Greatest Fights in UFC History

For some of you hardcore UFC fans you’ll know there’s currently a vote on the UFC’s greatest 100 fights (I think it’s 100) in celebration of the UFC 100 card. I’m currently in the process of working out my own top 50 which I will post in the days leading up to the UFC 100 card. I’ll be posting 50-41 on the Monday before the card and the next 10 each night after that until the Friday. I’ve currently narrowed it down to about 75 and I’m going to spend the next few weeks watching and ranking them until I’m happy with my 50. I left it until now to make this post as I figured there was a chance of some late inclusions with some of the matchups on UFC 99 and the TUF9 Finale and a few of the fights have made the shortlist. So get your fine tooth combs out and get ready to rip the shit out of my list because it’ll be coming up shortly.

Sanchez edges Guida in war at TUF9 Finale

In what has to be the fight of the year in MMA so far for 2009, TUF1 Middleweight champion Diego ‘Nightmare’ Sanchez scored a split decision over Clay Guida in the main event of The Ultimate Fighter 9 Finale. Both guys seemed eager to start the fight, with Sanchez staring Guida down during his walk to the Octagon and the fighters engaging in one of the most intense staredowns during the referee’s final instructions. That eagerness boilt over as both men opened with a huge flurry that lasted a good 20 seconds with Sanchez rocking Guida against the cage. The two traded heavy strikes for the opening minute of the first round with Sanchez’s ever improving stand-up skills allowing him to tattoo Guida with a variety of clean shots, one of which knocked Guida’s mouthpiece out. Guida then scored a takedown and began working his top game that has earnt him victories over Mac Danzig and Nate Diaz in his recent outings. Sanchez worked his way back to his feet and after a brief respite to replace Guida’s mouthguard, Sanchez again took the upper hand dropping Guida heavily with a head kick. Somehow Guida wasn’t unconscious when he hit the ground, and he rises before Sanchez can finish him. Sanchez went to work with his hands landing more hard shots that appeared to have broken Guida’s nose before getting a takedown of his own and landing several shots from on top before the buzzer sounded.

And that was just the first round…..

Guida came out for the 2nd round like nothing had happened and put Sanchez on his back early and began to control him from on top. Sanchez was just as aggressive from his back, throwing hard elbows that landed frequently as Guida appeared more interested in controlling Diego then doing damage. Sanchez was also busy with submission attempts, looking for the kimura on more then one occasion although Guida’s defence was tight. The fighters exchange strikes on the ground at the end of the round with Sanchez landing a series of elbows that cut Guida’s forehead open before the buzzer. Sanchez scored early in the third with strikes as Guida attempted to land punches to set up a takedown. Midway through the round Guida shoots in for a takedown which fails an Sanchez tries to capitilise by taking his back. Guida defends and Sanchez ends up on bottom but with a rear (?) naked choke locked in as he is still half around Guida’s back. Guida escapes again and looks to capitilise but Sanchez keeps him busy defending submission attempts as the fight ends and the debate about who won begins.

While Sanchez did the most damage by far, Guida was successful in controlling where the fight went for most of it. I scored a 10-8 round for Sanchez in the first and thought the 2nd and 3rd could go either way (I wouldn’t argue with a 10-9 in the first either) giving Guida the 2nd and Sanchez the 3rd. The judges were split with 29-28 Guida and 29-28/29-27 for Sanchez giving him the split decision and likely a shot at the winner of Florian-Penn at UFC 101. It truly was one of the best fights I’ve seen in MMA and both fighters stock rose significantly from the fight.

In the Ultimate Fighter Finals it was a UK clean sweep with Ross Pearson edging Andre Winner in the Lightweight Final and James Wilks choking out DeMarques Johnson in the opening round of the Welterweight final. Also on the card, Chris Lytle survived a scary first round in which he was dropped to score a unanimous decision over Kevin Burns and TUF2 Welterweight Joe Stevenson showed an improved overall game decisioning TUF5 Lightweight champion Nate Diaz.

