I’ve been watching the UFC so much that I’ve decided to write star ratings on them. Here is what I base the star system on:

Engagement on different levels
You can’t just only stand or only grapple. Great matches have both.

Near finishes
Whether submissions attempts or knockdowns, escapes and recoveries make fights more exciting.

Entertainment
Whether the drama building to the fight or the story being told in the fight, special fights have a special aura around the fight. Consider this the x-factor.

***** Fight of the year candidate
**** Great fight
*** Watchable fight
** Mild fight
* Boring
LAME Just go take a big shit

Prelim Card

Light Heavyweight bout: Alexander Gustafsson vs. Phil Davis
This looked like Fred Ettish vs. the big ass dude. Phil Davis looked confident and impressive, but Joe Rogan seemed to be really impressed with Gustafsson’s takedown defense. I guess preventing your opponent from taking you down as you take a bunch of punches is impressive to some. Nice anaconda choke with the great fortune of having the fence to walk on to tighten the choke. **

Main Card

Middleweight bout: Kendall Grove vs. Mark Muñoz
Kendall Grove was TUF 3 winner and is pretty good. He was dominating Munoz, but gave up position for an armbar which is a big nono in most BJJ dojos. After that, Munoz just held Grove’s feet and dropped bombs. Grove takes them and takes them until he curls into a ball and the ref stops the fight. I didn’t really notice that Grove was in danger, but it was a good stop. ***

Lightweight bout: Terry Etim vs. Rafael dos Anjos
They keep hyping Etim as the next big thing. Etim tries to gullotine a black belt in BJJ from the start. Most bjj practitioners know just to wait until the dude gasses his arms out then escape. Anjos does, and passes Etim’s guard easily. Anjos completely dominates Etim on the ground, gets side control, knees the guy’s ribs/back, gets warned by this ref I’ve never seen before for “kneeing the spine” which Anjos doesn’t understand because he speaks fucking Portuguese, knees some more and the ref stands them up and Anjos is confused as to why. I was pretty pissed. Didn’t matter though because Anjos’s BJJ is really good and gets side control, knee on belly, spiderweb, pushes the defending arm and then covers that arm so he couldn’t defend again and finishes with the armbar in a 45 degree angle like you should. Just awesome BJJ. ***

Welterweight bout: Matt Hughes vs. Renzo Gracie
I fucking hate Matt Hughes, but he’s acting all humble so it’s even more annoying. Ground and pound vs the family that created the guard game. So of course the fight is stand up the whole time with Renzo getting leg kicked to where he has no power in his punch and just covers up. There was this weird friendly shit that annoys me. It was like a sparring match. Hughes doesn’t even follow up when he starts punching Renzo with any force. I don’t know how anyone goes into an MMA ring and doesn’t know how to defend a leg kick. LAME

Lightweight Championship bout: B.J. Penn (c) vs. Frankie Edgar
Edgar has awesome MMA movement. Where boxing prides on head movement, Edgar can mix head movement with shoot feints like a complete fighter should. BJ’s corner tells him to do a takedown, which is smart because it’ll make Edgar think low, but BJ ignores them like always and rightly loses by decision. BJ just gave up, wanting to win his way or no way kind of like MAchida did in Machida/Shogun I. Boring fight, but Edgar was trying to win a title. * Note: Compustat has BJ Penn winning as they didn’t count the takedown because Edgar didn’t get an advantageous position after the takedown.

Middleweight Championship bout: Anderson Silva (c) vs. Demian Maia
Hilarious fight. Silva comes out doing OH NOEZ dances, lunges, capoeira, British old school boxing stances, and daring Maia to punch and shoot on him. It came off mean because Maia is a cool guy, but it was amazing. At the end of the second round, his corner tells Silva to knock that shit off and Silva loses his spirit and just runs for the rest of the fight. At one point, Silva hides behind the ref as Maia gets up from being on the ground and the ref has to push him. Dana gives the belt to Silva’s coach in the 4th round and just LEAVES. Silva wins, but they don’t announce the scorecard and the ref was like “whatever” about raising Silva’s hand. Dana’s taking a beating on Twitter and during press conferences looks REALLY mad and REALLY depressed. Silva gets the record for the most successful title defenses at 6 but everyone is superbutthurt about the night. I thought it was entertaining and better than anything Muhammad Ali did. ESPN and the other “analysts” will talk a bunch of shit saying MMA is a disgrace again and that we can keep MMA and they’ll stick with boxing. Right. And you keep your snail mail and I’ll go ahead and use email you archaic fucks. I digress. Hilarious fight but Dana was pissed and so was the crowd. No sense of humor. ***** for the first 2 rounds. LAME for the last three so I’ll round it to ***

Really shitty night.

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 11th, 2010 at 2:35 am and is filed under Be a Man Like N. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.