Monday 21 February 2011

UFC Fight Night Anderson Silva vs James Irvin thoughts

I'm sure it's been talked about to death by other MMA outlets, but I'm going to chime in on this anyways. Dana White says he isn't "threatened by a T-Shirt company" (Affliction Clothing's first PPV event evah), YET he goes out and puts on a free Fight Night on Spike TV with a STUPID main event with only a few decent match ups.  Ya, I get why UFC did it but as most I'm sure predicted it turned out for the worse. Anyways... I still watched it.

Anderson Silva vs James The Scrub Irvin - well, they circled for a while, sure enough Irvin throws a low kick, Silva catches it, counters and Irvin folds for a paycheck. WTF was the point?

Brandon Vera vs Reese Andy - I used to make excuses for Vera and his crappy performances after his contract disputes, which didn't do him any good, but after his tonight's performance I say stick a fork in him for a while and let him go see Tony Robbins, who did wonders for Chuck Liddell. I don't buy Vera's lack of any type of triggerering mechanism against a guy who can't take you down or strike with you on weight cutting. After the first round even a strategerist like Tito Ortiz would have realize that his opponent had nearly non-existent offence and that all Vera had to do is jab Andy's chest and follow up with some crosses or jumping knees or high kicks or wtfever. Seriously, I like Lloyd Irving's Grappling Plan and all, but he isn't doing anything for Vera's obvious flaws with his mental aspect of the fight game.

Hermes Franca vs Franky Edgar - at first I thought - cool, former title challenger vs rising star but then the fight took place. Franky Edgar kept a fast pace and Franca didn't care at all about getting taken down.  So Edgar took him down and worked him over with repeated elbows. Joe Rogan tried to defend Franca's relaxation routine under elbow assault saying he's just waiting to explode. Good timing for Rogan cause Franca did almost pull off a nice armbar, but Edgar just as nicely escaped and proceded to gift Franca with face swelling elbows. It was all Edgar most of the fight for a relatively unanimous decision.  This fight left me wondering though why would Franca just give the fight away? He's just one of those guys that tries to do everything last minute, unfortuntely for him the hard workers of the world will cosistenly come out on topof the slackers.

Cain Velasquez vs Jake O'Brien - Heavyweight division is kinda hurting so it was good to have this fight to expose Velasquez a bit. He was on a mission and he completed it with non stop punching of trapped O'Brien's head. Kudos to Yamasaki for letting it go for a while so that there weren't any doubts.

Anthony Johnson Vs. Kevin Burns - Burns did impress everyone by beating a really tough Roan Carneiro with a submission in his last fight. However Anthony Johnson made him look very average. The fight was ok until Johnson started feeling more comfortable in the second round and began to pick Burns apart, however lazy. Burns poked Johnson in the eyes about three times in second and in the third round he did it again and really deep. Johnson falls downs, he can't continue, replays show a finger jab going straight into his eye and they award victory to Burns? WTF?

Jesse Taylor Vs. CB Dollaway - I'm glad Jesse was brought back, but at the same time why make such a big deal on the TV show, take him off the Finale show and bring him back not a month later. When did he have time to go to the Alchoholics Anonymous, EH? Anyways, the fight was good, Jesse was controlling CB pretty well, till CB pulled a nice Marcello Garcia move to get behind Jesse and set up his now famous peruvian neck tie choke.

On it's own and without the stupid main event, this Fight Night was ok for me. But considering why it was put on, it was bust. Especially knowing how the competing event went. Dana should be ashamed of his ego, not willing to set up Randy vs Fedor and trying to be a bastard when others do it without him.

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