February 20, 2007 A MOMENT, HONORED Las Vegas Sun photographer Sam Morris won first place Sunday in the sports feature category in the prestigious Pictures of the Year International competition. Morris captured this shot of battered heavyweight Mark Coleman and his daughters after the Pride Fighting Championships in October. As the crowd filed out of the Thomas Mack Center, the two girls were lifted into the ring, and the bloodied Coleman tried to calm them. He embraced them while caressing their hair and repeating over and over that, "Daddy's OK, Daddy's OK." Morris is an Iowa native who joined the Sun eight years ago. He also has won several awards in the Nevada Press Association contest and first place in the APNEC contest for his coverage of events in Las Vegas surrounding the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Pictures of the Year International draws tens of thousands of entries from photographers around the world. This is the first time the Sun has won an award in POYi. The results of the judging are released over three weeks. The winning sports photographs were the first ones released. The Missouri School of Journalism administers the contest, with additional financial support from Fujifilm, MSNBC and National Geographic.

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Mark "The Hammer" Coleman competitor, former UFC Heavyweight Champion, PRIDE 2000 Grand Prix Champion, and member of the UFC Hall of Fame. I was a former NCAA National Champion Wrestler from The Ohio State University, and former Olympic amateur wrestler. I am credited with proving the ability of wrestlers to dominate in the developing sport of mixed martial arts, and with being the inventor of the strategy that came to be known as "ground and pound".

I began my career freestyle wrestling, going on to win an NCAA wrestling championship, and competing in the 1992 Summer Olympics, taking seventh place overall. Following my amateur career, I made the transition to the then-new sport of mixed martial arts, winning my first two tournaments, UFC 10 where I beat defending champion and fellow superstar, Don Frye and UFC 11 in 1996, become the UFC's first Heavyweight Champion when he submitted Dan Severn via neck crank
From 2000 through 2006, I fought for PRIDE Fighting Championships in Japan, while also making appearances with the professional wrestling promotion HUSTLE in Japan. I won the PRIDE 2000 open-weight Grand Prix tournament defeating Masaaki Satake, Akira Shoji, Kazuyuki Fujita, and Igor Vovchanchyn. I was once again at the top of the mixed-martial arts world. I continued to thrive the next 5 years facing top flight competition and maintaining my reputation as on of the toughest heavyweights in the world. I appeared with teammate, Kevin Randleman, on the US PPV broadcast of the final PRIDE event, PRIDE 34 "Kamikaze", stating that I intended to keep fighting, even though many have said that my career is winding down and I should retire. My next fight will be against Brock Lesnar, as announced at UFC 82 in Columbus.

I am also the founder of Team Hammer House, a mixed martial arts team and training facility in Columbus, Ohio.

The Hammer
15 - 8 - 0 (Win - Loss - Draw)
4 TKOs
8 Submissions
3 Decisions
2 TKOs
4 Submissions
2 Decisions