UFC 109 - Relentless

This Superbowl weekend, Saturday night on ppv:

Randy Couture vs. Mark Coleman
Nate Marquardt vs. Chael Sonnen
Mike Swick vs. Paulo Thiago
Demian Maia vs. Dan Miller
Matt Serra vs. Frank Trigg

Mac Danzig vs. Justin Bucholz
Melvin Guillard vs. Ronys Torres
Phillipe Nover vs. Rob Emerson
Brian Stann vs. Phil Davis
Tim Hague vs. Cris Tuchscherer
Mostapha Al-Turk vs. Rolles Gracie

Another one of those cards IMO that doesn't appear to be the most exciting that will probably produce many very nice fights.

Couture vs. Coleman - What can you say. This has been a long time coming. Too bad both these guys are north of 40 for this their first meeting. I assume that if either has a real dominant performance, they will step into the title picture. I look for Couture to win somehow.

Marquardt vs. Sonnen - This fight makes no sense for the title picture, only to keep Marquardt from staying inactive until Anderson fights Belfort. Marquardt is clearly the next in line for a title shot, however he could easily lose his status with a loss to Sonnen. Sonnen is a tough mofo and can be very dangerous, although I don't see him as much of a finisher. Marquardt should win this fight, but not if he is looking past it to his next fight.

Swick vs. Thiago - Was supposed to be a rematch between Thiago and Kos, but Kos got injured, so in steps his AKA teammate. This will be the third upper tier AKA WW that Thiago has faced. I can really see this fight going either way, and likely we will see some of Swick's supposedly amazing ground game, because Thiago is a BJJ black belt and will probably want to be on the ground at some point. Swick, however, does have probably the best takedown defense in the WW division. I say this is a very evenly matched fight.

Maia vs. Miller - Maia is coming off his 20 something second KO loss to Marquardt and Miller hasn't fought in almost a year. Miller is a good wrestler and we all know how good Maia's BJJ is. It will be interesting to see if Miller can contain Maia on the ground. I'd give a standup edge to Miller, but don't think most of the fight will take place on the feet. Maia by sub.

Serra vs. Trigg - This to me is one of those fights that I have little interest in, but like a good highway car wreck, I have to look. I just have zero confidence in Trigg and look for Serra to pull it out either with a KO or a SUB.

Since there are no title fights here, I look for several of the undercard bouts to be shown. One of the most interesting for me is the debut of Rolles Gracie. A HW prospect, with the name and a lot of hype coming in. He should be able to handle Al-Turk quite easily IMO. I also find it funny how they keep giving Melvin Guillard opponents whose strengths are ground skills. Melvin has supposedly been training a lot with Joe Daddy, so we will see how much he as learned.

Where was your Strikeforce thread?

This should almost be a fight night card... two bad ones in a row with no interest for me... there should be some serious 205 pounders on this card and there aren't any... I have no faith in Stann...

Nope and nope!

Coop....my bad...forgot about Strikeforce until it was too late. I enjoyed watching all those fights tho for sure.

Nope and Nope to what?

Nope and nope to the whole card. No interest at all. I like Randy.. I hope he wins.. but not enough to fork out 50 dollars to watch the pay per view. This should be a fight night card, as David said. No way this is pay per view quality.

I doubt we'll buy another pay per view until GSP vs. Hardy in March.. and that's mostly for me.

I watched the strikeforce event and I will be honest I find it kind of hard to stomach. I am not a real core MMA guy. I just started watching about a year and a half ago. And I generally buy all the UFC events so we can have some friends over and party. But Strike force just seems so cheesy. The annoucers and the intros ring are just too much. Also Strike force might have a couple top guys but the depth is definatly missing. I mean the Walker was fighting looked like he had no clue what he was doing.

I wish some big guys would fight again. Feel like I havent seen GSP, Silva, Lesnar for so long.

That said....cant always have stacked cards. and they all have their reasons. I will still watch this one though.

I love both Randy and Coleman so I am actually looking forward to this card. Although i would think the Couture Coleman fight may be a little boring, these are two top notch wrestlers who should have fought a long time ago. I give it to Randy just because his heart.

