GO FOR 2

The UFC hit the century mark tonight, and aired its 100th event. The night may not have been all it was billed to be, but it was absolutely a great event. First are the results, then we’ll hand out some awards (note that due to the limitations of Pay-Per-View I’m only drawing awards from the main card). Here are the results:

UNDERCARD:

Tom Lawler def. C.B. Dolloway by guillotine choke at 0:55 of round 1.

Shannon Gugerty def. Matt Grice by guillotine choke at 2:36 of round 1.

Dong Hyun Kim def. TJ Grant by unanimous decision.

Jon Jones def. Jake O’Brien by guillotine choke at 2:43 of round 2.

Jim Miller def. Matt Danzig by unanimous decision.

Mark Coleman def. Stephen Bonnar by unanimous decision.

MAIN CARD:

Yoshihiro Akiyama def. Alan Belcher by split decision.

Dan Henderson def. Michael Bisping by KO at 3:20 of round 2.

Georges St-Pierre def. Thiago Alves by unanimous decision.

Brock Lesnar def. Frank Mir by TKO at 1:48 of round 2.

Jon Fitch def. Paulo Thiago by unanimous decision.

And some awards from the centenarian event:

Fight of The Night:  Lesnar vs Mir

I’m giving this fight of the night for three reasons. 1) There was a ton of hype leading up to this fight, and I’m not sure I’ve ever been so excited to see two guys finally start trading leather. 2) The energy in and around the ring was insane. Brock and Frank clearly had it out for each other, the crowd clearly wanted to see these two get at it, and Lesnar’s hard-charging attack and relentless strikes just flat-out keep you on the edge of your seat. 3) The finish. When you saw the end of this fight from the overhead camera you could see the kind of damage Lesnar was doing – you could also clearly see the results on Mir’s face.

KO of the Night: Henderson vs Bisping

Sure, this was the only actual “knock out” on the main card, but it was oh-so-sweet. Bisping spent the whole fight trying to make like Ali and dance around the octagon. However Henderson was completely undeterred and just stalked Bisping all around the ring, throwing his jab and waiting for an opening. Despite Bisping’s corner telling him not to float to his left (which lines him up with Henderson’s explosive right hand), Bisping couldn’t fight habit and kept moving that way. Finally, Henderson lined it up, came over the top, and just crushed Michael Bisping. Henderson followed it up with a very hard shot to a clearly out of it Bisping before being pushed off by Mario Yamasaki (he then admitted he knew he was hitting an unconscious Bisping – not a great idea, but extremely entertaining).

Let Down of the Night: St-Pierre vs Alves

Its nothing against either guy, both worked very hard and put on a good show. The fact is: nobody can handle GSP right now. The fight essentially consisted of GSP keeping Alves at range, then taking him down and working the transition game at will. GSP landed a few solid shots (Alves’ face showed it), but for the most part nothing overly excitng happened. It was basically just a dominant fighter controlling the action for 5 rounds.

Thats Nice In Theory Award: Lesnar vs Mir

There was a lot of talk about Frank Mir’s submissions, how good he was from his back, the fact that he survived and won during the first fight. That’s nice in theory, but Lesnar completely and utterly crushed an inferior opponent Saturday night. Before the fight Mir said that Lesnar’s ground and pound was “like your little sister jumping on your back” because he didn’t lift his hands very far. Ask Frank Mir if he still thinks that’s true. Lesnar fought Mir chest-to-chest and hip-to-hip on the ground, preventing Mir from creating any space to work for a submission or even a decent transition attempt. The shots Lesnar landed – without being able to move his arms very far – tenderized Mir’s face like a cut of beef. The final shots that ended the fight sent Mir’s head visibly flying backward into the cage. This fight was never even close.

Joe Rogan’s Worst Moment:

I don’t like Rogan very much, sorry, so I need to have this award in here. Rogan did a pretty solid job, so I’m not going to be too hard on him, but his post-fight interview with Georges St-Pierre was really lacking. Rogan tried (key word, tried) to ask GSP what he thought about the competition in the welterweight division. Now, GSP speaks English very well, but its his second language. The fact that Rogan had to rephrase the question 3 times before finally spitting it out doesn’t help. Rogan actually gets time to think of these questions before he goes in to ask them…but he absolutely whiffed trying to spit out this one-sentence query. 

Other Thoughts on the Evening:

Akiyama/Belcher: A lot of people (Joe Rogan included) weren’t real happy with the Akiyama-Belcher decision. Too bad, this was NOT an unsupportable decision. Most people probably thought Belcher deserved the win because he was pressing the action, well thats only a small part of how this is scored. Belcher threw more punches, but watching it myself I would wager that Akiyama actually landed more shots. Sure, this was a close fight to call – but thats why it was a split decision, at the end of the day evidence existed to support the decision in favor of either fighter, so don’t say Belcher got robbed…that’s just how the 3rd judge leaned.

Brock Lesnar’s Attitude: Dan Wetzel over at Yahoo wrote a great article talking about how St-Pierre is a classy champion, and that’s the model the UFC needs instead of Lesnar’s rough attitude. Well, with all due respect to a great writer, I really don’t agree. The UFC isn’t like the WWE, where villians and heros are created by script, and story lines are oh-so-important, that doesn’t mean having different and visible personalities is a bad thing though. Its always nice to have a villian around, someone that the crowd can hate and simply doesn’t mind being hated. Would we really be as interested in a bunch of guys trying to pound each other into dust and pull each other’s limbs apart if they were all nice, humble, well-mannered friends? I don’t think so. Why do you think Ken Shamrock and Tito Ortiz generated so much interest?

At the end of the day, having a guy who just goes out there and gets in his opponents face, doesn’t respect people, and talks about how he’s the best is a nice thing to have. People want to watch either because they want to see a complete, no-holds-barred bad guy rip someone’s head off – or because they want to see someone finally shut the guy up, and give him his come-uppance.

I don’t think the UFC should be packed with guys who have Lesnar’s attitude, and I certainly don’t think guys should be brought in just because of that. But Lesnar is a serious fighter, a real talent, and a shot in the arm for the UFC. He brings talent and a who-cares attitude. He isn’t there to do the right thing, promote properly and focus on the business, he’s there to beat guys up and be a champion – I’ve been watching the UFC since Royce Gracie was submitting Kimo, and I think its nice to have this guy here.

Ridiculous Stats:

One final note, I’ve seen a lot of UFC Pay-Per-Views, and I’ve never seen so many damn statistics. My personal favorite? Thiago Alves has landed the third most leg kicks of any fighter in UFC history. Neat…but what the hell do I care? Just tell me he has a brutal leg kick, that’s enough. Did I need to know that Brock Lesnar lands 86% of his ground strikes? Nope, again this is kind of neat, but I’m not here to watch a baseball game. These statistics are a little bit over the top, I don’t think they need to go, but they need to be displayed a little more subtly. And before you accuse me of not understanding the fine points of MMA, I’m a BJJ blue belt – I love the weird, technical stuff. I just don’t need to know ridiculous percentages when a generality serves me literally just as well.

Congratulations to the entire organization, all the owners, investers, and certainly fighters should be glad to see the UFC (and MMA in general) hit such a good milestone, and I can tell you for certain that the fans are glad as well.