Klitschko vs Chagaev; who cares?

What a pisser! I was very much anticipating how Klitschko was going to handle David Haye’s speed and power as well as his ability to actually throw punches, but instead we get to see Klitschko fight another midget southpaw. Klitschko has a bad history with lefties; being knocked out by Corrie Sanders has made him fear them to the point that he doesn’t throw a right hand. We all remember his fight with Ibragimov last year, and Chagaev is basically the same fighter. The one thing that this fight has going is that Klitschko hasn’t been preparing for a southpaw for the full camp, so Chagaev may cause an upset. Still, I think we’re going to get a repeat of the Ibgragimov fight with Klitschko pawing for dear life with his jab while Chagaev is too afraid to take chances and will stay on the outside for 12 rounds. This fight somehow is for the Ring Magazine belt I believe which is complete horse shit considerin Chagaev hasn’t fought a decent opponent in years. Everyone knows Vitali and Wladimir are the two top fighters in the division and until they meet we don’t have a proper champion.

TUF9 Finale

The Ultimate Fighter 9 “US vs UK” concludes tomorrow with the usual final card featuring the final bouts as part of the main card. There was a lot of hype around this season being the best yet, I don’t quite agree with it to be honest. While some of the tension between the two teams was good, the rivalry with the coaches wasn’t up there with some of the other seasons and the antics in the house were pretty tame I thought. I was sort of waiting for someone big to happen in the house for the entire show and nothing happened.

The finals pit DeMarques Johnson (US) against James Wilkes (UK) in the Welterweight division and in the Lightweight division Andre Winner and Ross Pearson of team UK do battle. I think Johnson will have too much experience for Wilks, who seems a little green at this stage. As much as I didn’t like Johnson (or anyone from team US), he probably had the most well rounded game in the house and Wilks showed some weaknesses in his game in his two fights against Lester. The all UK Lightweight final should be a cracker and I’m really not sure who to pick. I’m going with Winner to win on points in what could be fight of the night (if the main event doesn’t live up to expectations).

The main card has some interesting non-TUF fights with a pivotal battle in the lightweight division between Diego Sanchez and Clay Guida headlining the card. This fight provides us with the clear next contender behind Florian and Penn in my opinion. Maybe Gray Maynard is up there, but I think with Sanchez’s success at welterweight and Guida’s resume as well as the performance he showed in losing to Huerta that the winner of this fight should get the next crack. I think Sanchez has the better finishing skills out of the two, but Guida’s wrestling, pace and cardio could make the fight very interesting. Sanchez has dealt with fighters like Guida before and seeing how he doesn’t have to deal with the strength of a 170lber in this fight, I think he won’t be as troubled by the wrestling skills of Guida. Plus Sanchez is known to set a pretty high pace himself and also has great cardio. The x-factor here is the weight cut for Sanchez, if it effects him Guida will just outwork him. I think it won’t, especially since this is the second time he’s cut this far now and I think Sanchez will prevail by unanimous decision or late stoppage.

The other interesting fight on the card sees the two men who most recently lost to Guida and Sanchez doing battle. Nate Diaz fights Joe Stevenson in a battle of former TUF champions and one both men can’t really afford to lose. Diaz had a strong run of victories post TUF but stumbled in his chance to join the elite against Clay Guida at UFC 94. Stevenson struggled a bit post TUF before winning enough straight fights to earn himself a shot at BJ Penn’s title. Penn made light work of Stevenson which has started a run of bad results for ‘Daddy’ as he is going into this fight with back to back losses against Kenny Florian and Diego Sanchez. Both guys have great grappling skills, but Diaz’s stand-up is much crisper and provided Stevenson can’t take him down at will I think Diaz will batter him on their feet and maybe even score a stoppage late in the fight.