The rest of the cards while maybe not a Lesnar vs Cane could be really good. Is this this Saturday or te Saturday after?

PS DTW I swear no joking you really need to write for an MA magazine. I find myself hanging on to your every word, good job writing these threads my man.

Thanks Flight.

Strikeforce is a good organization for what it is. They do lack the depth of the UFC, but to make up for that, they 'share' fighters. Between Strikeforce, M1 Global, and Dream, there are some fun matchups possible. Not a lot, but some. This is why they are doing about 4-5 events per year.

The UFC puts on a LOT of events every year. Now we never really expect to see a title fight during the freebies on Spike or Versus, but at the same time, unfortunately, we can't really expect to see a title fight on every ppv either, even though they have at least one per month. There are only 5 divisions and 5 champions. In a perfect world, a champion would fight every 5 months and we (in theory) could have a title fight at every ppv. BUT, this is mma. Fighters get injured during fights. Fighters get injured during training. Recovering from these injuries can take a long time. Then there are freak ailments like what Lesnar had. Then apply this scenario to every fighter in the stable, not just the champs, and you have a headache of a job scheduling these fights. (Although I would love to try it for awhile )

I don't feel that this card is the best looking and most worthy of $50 either. Having said that, I don't know too many people who can fork out $50+ a month for all the UFC ppvs. I'm sure the UFC knows this too, and I think they do a pretty good job, but not every card is or can be the best card ever. I get the feeling that most people do want a title fight on as many cards as possible, so lets look at the current champions:

LW - BJ Penn....Last fight 12/12/09; Next fight 4/10/2010...the guy doesn't seem to ever get hurt. Penn's blood is a rarer sight than Haley's Comet. The guy has pretty much carried the championship load the last several months and is scheduled to fight Frankie Edgar in late spring in Abu Dhabi.

WW - GSP....Last fight 07/11/09; Next fight 03/27/10. Definitely one of the best fighters ever, he is slightly injury prone and had that nasty groin injury sustained sometime during his fight with Alves last summer. Scheduled to fight Dan Hardy in less than 2 months in New Jersey.

MW - Anderson Silva; Last fight 08/08/09 - Last TITLE fight 4/18/09; Next fight 4/10/2010. So Anderson brings another title scheduling problem to the mix...he jumps from MW to LHW. His last fight was against Forrest at LHW, his last title fight was against Leites and when he fights Belfort in April, it will have been just over a week shy of ONE YEAR since he has defended the championship. In the meantime, Marquardt has been on a TEAR and is still taking fights.

LHW - Machida.... Last fight 10/24/2009; Next fight 05/08/2010. Machida has had injuries before, and did get I believe a hand injury during the fight with Shogun. And since the rematch with Shogun is up next, you can put Shogun on this same schedule.

HW - Lesnar....Last fight 07/11/2009; Next fight, not officially scheduled. Here is the freak ailment. When Lesnar fights again, it will likely be almost a year removed from his last fight. At least we are getting an Interim champ in the meantime here, either Carwin or Mir, the winner of which will be Lesnar's return opponent.

So you can see that getting these champs to fight on a regular schedule seems to be near impossible. Seems to me that the champions average more than one, but not quite two fights per year (Penn being the exception), but most of the other fighters in the stable fight about 3 times per year.

I don't know why I wrote all this, just thinking with my fingers again. I'd still give my left two lug nuts for Joe Silva's job.

Old guys fighting is olde.



Type less,surf more.

Dave - You are welcome to come on April 24th to the WEC event! Stop using the "I live hundreds of miles away" excuse!

Hey where has Andre Arlofsky been? i know he got knocked out by Fedor but he is in my opinion still one of the top heavy weights. His problem is a glass jaw. I'd like to see him back in the UFC.

I believe Andre's last appearance was on Bully Beatdown. IT WAS FING AWESOME except for the guy he was fighting didn't know he was so it took some of the fun out of it.

Phat what do you mean?

