UFC 107 has come and gone, finalizing a less than exciting year for the leading mixed martial arts promotion. Racked with injuries, fighter defections, controversial results and upstart promotional competition from Strikeforce and Bellator, the year couldn’t have ended sooner for Zuffa and its President Dana White. UFC enters 2010 in a very weird position and last night’s awful mismatch between BJ Penn and Diego Sanchez personifies the problem.
The UFC, outside of its Light Heavyweight division really doesn’t have one marketable championship fight any time in the near future. Its champions BJ Penn, George St. Pierre, Anderson Silva and Brock Lesnar really don’t have any competitive fights on the horizon. These are the headline fighters of the organization and the UFC basically has nobody of quality for them to fight.
BJ Penn’s destruction of Diego Sanchez last night was the prime example. Dana White gave us the Vince McMahon sale that Diego Sanchez was the unquestioned second best lightweight fighter in the world and that Penn was going to get his first real test. Sanchez told us he was going to storm across the cage, attack Penn like nobody has before and take him down to the mat for a beating.
None of this transpired.
Instead, Penn manhandled Sanchez like a rag doll and displayed just how weak the talent level is in the UFC at lightweight. Sanchez, the former TUF 1 Champion, displayed no real martial arts skills. His fighting approach that got his the championhsip fight invite was to bullrush, takedown and pound. Last night, the talented Penn nullified these basic skills, fended off every weak takedown attempt and handed out one of the most brutal beatings ever seen in the cage. So if Sanchez really was #2 as Dana White told us, Penn is out of competitors to fight under the UFC banner.
This leads us to the problem with the UFC…its refusal to cross promote. What killed boxing were promoters that overprotected their fighters, controlled the matchups and didn’t deliver the fights people demanded to see. Multiple title holders from different organizations that were not making the fights to protect and hold their crowns. Dana White is displaying his Napoleanistic complex and is dooming the sport in front of our eyes.
Fans are calling for the UFC to sign new top lightweight fighters. The bloom is off the rose. The fans will only drink so much kool-aid. People have figured out that they are not being served shinola now.
Every forum board last night online had discussion threads discussing what fight matchups would look like for Penn with all the great lightweights that are not fighting at UFC. Even commentator Joe Rogan called for it during the broadcast, something I am sure he will get admonished for by Zuffa. The UFC can make these matchups and they don’t have to sign anybody.
Penn is in the driver seat now to help take MMA mainstream. He can push UFC to start cross-promoting to make the biggest fights for him or threaten to bolt to another promotion that will do so. He has reached the point in his career where he controls his destiny, not the UFC.
The fights that matter for Penn which hold the greatest monetary take for him reside with fighters in other organizations. The fans don’t want to see him maul another second-rate UFC fighter. They want to see him fight Dream’s Shinya Aoki, Tatsuya Kawajiri or Joachim Hansen. They want to see him square off against Bellator’s Eddie Alvarez or Jorge Masvidal. Or perhaps throw him in the cage with Sengoku’s Mizuto Hirota. These are the fights that fans want to see, not matchups against an overrated 10 loss fighter like Joe Stevenson or a wrestler with no martial arts skills like Gray Maynard.
As this year comes to end, UFC needs to make some big decisions on how it runs its business and its impact on the sport as a whole. The WWE coattails that have been ridden thus far need to be cut and the UFC needs to recognize it is a promotion, not a league or “sports entertainment”. The sooner this happens the better.
Many questions were in the air in Las Vegas on Saturday, as Kimbo Slice took to the octagon for his first official UFC fight. While much of the focus was on Slice, the spotlight should have been placed on Dana White.
Once upon a time, Dana White told MMA fans that Kimbo Slice was a joke to the sport and would never see the inside of the octagon unless he won The Ultimate Fighter. Well, Kimbo didn’t win TUF and was invited into the octagon anyways. So what’s the deal?
The deal is that the UFC is more about sports entertainment than it is about sport these days. Built on the foundation of following WWE shows on Spike, UFC sold itself out long ago by appealing to folks that think Vince McMahon’s product is actually real. The recipe: build story lines, deliver the drama and then send some sensational athletes out there to display their acrobatic skill.