Mercer KO’s Sylvia in 10 seconds

I didn’t think this deserved any attention, but when the fight was changed to MMA rules and Mercer managed to upset the former UFC Heavyweight champion in his MMA debut, I thought I should chime in on it. For those of you who are yet to see the fight, here it is:

First thing I’m going to say is that I’m a huge Ray Mercer fan and I’m glad that he won this fight and ended his career on a bit of a positive. He was a talented although lazy heavyweight who could have made a lot more of his career if he took it a bit more seriously when he was younger and also didn’t fight in an era with such talented guys like Lennox Lewis, Evander Holyfield and Larry Holmes. He’s tried to make some money later in his career by taking stupid fights like his K-1 career and fighting guys like Wladimir Klitschko and Shannon Briggs. To see him score a win over someone like Sylvia under Sylvia’s rules was very satisfying for me.

Now, the issue that I want to address (and shoot down) in this post is the Boxing vs MMA one. Basically I see this fight as the one out of fifty occurrence that would happen if a good professional boxer fought an elite MMA fighter in his rules. That occurrence being the pro boxer gets his big punch off before the MMA fighter can either kick his legs out or take him down. The fact that Sylvia is more of a stand-up fighter anyway gave Mercer all the more chance and also the facts that Sylvia had been training boxing and was 310lbs makes that occurrence that much more possible.

The fact is, pro boxers will always have the advantage with their hands and being a good pro boxer is going to give you an advantage over someone in an MMA fight. It’s like being a world class submission artist; if you can keep the fight on your feet you’ll always have a punchers chance. The advantage top submission guys have is that most people naturally have a morons idea how to fight on their feet whereas fighting on the ground requires years of training to be competent in. Plus it’s easier for a submission fighter to keep an inexperienced ground fighter on the mat then it is for a good boxer to keep it standing up because boxing doesn’t train takedowns. Bascially what I’m trying to say is that MMA fans knock pro boxers as fighters a lot but they’re still dangerous fighters if you let them throw punches at you and thats what Sylvia did. If Sylvia shot after the opening bell he’d likely have got Ray down and submitted him with a rookie submission. I really hope Mercer retires on this and Sylvia gets back to fighting MMA seriously.

For the record, this win by Mercer takes zero away from Fedor’s win over Sylvia last year. If you think the Sylvia that fought Mercer was even remotely close to the Sylvia that fought Fedor then you need to unclench your fingers from around Dana Whites nut sack and do it now before you evolve into a nasty growth that he has to have surgically removed.

Couture vs Nogueira on Aug 29 at UFC 102

The UFC has officially announced it’s main card for the August UFC 102 card in Portland, Oregon and the main event will indeed feature the ‘losers’ bracket of the mini heavyweight tournament with former three time UFC Heavyweight champion Randy Couture set to face former PRIDE Heavyweight champion and former UFC interim Heavyweight champion Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira. The fight is one for MMA’s long time fans as both Nogueira and Couture held the PRIDE and UFC titles at the same time back in 2001/2002 before Couture was beaten by Barnett and Nogueira lost his title to Fedor. The fight could give us the next challenger for the division, but then again with contenders like Velasquez and Carwin emerging it may not. Also, with the chances of Lesnar beating Mir we could get the rubber match before we see anyone else challenge for the title.

The co main event is a shocker to me. I thought with the lack of names at 185lbs that the Demian Maia vs Nate Marquadt fight was a certain for co-main event but it was beaten out by Thiago Silva vs Keith Jardine. Really, what does that fight do for the 205lb division? Maia vs Marquadt gives us the next top contender in the division and if Maia wins it as easy as he’s won some of his other fights then all of a sudden there’s a serious threat to Anderson Silva but not a marketable one. If Maia is featured on a countdown show in length, then if he gets the chance to fight for the title his fight is that much easier to market. Regurgitating Keith Jardine and Thiago Silva when they should take their rightful place lower on the card makes little sense.

