SPONOR KENDALL GROVE
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Articles form the files of Kendall Grove
UFC 74: RESPECT 4/7/07
UFC 69 1/5/07
Ten Best - The Top UFC Fights of 2006 12/28/06
Kendall Grove Exclusive Interview 11/6/06
Grove Enjoying Bout with Success 10/10/06
Kendall Grove vs. Chris Price 7/14/06
Tough Love: Fighters' visit packs a punch
Results: Kendall "Da Spyder" Grove was defeated by Patrick Cote by TKO in 4:45 in the first round at the UFC 74. Fight Card: |
Kendall Grove Post Fight Interview
10/5/06
Kendall Grove vs Chris Price
Pre Fight Interview
Fisher took this UFC 58 fight against young gun Stout on just three days notice, was forced to drop 20 pounds in two days, and still put on a gritty and entertaining performance against the hard-hitting Canadian, who pulled ahead late in the bout as Fisher tired to win a close three round split decision.
Fisher’s MFS Elite teammate Drew McFedries was seen to be the perfect foil for former pro boxer Alessio Sakara in their UFC 65 bout, and sort of a standup consolation gift for ‘Legionarius’ after he was pitted against ground aces Dean Lister and Elvis Sinosic in his previous two bouts. But after absorbing Sakara’s bombs early, McFedries roared back with heavy shots of his own and eventually stopped the Italian at the 4:07 mark of the first round in an impressive UFC debut performance.
Boxing’s heavyweight division could learn something from Christison and Imes, who threw leather like welterweights in their bout despite being two of the biggest men in the sport. And despite the two-to-toe brawling for much of the bout, it was a submission that ended this bloody battle as Christison scored with a fight ending armbar in the third round of this TUF2 alumni fight.
If you look at the lopsided scores in favor of Franklin, you would wonder why this fight is even included, but sometimes a fight goes beyond a simple give and take, and the courage shown by Franklin (who battled several injuries sustained during the bout) and Loiseau (who absorbed a sustained pounding but kept moving forward) shows you what mixed martial artists are truly made of. Plus, Loiseau’s power always kept things interesting and made you well aware that one mistake by Franklin could have spelled doom. This was 25 solid minutes of compelling stuff.
BJ Penn was at the top of his game for ten minutes against Matt Hughes in their September rematch, and the champion - who had lost his title the first time to the ‘Prodigy’ - appeared to be on his way to a repeat defeat, even turning to prayer to help him out of a tight submission lock by Penn in the second round. But as I wrote that night, you can never underestimate the heart of a champion, and Hughes (who said later, “I knew I had lost the first two rounds; that just meant I had three left.”) roared back to stop Penn in the third round and avenge his loss to the Hawaii native. And though it was later revealed that Penn had suffered an injury in the second round, it takes nothing away from a memorable fight and comeback by the future hall of famer, Hughes.
You would think that when friends square off in combat that they would take a little something off their punches and be a little gun-shy about going for the finish. Don’t tell that to Smith and Sell, who were swinging for the fences from the opening bell and who punctuated their furious exchanges with smiles and high fives. In the second round, Smith appeared to be pulling ahead when Sell landed an equalizer in the form of a vicious body shot. But as Smith staggered backwards in pain, Sell rushed in recklessly and got caught with a shot on the jaw by ‘Hands of Steel’ that ended his night. It was a Hollywood ending to an exciting war and will live on in highlight reels forever.
You really had to be at Anaheim’s Arrowhead Pond to appreciate this fight, as the crowd was loud and boisterous from the fighter entrances to the final bell. And even though there was some controversy over the final decision in Ortiz’ favor, this was a bout where there were no losers, as Ortiz made a triumphant return to the Octagon, and TUF1 winner Griffin showed his heart once again as he fought back from a disastrous first round to take round two and in many eyes, round three. Griffin showed he belonged among the best at 205 pounds, Ortiz got to move on to bigger and better things, and the fans definitely got their monies worth.
4 - Tim Sylvia TKO1 (2:43) Andrei Arlovski – April 15 – UFC 59
It was going to be tough for heavyweights Sylvia and Arlovski to top the fight that led up to their rematch – Ortiz vs Griffin – but the big boys managed to do it in just two minutes and 43 seconds. Arlovski, the seemingly unbeatable champion, who was improving in devastating fashion with each fight, nailed the 6-8 Sylvia and dropped him hard to the canvas. Sylvia found his way back to his feet though, and as an overeager Arlovski moved in for the finish, ‘The Maine-iac’ avenged his first defeat to ‘The Pitbull’ with a short uppercut that put the Belarusian on the canvas. A follow-up barrage was just a formality. Big men, big punches, big finish – just what we want from our heavyweights.