During the TUF 10 Finale last night, UFC came closer to becoming sports entertainment than any time in its history. Kimbo Slice was matched up with an undersized light heavyweight named Houston Alexander, a huge flop in the UFC that got brought back for a staged feeding. The story line we were sold was that Alexander was a skilled fighter that was desperately trying to get back into the UFC and that Slice was his way back in.
In my years of watching MMA, this fight now rates #1 on the worst fights I’ve ever seen. It made me come away with a feeling like it was staged. This is not just because of the EliteXC debacle with Slice, its what was displayed in the cage. Alexander refused to initiate action, circling and running throughout. He never attempted an aggressive move for 15 minutes. This was not a guy desperate for his path back in.
Here is my analysis of what went down:
First, Alexander was taken down into a ground-and-pound position with Slice in side control. As most wrestlers know, you never lay on your hips on the side without your leg hooks in, otherwise the other guy will step over or roll you. But here was Slice, lying on the side of his hip with Alexander making no attempt to breakout despite his center of gravity being higher. Needless to say, a bantamweight could have turned the tide on Slice given his awful positioning. These are basic you learn during pee wee wrestling.
Second, Alexander was continually attacking with lower leg kicks. Part of the “story” was that Slice was experiencing serious arthritis in the knee. At one point in the fight, Slice was chopped down to the mat by a leg kick from Alexander. Rather than pouncing on the fallen opponent, Alexander hesitated, backed off and then made a half attempt to make it look like he thought about attacking. It was pathetic.
Finally, in the closing seconds, Alexander clearly rocked Slice with a shot to the head as the fighters brawled. Slice went stumbling backwards, clearly affected by the shot with less than 10 seconds left. Given the closeness of the fight, Alexander needed the round to win. Again, instead of pouncing like a fighter “desperate” for a victory, Alexander hesitated and never tried to go for the kill.
Needless to say, this was one of the most despicable displays of fighting I’ve witnessed in the cage. More shocking is the commentary on MMA blogs and forums off people discussing the fight that have limited to no knowledge on fighting skills.
The final word. Kimbo Slice’s skills have not improved at all. Houston Alexander never attempted to fight him and we’ll all be left puzzled to the answers behind his decision not to aggressively attack.
The UFC will likely continue to promote this carnival sideshow that is Kimbo Slice. Basically, Kimbo equals dollar signs. While he seems to be a nice guy, he’s just not a skilled fighter and he hurts the credibility of the sport. He’s become the Mike Tyson sideshow of MMA.
The UFC went back on its word that Slice would never enter the ring and not one media outlet and saying boo. Where was the media hammering Dana White for not keeping his word? Why was he not taken to task as a sellout?
Congratulations Dana White, the crown has been passed from Vince McMahon as the greatest promoter of sports entertainment.
Thankfully for sports purists, Strikeforce is making in roads in great strides and Bellator will be back in April with live weekly telecasts.
Another UFC event has come and gone leaving a bad taste in the mouth of those shelling out $50 for the pay-per-view fights. Lets all breath a collective yawn and get ready for the next uninspiring card that will air in three weeks.
UFC 106 was viewed by many as the weakest event of the year due to the cancellation of the main event featuring Brock Lesnar and Shane Carwin. Even before the original main event was cancelled, not much interest was being generated on what was expected to be a main event mismatch of grand proportions.
Dana White Is Concerned About Judging, Not Fight Quality
How did Dana White try to fix the hole in the event? Well, lets sell Ortiz/Griffin as the main event and we’ll plug in Koscheck/Johnson as co-feature even though they will have just 3 weeks of training. People will drink the koolaid, just got to mix in the sugar.
This is now five straight events that were below the standards of the normal UFC product we’ve come to know. Uninteresting main events, weak undercards and too much WWE-laden drama. While UFC 107 stands to offer an interesting set of overall fights for the first time in months, the main event will be an extreme mismatch for the lightweight championship belt.
Which brings forward the question…are there really any true contenders out there for the championship belts?