Bully Beatdown was a show with Jason "Mayhem" Miller as the host.The would bring in so called tough guys from your hood,and have them scrap with pros.Those that could last(The russian punk did well)get paid for each minute they survive.

There were several well known pros on the show,Andre was one of them,as well as local boy,Jake Shields.

Yeah Ive watched the show love it but did Andre kick his opponents butt or did he actually give him a match?

 

Randy Couture looked phenominal tonight. I can't believe at nearly 50 he is still a force in the UFC. What is the deal with Mike Swick? I mean at one time i thought he might give GSP a tough time but his last 2 fights he has not looked the same. Matt Sera is a good fighter and is better then everyone gives him credit for. trigg needs to give it up and go back to announcing. I felt it was a humdrum night of fights.

bonuses:

Marquardt & Sonnen $60k each for FIGHT of the night
Thiago $60k for SUB of the night
Serra $60k for KO of the night

Humdrum is a great adjective.

Still can't believe Sonnen handled Marquardt like that.

Sonnen finally living up to his ability! Figured Coleman would get whopped. He just looks so slow and old. Randy did what he should have done. Was suprised Rogan actually thought hes better than he ever has been lol Think he was kinda caught up in the moment lol Thiago looked great! That was a sick sub.

Yeah Sonnen is the real deal, If anyone is going to beat Anderson it's going to be on the ground. Sonnen may be the guy to do it. Sonnen will easily get Anderson down and if he can ground and pound and control like he did last night we may just see an upset. I know Im reaching but Sonnens performance last night was out standing over a guy who was in line to fight Silva again.

I was really bummed Marquardt got handled like that. It was pretty much domination. He still had a chance with that choke. That cut was pretty intense as well.

I don't think u can judge Randy on that fight. He looked good but Coleman looked like he had no business being in the octagon. Randy just did what he was supposed to.

Overall I thought a pretty weak card. Maybe I am just too much of a casual fan but I can't wait for the big boys to get back!! Just one more so-so card and then it is on! Saying that the next next card at least has a couple of big time fights that have title implications.

Lastly what you guys think of Paul Davis he looked pretty dominate. I would like to see more of him. With the Davis performance and Sonnen's performance it shows how wrestling can be such a dominate weapon

I agree, the wrestlers seem to have an advantage although the really top notch BJJ guys are very dangerous. I to was sad to see Marqaurt get handeled like that. Just showed me he wasn't ready for Silva. I want to see Vitor & Silva and the winner of that can have Sonnen. Im not a Sonnen fan but what I did like was his confidence when he said there wasn't a man that God made that he couldn;t beat, I firmly believe he believes that.

UFC 110 has a few really interesting matchups...the one that seems to be under the radar the most is W.Silva vs. Bisping. I would bet my bottom dollar that 110 is much more exciting than 109.

Sonnen has a game that could potentially beat Anderson. However, I don't want to see Anderson lose a decision and lose his belt. I would like Sonnen a LOT more if he could finish his opponents.

Phil Davis looked amazing. But keep in mind that Stann has a very un-evolved ground game, and not great TD defense at all. I hate seeing him put in there against the ground wizards, but if he wants to progress, he has to beat them sometime.

I'm really worried about Swick....he just hasn't had his mojo since he beat Saunders. Seems like after Hardy pushed him around, he is really wilting.

Totaly agree about Swick Dave.

I don't know what Swick caught, but he has lost his mojo, seems like a mirror image of Vera. So hot in the beginning and now can't win a fight to save their career.

Marquart was beat down, school yard style, I was shocked. I liked sonnen and expected a good fight but that was a dominant sonnen that looked unbeatable.

Flight - Andre beat down the bully pretty good, not as good as I had hoped but you could tell he was taking it easy on the fatty.

Swick looks way too skinny at 170, he's lost considerable muscle, but I don't think he's a tru 185er either, some of these guys just get caught in between classes...

Sonnen looked legit and it wouldn't hurt my feelings to see him given a shot at Silva very soon.

Sonnen is saying that Anderson is a much easier fight than Vitor.