Bruce Reed, mostly known as “Hacksaw” Butch Reed, who in the early-to-mid 80s was an incredible blend of power and agility and became one of the best wrestlers in the world in a short period of time, passed away on 2/5 at the age of 66.
Reed tested positive for COVID-19 on 1/12, and then suffered two major heart attacks later in the month, which he never recovered from.
Reed, born July 11, 1954, excelled in a wide variety of sports, notably football, basketball, track (where he both ran the 100 meters and threw the shot put), and powerlifting, before pro wrestling. The peak of his career was when he was for a time the top babyface in Championship Wrestling from Florida, and later, one of the key players, as both a babyface and a heel in the glory days of Mid South Wrestling.
He also had an incredible series of matches battling for the NWA championship against Ric Flair in Florida, Mid South Wrestling, Central States and St. Louis during his in-ring peak from 1982 to 1985, when he was top ten in the world.
He also had a run in the WWF under the name “The Natural” Butch Reed, where at some point he was slated to win the Intercontinental title in the 80s, and his last major promotion run was with World Championship Wrestling as part of the tag team of Doom with Ron Simmons.
For the second time in six months, Bellator MMA will be moving their TV location within the Viacom family.
Mauro Ranallo, Bellator president Scott Coker and Showtime Sports president Stephen Espinoza made the announcement Tuesday that Bellator will be moving to Showtime exclusively in the U.S. starting on Friday, April 2nd — the kickoff for three straight weeks of events. Coker said a big announcement for the European market is coming on Thursday or Friday.
This will be the first time the premium cable network will host MMA since the final Strikeforce show on January 12, 2013, before the organization folded into the UFC. The events will be live on Fridays starting at 9 PM Eastern.
In September, Bellator moved to CBS Sports Network for Thursday shows after a seven year run on Spike TV/Paramount Network that also included a short run on sports streaming service DAZN.
Espinoza gave no business reason for the move other than saying it was the right time to do it. While fellow premium pay channel HBO got out of the boxing business, Showtime has continued to be heavily involved with Espinoza saying the kickoff weekend will also feature a boxing event on Saturday.
April 2nd’s Bellator 255 will feature featherweight champion Patricio Pitbull defending against Emmanuel Sanchez in a Featherweight Grand Prix tournament fight, while April 9th’s Bellator 256 will see the kickoff of their first-ever Light Heavyweight Grand Prix with former light heavyweight champion and current heavyweight titleholder Ryan Bader rematching Lyoto Machida and Corey Anderson facing the debuting Dovletdzhan Yagshimuradov.
Two more Grand Prix fights will follow at Bellator 257 on April 16th as current champion Vadim Nemkov will rematch Phil Davis and the debuting Yoel Romero will face the debuting Anthony “Rumble” Johnson in a high profile pairing of former UFC title contenders. They also announced May 7th’s Bellator 258 will feature bantamweight champion Juan Archuleta defending against Sergio Pettis.
Ranallo intimated he will be involved with the Bellator product, but it’s unclear if that will be back in the play-by-play chair or as part of the presentation for the show.
For the first time in two years, Brian Campbell of CBS Sports & Showtime returns to Josh Nason’s Punch-Out with a lot to talk about.
Since we last talked, Brian and co-host Luke Thomas launched Morning Kombat, a live YouTube show that has expanded out into watch-alongs and a new show that Brian revealed exclusively on the podcast. He also continues to put in the work with CBS Sports as the host of the State of Combat MMA/boxing podcasts with Rashad Evans, Rafe Bartholomew, Brent Brookhouse, and other guests.
A few topics:
We caught up about how Kombat came to be and his relationship with Luke on and off air.
The reveal of a new show coming to Showtime Extreme.
Dana White’s announcement that they are moving ahead with a May 9th show in an unknown location.
Whether Florida’s essential business change of heart will mean boxing is coming to the Sunshine State
Whether Nevada is going to be next on the essential business combat sports train
An early read on the WWE talent cuts (we recorded right when all hell started breaking loose Wednesday)
I also give a few thoughts on the passing of Howard Finkel including how he influenced me in my brief run as a ring announcer.
Enjoy this talk with one of the nicest guys in the media game and one of the fastest risers.
Showtime Sports has revealed the premiere date and released the trailer for their upcoming documentary on Mauro Ranallo.
The film is called “Bipolar Rock ‘N Roller,” a reference to a nickname that Ranallo gave himself earlier in his career. It focuses on his time in broadcasting and the mental health challenges that he’s dealt with. The documentary will debut on Showtime at 9 p.m. Eastern time on May 25th, which is part of Mental Health Awareness month.
“I have always tried to do my part to bring awareness to mental health issues,” Ranallo said. “Over the last several years, I allowed my best friend, Haris (Usanovic), to film me at my lowest points as well as at my highest. The idea is simply to show others who suffer that they are not alone and that, even when the outlook is bleak, you can overcome and achieve success. Mental illness is a life sentence — there is no cure — but it doesn’t have to be a death sentence.”
Ranallo currently does play-by-play for NXT, Showtime Boxing, and Bellator MMA. He joined the NXT announce team last June, which came after a severe bout with mental health issues and him leaving SmackDown amid allegations that he was being bullied.
Dave Meltzer reported last month that Showtime and WWE are both involved in the documentary.
Former New Japan Pro Wrestling and SmackDown announcer Mauro Ranallo was announced officially today by Showtime as the lead play-by-play announcer for the August 26th Conor McGregor vs. Floyd Mayweather Jr. fight.
Showtime officials told The Sporting News that they would go with their usual boxing crew, and that the event would also include guest commentators, which are believed to be appearances by members of the UFC broadcast team.