The fact the UFC awarded contracts to both Grove and Herman (the first time that was done since Forrest Griffin and Stephan Bonnar waged war in the TUF1 finale) should tell you right away how good this one was. Herman controlled the first round, Grove came back in the second, and both fighters fought like a contract was on the line in a third round that had more twists and turns than a rollercoaster, with both fighters seemingly seconds away from victory or defeat depending on the moment. A memorable fight to say the least.
The big question mark about Georges St. Pierre entering his fight with returning BJ Penn was, how would he react if he had to face adversity. The first time it happened against Matt Hughes, St. Pierre folded. Against Penn in a first round that saw him bloodied and battered, the Canadian bit down on his mouthpiece and went to war, winning the next two rounds to eke out a close decision and earn a rematch with Hughes. It was stirring stuff from GSP in a bout that was tense from start to finish as two of the best 170 pounders in the world matched wits for 15 minutes.
Speaking of elite 170 pounders, Sanchez and Parisyan locked horns in August in a bout that you can show to skeptics and say ‘this is what mixed martial arts is all about.’ And though the unbeaten Sanchez’ true arrival as one of the best welterweights in the world came at Parisyan’s expense via decision, ‘The Heat’ should never hang his head for a performance that saw him land his patented judo throws on Sanchez and continue to battle, even as the seemingly indefatigable Albuquerque native kept attacking for 15 torrid minutes. If you can’t appreciate this fight for its technical and visceral brilliance, I’m sure there’s some golf playing on the tube somewhere for you.
- Josh Neer WSub1 (4:20) Melvin Guillard - January 16 – UFC Fight Night
- Chuck Liddell KO2 (1:28) Randy Couture – February 4 – UFC 57
- Paul Buentello TKO2 (2:27) Gilbert Aldana – February 4 – UFC 57
- Joe Riggs W3 Nick Diaz – February 4 – UFC 57
- Josh Neer W3 Joe Stevenson – April 6 – UFC Fight Night
- Matt Hughes TKO1 (4:39) Royce Gracie – May 27 – UFC 60
- Spencer Fisher TKO2 (1:43) Matt Wiman – May 27 – UFC 60
- Rory Singer WSub1 (0:44) Ross Pointon – June 24 – TUF3 Finale
- Jonathan Goulet W3 Luke Cummo – June 28 – UFC Fight Night
- Forrest Griffin W3 Stephan Bonnar – August 26 – UFC 62
- Roger Huerta W3 Jason Dent – September 23 – UFC 63
- Sean Sherk W5 Kenny Florian – October 14 – UFC 64
- Georges St. Pierre TKO2 (1:25) Matt Hughes – November 18 – UFC 65
- James Irvin TKO2 (2:36) Hector Ramirez – November 18 – UFC 65
- Karo Parisyan W3 Drew Fickett – December 13 – UFC Fight Night
- David Heath W3 Victor Valimaki – December 13 – UFC Fight Night
- Chuck Liddell TKO3 (3:59) Tito Ortiz – December 30 – UFC 66
By ROBERT COLLIAS, Staff Writer
WAILUKU – Considering where he has been over the last 11 months, it is easy to realize that Kendall Grove is enjoying his vacation – even if it did come with surgery attached.
Right now, Grove is a 6-foot-6, 210-pound Maui resident, enjoying ’’the plate-lunch diet’’ as he is home through Thanksgiving.
When Grove – a 2000 Baldwin High School graduate – leaves the Valley Isle, he will turn into a 6-6, 185-pound Ultimate Fighting Championship contender. He has an 8-3 record in UFC middleweight bouts.
He beat Ed Herman 29-28 in the final of the ’’The Ultimate Fighter 3’’ reality television show on Spike TV in June. That win led him to sign a six-figure, three-year contract with UFC, a $50,000 watch, a $5,000 bonus for the fight of the night, and a new cell phone with lifetime service.
He was back in the ring on Oct. 10, where he beat Chris Price of Indiana in a nationally televised bout, but suffered a dislocation to his right index finger.
One of the things he will do in his time on Maui is rehabilitate the dislocated finger that required surgery and a pin to fix. When the cast comes off in two weeks, he will add a ninth tattoo to his right arm.
’’I popped my index finger on the first combination and that was it,’’ Grove said last week of his fight with Price. ’’I had to take him down and I was just praying, ’Please keep him down.’ ’’
Three minutes, 59 seconds into the first round, Price tapped out.
’’It was just a head thing,’’ Grove said. ’’I knew I could still fight. I couldn’t punch with my right hand, but I could still fight. I finished him with my elbows.’’
