You stand a couple of 265-pound man mountains front and center, and a lot can get hidden in the background.

So maybe it shouldn't be such a surprise that, obscured in the beefy shadows cast by UFC 141 main event combatants Brock Lesnar and Alistair Overeem, there are some pretty good fighters on the Dec. 30 card who are nowhere near the sparkle of the spotlight.

It's true that every UFC event is built around its headliners. And when the fight organization's…

Tyron Woodley isn't opening a gym for the sake of opening a gym.



Instead, the top Strikeforce welterweight contender has much loftier goals – including one to put St. Louis and Missouri on the MMA map.



Additionally, he wants his new venture, American Top Team Evolution, to be a launching pad for world-class fighters who also are world-class people.



This past week, Woodley opened the gym in St. Louis (9751 Manchester Road). The Missouri…

Twenty years ago, boxing reigned unopposed as the most popular fight sport in the world, with champion pugilists up there with Hollywood A-listers in the celebrity stakes (where some still linger, as Mike Tyson's cameos in the Hangover films surely attest).



Today's boxers, however, have been overshadowed by a new heavyweight sport - mixed martial arts (MMA). A controversial fringe sport during the 1990s, it gained popularity in the new century, thanks largely to…

Salvador Flamenco loved mixed martial arts. So much so, that he routinely flew around the country to spar with other enthusiasts he met online.

But something went horribly wrong after a two-day training session at a home in Vancouver, Wash., on Dec. 17, leaving Flamenco dead at 38.

“He was mostly doing a mix of wrestling and boxing on this trip,” said Flamenco’s roommate and friend Robert…