What fights have you watched today?

UFC 57.

Some big results here.

Diaz loses to Rigg in a very close fight and it's interesting seeing Diaz fight as he can't decide whether he's a BJJ or a boxer and being good in multiple disciplines is an advantage but he doesn't seem to have a set gameplan yet which hinders him against the best opponents.

Mir had a comeback from hell. He looked awful here and what an awful choice of opponent. He goes in against a more qualified BJJ man and sets up to out strike him. It goes to the mat and a huge elbow lands leaving Mir unable to see and Cruz just tees off on him till it gets ended.

Lidell seals his legacy with another KO over Couture. Aside from Rua you'd have to class him the best LHW in the world. He looks an absolute beast and would be favoured over Wandy and Rampage right now.


Over in Pride Wanderlei squeezed past Arona and it's clear to see the era of dominance is at an end now. Although ironically this perhaps points to a stylistic weakness of Wandy. He beat Henderson, Jackson and Sakuraba but has been bossed around the mat by Tito and Arona. The decline is now kicking in though and he isn't the best LHW in Pride let alone the world right now.

Hunt outstrikes Mirko with a top victory to throw his name into the hat for title contention. Two wins in a row against ATG opposition.

 

Pride 31.

Jackson and Werdum both win low key comeback victories against lesser opposition.

Overeem makes the step to world class tonight. At LHW he's a .50 fighter who can beat anyone but lose to anyone at the same time. He bulks to 230 pounds and outgrappled Kharitonov before locking him in side control and further in a crucifix leaving his knee attacks open and relentless. This Overeem looks mega. He needs to stop boiling down to LHW.

Nog and Barnett score submission victories over lesser opposition. Although Nog has the more recognisable name at this point.

Coleman slams Rua and pops his shoulder out before laying a brutal G&p that drove Rua's team into a frenzy and a huge brawl ensued.

Hunt continues his good form with a late KO and at this point he's probably the next best HW after Fedor.

 

Yeah they seem really low in price ATM, I've got every dvd up until UFC 70. I'm not gonna buy any more after that though, just the annual best of series. Unless there's any particularly stacked events that catch my eye.

 

UFC 58, this night was about two fights.

GSP begins to secure his legacy with a big performance against BJ Penn. I think at this point in time Penn, Hughes and GSP are the best 3 WW fighters ever. The fact they're all fighting each other in their prime is incredible.

Franklin defends his title in a relatively weak division. Aside from Henderson and Bustamante there isn't anyone really out there worth shouting about.

I think at this point in time in 2006, the best 10 fighters in history are:

1 Fedor Emelianenko HW
2 Matt Hughes WW
3 George St Pierre WW
4 Kazushi Sakuraba WW
5 Rodrigo Nogueira HW
6 B.J. Penn LW
7 Mauricio Rua LHW
8 Chuck Lidell LHW
9 Wanderlei Silva LHW
10 Ricardo Arona LHW

 

UFC 59 and 60

Tito Vs Griffin was an incredible fight, great action and very very close but Tito steals it with a big takedown in the third.

Arlovski Vs Silvia was another blink and you'll miss it fight as they exchanged huge right hand with Arlovski coming off worse.

The big fight was in 60 though

Hughes Vs Gracie. Well, up until this point I've had Gracie as one of the best WW fighters who's ever competed. His resume is thin but we've seen him submit Severn and Shamrock. We've seen him control Takada and Yoshida. We've seen him win the first half hour of fighting against Sakuraba. We've seen him tap pretty much everyone he fought against. But he was dominated for the first time here.

The stand up exchange was pretty even, Hughes took Gracie down into side control and from there the best Gracie ever did was get half guard. He made no attempt to bridge or shrimp out of side control, he just waited patiently, rolled into half but then Hughes got him in an arm bar and probably could have snapped his arm had he been more ruthless. With the hyper extended arm he was next to useless as Hughes got his back rear mounted and pounded at will.

Not sure how to take this loss as it has shattered the Gracie mystique some. At this point in time its 2006.

Since Gracie we've had Newton, Bustamante, Penn, Big Nog and Little Nog and Ribeiro establish themselves as MMA greats whilst being BJJ practitioners. They were all inspired by the Gracie family but have they evolved better than the Gracie's ever we're? Rickson was known as the best but Royce was proven as the best. These guys came afterwards now for the first I'm beginning to wonder if their technique has surpassed that of Royce. Especially with the MMA training they all do in no Gi combat.

I need to revaluate Gracie now and see if his place in history from a h2h pov is actually secure. His adversary Ken Shamrock proved he could train multiple disciplines and the rematch was so different to the first fight. With judges he probably avenged that defeat.

Time to do some soul searching.
Ironically as I type this I'm getting kitted out in my own gi ready for rolling tonight.

 

Pride total elimination 2006 open weight first round.

Again I watch UFC the HW division and as soon as I start to think it isn't that bad, I catch a pride event reminding me how **** it actually is. UFC HW had one decent guy in Mir and given his god awful comeback it's fair to say he isn't making any waves any time soon. Sylvia and Arlovski are both pants. No one else exists. No one.

Now over in Pride, we have Fedor (out with an injury) Hunt, Cro Cop, Barnett, Werdum, Overeem, Nogueira. Better yet they are all signed into a tournament to determine the best of the bunch. That's 7 names who would all be huge favorites over any UFC counterpart at this moment in time. In fact Kharitonov didn't even make the tournament and he'd be a huge favourite as well. How did Dana let this happen.

