TORRANCE TRIBUNE March 10, 2016 Page 5 The Power of Trash-Talk You’re Invited Doors Open at 9:00 am STARS & STRIPES A M E R I C A N M A D E C L O T H I N G S T O R E COME CHECK US OUT! GREAT CLOTHING INCLUDING DENIM, HATS, BAGS, SHOES AND MORE 1107 Van Ness Ave.Torrance, CA 90501 • 310.320-3207 LEE 101 USA, WOOLRICH, SAVE KHAKI, MINNETONKA MOCCASIN, PENNY, JAN SPORT, DULUTH, REYN SPOONER, TRETORN, BALL, BURTON, STANCE, RAINBOW SANDALS, FILSON, TEVA, NEW YORK HAT, PADDY WAX, RICHER & POORER, SCHOTT USA, STRATHTAY Open Mondays through Saturdays Noon to 6pm Up and Adam See Up and Adam, page 6 In order to serve on a City of Torrance Commission, a 2 hour Commission Certification Class must be completed. The next Commission Certification Class is offered on: Tuesday, March 29, 2016 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. Toyota Meeting Hall Register online at: http://www.torranceca.gov/CommissionerCert.htm Or call the City Manager’s Office at 310-618-5880 GRAND OPENING FRIDAY 3/18 317 Torrance Blvd. Redondo Beach, CA 90277 By Adam Serrao The sport of MMA, or Mixed Martial Arts, may not be the most popular sport in America, chastised for its brutality and outright violence, but it can teach us all a great deal about sports and sportsmanship alike. The fight game nowadays isn’t what it used to be when Muhammed Ali was around and boxing. Ali could get away with trash-talking his opponents because he wasn’t lazy about it. Now, left and right, athletes are being humbled by the sport and learning that their over-the-top bravado may just be the thing that put them at a deficit in the first place. After boasting and bragging all month long about how he’s the best that ever was, Irishman Conor McGregor learned the hard way that modesty, every once in a while, isn’t such a bad thing to have. To everyone’s surprise, the normally 145-pound featherweight champion tapped to submission last Saturday night when facing Nate Diaz in Las Vegas for the Welterweight championship. “I’m just looking at your little frame and it just reminds me of an injured gazelle, strapped up,” McGregor said to Diaz in a pre-fight interview. “I’m a lion in there,” McGregor continued. “Your little gazelle friends are going to be staring through the cage looking at you and your carcass getting eaten alive. All they’re going to do is say: ‘We’re never going to cross this river again.’” Those were just a few of the verbal jabs that McGregor took at Diaz before the fight actually took place, but little did he know, Diaz was much bigger, and stronger, than expected. Diaz took the fight against McGregor on only 11 days notice after Rafael Dos Anjos withdrew due to a broken foot. To keep everything on schedule, McGregor had to move up two weight classes in less than three months to fight Diaz, going from featherweight, where he is accustomed to fighting at 145 pounds, to welterweight at 170 pounds. The shift in classes eventually took its toll on the former overconfident champion. McGregor came out looking like his normal self, landing jab after jab to the face of Diaz, visibly injuring his opponent in the first round. Despite a bleeding cut over his right eye, however, the much bigger Diaz never went down. With a two-inch reach advantage, the fight took a much different turn for Diaz in the second round. Landing 60 percent of his strikes in the second, as opposed to 37 percent in the first, Diaz wobbled McGregor and ultimately brought him to the mat where the fight would eventually end by submission. Once Diaz started to hurt McGregor, he kept pouring it on. Diaz was the bigger guy and neither McGregor’s words, nor his fists had an effect on the fight. “I took the chance in going up to 170,” McGregor said after the fight. “I was inefficient with my energy. I’m humbled in victory and defeat.” Now that the fight is over and he has taken the loss, McGregor has begun talking about being humble. Just one week ago when he was comparing Diaz to a gazelle, however, there was no modesty to be found. “I needed to recognize that a bigger man -- you must put the shots together a little bit more to stop a bigger man.” Diaz, the bigger man, took the fight on only 11 days notice after Dos Anjos’ withdrawal called for a new opponent. “I put in a lot of work and time and wasn’t getting the same love [as Mc- Gregor],” Diaz explained after the fight. While he didn’t have much time to prepare, Diaz stayed focused on his opponent, never went over the top