The Full main card:

Randy Couture vs Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira
Keith Jardine vs Thiago Silva
Demian Maia vs Nate Marquadt
Matt Hamill vs Brandon Vera
Chris Leben vs Jake Rosholt

Main Event showing UFC 100 a day late!

Showing UFC 100 on tape delay: thats-a-paddlin'

 Australian PPV company Main Event have decided to show the highly anticipated UFC 100 card on tape delay rather the day after (a Monday!) rather then show it live. Instead they will show the boxing bout between Vic Darchinyan and Joseph Agbeko. Now this is a huge step in the right direction from when they showed A REPLAY of Andre Rieu last year instead of showing Randy Couture vs Brock Lesnar live, but this habbit of showing the biggest cards of the year on tape delay is getting annoying. Now I’m glad we’re getting Darchinyan’s fight live, but really we shouldn’t even have to pay for that considering no one else anywhere in the world will have to. I really hope One HD can take some of Main Events strange hold on boxing away as it develops so that they can put stuff that is actually PPV worthy on WHEN IT’S MEANT TO BE ON SO PEOPLE LIKE ME DON’T HAVE TO TAKE A DAY OFF WORK TO NOT HAVE THE RESULTS SPOILT BY PEOPLE. I stopped taking chances with MMA results when someone spoilt Rampage’s first round KO over Liddell for me so I won’t even get to watch Darchinyan live. I’ll likely do nothing on the Sunday other then hide from the rest of the world with my phone off so no one spoils anything and then take a day off work just so I can have the enjoyment of watching arguably the biggest MMA card ever without knowing the results. I’d just like to take this moment to tell the guy in charge of this decision to go take a shit in your hat and pull it over your ears. Thanks a lot!

Franklin edges Silva at UFC 99

Former UFC 185lb champion Rich Franklin scored arguably the biggest win of his career over former PRIDE 205lb champion Wanderlei Silva in Germany at UFC 99 on the weekend. Franklin scored a three round unanimous decision over ‘The Axe Murderer’ after three rounds of hard fighting. Using good footwork and a patient stand-up game, Franklin got off first in the opening round scoring with lead right hands and the odd left kick. Silva was also patient as he tried to find an opening for his right hand. Midway through the round, Silva caught a body kick and took the fight to the mat where he landed with a handful of solid punches from in Franklins guard. Franklin worked his way back up where Silva attempted and missed a guillotine choke attempt, ending up on his back. Franklin landed several hard punches as he attempted to move to mount, which allowed Silva to escape back to his feet to end the round.

Round two saw Franklin controlling the tempo of the round early before Silva started finding his range standing up. After scoring with a few kicks, Silva rocked Franklin briefly with a right hand, only to eat a jab that briefly dropped him in return. Later in the round Silva again scored with a right hand that shook Franklin up. Silva smelled blood and landed several hard shots that had Franklin in trouble. Franklin survived as Silva looked exhausted at the end of the second round. With Franklin having a clear edge in the first and Silva the edge in the second, both men looked to gain the early advantage in the third.

Franklin scored with a heavy body kick early in the round, but Silva retaliated with two hard right hands. Despite his physical exhaustion, Silva continued to look for the knockout with every strike as he attempted a few wild head kicks. Franklin however was racking up the points with his jab and making Wanderlei miss his counters. In the final minute of the fight, Silva raises his arms to the crowd and then attacks Franklin with a flurry of hard punches. Franklin survived and scored a takedown before Silva escaped but gave up his back in the process. With both men standing agfainst the fence, Silva threw some nasty elbows at Franklin (who was behind him) while Franklin threw hard punches for the final seconds of the fight.