So anyways, first match was Werdum Vs Overeem, Werdum showed in his fight against Kharitonov that he was world class, tonight he proved it by holding his own striking with a kickboxing world champion and then taking him to the mat and submitting him. Great showing.

Hunt Vs TK. If you haven't watched this fight, watch it. Seriously stop reading right now and watch it.

Barnett proved he's back with a quality submission over the lesson Emilianenko. Aside from the one punch against Rizzo and the loss to Mirko he's not suffered defeat and now it looks like hell gain some momentum.

Filipovic absolutely blew his opponent away in a massacre.

Nogueira tapped out the ridiculously huge zuluzinho. With relative ease as well to be fair. Having no flexibility is a bad move against BJJ.

Fedor is out injured so Wandy took his place with a bye to the next round.

Great card. Staggering amount of quality.

 

Bushido 11.

This is the second MW tournament in Pride.

However the best MW in the world and in history so far is in the UFC (Franklin) although they do have the second best MW there in Henderson so it is still a worthwhile tourney.

First round saw Filho absolutely dominate his opponent in basically a none stop g&p battering.

Chonan (the man who beat Anderson) picked up a split decision victory which actually could have gone either way.

Suloev ended the hype of Bustamante. A lot of his defeats so far have had an asterixs either with opponents being too big or genuinely better than him. This proves he was never the great he claimed to be.

Gono and Misaki both picked up decision victories to progress.

Mousasi is one of the first men I've seen successfully counter a semi locked armbar and infact he reversed it, took the back and laid on a beating so bad he shattered the eye socket.

Kang scored what is surely the quickest victory in Pride history as well.

At this point in time the rosters are fairly even across the weights.

HW = Pride has the man
LHW = Pride has the man
MW = UFC has the man
WW = UFC has the man.
LW = hard to say. Gomi is clearly the best LW active in the division but Penn is clearly the best man who can make LW.

So not as one sided as some make out across everything.

 

UFC 61.

Mir wins another comeback fight but looks so far removed from the dominant man who took championship gold. Plus he's got really fat now.

Ortiz wins a bs stoppage against Shamrock.

Sylvia wins a hard fought decision against Arlovski. The way they talk up Arlovski is laughable with the depth over in Pride. Inhuman they call him, inhuman. A guy who's lost 4 fights already and by stoppage no less, is not inhuman. He's very much human and wouldn't be one of the top ten humans in the Pride roster right now.

 

Pride Bushido 12

Aoki, Melendez, Kawajiri, Sakurai and Gomi all win none tournament bouts. For Aoki it's more about him building his name up as he isn't quite recognised as one of the best yet, the latter 4 are all doing very well in the lighter divisions.

In the tourney we see Kang submit Suloev and Gono submit future star Mousasi. The two main fights are Filho Vs Chilonan and Misaki Vs Henderson.

Filho again dominates, makes Chonan go for a sweep which he counters into an armbar. Beautiful stuff.

Henderson is one of the favourites. He's proven to be effective but sometimes outsized at LHW whereas at MW he's established himself as one of the finest ever. Here though he treats the mat like lava and proceeds to get edged out in a striking battle. Not a lot in it but the right man won.

2006 has seen MMA explode globally and keeping up with the developments at this point is hard because we have UFC and Pride dominating the higher divisions, but we now also have Strikeforce and WEC gaining recognition.

Over in WEC we have FW champions and BW champions. Faber beats Escovedo to establish himself the goat FW (out of 2) and Wineland establishes himself the goat BW (out of 1).

Strikeforce has a booming LW division but a lot of them compete in Pride as well so it's easier to track there. Melendez is the main man for them but he's not a patch on Gomi for my money.

 

UFC 62.

Diaz wins a great performance and I just admit I'm quite a fan of Nick. his combination of boxing and jits make him an incredibly tough prospect for anyone in the WW division. I hope he makes a comeback, maybe a rematch with Lawlor then a fight against Thompson.

Griffin and Bonnar had a rematch of their war and it was a bit slower paced and a bit more competitive with the crowd booing the scorecards.

Liddell destroyed Babalu again to reassert his claim as the top LHW in the world. It's between him, Silva and Rua right now but Rua had a bad injury against Coleman and is on the comeback trail.

 

Pride final conflict.

Ok so first we see Overeem insisting he's a LHW, he gets a brutal leg kick and an even worse g&p which sees him lose to Arona.

Rua makes his comeback against a lesser opponent.

Filipovic cuts through Silva like a hot knife through butter. Absolute beat down and a deadly high kick to knock him out cold.

Barnett Vs Nogueira is an absolute masterclass in grappling which sees Barnett take a deserved victory by virtue of a heavy knockdown and more importantly a last ditch submission attempt. This fight should be shown in BJJ gyms across the world. Incredible ground work at the highest level.

In the final Filipovic again cuts through Barnett like a knife through butter. Making him tap out. Mirko does a Tito here, totally disrespect to the guard as he just punches right through it. Established himself as the next best HW in the world behind Fedor and the greatest in history behind only Nog and Fedor. What a performance.

 

Arona was a beast. Reem, Silva, Sakuraba, Henderson, Mezger and Horn is a good win list. His defeats aren't too bad as Rampage, Rua and Silva are all ATG.

The problem is his career was quite short, he was bombed out by Sokoudjo and the division he's in is absolutely stacked in terms of great names.

The main point of that post anyways is that Overeem shouldn't be anywhere near 205 pounds. At 230 he'd have crushed Arona.