Karl's Picks - UFC 131

 Time for the third UFC card in three weeks, and we got a bunch more ahead. As a fan, it's great, but I'm struggling getting the Picks and Matchmaker posts up for each event. This is the biggest card of the recent ones, and features a really good matchup of Junior Dos Santos and Shane Carwin. Both guys are the definition of knockout artists, and fireworks should be expected. Anyways, on to the picks.

Darren Elkins (11-2, 1-1 UFC) vs Michihiro Omigawa (12-9-1, 0-3 UFC)
Recent Fights
Elkins: Submission loss to Charlie Oliveira, TKO win over Duane Ludwig, decision win over Gideon Ray
Omigawa: Decision loss to Chad Mendes, submission wins over Cole Escovedo and Young Sam Jung
Strengths
Elkins: Good record in the minors
Omigawa: Great judo, lots of experience
Weaknesses
Elkins: Haven't seen much from him
Omigawa: Can be outwrestled,
Prediction
Elkins, after two quick fights in the UFC, makes his featherweight debut against one of the best in the world in Michihiro Omigawa. It might not look like it from his record, but Omigawa is an outstanding featherweight, who UFC losses are to top contender Chad Mendes and two previous losses years ago at lightweight. I really don't know much about Elkins - both of his fights have lasted less than two minutes, and his win only came by injury. I think Omigawa is going to show how experience makes a difference by easily taking the fight to the mat and submitting Elkins. Omigawa by armbar in the first.

Karl's Top 7 - Most Badass Characters on Beast Wars

Many don't know this, but Beast Wars is actually the greatest television show ever made. The show started with a basic concept of having gorillas fight dinosaurs (which, on it's own, sounds fucking sweet) and kicked up a notch by also making the gorillas and dinosaurs Transformers. Then they made shit real by setting the whole show on *spoilers* Earth. I know what you're thinking, and yes, the show was often dangerously intense and overwhelmingly badass. I'm pretty sure you aren't supposed to watch Beast Wars if you have a heart condition because there's so much action.
I remember having a VHS of the first two episodes, and it came with a card that, when you turned it, changed from Optimus Prime Animal Form and Robot Form. I guarded that card with my life.

7. Tarantulus
When I was younger, I liked Tarantulus alot more, but upon more recent viewings, he's kind of a dick. He still can shoot bullets from his arms and has cool gadgets though.

Monday Music - Common "Be" and "Go"

Common is just a cool fucking character. If Common was a character in Grease, he would definitely be Kenicke (Fuck Danny Zuko). If he was a character on Beast Wars he would most certainly be Tigertron (I'd say Rhinox, but Rhinox is simply to awesome to have a mere human as a parallel). If he was a boss in the first Paper Mario game, he would be the Crystal King (Nothing like Tubba Blubba - that guy's a pansy).

Anyways, here's the tunage. Listening to music like this is good for your ears. Listen enough and you'll be able to fly around with them like Dumbo. And don't even try to say that wouldn't be awesome.

"Be"

"Go"

Karl's Review - LA Noire

One of the first cases you get, and one of my favorites of the whole game

I just finished LA Noire, and I have to say, while it was a great game it felt a little short of what I expected. While a great game, I didn't feel the same way about LA Noire as I felt with Rockstar's previous game, Red Dead Redemption. That's not a knock against LA Noire - Red Dead Redemption is one of my favorite games on the 360 - I was just expecting something as good and felt that LA Noire came close to, but never quite up to, that level.
LA Noire is still a fantastic game. The whole investigation and interrogation system was really well implemented, and interrogating was both a lot harder, and a lot more fun, than I expected it to be. The story cases are all well done, and the additional street cases add some more action into a game that at times can be a little slow. Throwing in hidden cars, film reels, newspapers, and landmarks to collect add more to do, and the virtual LA Rockstar created is extremely detailed and well crafted. The game was a little shorter than I expected, but there's enough additional content there to keep you interested. I'd be interested in the DLC that gets released later, and might end up picking up a rerelease with all the extra content later.

Overall - 9/10

Armchair Matchmaker - Ultimate Fighter 13 Finale

Unlike last week's UFC 130, the finale card was actually pretty good. Some solid undercard fights, coupled with some good KOs on the main card means an overall entertaining night of fights.

Cut List - Ken Stone, Ryan McGillivray, Chuck O'Neil,

Clay Guida vs the winner of Jim Miller v. Ben Henderson
Clay Guida picked up a big win with his decision over Anthony Pettis, but it wasn't the most exciting performance. A fight against the winner of the upcoming Jim Miller/Ben Henderson fight would create a number one contender, as well as being a matchup in which both guys tremendous wrestling could negate each other, forcing the fight to stay on the feet.

Karl's Picks - Ultimate Fighter 13 Season Finale

 Well, another shitty season of The Ultimate Fighter is in the bag, and it's time for the final card. Outside of the main event, there's not a whole lot of interesting stuff here, but it's free, so what do you expect? Also, due to the lateness of this post (some of the fights were only announced in the past few days) this won't be a full prediction post - sorry to the three people that might care.

Chuck "Cold Steel" O'Neil (8-3) vs Chris "C-Murder" Cope (4-1)
Let's get the obvious out of the way - those are some fucking awful nicknames. Two of the worst I've ever heard. As for a pick, I don't know - from what I've seen both of these guys suck. I guess I'll go with Cope because I watched one of the O'Neil fights and he just looked awful. On the bright side I doubt either of these guys will be around by this time next year.

Summer Movie Review - Boondock Saints

Overall, pretty cool movie. Never felt slow, had some fuckin awesome action scenes, and Rocco was hilarious. I also didn't know that Ron Jeremy was in any movies where he didn't play Ron Jeremy. The more I think about it, the more I like it. If you haven't (and i assume many of you have), check it out. If you have seen it, watch it again.

Best scene: The action scene that Willem Dafoe explains as it happens was awesome, and the incident with the cat was strange and hilarious.

Rating - 4.5/5