Mixed martial arts is one of the most rapidly growing spectator sports in the nation and is moving into mainstream television.
According to Bryan Alvarez and his Figure Four Weekly newsletter, a recent UFC fight on Spike TV between Ken Shamrock and Tito Ortiz enjoyed big numbers among young males.
The fight lasted just two minutes, but the quarter-hour it played drew a 9.7 rating in males ages 18 to 25 and an 8.0 in males 18 to 34. According to Alvarez, the show drew more 18- to 34-year-old men than anything on cable or broadcast television for the entire day.
Alvarez said that ESPN stopped accepting UFC advertisements the following Monday and sent a message to its affiliates that they could not accept any UFC ads either.
Like the sport itself, Grove is on a fast track to success. He is a former wrestler and football player at Baldwin. His grappling background, mixed with jiu-jitsu training, has led him near the top of the sport. He is in Ortiz’s stable of fighters.
He has the cauliflowered ears that an Olympic wrestler might sport.
’’A lot of people say I cut in front of the line – 11 months, two fights in the UFC,’’ Grove said. ’’Without that show it would have been impossible to do that. That show just opened a lot of doors for me and helped me out a lot. It took me to that next level.’’
Grove signed his contract to do the reality show in December 2005. Now, he has as contract with UFC for three fights a year for the next three years, the first of which was the showdown with Price.
The injury has been a blessing in disguise.
’’I firmly believe that things happen for a reason,’’ he said. ’’I had been going nonstop since last year. Now, I get to rest a little bit and visit with the family. We are all human, as you can see.’’
In April 2007, Grove plans to be back in the ring with Rory Singer, one of his teammates on the TV show.
’’Me and Rory have bad blood,’’ Grove said. ’’Rory was Tito’s first choice at 185 pounds for the show. A lot of things happened on the show. It was childish stuff that happened on the show. Everybody knows about it. At my last weigh-in, we were talking and he said he didn’t see anything impressive in my fights. He was disrespecting me to my face, so I said let’s fix it like everybody else would – let’s go. He accepted, so I give him a lot of respect for that.’’
Grove is the brother of former Baldwin football standout and head coach Chad Kauhaahaa, now an assistant coach at Weber State University. The two shared numerous phone calls after Kauhaahaa watched episodes of the show.
Grove will celebrate his 24th birthday on Sunday. His 10-year goal is to be retired with his own school for the sport. Right now, his focus is on becoming a world champion.
’’I tell everybody I fight for Hawaii,’’ he said. ’’You guys back me up and that is my goal to get better and come back and teach to anybody on Maui or Hawaii who wants to learn. In five years, I see myself as a champion – that is my short-term goal, to have that belt around my waist.’’
Robert Collias is at rcollias@mauinews.com
In the main undercard bout on October 10th, 2006, Kendall Grove, middleweight winner of ‘The Ultimate Fighter’s third season, kept the momentum going with a dominating first round strike-induced submission of Chris ‘The Exorcist’ Price.
Grove was impressive from the outset, landing a hard right cross to the jaw of Price and then working on him with strikes and submission attempts when the fight hit the mat. With less than two minutes to go, Grove got full mount on Price and finished him off with a series of strikes that forced Price to tap out at the 3:59 mark.
Q&A
Thoughts on opponent, Chris Price? He’s a scrappy kid and he’s getting his shot. He’s got nothing to lose and everything to gain. I think he’s gonna come out fighting with everything he’s got and I think it’s gonna be a tough fight for me.
When and why did you start training for fighting? I started training in late-2002. I really loved it, and never thought about fighting, but I was helping Phil Baroni train for a fight and after one session he said ‘you’ve got potential, you should start fighting.’ Two months later I was in the ring fighting.
What ranks and titles have you held? Total Combat middleweight title Do you have any heroes? BJ Penn, Shogun Rua, and my nephews. What is your favorite technique? To stand and brawl – I love it. What does it mean for you to fight in the UFC? It means a lot. When I first started, it was my dream. Every fighter wants to be in the UFC, and for me to make it, it’s a big accomplishment. I’m just stoked that I’m in it.
Did you go to college and if so what degree did you earn? No
What was your job before you started fighting? I did a lot of things - roofing, waterproofing, landscaping, tiling, construction. Pretty much any hard job, I did it.
Photos Copyright Zuffa, LLC: All Rights Reserved.
Ultimate Fighter Kendall Grove, otherwise known as "Spyder," allows Cpl. Hansley Thomas to put him in a headlock so that Thomas' friend can take a picture while Spyder and other Ultimate fighters mingle with Marines at Camp Pendleton on Friday. By: TERI FIGUEROA - Staff Writer
CAMP PENDLETON ---- They come with names like The Boogeyman, Da Spyder, The Truth and The Natural. And they come in style.
