I probably never saw any of these fights before but if I did I forgot them, which is par for the course with me. The UFC Wired show featured Josh Koscheck against Thiago Alves, then Matt Hamill against Mark Munoz, and finally Big Nog against Frank Mir. I can't afford to see pay per view events. I wish they cost less. If they were just 10 or 15 dollars a show I'd see them.

All three fights were actually the same fight. Same thing three times in a row. You have guys who are expert ground fighters, but they aren't fighting on the ground. They are just doing karate, or in Alves's case, Muay Thai/karate.

First of all, why are these guys doing karate? Five of them are ground fighters. Why the hell are they doing karate? Why don't they do what they do best? You take these wrestlers like Koscheck and Hamill, pure wrestlers, and you teach them karate, and next thing you know, that's all they do. What about all the years studying wrestling? What about all the wrestling trophies they won? What's all that, garbage?

Koscheck played right into Alves's game plan by doing karate with him. I'm sure Alves was happy about that. Here he is fighting a decorated wrestler and all he has to do is stuff a few takedown attempts and he has himself a Muay Thai/karate fight. Cool. Naturally Alves won because he's better at the standup game than Koscheck, who was a bit lost out there when Alves was knocking him in the noggin.

I can appreciate that Koscheck trains a lot in karate. Good for him. But hell, why doesn't he keep his wrestling game up? Why doesn't he train more in the takedown and get the fight where he excels, with the other guy lying on his back? If he can learn karate that well, why can't he learn how to take a karate guy down?

There's really nothing much else to say about that fight. Alves kicked him in the legs a lot, really bad, and also out-karate'd him. Alves won a unanimous decision. So now Alves gets to fight GSP and Koscheck doesn't.

Matt Hamill, the deaf guy, a much decorated wrestler, fought another wrestler, Filipino Mark Munoz. Hamill just karate'd him. That's the whole fight. Hamill wasted his time learning how to wrestle, apparently. Screw wrestling. I don't get it. All those moves he learned, and he does nothing with them. He just karate's the guy.

Big Nog and Frank Mir are top jiu jitsu fighters, not wrestlers. Even so, it's ground fighting. What happens? Mir stays the hell away from Nog's jiu jitsu. Any time Nog is on the ground, Mir is walking away. Mir just wants it to be a karate fight, and it is. Nog doesn't bring him down. Mir socks him with his left a few times, knocks him down, so it's actually more of a boxing match than a karate fight, though Mir does show some good karate kicks too. Anyway down goes Nog, and the referee stops the fight with Nog hurt. At first it looked to me like a quick stoppage, but when the fight was over and Nog stood up, he wobbled, so okay, it was an appropriate stoppage, Mir knocked him out.

I think these top ground fighters get so enamored of the stand-up rock em sock em game that they neglect their wrestling. Koscheck and Hamill need to get back to their roots and start wrestling again. They should put the same intensity into their wrestling training as they do in their karate and boxing. Otherwise what's so special about them? If they are going to piss away all their wrestling accomplishments by not studying the ground game, not learning how to take down a Thiago Alves, then they aren't special and they won't be champions. Hell, even that mediocre British fighter whatshisname, the one with the big mouth, you know who I mean, the recent coach on TUF, Bisping, that's the guy, can stand and sock with Hamill.

When they crowned Frank Mir the new interim heavyweight champion, it seemed so ridiculous. How can you have an interim heavyweight champion when you also have a regular heavyweight champion? It's so stupid. Interim means in the meantime. Interim means you stripped your champ of the title and you're fishing around for a new one or waiting for the old one to recover from an injury or whatever. You don't have a regular champ and an interim champ at the same time. That's just dumb. What does the word "interim" mean? It means in the meantime, while we're waiting for something else. Like an interim NFL head coach, serving because the regular one just got fired. Or an interim manager in baseball, serving because the prior manager just got fired and they didn't settle on a replacement yet. It does not apply to this UFC situation anymore.

And what caused this problem? Dana White. When he got Randy Couture, the heavyweight champion (yeah right), back under contract, he was supposed to match him immediately against his interim champion Big Nog. But he didn't because he's a sadist and he was pissed at Couture. So instead of giving Couture a fight with Big Nog, which Couture may have won, he wanted to put Couture in with someone who Couture would have no chance in hell against, Brock Lesnar. It was just Dana's sadism and vengefulness, and the result was that the interim title became meaningless.

It's now time to put the old lions like Big Nog and Couture against the young lions like Carwin, Velasquez and Lashley. We don't have an old timers division as they have done in golf. Nog and Couture need to prove that they are still relevant, and they need to do it against the new guys. Anyone who puts Nog and Couture higher in the rankings than Carwin, Velasquez and Lashley is just judging on old laurels. The fact is, these newer guys can probably take them and probably deserve to be higher on the list. I'd make any one of them, Carwin, Velasquez or Lashley, a heavy favorite to knock out both Nog and Couture. Unless you find a time machine and put Nog and Couture back 5 years.

You figure that the guy who eventually beats Fedor will be one of the big muscular wrestlers, Brock Lesnar, Shane Carwin, Bobby Lashley, Cain Velasquez. When Fedor gets a bit older. Time waits for no man, not even an emperor. The clock is ticking on Fedor. I think Lesnar can give him an even fight right now, though the others would get their heads handed to them by Fedor now. A few years from now, who knows? I guess I still make Fedor a very slight favorite over Lesnar, but who knows with Lesnar, how far he's come. I expect him to beat the shit out of Mir, and I expect Fedor to beat the shit out of Barnett, but we have to wait to see.