With the decision appearing to possibly go either way, it was a shock when no scores were read out and a unanimous decision announced for Franklin. On first viewing I thought Rich deserved the fight and it was possible to score all three rounds to him. On second viewing I thought Wanderlei won 29-28 and thought he was winning the first round until he ended up on the bottom from the attempted guillotine. I trust my second viewing better as the first viewing was at 7am after an hour of interrupted sleep. The biggest thing I noticed in the fight was the weight cut really affected Wanderlei. I think if these two fought at 205lbs that Wanderlei would have taken him apart and I really can’t see Wanderlei being a huge force at 185lbs unless he gets a specialist trainer in to help him cut weight. Sure it was a first time thing so the effects might be different next time, but next time if he plans on fighting at 185lbs he’ll have to lose an extra 10lbs which could be hard for someone who has never cut weight during his career and has been in as many wars as Wanderlei has had. At 205 certain guys are too big for him (I still think Wanderlei was beating Rampage until he got caught, just for the record), but I think he has a lot more chance of being a force at 205 without cutting weight then he does of even making 185lbs.

On the undercard, Cain Velasquez showed the lack of basic jiu jitsu positions as he survived three knockdowns en route to a dominating decision win over Cheick Kongo. Velasquez was dropped twice in the opening moments of the fight before he scored a takedown and mounted Kongo easily where he delivered punishment for the full five minutes. The second round was more of the same except that Velasquez was only dropped once at the start of the round. The third round was more of the same again, except that Kongo didn’t drop Velasquez. If Velasquez knew how to put the hooks in from back mount and went for a choke, I think he could have ended this in the first round. It seems to be a trend from the bigger wrestlers to not use the hooks from back but instead just ride them like side mount which is effective but not so much in terms of ending the fight.

In other action, Mirko Cro Cop scored a controversial first round stoppage over Mustapha Al-Turk in his return to the UFC. After battering Turk for most of the round, Cro Cop accidently poked Mustapha in the eye before bludgening him while he was in pain forcing the referee to stop the fight and award Cro Cop the victory as he didn’t see the eye poke. Mike Swick moved further towards the Welterweight elite scoring a 2nd round knockout over undefeated Ben Saunders. Caol Uno’s return to the UFC was a bitter one as he was (in my opinion anyway) robbed of a decision over Spencer Fisher. The fight was very tactical, but Uno appeared to do enough to win the 2nd round and easily won the third round. In the other fight of the evening (morning), Dan Hardy won a split decision over Marcus Davis in a highly anticipated grudge fight. The fight was close with Davis having the better control and Hardy doing more damage which included dropping Davis with a knee in the 2nd round. I scored the fight for Hardy 29-28.

“Super Boxer” series debuts July 9 on One HD

The first live free to air card on the new “Super Boxer” series (which is basically a return of TV Ringside for Australian fans) will take place on July 9 and will be headlined by Billy Dib. Dib will take on Japanese contender Kenichi Yamaguchi who is relatively untested, but has compiled a 15-1-2 record according to Boxrec. Dib has by far the more experience out of the two having fought for a world title, but this is a far better matchup then what a lot of fighters in Dib’s position would take on. Little is known of Kenichi so it could potentially be a hard nights work for the young Dib.

The undercard has two very very interesting matches in terms of the National Cruiserweight title picture and fights that I’m looking forward to more then the main event itself. OPBF Cruiserweight Champion Dominic Vea takes on tough Anthony McCracken in the co-main event and in the other main fight of the evening former Australian Cruiserweight Champion Daniel Ammann takes on undefeated Jamie Withers. Now a bit of back history, apart from Withers, the rest of these guys have all fought each other or are fighting each other on this card which could make for some interesting fights down the road.

Vea and Ammann have had two wars, splitting the fights with Ammann winning a majority decision back in 2006 in a defence of his National title and Vea avenging that loss in April of last year by unanimous decision. Withers has defeated both McCracken and Ammann on Mundine undercards, although he had some trouble with McCracken and Ammann was in his 5th professional fight at that stage of his career. Ammann and McCracken have also fought, with Amman emerging victorious on points after 10 rounds in an Australian title fight in 2007.