If you breakdown each weight class, outside of light heavyweight, the gap between the champions and the “#1 Contenders” is widening. Lesnar, Anderson Silva, George St. Pierre and BJ Penn are all at no immediate risk of losing their belts. There is nobody coming up the ranks to deliver a challenge, which poses a big problem for the UFC. Whose the next real contender?
Great fighting events are defined by the main feature. Nobody goes home remembering the warmup fights. In fact, people don’t start streaming into the arena until the last couple of fights. The UFC cannot expect to sustain its dominance if it cannot fix the top of its fight cards. To fix these problems, here are a few things that the UFC is going to need to address:
Reduce the number of events per year
Larger win bonuses, lower minimum purse
Begin fostering new fighter development
Start cross-promoting with other organizations
The biggest problem with the UFC right now is that they are doing too many fights. When you couple this with not increasing the number of fighters under the promotion, it decreases the quality of the events. The UFC is clearly going after cash while sacrificing product quality and hording its profits. This has to stop soon or it is going to come back to bite them. If you can’t increase the number of fighters in the stable, you cannot put on this many events.
As shown during Season 1 of Bellator, if you hang the money carrot you get better fights. While Bellator didn’t have many of the big name fighters, just ask anyone that attended an event whether they got their money’s worth on the tickets. What made for the better fights was the incentive to win and the fighters went for the kill. In the UFC, the fighters are more worried about their next payday versus their current, and this can only be recitified by lowering their guaranteed purses and making them work for the payout.
Next, please put The Ultimate Fighter out of its misery. The show has turned into Big Brother inside of a cage. Its no longer about fighter development, its about tv ratings and advertiser dollars. How else can you explain the sad sacks on display in TUF 10 or the unbelievable decision to not invite the up-and-comer Tyron Woodley for TUF 9. Its about finding “personalities”, not fighters. The UFC needs talent development. When was the last time an undercard fighter made his debut with the UFC? I can’t recall. Reliance on the smaller promotions to build fighters and stealing them is not a long-term strategy for success.
And finally, the time for Dana White to swallow his pride and acknowledge that the other organizations now have equal fighter quality has come. Nobody wants to see BJ Penn fight anyone in the UFC, they want to see him against Shinya Aoki or Eddie Alvarez. Do you want to pay $50 to watch Silva slaughter the talentless UFC foes, or would you rather see him fight Jake Shields, Hector Lombard or Gegard Mousasi. And do I even need to bring up commentary about the heavyweight division…Fedor?
The time is now for the UFC to shore up its product. No more whiny calf sniveling from Dana White about the poor judging. This issue with the UFC latest string of fights has nothing to do with judges…it has everything to do with a stale business model that is prepared to get knocked down by the competition if it cannot recognize the error in its current strategy.
Randy Couture displayed that age is not slowing him down just yet, but is catching up with him. At 46 years old, the former UFC champion Couture (17-10) was able to score a slim victory over the much younger challenger Brandon Vera (11-4) in a light heavyweight clash at UFC 105 in Manchester, England.
In an uneventful fight with a limited amount action, the two former Greco-Roman wrestlers spent the majority of the fight in the clinch along the cage wall. Couture was able to maintain control, keeping Vera pinned along the cage wall while delivering surgical blows to the head and body. The referee was active, breaking the clinches, but Couture imposed his will taking Vera back to the cage with consistency.
Action torqued up a notch midway through round two shortly after a clinch was broken. Vera was able to keep keep his distance and land a sharp leg kick to the midsection which dropped Couture to the mat. Vera attacked quickly, landed some blows, but was unable to put Couture away.
Couture moved the fight back to the cage wall in the third round, dictating the pace and focus of the fight. Couture again surgical delivered shots with Vera smiling that the blows were not phasing him. After another re-start in the last minute, Vera attacked quickly landing a shot which stunned Couture. Vera followed through with a takedown and gained a mount. Couture was able to tie him up and stop Vera from scoring any major blows, perhaps saving the fight.
Awaiting the decision in the middle of the cage, Vera’s camp looked confident they had taken the fight. As ring announcer declared all score cards in favor of Couture at 29-28, Vera seemed stunned by the loss.