with verbal barbs, trained hard and unlike McGregor, ultimately came away with a victory. Some might remember that less than four months ago, Ronda Rousey had the same gameplan as McGregor when she took on Holly Holm for the UFC championship. Rousey was overconfident and over-talkative before the fight, loudly expressing all of the ways that she Lady Warriors Lose Title By Adam Serrao It seems like tiresome work, making it to the CIF finals three times in a row. That’s precisely what the West High Lady Warriors did when they made it to this year’s CIF Southern Section Division 1AA final at Azusa Pacific University last Saturday night to take on the Ventura Cougars. After winning two titles in a row the previous two years, though, the West High’s weary and worn-out legs surfaced, at last. Ventura’s size didn’t help much either. After dominating for much of the regular season and going on a remarkable postseason run, the Warriors offense finally fell flat. A 47-25 loss to the Cougars in this year’s championship game ended West’s season just one win shy of achieving the incredible feat of back-to-back-to-back championships. “They took us out of what we wanted to do early,” West High coach William Atkinson explained. The West High girls managed only four points in the first quarter of play. Needless to say, Ventura’s defense on the hometown team was working effectively. “We were being impatient on offense. We like to play inside-out and we didn’t make the right adjustments,” coach continued. It seemed as if every shot that the Warriors attempted to put in the basket would simply rattle out. The team shot a dismal 14 percent from the field on the night; a night where the team needed to be at their best to win a title. 25 points was the lowest scoring output of the season for the Warriors. Even in their victories this season, Warriors opponents scored 25 points or less only three times all year long. “We beat two really good teams to get here,” Hayley Jones said. “We knew we had the mentality to be able to play in this game, but we just beat ourselves.” Jones finished the night with just one point and two rebounds, missing all eight shots that she took from the field. Jones wasn’t the only one missing, though. With only six points in the second quarter, the Warriors put up their lowest scoring half of the year as they took a 21-10 deficit into halftime. Ventura’s lowest scoring quarter of the game was West’s highest scoring quarter. The Cougars scored nine points in the third quarter while West scored nine in the fourth. “The depth perception throws us off a little bit and it takes us a little while to adjust,” West’s star Hayley Tanabe explained. “Unfortunately we couldn’t adjust our shots tonight.” In their 25 point final effort, the Warriors didn’t score in the double digits in any one quarter of play. Ventura capped off their night by scoring 17 in the fourth quarter to extend what was already a 30-16 lead going into the final period. Tanabe finished the night with nine points and two assists, leading her team in scoring. In addition to losing their offensive touch, the Warriors were also outrebounded significantly on the night as well. The Cougars grabbed 52 while West could only manage a total of 24. Barbara Rangel and Aubrey Knight pulled down a total of 22 rebounds for Ventura with 12 and 10, respectively. Rangel also added two blocks and nine points while Knight led the team and the game with 12 points. Emily Herring also scored 10 points for the Cougars. The Lady Warriors will now head into an offseason full of question marks where they will have to deal with the loss of their best player and captain in Tanabe. In addition to Tanabe, coach Atkinson will be without the services of four other seniors on the team who are all off to graduation. This year’s captain and junior guard/ forward, Kalei Atkinson will be back to help the team next year in addition to Jones, who, as only a sophomore, looks to have a bright future ahead as a Warrior under coach Atkinson. Despite finishing in second place in the Pioneer League standings this year, the Warriors (25-7, 8-2) wound up enjoying an excellent season, full of many accomplishments. The girls’ 37 point “The fight game nowadays isn’t what it used to be when Muhammed Ali was around and boxing.” See Trash-Talk, page 6 “Tanabe finished the night with nine points and two assists, leading her team in scoring.”
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