Grapplemonkey.com

MMA/BJJ iPhone Apps

Need to finish an armbar during camping but lacking proper technique? Need to know what Gilbert Yvel’s professional fight record is while you’re on a bus? Yep, there’s an app for that. Here are some iPhone apps for MMA and Brazilian Jiu Jitsu fans and practitioners.

MMA News

  • MMA Underground – $1.99
    Probably the most polished MMA app out there. Features MMA news, fighter database, upcoming events (MMA and grappling), and you can read the underground forums (no posting).
  • MMA Fan – Free
    MMA news, videos, photos (MMA models), podcasts, and aggregated MMA-related twitter content.
  • MMA Torch – Free
    MMA news – basically a pocket sized MMATorch.com website.
  • Ultimate Fighting Championship – $0.99
    The official UFC app. Highlights, video content (in-app pay-per-view), slated to offer PPV events, Octagon Girls, UFC fighter database. Great app if you only watch Zuffa-promoted fights.
  • MMA Junkie Mobile – Free
    MMA news from MMAJunkie and Yahoo! Sports.

More apps after the jump.

BJ Penn on Sport Science

BJ Penn demonstrates the rear naked choke on Sport Science. It’s an interesting breakdown of the science behind blood chokes.

MMA Calendar of Events

The UFC cranks out fights about twice a month. Throw in UFN, WEC, Strikeforce, and all the Japanese promotions, and suddenly it’s super hard to keep on top of MMA events. I decided to put together a public MMA calendar that you guys can subscribe to. It’s filled out into Q2 at this point, and I hope to keep it updated throughout the year.

Here are the links to the calendar:

iCalendar (Entourage, Outlook, Apple iCal, Google Calendar)
http://www.google.com/calendar/ical/op8jqrkndnpgma2fla7aq0ei4c%40group.calendar.google.com/public/basic.ics

XML
http://www.google.com/calendar/feeds/op8jqrkndnpgma2fla7aq0ei4c%40group.calendar.google.com/public/basic

HTML
http://www.google.com/calendar/embed?src=op8jqrkndnpgma2fla7aq0ei4c%40group.calendar.google.com&ctz=America/Los_Angeles

Jon Fitch Got Fired

According to this article on All Things Digital, Jon Fitch was dropped from the UFC because of his unwillingness to sign likeness rights over to video game publisher THQ for their upcoming title UFC 2009 Undisputed. The article mentions that Koscheck was also resistant to the mandate. I wonder if the rest of the AKA crew have expressed any discomfort in the situation.

Fitch was let go by the organization earlier this week because he had refused to sign a lifetime contract that would have given the game publisher THQ (THQI) the right to use his likeness for UFC games. The presentation of the contract rubbed him the wrong way, according to an interview he did with Hardcore Sports Radio: “They basically kicked the door open, guns blazing, pointed it in our face and said, ‘Sign this or you’re going to pay.’”

This kind of heavy handed management that the UFC practices is unfortunate, and I think in the long run it will create more problems than benefits for them. Essentially what’s happening is that the UFC is maintaining control over the fighters by holding their contracts over them. Fighters have very little say on salary, who they fight, or in this case who they sign their likeness rights to.

The article says the fighters were “asked to sign away their likeness rights for life”, which seems a bit unreasonable. I would imagine it could easily be altered to provide some limitations.



Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 Unported License.
Powered by WordPress