By Cheryl Ragsdale, Yahoo! Contributor Network
Voting for the high profile, fourth annual World Mixed Martial Arts Awards show presented by “Fighters Only Magazine” started September 1st and will continue until November 25th. The distinctive silver MMA fighter awards will be presented to the winners on November 30, 2011. The black tie, red carpet event takes place at the Palms Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, NV.
Mark Mullen applies an arm bar to Ernesto Martinez during the Open Tap Out Tournament at Camp Schwab’s Power Dome Gym.
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Winners are chosen by votes collected from MMA fans. According to information on fightersonlymagazine’s website, over 387,000 votes were received last year. The organizers of this year’s contest hope to attract even more fans this year.
Categories range from Fighter of the Year to Best Entrance to Best MMA Journalist.
After reading through the list of Submission of the Year nominees, I realized that I hadn’t seen some of them. I decided to take a look at each one before casting my vote. The award is supposed to be given to the fighter “who scored the most technical and/or slickest submission victory of the year.”
Submission of the Year Nominees
The first name in each pairing belongs to the fighter achieving the submission. A short video of the submission is provided where available.
Chan Sung Jung (Korean Zombie) vs. Leonard Garcia at UFC Fight Night 24: first twister in the UFC (video), submission of the night
Pablo Garza vs. Yves Jabouin at UFC 129: Flying Triangle, submission of the night
Richard Hale vs. Nik Fekete at Bellator 38: Inverted triangle choke (video)
Vinny Magalhaes vs. Viktor Nemkov at M-1 Challenge 25: Vinny, the only Brazilian MMA fighter to make the list for Sub of the Year, defeated Russian MMA fighter Nemkov with a gogoplata neck crank.
Tito Ortiz vs. Ryan Bader at UFC 132: Guillotine choke (video). This fight with the surprising finish put Tito back in play with the UFC. A month after defeating Ryan Bader, Tito was back to face Rashad Evans at UFC 133. He lost to Rashad by TKO in the second round. Despite this loss, Tito has also been nominated in the “Comeback of the Year” category for resurrecting his career in the UFC.
Who has the Slickest Submission?
It was either luck or a stroke of pure genius that had me pick Tito to win against Ryan Bader at UFC 132. I don’t see him winning the Submission of the Year award for that guillotine choke though.
I’m taking Vinny out of the running for his gogoplata neck crank. The Korean Zombie’s twister was cool and unexpected, but not as cool as my top two choices – the flying triangle from Pablo Garza and Richard Hale’s inverted triangle choke.
My vote goes to Richard Hale. Anyone who can complete a submission performing a BJJ move while upside down is super-slick and deserves to win the award. The Bellator commentator in the background on Richard’s video sealed the deal when he said, “The former professional boxer scores an amazing technical submission win here in his Bellator debut.”
Who’s your favorite? Who will you vote for?
