There are some really competitive matches scheduled for the upcoming UFC card. The ones they are promoting on their commercials are Brock Lesnar vs. Heath Herring, Georges St. Pierre vs. Jon Fitch, and Kenny Florian vs. Roger Huerta.
Brock Lesnar is a huge musclehead wrestler from Minnesota, college wrestling superstar and pro wrestling showman. He should be very successful in MMA because he's a cream of the crop college wrestler, and that is a very powerful credential. Dana White brought him into the UFC with hopes that he would make people forget about Fedor Emelianenko, and he promoted that in his tv commercials for the Lesnar vs. Frank Mir fight months ago. Unfortunately for Dana White, his budding superstar lost to Mir, and Fedor defeated former UFC champ Tiny Tim Sylvia, so his dreams of making MMA fans forget about Fedor and concentrate on Lesnar fell through, resulting in Dana's recent suicide. Dana slit his own throat after Fedor whipped Tiny Tim in 3 seconds flat, then disconnected his head from his shoulders and placed his severed head in his freezer next to the frozen mac and cheese. His dying words were "Fuck that fucking Russian fuck", which was very creative grammatically, using the same word as a verb, adjective and noun in one sentence.
Opponent Heath Herring is well known for his multi-color hair. He is a blonde, brunette and redhead at the same time. He is also well known for his nickname, The Texas Crazy Ass. Several fights ago, he lost to an underdog who took him to the ground and got the best of him, and after the fight he whined about being taken to the ground. His conception of MMA was apparently a boxing match. However, since that fight he has been a lot more impressive. He beat black French star Cheick Kongo and big Brad Imes, and lost a reasonably close decision to one of the best groundfighters in the division, UFC champ Minotauro Nogueira. That loss to Nogueira makes me think that he actually has a chance against Lesnar. But still I expect Lesnar to win big and beat up Mr. Texas Crazy Ass. Obviously so does Dana White. He staged the whole show in Lesnar's home state of Minnesota, and the key to success in MMA events is to think local, to give the local fans a winner to root for. Look at when he sent GSP to Canada to beat up Matt Serra. Look at when he sent Michael Bisping to England to get a horse's ass crooked decision victory over Matt Hamill, who beat Bisping and got cheated out of the hometown decision. So now Dana is making Herring swim upstream to Minnesota to get his crazy ass beat by Brock Lesnar. Then we are all supposed to forget about Fedor Emelianenko and consider Lesnar the future of the heavyweight division.
The GSP vs Fitch fight is a really good matchup. Fitch beat Diego Sanchez. Fitch has done nothing but win win win, for a long time. He deserves this title shot. If this was boxing, GSP and Fitch would not be fighting now. GSP would be the IBF champ. Fitch would be the WBA champ. Moishe Pippick would be the WBC champ. Dweezil Zappa would be the WBO champ. And none of them would ever fight each other. This way, each little bullshit organization gets to stage "world championship fights". Dana White puts the best against the best. If he can sign them. Dana gives us a true world champion in all weight divisions from 155 pounds to 205 pounds. As for the heavyweights, Dana has made himself an irrelevancy.
The Florian vs. Huerta fight is another good matchup. It is a championship calibre fight. I like the fact that Roger Huerta is bitching about the way Dana White is treating him financially. I will always be on the side of labor vs. management. I'm thinking Dana is a greedy pig. If Huerta beats Florian, he'll be in a position to sign with anybody, with any of the many fly by night MMA organizations that will be bankrupt by next Thursday. Great move, Roger. Alienate the only MMA organization that will still be around by Christmas.
Florian and Huerta are evenly matched. I'm rooting for Huerta for two reasons. First, his nickname El Matador is pretty good, while Florian's sucks. Kenny Florian's nickname is Ken Flo. Fuckin idiot. Kenny "Ken Flo" Florian. Fuckin idiot. How about these imaginative nicknames. Bill "Bill Clin" Clinton. Or George "George Wash" Washington. How about Jesus "Je Chri" Christ. Or Marilyn "Mar Mon" Monroe. Or what about Josef "Jo Stal" Stalin. The other reason I root against Kenny "Ken Flo" Florian is that he sounds like a Boston bean.
On the undercard there is Cheick Kongo vs. some guy, Manvel Gamburyan against somebody or other, the mediocre Luke Cummo against some guy, and some other guys against some guys I never heard of. Sounds like a pretty good card. I'm not paying forty bucks though. I'll read about it on Sherdog.
lfbno7 posted on Aug 05, 2008
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Comments
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Lucytorial said on Aug 06, 2008....
Ohh man... I just saw the "need distraction" came in was assalted with all this!!!!!! I don't know what to do now... I know nothing about this stuff but I can provide a distraction..*-} -
lfbno7 said on Aug 06, 2008....
oh man. i thought you were a huge mma fan. i can just picture you getting guys in the rear naked choke. -
Lucytorial said on Aug 06, 2008....
Come to ponder upon that yes I do believe I could, is there such a move to suffocate by way of breasts? that I would be good at, oh and what about the old ball grab? do they do that stuff still? -
tbs230 said on Aug 06, 2008....
What EXACTLY...are you talking about???!?!?!?! -
lfbno7 said on Aug 10, 2008....
