National Wrestling Alliance: The Untold Story of the Monopoly that Strangled Pro Wrestling examines the NWA promoters' overwhelming success, and the relationships to influential politicians and writers that protected their financial interests for over 50 years. Breaking the façade of sports production, it shows how promoters actually twisted arms to edge out their opponents.
Hornbaker documents the life of the NWA, from its humble beginnings in the Midwest after World War II, to its worldwide expansion. He chronicles the Department of Justice's investigation, providing sports fans with a never-before-told side of wrestling's legacy.
The most noteworthy exploits of the National Wrestling Alliance were behind locked doors. Now, the conspiracies of a century-old brand of entertainment will finally be revealed.
The decline and fall of the Montreal Expos. In 1969, the Montreal Expos played their first game. Thirty-two years later, the team that once boasted baseball's best farm system is nearly dead. In this book, former Expos president Claude Brochu gets to the bottom of the Expos' story. From his successful marketing career at Seagram's, Claude Brochu was thrust into the role of Expos president in 1986. Back then, the Expos were a team with terrific potential. But as the years went by, attendance began to slide. Whenever owner Charles Bronfman attended a game he would shake his head, discouraged: "Why don't they come? What do we have to do?" The answer - field a winning team - seemed so simple, yet so elusive.
And then, after 21 years, Bronfman decided to sell the team. He entrusted the sale to Brochu, who took up the gauntlet: "I made it a personal challenge. Businessmen are often portrayed as cold, emotionless people, who make decisions only on the eventual possibility of making a lot of money.? But that's not it at all. What fascinated me, what motivated me, was keeping the Expos in Montreal, in the hands of Quebecers. One of them being me.?"
"They need to think big like I did. If they can see it in their head, they can get there." Thinkin Big is the story of a kid whose dream was never supposed to come true: the story of a man who won hearts with his gentleness, but whose fearlessness was legendary. It is the biography of a champion once broken by boxing.
As he watched Cassius Clay destroy Sonny Liston on February 25, 1964, James Tillis was told by God he would be a professional fighter. Thirty-three years later, James "Quick" Tillis, dubbed the Fightin Cowboy by Muhammad Ali, would record his story in a dimly lit jail cell. He was a young black athlete who'd clung to his alcoholic father and his religious mother, rising to battle seven heavyweight champions.
But this naive heavyweight would be sacrificed by the sport he loved; it would rob him of the women he loved, his dignity, his fortune, and his title. He crawled into the ring 64 times to prove that he could win, but one dirty agent was determined to bleed him dry. Now he tells a story like no fighter before. It's raw, yet full of humour, told from a legend's perspective.