Vera really has nobody to blame for this loss but himself. Couture brought very little to the cage on this evening and Vera was happy to oblige, allowing Couture to lay on him and be inactive throughout the fight. Vera showed way too much respect throughout the fight and really only put forward two offensive attacks over the fifteen minutes in the cage. His loss to Couture eliminate any future plans Vera had at a potential championship shot or even a fight against the other top contenders in the light heavyweight division.
As for Couture, it appears that it is time for him to seriously consider retirement, regardless of his newly-minted multiple fight contract with the UFC. Couture will undoubtedly be offered another championship shot at light heavyweight at the expense of more deserving fighters. On this evening, Couture displayed fading skills against a second-tier fighter in a lower weight class.
As with boxing, the greats of the sport seem to find it hard to call it quits.
The tension was clearly visible at the beginning of the matchup between welterweight contenders Dan Hardy and Mike Swick. With a possible title shot against George St. Pierre, the fighters stared each other down and refused to touch gloves to start the fight. That early tension carried out through the fight, with Dan Hardy pulling out a hard-fought unanimous decision of 30-27, 30-27 and 29-28.
Swick (14-3), a former middleweight that recently dropped to the welterweight class, dictated the action for most of the first round. It was clear for early on Swick’s focus was to make the fight a grappling affair, working the clinch and backing Hardy (23-6) into the cage wall. The fighters spent most of the round trading advantage position along the cage wall without delivering much damage to each other.
Hardy changed the momentum quickly to start the second round, landing a heavy right that stunned Swick and buckled him backward. Hardy grabbed for a clinch and fired away with a flurry of hard strikes to the head and body. Hardy landed a snapping uppercut before moving back to the center. Swick was able to landed some nice counters lefts, but Hardy ended the round with a few solid strikes to win a convincing round.
As the third and final round began, the body blows delivered by Hardy appeared to have taken their toll on Swick. Hardy outgunned the man known as “Quick”, landing a series of blows that stunned Swick once again. Hardy then took the fight to the mat and landed some hard blows before being put back on their feet by the referee. Hardy didn’t let up, going on the offensive with a series of blows to close out the round and take the bout.
With George St. Pierre in attendance, the upcoming championship bout appears set for 2010 as the fighters met in the cage during after fight interviews to begin promoting the fight.
Michael Bisping of Great Britain (18-2) made a solid return to the cage Saturday night, getting a TKO on punches over Denis Kang (32-12-1) in the second round at UFC 105 held in Manchester, England. After a lackluster first round with Kang in control, Bisping shifted the momentum, scoring the TKO at 4:24 of the second round.
Bisping Lands Critical Blow En Route to Victory (Sherdog.com)
Bisping, coming off his first loss by stoppage at the hands of Dan Henderson at UFC 100, was the fighter in the spotlight tonight, with his legion of fans waiting to see how he would respond after being viciously knocked out in his last fight. Kang served as a dangerous fight for a fighter that clearly needed a confidence building affair.
Kang dictated the action throughout most of the first round. Connecting with a solid blow to the head early in the first round, Bisping hit the mat hard and Kang pounce and delivered extensive ground and pound, connecting to the head and body consistently for almost three minutes. While Kang was in control, he was unable to land any punishing blows and Bisping displayed some excellent defensive skills as he recovered from the flash knockdown.
During the break between rounds, Bisping seemed dazed and was gathering himself throughout. Bisping asked his trainers what happened to send him to mat, signaling that Bisping was significantly hurt and may perhaps have been concussed.
The second round started with the fighters trading punches on their feet. Bisping scored a strong takedown around two minutes into the round, turning the momentum of the fight in his direction. Posturing up over top of Kang, Bisping unleashed a fury of punches that punished Kang. Scrambling, Kang was able to flee the assault and get back to his feet while bleeding heavily from the nose.
Bisping was in control from there, taking Kang down twice more and landing a barrage of punches while posturing up. The second flurry of unanswered shots rendered Kang helpless, causing the referee to step in and call a stop to the fight.
Fighting in front of his hometown fans, Bisping displayed great heart and grit in getting himself back into the win column. While he started slow, Bisping delivered one of his best performances in recent memory. The former TUF 3 champion reminded many why he is still a man to be reckoned with in the middleweight division.
