Monday, July 13, 2009

UFC 100 lives up to hype




The Ultimate Fighting Championship was banking on their 100th pay-per-view event to be the most loaded card in their history, and they struck gold, even if they went off the air with a giant gaffe from now undisputed heavyweight champion Brock Lesnar, hurting at least his own image while not doing the company any favors. Despite Brock lashing out at opponent Frank Mir afterwards (along with turning his back to him before the fight when traditionally they're supposed to tough gloves to show sportsmanship), poking fun at Bud Light (the promotion's biggest sponsor) and promoting their competition ("I drink COORS LIGHT because BUD LIGHT doesn't pay me!") and even flipping off the crowd, it probably only hurts his image personally, and not the company or sport as a whole.

Still, the most memorable moment of the night will always be Dan Henderson's brutal knockout of Michael Bisping, a fight with more personal animosity between the fighters than even Lesnar-Mir had. A few have tried to throw Henderson under the bus by calling his flying punch to a downed Bisping after he was already knocked out, but before the referee had actually stopped the fight. Henderson pulled the punch significantly but admitted it was mainly to "shut him up," but he really did nothing wrong. It's the referee's job to stop the fight, and the fighter's job to keep going until he does so.



The welterweight championship fight between champion Georges St.-Pierre and Thiago Alves further cemented GSP's status as a pound-for-pound top three (at least) fighter in the world. Alves was on his back most of the five rounds and had no answer for GSP's outstanding wrestling and takedowns. Alves's only real offense was a takedown in the fourth round where he had GSP on the ground for a little over a minute and landed a few punches. There's nobody left at welterweight for St.-Pierre, as Alves was likely the best competition he was ever going to have in that division.

The next challenge for him could very well be a fight with Anderson Silva, who is moving up to 205 to take on Forrest Griffin at UFC 101 next month. When commentator Joe Rogan asked him about it, GSP danced around the question and said he was simply going to work on putting on weight (which might as well have been "yeah, it's probably going to happen"). If the UFC is able to follow up this card and what should be a good event next month (BJ Penn vs. Kenny Florian in addition to Silva-Griffin) with an announcement that GSP and Silva are set to clash, the hype will go on longer than any contest this sport has ever seen.

No comments:

Post a Comment