Brian Custer was announced as the host of the show, while Ranallo will handle play-by-play.
Ranallo did the play-by-play for Showtime for the Mayweather-Pacquiao fight and most recently did the Joshua-Klitschko fight from Wembley Stadium in London. Besides his stint on SmackDown, which ended abruptly and in controversy in March, he’s done pro wrestling and every combat sport, from the heyday of Pride, to Glory kickboxing, to a number of MMA
promotions including Strikeforce, Elite XC, and Invicta, as well as the biggest matches over several years from New Japan Pro Wrestling on AXS.
Ranallo started his career as a heel manager for All-Star Wrestling in British Columbia and later became the television announcer for the local promotion, and also had a stint as the lead voice of a remake of Stampede Wrestling.
Boxing Hall of Famer Al Bernstein will handle the color with former champion Paulie Malignaggi.
Also on the crew will be Jim Gray handling the interviews and Steve Farhood doing the scoring. Farhood, who was just inducted last week into the International Boxing Hall of Fame, also has a pro wrestling background as one of the so-called Apter mag writers early in his career.
I feel like I have to preface this column with a bold statement: one way or another, I will watch Conor McGregor and Floyd Mayweather box in late-August.
I know, what a hot take. Call me Stephen A. Nason or Josh Bayless.
I could try to tell you that this affair is a complete atrocity, that it’s terrible for MMA, and that I can’t support it, but that would be completely disingenious. Like many of you, I will find a way to watch and will be entrenched in the build leading up to this “fight”.
But after taking in everything after the announcement and listening to that first conference call discussing how the deal was made, there’s a lot of reality checks that all of us that are heavily invested in MMA need to come to grips with before this thing happens in late-August.
So far, the ‘MMA’ and ‘UFC’ might as well be curse words
According to all parties, the day itself will feature no MMA whatsover and will be, as Dana White said, “a boxing day”. In the intro for the call, McGregor was referred to as an “Irish superstar” and there was no mention of his being a UFC lightweight champion, two division champion, etc. In a promotional tweet Mayweather sent, the UFC logo was absent. Even, the Showtime tweet about the promo poster even used #UFC and not @UFC while properly tagging the fighers’ handles.
It’s only been a few days, but considering McGregor came to prominence in the UFC and in MMA, it’s surprising and, likely negotiated, how little that seems to matter now.
The UFC isn’t promotionally riding shotgun, but is sitting in the back middle seat
The most disheartening aspect of the Wednesday night call was hearing White cite Showtime as “kind” for allowing them to do promotional content like UFC Embedded leading up to the show. It’s as if White and the UFC are bowing down and paying a penance instead of standing side-by-side in promoting this whole thing.
While I understand that Mayweather is a PPV superstar, the UFC built a $4 billion brand that has a foothold in the sporting conscious, even if just in name value alone. The day shouldn’t just be “a boxing day”. What about the MMA fans that don’t care about boxing and need to be sold on why they should spend $100 for a one-fight show in which that one fight will be probably pretty bad?
To see a fight brand and promoter that has openly swatted aside notions of co-promotion (M1 and Fedor Emelianenko, anyone?) now have to play second-class citizen to a network they used to despise and a retired boxer they’ve never done business with before is jarring.
Boxing isn’t dead
Like many MMA writers, I did once pen the obligatory ‘boxing is dead’ column years ago after another frustrating night watching two heavyweights slog it out while two UFC heavyweights were doing their thing. While it may never return to its previous heights, I was definitely wrong with your latest example being the crowd and overall buzz for the recent Joshua/Klitschko fight in England’s Wembley Stadium.
It definitely isn’t dead when you consider that a retired 40-year-old boxer is going to face a boxing newbie and give that newbie the biggest payday of his life even though he’s the UFC’s biggest star and arguably their biggest financial draw of all time. It also definitely isn’t dead when you consider this fight will do bigger business and will get more mainstream media attention than any MMA fight ever.
It proves that no matter how far we think MMA has come, there’s still so, so far to go.
This will cost us a quality McGregor UFC title fight
White seemed confident that McGregor will fight in the UFC once this year, using that as a bully pulpit to bash his own fighters for not taking fights against anyone at anytime. (Who could he be talking about, I wonder?) I hope that’s the case as there’s no shortage of quality fights waiting for the lighweight champ…if he decides he even wants to return, a talking point given the Brinks truck that’s about to back up at 1 McGregor Way.
Even with the birth of his first child, you’d expect him to be fighting this summer if this Mayweather business wasn’t going on, probably against the likes of Tony Ferguson or Khabib Nurmagomedov. Yeah, they’re not the marquee names like Mayweather but for those who follow the sport, those are the guys we want McGregor to test himself against. That’s our idea of a $100 PPV, so to speak.
And let’s not forget this fun fact: McGregor has yet to defend any UFC title he’s won.
The promotion will be the best part
Impending hyperbole and talking heads blathering aside, McGregor’s chance of beating Mayweather are slim even if Mayweather hasn’t fought in two years. What’s going to sell this fight for the mainstream is both guys talking and they have a concentrated time to do it in: two and a half months. Going into this, we all knew the real draw was going to be everything before the fight anyway.
With all that said, it’s going to be a dizzying sprint focused on an event featuring the UFC’s top draw in a fight that isn’t in the UFC nor in the sport that brought him fame. Plus, there’s that other bit of business for White and company: the eight scheduled UFC shows between now and then starting with this weekend’s overlooked event in Singapore.
Whether you’re going into this kicking and screaming or are primed at the pump for it, your seat aboard the McGregor-Mayweather train is reserved. Let’s all just hope there’s no delays on the track ahead.