Well it looks like the only match I was willing to make a prediction on was the Lesnar vs. Herring fight, where I wrote that Dana White is making Texas Crazy Ass Herring swim upstream to get his ass beat by Brock Lesnar. It sure turned out that way. But Lesnar was a heavy favorite by the oddsmakers so it is no great accomplishment to happen to pick the same guy the oddsmakers all picked too, and one-sided at that.
It seems that St Pierre beat the crap out of Fitch, which is pretty disappointing for the sport because Fitch was the best challenger in the weight division. Now the UFC will have to make B.J. Penn fight above his weight again, to give GSP somebody to fight. I don't know who the winner of that will be, which is a testament to how great Penn is, since he's a 155 pounder giving up 15 pounds to GSP. Penn seems destined to fight above his weight.
The Roger Huerta vs. Ken Flo Geo Wash Mar Mon Jo Stal Florian fight seems to have been kind of a stinker, with the Boston Bean managing to keep it from getting violent, and winning on carefulness. That's the impression I got from Sherdog's review. I'd much rather watch El Matador go out swinging than watch Ken Flo tickle him for three rounds. I think Ken Flo may be my least favorite MMA fighter, but I freely admit he's really good. I guess I'll always root against him. Don't like his style. And don't like his elbows either. The guy sharpens his elbows. -
toodiesel said on Aug 10, 2008....
The Florian/Huerta fight, billed a Fight of the Year candidate by everyone, was horrible. Kenny must be taking striking lessons from Lyoto Machida ("That's it Kenny, run away from their punches and don't throw any of your own"). Huerta did what he could, but Kenny Florian wanted no part of Roger Huerta. I'm surprised a lot of these judges didn't deduct points from Florian for lack of aggression, but they seem to be all boxing/state athletic commission people so it shouldn't surprise me. -
bloc said on Aug 11, 2008....
i think toodiesel was watching a different fight than me. florian hit huerta a lot, mounted him a couple of times (i was shocked huerta got out), and dominated across the board. -
toodiesel said on Aug 12, 2008....
i think we were watching different fights - the fight I saw showed Florian backpedaling for about 10 minutes, only choosing to counter with takedowns or minor punches when huerta would lunge at him because Florian was keeping such a great distance....
It takes two people to fight and, IMO, it's pretty disgraceful that Florian would choose to step in the cage that night because he certainly didn't come to fight, he came to abuse the rules and judging criteria. The rules definitely need to be revised with regards to aggression.
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bloc said on Aug 12, 2008....
i distinctly remember florian kicking huerta in the face. I'd call that aggression. -
toodiesel said on Aug 12, 2008....
i guess we just disagree - i've rewatched the fight and believe I'm spot on with my original assessment. Florian doesn't fight so much as run away and counter with strikes or takedowns.. You can even see Huerta lunging at Florian because Florian is just so far away so often. Huerta attempted to make it a fight, but Florian turned it into a machida snoozefest (don't get me started on that guy).
Not saying I'd do any better, but this is the guy that says "I finish fights"??? excuse me?
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bloc said on Aug 12, 2008....
i always thought one of the goals in a fight is to avoid getting hit. I'd agree with you if florian took him down and laid on top of him for 15 minutes. He mounted him twice, hit him with a lot of solid shots, while intelligently choosing when to strike.To me strategy is what distinguishes a sport, like MMA, from toughest man brawls. -
toodiesel said on Aug 12, 2008....
I completely understand the point about avoiding strikes. However, there are "good" ways to avoid strikes (head movement, feints - e.g. Shogun Rua, Clay Guida, etc...) and there is the "I don't ever want to watch this guy in another fight again" method employed by Machida and Florian in that Huerta fight, namely running away to the point of not fighting.
I'll post a portion of a blog I had written about this:
"I think this second method is really outrageous and more dangerous for the fighters, as you have one fighter attacking, leaving himself exposed, and trying to actually fight, while the other fighter is decidedly not trying to fight, and really only covering up, not exposing himself in any way by attacking. Remember, the person that first strikes leaves themselves in a very vulnerable position, as that part of their body cannot be used for defense anymore. I argue that this non-fighting is much more an outrageous strategy when you get to the higher levels of competition, and the margins by which fighters are better than one another is almost nominal, thus the fighter who is non-committal, and only counter-attacking, has an enormous advantage."
Ok, I admit, I'm a gasbag about this, and I don't advocate a guns-blazing headfirst approach (but who doesn't like that?), but when you have a guy backpedaling the majority of a fight, without him having a reason to (i.e. he's hurt), then, really, what are they in the cage for?
Additionally, I completely don't blame Florian not getting BJ Penn after that Huerta fight because Dana White (the UFC promoter) probably realizes that no one is going to want to watch a main event with Florian fighting the style he employed against Huerta.
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bloc said on Aug 12, 2008....
i'm going to have to rewatch this fight now :) -
lfbno7 said on Aug 16, 2008....
I won't be seeing it until it's on for free. I kind of like Lyoto Machida though. I think he hits enough to be interesting. I recently saw him dismantle Sokoudjou in a repeat, for the second or third time, and I like Machida's style, at least in that fight. He reminds me of when I used to take karate and we'd pace ourselves and pick our shots. We didn't run in like rock em sock em robots. We used a lot of fakes, and movement, and had fun with it. -
bloc said on Aug 16, 2008....
i feel the same about machida.