Looks like this may be an interesting season after all…
I will have to keep an eye out for Charley Lynch, he is the self-proclaimed baddest man in Minnesota. I wonder if Brock Lesnar has anything to say about that.
Since I finally signed up for satellite TV, I was able to get Showtime free for three months. I didn’t think I would watch it that much, but I did catch the last Strikeforce event, Strikeforce Challengers VI.
The production of the event was about what I have come to expect from Showtime. They do a good job introducing the fighters, this can make the fights interesting to watch especially if you are not familiar with the fighters. My only major complaint is with the flashing lights, they made it difficult to look at the TV sometimes.
One nice surprise was the quality of fights early on the broadcast. I thought the first three fights were very entertaining.
OK, now the bad news. The main event was not fun to watch. The fight between Sarah Kaufman and Takayo Hashi was for the womens welterweight title and I was board 3 minutes into the fight. I am going to suggest that if the fighters had been more evenly matched it would have been a better fight. Still, this was anticlimactic to say the least.
Overall, I have to say that I wouldn’t order Showtime to get these fights but I will watch them as long as I get Showtime for free.
I finally decided to create my own rankings, you can see them here. I must admit that I was motivated to create these rankings because I joined a cross site ranking effort initiated by mmaquickhits.com. I will keep you posted on how it goes, should be fun. Do note that I won’t be ranking the featherweight and the bantamweight classes as I don’t follow them closely enough to judge.
The heavyweights were the most difficult to rank, especially after you get by Fedor, Lesnar and Mir. The division I had the most fun with had to be the middleweights. Despite the apparent lack of a challenger to the number one spot, I think you could shuffle the remaining four fighters around and nobody could argue that much.
I don’t think anybody will argue too much with my rankings, maybe outside of the pound for pound rankings. To me, these always seem to generate more discussion than anything. For my money, Anderson Silva is the most dominant fighter in the world and so he lands in the number one spot.
What do you think? Leave me a comment.
UFC 110 turned out to be one of the better events in some time despite the relatively week main event. Here is my reaction to the event.
As I looked at the card for UFC 110, I couldn’t help but laugh when I saw Elvis Sinosic’s name. From what I can remember, he has been destroyed in most of his UFC fights. I remember Forrest Griffen and Michael Bisping both knocking him out. In fact, Sinosic has lost six straight fights in the UFC. His lone victory in the UFC was over the legend that is Jeremy Horn. Still, one win doesn’t make you a good fighter it makes you lucky.
Sinosic’s overall record stands at 8-11-2. This combined with his 1-6 UFC record begs the question, why is this guy still in the UFC? If the UFC is going to market itself as having the best fighters, they need to find somebody better than the King of Rock and Rumble. Maybe I am missing something here, but I doubt it.
UFC 110 is this weekend and it appears to be a decent card despite not having a title fights. Here is the card and my spare thoughts on each matchup:
Now that Demian Maia has been chosen to battle Anderson Silva at UFC 112, the question is can he win the fight? The obvious answer is of course he can win, anybody can win a fight. Do I really need to remind you that Matt Serra destroyed George St-Pierre?
In my opinion, Maia is as likely to win as anybody else the UFC could have chosen. I won’t get into the complete breakdown, but there were only two real candidates outside of Maia. The first being Chael Sonnen, who because of a medical suspension wouldn’t be able to train until a month before the fight. The other being Nate Marquardt, who couldn’t really be put in a title fight after losing his last fight.
So how does Maia win this fight? Maia will need to find a way to get this fight to the mat, which in itself may prove too hard to accomplish. I believe Maia will have to exchange some at the beginning of the fight to setup a takedown or to pull guard. If the fight does go to the ground, Maia clearly has the advantage and should be able to pull of some sort of submission.
Even if Maia has slugger’s chance to win this fight, Anderson Silva has yet to lose in the UFC and has made fighters such as Forrest Griffin and Rich Franklin look foolish in the cage. As much as I would like Maia to win this fight, look for a knockout early by Mr. Silva.
In what had to be the upset of the night, Chael Sonnen defeated Nate Marquardt at UFC 109. Prior to the fight, I didn’t give Sonnen a chance to win the fight, yet he proved me and most people wrong by relentlessly attacking and controlling the fight.
So where does this leave Marquardt? Well, officially one win short of another title fight. I know it probably won’t happen unless Anderson Silva loses, but I would like to see Marquardt fight Rich Franklin next. I think their styles match up real well and it would be an entertaining fight to watch.
For Chael Sonnen, next up will be the title fight against Anderson Silva, the most dangerous fighter in mixed martial arts today. Anderson, take note… nobody gave Sonnen a chance against Marquardt either.
Yesterday, Facebook reminded me that there is another local MMA event here in Rochester. I still haven’t decided if I will go, but I must say that the last event was worth the $25.
The last event I attended was Fight Nation: Guida vs. Clark and overall I was impressed. The card actually featured fighters I have heard of like Jason Guida, Logan Clark, Tommy Spear and Travis Wiuff. Although, I have to admit that I didn’t remember Logan Clark until I looked him up.
In general, the fights were entertaining and fun to watch. I was surprised at how much the fights actually resembled MMA fights. For some reason, I half expected tough guys off the street just throwing hands at each other. I can’t remember for sure, but I bet there was at least two submissions.
My only real complaints were the loud music and long breaks between fights. The breaks might not have been so bad if I didn’t have to shout to the person next to me just to carry on a conversation.
What did surprise me was how the crowd reacted when local favorite Logan Clark was knocked out in seven seconds by Jason Guida. It probably didn’t help that Guida raced around the cage flipping off the crowd, but people on the floor level were out of there seats next to the cage screaming at Guida. I half expected the crowd to storm the ring. Eventually, Guida settled down and so did the crowd. Let’s just say a local ban on MMA was averted for another day.
MMA Gladiator Cage Fights this weekend in Rochester Minnesota. I went to the last event held in Rochester and overall I was impressed with the production. If you are going to be around this weekend, I recommend checking it out.
Fight Card: