MMA Opinion

Its rare these days to watch a MMA event and see 8 out of 10 bouts end in decision. It’s even more rare to find that half of those decisions were (as they always are) controversial split decisions where both sides are plagued with the realization that many fans aren’t completely convinced that one side won while the other side lost. But, it was bound to happen and it happened on a night that many UFC fans were looking for a night of knockout and submission action on a card that was filled with upcoming prospects and well-known MMA legends.

Clay Guida vs. Nate Diaz was the opening bout on the main card and it was no surprise that the UFC, once again, chose to lead things off with the little guys. I have never been a huge fan of Nate Diaz. Maybe its because of his thuggish attitude in the cage or the fact that he’s beaten semi-local guys who I personally enjoy watching (like Kurt Pellegrino). Either way, I was hoping one of my favorite lightweight favorites, Clay Guida, would hand Diaz his first loss since his October 2006 fight with Hermes Franca. The fight was typical, at least to me. I expect Diaz to use his reach and I was looking for Guida to slam Diaz to the ground. Thanks to his relentless non-stop takedown attack, Guida was once again victorious via decision.

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Georges St. Pierre def. B.J. Penn via TKO (corner stoppage) - Round 4, 5:00

Lyoto Machida def. Thiago Silva via knockout - Round 1, 4:59

Jon Jones def. Stephan Bonnar via unanimous decision

Karo Parisyan def. Dong Hyun Kim via split decision

Clay Guida def. Nate Diaz via split decision

Jon Fitch def. Akihiro Gono via unanimous decision

Thiago Tavares def. Manny Gamburyan via unanimous decision

John Howard def. Chris Wilson via split decision

Jake O’Brien def. Christian Wellisch via split decision

Dan Cramer def. Matt Arroyo via split decision

Watch all five of the UFC 94 fights, including BJ Penn vs. Georges St. Pierre for the Welterweight belt!

BJ Penn vs. Georges St. Pierre Part 1, Part 2

Lyoto Machida vs. Thiago Silva

Stephan Bonnar vs. Jon Jones

Karo Parisyan vs. Dong Hyun Kim

Nate Diaz vs. Clay Guida

The UFC has been lining up fights for the next five events all across the country, Canada, and Ireland. Although it looks like UFC 94 could be hard to beat, stranger things have happened in MMA. Here’s a look at the upcoming UFC events from UFC 93 to UFC 97 as they stand today.

UFC 93 is set to take place in Dublin, Ireland on January 17th with the headlining fight between Rich Franklin and Dan Henderson. Here’s the entire card.

UFC 93
Dan Henderson vs. Rich Franklin
Mark Coleman vs. Mauricio Rua
Marcus Davis vs. Chris Lytle
Alan Belcher vs. Denis Kang
Jeremy Horn vs. Rousimar Palhares
Dennis Siver vs. Nate Mohr
Eric Schafer vs. Antonio Mendes
Thomas Egan vs. John Hathaway
Ivan Serati vs. Tomasz Drwal
Alexandre Barros vs. Martin Kampmann

UFC 94 will be happening on January 31st in Las Vegas and features a title fight between current welterweight champ Georges St. Pierre and lightweight champ BJ Penn for the welterweight belt.

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Earlier today, the UFC released the official bout order slated for “UFC 94: St Pierre vs. Penn II.” The event is scheduled to take place on January 31st at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas.

The main event of the card is a clash which needs no introduction, a clash that one would only read about in Greek Mythology; Georges St. Pierre vs. B.J. Penn will easily be considered one of the biggest fights in UFC history. Forget Couture/Lesnar, this one holds all the marbles. 

In what may seem as a surprising move, a welterweight bout between Jon Fitch and Akihiro Gono has been ranked among the untelevised preliminary bouts. Uh oh, here come the conspiracy theories!

In all seriousness, this should in no way seem as a slight to Jon Fitch. This is not Dana White trying to get back at him for the video game contract debacle which went on recently. Simply put– this is a business decision in an attempt to score the highest ratings possible. The UFC seems to be devising their bout order based off of fan base, marketability, and previous fight history. This apparent scheme of ordering and matchmaking is not a new concept.

So what’s another “questionable” bout to make the main card over Fitch? First instincts would say the light heavyweight bout between Stephan Bonnar and Jon Jones will be criticized. On the contrary, there is a lot of hype behind Jones and it certainly showed in his UFC 87 meeting with Andre Gusmao. Bonnar is a guy who needs no introduction. He will be making his comeback to the Octagon after a fifteen month layoff. We all so passionately remember him from his TUF 1 Finale bout with Forrest Griffin which was later dubbed as “putting modern mixed martial arts on the map.”

Check out the card and make your own arguments (if any). The entire card is as follows after the jump:

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UFC 71 was supposed to be just another fight for Keith Jardine. As he looked across the octagon at Houston Alexander he had no clue what the next few minutes would hold. Just 48 seconds into the fight, Jardine was finished, and a new superstar nicknamed The Assassin was upon us… or we thought. It appeared that a new name would surface in the 205 pound weight class. What a difference a year makes. Since getting TKO victories over Jardine and Alessio Sakara, Houston Alexander has dropped two straight and could be in serious trouble of being cut from the UFC.

In his last fight he was the result of an embarrassing 8 second loss, but even worse was the size of the holes in his game shown in the fight prior. Against Thiago Silva, Alexander showed that he may be a big strong guy with bricks in his hands, but he also showed us his lackluster ground game. He showed the world just how to beat him, and if you have a solid ground game you may have his number.

On September 17th, Houston will have the opportunity to fight for his spot in the world’s best MMA organization. He will step into the cage against Eric Schafer. Schafer has lost 2 straight against much bigger names in Stephan Bonnar and Michael Bisping. A loss for him could land him on the unemployed block as well.

Cole Miller once told me “you just see these guys fighting on TV so you assume because you’re not there yet that you are far away from that level but really some of these guys aren’t good at anything, they’re just tough.” Is Houston Alexander this type or is he a true MMA talent? Only time will tell but unfortunately for him, time is something that may be running out at the end of September.

In a string of bad luck decisions/good luck decision consequences, the much maligned stretch of two B-level UFC pay-per-view broadcasts kicks off tomorrow night in Cincinnati. Perhaps, being more realistic, it’s bad luck, even more horrible luck (some might say karma), followed by decent luck in consequences. But Fedor signing with M-1, followed by Couture leaving the UFC abruptly, has left the Brandon Vera vs Tim Sylvia heavyweight bout meaning much more.

Add to that a main event with a hot crowd for hometown hero Rich Franklin in his quest to dethrone the heavily favored champion Anderson Silva, and we have the storyline aspects for a compelling night of fights. Many have questioned the fights themselves, but I would submit that those people, though they consider themselves “real” fans, are falling into a casual fan’s trap of looking for star power to guide them. I’m not sleeping on this card, and I think it’ll be the kind of surprising strong show the last UFC trip to Ohio provided. You know the one where an old man grabbed the heavyweight crown to cap a solid show, all said and done.

We in the MMA blog world, and those who put their blogs into a more authentic-looking traditional sports journalism form, tend to micromanage every Mixed Martial Arts related decision. Certainly this is true of the largest MMA company in the world, the Ultimate Fighting Championships, and its public face, Dana White. Dana hates the online bloggers and media (you make your own distinctions of who is what, as I do), and they in turn make a story out of anything he says or does. It’s a cute, if not tiring, war that yield some great stories and a lot of babble talk. Perhaps this is never more true than this instance because with a perceived weak card, the focus will be much more on what Dana does and says during the entire weekend, than what goes on inside the ring from 10pm until 1am, Eastern.

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Is it just me or has the overall talent on The Ultimate Fighter really started to drop off? I recall the first season, which was a cast filled with familiar names to those who were paying attention before Spike TV got in the mix. That season boasts the largest number of fighters who are still active within the UFC. But let’s be real. Koscheck, Diego, Swick, Leben, Griffin, Bonnar and even Quarry were all UFC bound with or without the show.

Ever since that first season we’ve seen the talent pool on the show dwindle and continue to dwindle. I’m not much into the drama aspect of the show, and often times have found myself fast forwarding my TiVo straight to the actual fight.

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Check out an article I wrote for Sprawl-n-Brawl.com here about how TUF is good for the Sport. Adam Morgan has been kind enough to let me write for his site as he focuses some of his efforts for 5 Oz of Pain with Sam Caplan while Sam focuses his efforts on working as the head editor of ProElite.com! I am still looking for writers for MMA Opinion so please email me or visit the Contact page.

It looks like the card for UFC 77 is set to go and although there should be some exciting matchups, I don’t see a fun middleweight title fight - at least not for Rich Franklin. You can say that Anderson Silva is over-rated, but I don’t see anyone beating this guy unless they find a way to exploit his game plan because Silva always seems to have an answer to whatever you throw at him. Hopefully we don’t see a repeat of Franklin prematurely crumpling to the ground again for the sake of an exciting fight.

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It’s been almost a year since light-heavyweight fighter “The American Psycho” Stephan Bonnar lost to Rashad Evans via an Unanimous Decision from the judges. Only two months later he lost again to Forrest Griffin by a Majority Decision in a rematch gone wrong for Bonnar. Very wrong.

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