I am a huge fan of the Ultimate Fighting Championship ("UFC"), and I really hope that I will be able to begin training mixed martial arts one day, but I have to get in substantially better shape to do that. In the meantime, I have taken a great deal of pleasure in watching the UFC grow from a sport that was on the verge of being banned and was derided as "human cockfighting" by Sen. John McCain (RINO-AZ) into a legitimate sport with a following of millions of fans worldwide and a pool of talent that grows deeper by the day. The UFC's explosive growth culminated in UFC 100, held in Las Vegas, NV, which featured a main card with a #1 contender match in the middleweight division between Michael Bisping and Dan Henderson, a title fight in the welterweight division between #1 contender Thiago "Pit Bill" Alves and Georges "Rush" St. Pierre, and a main event match-up for the heavyweight title between #1 contender/interim champion Frank Mir and Brock Lesnar. Here is my recap of the three main event fights:
1.) Dan Henderson 24-7 vs. Michael Bisping 18-1
These two fighters were coaches in the "Ultimate Fighter: U.S. vs. U.K." series on Spike. They could not stand each other, mostly because the British team sent 3 out of a potential 4 fighters to the season finale to fight for the UFC contract and Michael Bisping could not shut up about it. Maybe it was selective editing, but he came of as a smarmy, immature, cocky kid, while Henderson came off as the wily veteran biding his time until he could extract his revenge. In the UFC 100 countdown pre-show, I remember Henderson saying that he just let Bisping talk, and that he would "take it out of his a$$" at UFC 100.
The first round was mostly dancing and defense, but Henderson was controlling the tempo and landed the harder shots. After minimal action in the early part of the second round, Henderson uncorked a crushing right hand that knocked Michael Bisping out cold, and just for good measure, he added a vicious forearm to the face of Bisping after he was already unconscious on the mat but before the referee could step in. The blow was a little late, but not so late that it would draw a fine from the UFC or the scorn of the fans as a cheap shot, but the timing could only have been executed by a veteran of Henderson's stature. He should get a rematch with Anderson Silva later this year or early in 2010 based on this dominating win.
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2.) Georges St. Pierre 18-2 vs. Thiago Alves 22-4:
All 5 rounds of this match looked pretty much the same. St. Pierre had a big height, reach, and athleticism advantage, and it showed all night. Alves couldn't get inside St. Pierre's reach to hit him with his big power, and he spent most of his night getting badly battered on his back. This wasn't anywhere near as one-sided as the beating that St. Pierre laid on Jon Fitch a few months back, but it was still one-sided, and St. Pierre cruised to a unanimous decision.
What makes this domination even more impressive is the fact that St. Pierre apparently tore a groin or adductor muscle in the 3rd or 4th round, and yet he still managed to completely outclass one of the most vicious strikers in the game. This is an injury that frequently puts NFL players on injured reserve for the season or out of action for several weeks, but St. Pierre fought for 2 more rounds with that severe injury and won them both. One of the reasons I am such a big fan of the UFC is the class and respect shown by the fighters toward one another. I saw a story that said Thiago Alves came up to St. Pierre at a post-fight party in Vegas, told him congratulations on a great fight, and shared a few drinks with him. That is truly a great story, and this victory continues to cement GSP as one of the best in the fight game at any weight class and one of the most dominant champions of all time.
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3.) Brock Lesnar 3-1 vs. Frank Mir 12-3:
Back at UFC 81, Brock Lesnar made his UFC debut against former UFC champion and jiu-jitsu ace Frank Mir. After dominating Mir for nearly the entire 90 seconds the fight lasted, Mir caught Lesnar in a knee bar and forced him to tap out. That didn't sit well with Lesnar, a former NCAA wrestling champion who hates to lose. Lesnar rebounded from his loss to Mir with a unanimous decision destruction of Heath Herring, then he won the heavyweight title with a 2nd round TKO of Randy Couture. Mir earned his shot at Lesnar by dominating Antonio Minotauro Nogueira with a TKO, the first TKO loss of Nogueira's career.
The writing on the wall was pretty clear very early on in this fight. Lesnar took Mir down early in the fight, but unlike last time, he was much more patient and did not let Mir work his jiu-jitsu game. Toward the end of Round 1, he landed some very hard punches to the face, cutting and bruising Mir's face badly. At the start of Round 2, Mir seemed to understand that going back to the ground would probably cost him the fight, so he landed some good punches and a jumping knee to Lesnar's face, but Lesnar got the takedown when Mir came back down from the knee. Lesnar then pinned Mir against the cage and based his face in until the referee mercifully saved Mir, making Lesnar the undisputed UFC heavyweight champion.
Unfortunately, Lesnar made an a$$ out of himself after the fight in several ways, including getting up in the face of his injured and defeated opponent to talk trash. After that, Lesnar proceeded to bad-mouth Budweiser, one of the UFC's main sponsors, act like a WWE wrestling heel by screaming, spitting, and flipping off the cameras and/or the crowd, and most memorably, by telling the stunned crowd that he would "go home and get on top of his wife tonight". That was not one of the classier post-fight performances by a UFC fighter, and UFC President Dana White apparently agreed with my opinion, because he went into Lesnar's dressing room and read him the riot act. A much more contrite and humble Lesnar appeared at a press conference, where he apologized to the fans, to Budweiser, and to the UFC for his foolishness. I think that was the right thing to do, and I am excited to see how he does in the future, because he is a freak of nature athlete and a huge gate draw for the UFC. That said, my wife is thoroughly disgusted and wants him out of the sport forever, but I think that's because Frank Mir is one of her favorite UFC fighters and she was already mad because he lost...only time will tell if she softens up her hard mood toward Brock. :)
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All in all, this was a great card, and I would have loved to have been in Vegas to watch it personally, but that isn't possible without that little thing called a job. Anyhow, here's to another 100 successful pay-per-views for the UFC and many great fights to come!