Should McCracken manage to upset Vea, he sets up a rematch against either Ammann or Withers which is a rematch itself that has been long overdue considering Withers’ reluctancy to fight off Mundine shows or in longer bouts (I’m 95% sure the McCracken fight was over six-two minute rounds). Should Vea win, he sets up a rubber match with Ammann which if you’ve seen their other two fights you would know is a main event quality fight, or he sets up a blockbuster with Withers which pits the two top contenders in the Cruiserweight division against one another. This sort of stuff is why I’m so excited that boxing is back on free to air in this country. It’s been a long while since we’ve had an interesting domestic scene without a big name like Mundine in the picture. Fights like these on the audience this will be shown on will produce our next wave of stars and give guys who 2-3 years ago were fighting in RSL’s in front of 500 people the chance to fight in front of a nationwide audience.

The shows will be on apparently every Thursday night with the likes of Sam Soliman, John Hopoate and Tim Bell likely to appear on future shows. I will be doing my best to cover the results etc on here for every show and if anyone wants to plug their fighter who is coming up on one of the shows, feel free to email me at angryfightfan@hotmail.com and we can arrange something. These are exciting times to be a fight fan in Australia.

Boxing Breakdown: Miguel Cotto vs Joshua Clottey

This is a fight between WBO titlist Cotto, who won the vacant title after Williams moved up and now former IBF titlist Clottey, who won the title that the IBF took off Margarito for fighting Cotto and now they are taking the title off Clottey for the same thing because apparently whoever bought their #1 ranking recently makes a better fight then fight Miguel Cotto. Just thought I’d get that out of the way before I got onto the actual fight.

Miguel Cotto defends the WBO Welterweight title that he won in February against the IBF titlist Joshua Clottey tomorrow in what should be a very interesting fight. It marks Cotto’s first real test since since the stoppage loss to Margarito and his 2nd outing this year. Clottey hasn’t fought since his technical decision win over Zab Judah last August after a fight with Kermit Cintron fell apart at the start of the year.

I’m intruiged by this fight. Clottey is one of the tougher guys out there with only Margarito having a better ability to take a punch. He also has a high workrate and above average power which are two things needed to deal with Cotto. Clottey only has two losses on his record, one being a decision loss to Margarito in 2006, a fight which Clottey fought admirably but lost fairly. His other loss is nearly ten years ago to former Welterweight Champion Carlos Baldomir where Clottey was DQ’d in the 11th round while ahead on the scorecards. It was his loss to Margarito and then his domination over former Lightweight Champion Diego Corrales that put Clottey on the map in terms of being a top contender and he’s had trouble getting marquee names into the ring since then.

Cotto has never been one to turn down a hard fight. This guy has been fighting guys who could test him since about his 10th pro fight and has been dominating most of them with his only loss coming to Margarito last year in what was Ring Magazines fight of the year. He fought and beat Mosley when Mosley was struggling to get quality opponents to face him. He fought Margarito when no one would touch him with a 10 foot pole. He’s fought Paulie Malignaggi, Miguel Torres, Carlos Quintana, Lovemore N’Dou, Zab Judah and DeMarcus Corley. Sure those guys aren’t Mayweather or Pacquiao, but at the time of each fight they were dangerous opponents for Cotto and he stopped all but two of them.

I think the big key in this fight will be speed. Cotto has plenty of it, especially in his feet, while Clottey relies more on his ruggedness. Judah gave Clottey problems in their fight with his speed early before Clottey started to break him down. Cotto has shown, especially early in a bout, that his foot speed is among the best in the business. I think Cotto will dart in and out of range and use Clottey as target practice for the first half of this fight before Clottey will finish strong which could make for an interesting back end to the fight. I think Cotto will have this fight won by the 8-9 round mark and survive a shaky moment or two in the championship rounds to win this one on points. Miguel Cotto by unanimous decision.