Just as soon as most of this group of tough guys were out of the black Hummer they rolled up in Friday morning, they were surrounded by about 150 cami-clad Marines, many with cell phone cameras at the ready.
Such was the greeting at Camp Pendleton for a handful of fighters who specialize in mixed martial arts and who brawl as a part of the increasingly popular Ultimate Fighting Championship, or UFC.
On Friday, four big names in the sport made the rounds at Camp Pendleton, shaking hands with Marines and giving out fighting tips. Finding themselves at the center of photo-hungry Marines were UFC Hall of Famer Randy "The Natural" Couture, Dean "The Boogeyman" Lister, Kendall "Da Spyder" Grove and Brandon "The Truth" Vera.
Also along for the ride, and for the photo ops, were about a half-dozen UFC ring girls.
"I fight because I love the sport," the tattooed 23-year-old Maui native Grove said. "But it is also a profession."
Fighting has been his day job for two years now, and he snagged one of the two titles as "The Ultimate Fighter" ---- which brought him a six-figure contract.
The sport ---- which traces its official beginnings back about a dozen years ---- mixes martial arts, boxing and wrestling. The punches and kicks are real. So is the blood.
The appeal of UFC?
"Full-contact fighting," said Camp Pendleton Marine Isaac Ruiz, who took time off from work Friday to meet the fighters he sees on TV. "We watch it every time there is a main event."
Once pushed underground, the sport appears on the fast-track to the mainstream. In January 2005, cable channel Spike TV debuted its "The Ultimate Fighter" series, chronicling the training and matches of 16 up-and-coming competitors fighting for a UFC contract.
During its most recent season, the Spike TV show nabbed an average audience of 2.2 million viewers, roping in more men between the ages of 25 and 35 than Game 6 of the NBA's Western Conference semifinal series between the Phoenix Suns and the Los Angeles Clippers, according to the UFC.
Lister is a familiar face to fans of the Spike show; he was an assistant coach working alongside ultimate fighting star Tito Ortiz.
The sport got a boost in California last year, when the state Legislature approved a bill regulating it and the state's athletic commission sanctioned it.
"It was a very big thing for our sport," the effervescent Grove said Friday of the California action. "Now, its going to open more doors. Hopefully, New York City. Madison Square Garden."
Vera, who spent time in the Air Force, said his goal is to be the first seven-figure UFC fighter. Vera trains three hours a day when he's not prepping for a fight ---- and as many as six hours of "intense working" a day when there's a fight in his near future.
The 28-year-old said he moved from Norfolk, Virginia, to California because "It's the Mecca for fighters."
"There are four criteria for being a fighter," Vera teased. "Broke, bad credit, no regular job and no place to stay."
Lt. Ted Vickers, a Camp Pendleton spokesman, said the fighters called on Monday and asked if they could come out and greet the troops.
"This is great for the Marine Corps," said a smiling Vickers, who admitted that he follows the sport "religiously."
Couture, 43, recently finished shooting a movie with funny man Rob Schneider, and said he is heading to Iraq for 10 days at the end of the month.
The UFC Hall of Famer has been fighting since 1997 and headed into retirement in February as the only man to hold the UFC's light heavyweight and heavyweight titles.
Couture said he's "very delighted" by the increased popularity of the sport and credited the TV show as "a big factor."
Staff Sgt. Joe Caputo of New Mexico counts himself as a fan of the sport. The 30-year-old Marine noted that "the same thing we do on the battlefield, they do in the ring."
The UFC fighters weren't on hand for an exhibition, just a meet and greet with the Marines, who clamored around them for pictures, handshakes and autographs.
But the Marines were also up for a good scuffle, so pretty soon they formed a circle and a few of them went head to head, with the fighters behind them, coaching them, yelling out tips.
Good tips, too. One of the impromptu fighters, Cpl. Joe Alvarado of Texas, quickly ended up pinned by his competitor, Cpl. Benjamin Honacker of Ohio. But Lister stood nearby, telling Alvarado how to get out of what appeared to be a losing struggle to get on top. Within seconds, Alvarado ended up on top of his opponent.
After the battle, a sweaty, out-of-breath Alvarado said Lister's lesson could be a life-saver. Alvarado, Honacker and many more of the military police officers in the crowd are headed back to Iraq at the end of August.
"Always train for these kinds of moments," Alvarado said of hand-to-hand combat. "When you are rolling down the road in Iraq, anything can happen."
Contact staff writer Teri Figueroa at (760) 631-6624 or tfigueroa@nctimes.com.
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Date: July 14, 2006
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