UFC Fight Night 22 + TUF
 

Tomorrow night (sorry about the late notice) on Spike. Fight Night leads into the premiere of TUF: GSP vs. Koscheck. Here is the fight card:

Nate Marquardt vs. Rousimar Palhares
Efrain Escudero vs. Charles Oliveira
Jim Miller vs. Gleison Tibau
Ross Pearson vs. Cole Miller

Yves Edwards vs. John Gunderson
Jared Hamman vs. Kyle Kingsbury
Tomasz Drwal vs. Dave Branch
Rich Attonito vs. Rafael Natal
TJ Waldburger vs. David Mitchell
Brian Foster vs. Forrest Petz

Marquardt vs. Palhares - Marquardt coming off the loss to Sonnen. Palhares coming off a win, but subsequent suspension for holding onto a submission for too long. Palhares is quite the submission specialist, rivaling Maia. Marquardt is great on the ground, but his standup is much more advanced than Palhares'. Not saying that Palhares will automatically win a ground match, but Nate's chances are much much better for winning and finishing by keeping it a standup war.

Escudero vs. Oliveira - Escudero is quite well rounded, as we all know. Oliveira spend less than 2 minutes in his first UFC match, submitting his opponent. Oliveira has been spouting off that BJJ will cancel out and beat wrestling any ole time. Big words. If he can back it up, there will be a submission. Looking quite forward to this one actually.

Miller vs. Tibau -- Miller is very well rounded and extremely tough. Tibau is HUGE for 155. HUGE. Tibau IMO tends to gas due to his massive weight cut. Tibau is gonna want to end this as quickly as he can, cause the later into the fight he goes, the less his chances of winning are. Miller has gas for the duration and the skills to win this fight anywhere. Good matchup.

Pearson vs. Miller - I really like both these guys. Pearson is winner of a couple seasons ago TUF. Mostly a standup guy, but with good takedown defense. Miller is probably more well rounded, although I'd give a standup edge to Pearson. Miller will be looking to drag this to the mat. As much as I love to watch Miller fight and work the ground with his long limbs, I predict a Pearson KO/TKO victory here.

Then of course following the fights is the premiere of TUF: GSP vs. Koscheck. Season of lightweights. Koscheck has already gone on record many times saying he does not mind playing the villain. Especially on this show and with his upcoming title fight against GSP being held in Canada. Should be an interesting season, where I believe many many people will become much bigger fans of GSP and much bigger haters of Koscheck. Hoping that Koscheck will bring some of his AKA teammates in for training / instruction too....like Fitch, Swick, Cain, Buentello, etc.
:D:D

DTW is back!!!!!! We have missed your fight previews.....welcome back

Go Ross Pearson. I like that guy!

WOW.....Cole Miller.....very very nice performance!!!

Charles Oliveira....WOW....awesome finish. Escudero did absolutely nothing to get out of that.

I think TUF is gonna be fun this season.

Pretty lackluster night, with some weird endings. TUF looks to be pretty good. There are some bad dudes in there. I think we may even see GSP go out of his perfect gentleman routine at some point and Kos will push his buttons constantly.

IMO, the best UFN I've seen in a while. I thought every fight was exciting except for the main event. But, good stuff all around...I am really enjoying the lightweight division.

TUF is gonna be awesome this season!

Missed the UFN but TUF was a blast to watch and reminds me of what I like about MMA. Those guys were at it like they were fighting for their lives. None of this lying around trying to score points.

What happened i didnt see it? Did Nat take out Palharis?

Nate took him out, but it was quite comical actually.

Palhares got him to the ground early in the first and they rolled a bit, then Palhares dropped back to take one of Nate's legs. Nate pulled out with no problem, stood up, and simultaneously, Palhares was staring at the ref with his arms out like WTF? and not paying attention to Nate at all. Nate comes in with a BOMB that knocked Palhares silly and followed up with some nasty, uncontested gnp. Ref stopped it. Palhares got up & claimed there was grease on the legs. The commission checked him immediately, right there, and found no grease on Nate's legs. Nate said in the post fight that he purposely came out to the octagon warm and sweaty, which is completely legal. Palhares later apologized.

Side note, Chael Sonnen tested positive for some type of natural steroid and is now facing suspension, so he will not be fighting A.Silva again next. The winner of Belfort vs. Okami will get A.Silva next.

I'll start a thread for this weekends UFC soon. Stay tuned.

I am so glad now that Sonnen didn't beat silva. I still can't stand Silva but I don't want a cheater beating him. I know a lot of the fighters probably do steriods but once you fail a test it is different story.

ahahahahaha what a dumbass!!! I've never really liked him.

If you are going to run your mouth all over the place.. only to get popped for steroid use.. you are a complete idiot.

Sonnen had a ton of respect from everyone for putting it to Silva for four and a half rounds. Now.. it's all tainted. So stupid.

It's funny that this has happened to Sonnen. A buddy of mine that lives up in Portland and trains at one of the MMA gyms up there says that Sonnen (who doesn't drink alcohol) apparently lets his buddies pick fights at bars and then he rolls in to clean them up. I guess the people in town feel like he is a thug that goes around beating up drunk guys for fun. Don't know how true it is, but seems fitting.