UFC: Fight Night 10
06/12/07
Hollywood, Florida
-Your hosts are Mike Goldberg and Joe Rogan. They discuss the rise of the Lightweight division – this being another show headlined by the 155lbers – as well as the rise of Jon Fitch in the Welterweight division and his “toughest challenge to date†against Brazilian Top Team’s Roan Carneiro.
Middleweight Fight: Drew McFedries vs Jordan Radev
Opening fight here was an intriguing Middleweight clash between the Miletich camp’s McFedries, coming off a loss to Martin Kampmann via submission, and Bulgarian Olympic wrestler Jordan Radev, who was sporting an impressive record of 16-1. Definitely appears to be a size advantage for McFedries here as he’s a HUGE 185lbs while Radev’s more short and squat.
McFedries comes out swinging right away, and catches the Bulgarian with a right hand and a nice, short uppercut. Left high kick misses, but McFedries follows with a hard uppercut that causes Radev to wobble and fall, and Drew dives in with THREE BRUTAL RIGHTS to knock him silly.
Unbelievably brutal knockout. The uppercut that sent Radev down didn’t look all that nasty but the punches on the mat were downright scary and for once I can’t blame the referee as it all happened so fast that he couldn’t have reacted any quicker I don’t think. McFedries isn’t the most complete fighter out there but packing the amount of power that he does, he’s always going to be a threat. Good win for him.
Welterweight Fight: Chad Reiner vs Anthony Johnson
This was a preliminary bout from earlier in the night; surprising they’d show a prelim so early actually. Regardless, Reiner’s original opponent was set to be American Top Team’s Steve Bruno, but he picked up an injury in training and Chute Boxe USA’s Anthony ‘Rumble’ Johnson, carrying a record of just 3-0, stepped in at the last second. Johnson is a HUGE guy for a Welterweight too, just a big, tall, ripped monster.
We get underway, and Reiner comes out aggressively, windmilling at Johnson, but Rumble rocks him with a left hook and then flurries, landing another BIG LEFT HOOK for the KO at just 13 seconds!
Two fights, two dope KOs. That one wasn’t quite as vicious as McFedries’, but it was definitely highlight-reel worthy. Reiner basically walked right into it as he windmilled his arms with pretty much no defense whatsoever, leaving his chin sticking right up, and Johnson answered with some nasty power in the two shots he landed. Great way to debut and as he’s only in his early twenties, Johnson definitely has a bright future in MMA.
Welterweight Fight: Jon Fitch vs Roan Carneiro
This was one of the marquee fights on the card, as American Kickboxing Academy’s Fitch was finally given his chance to shine on the televised card, after racking up five successive UFC wins mainly on the prelims, over tough opponents like Thiago Alves and Kuniyoshi Hironaka. Announcers are calling BTT’s Carneiro Fitch’s toughest match to date, and although I would say Hironaka and Alves are better all-round fighters than Roan, they’re probably right in terms of how Carneiro matches up with Fitch stylistically.
Round 1 opens, and they press and exchange some strikes briefly before Carneiro ducks a shot and gets the surprising takedown to Fitch’s guard. Fitch tries to kick him away, but Carneiro moves and gets a front facelock, where he immediately works to secure a choke. He controls Fitch and then locks up an anaconda choke, and for a moment it looks like Fitch is in deep trouble, as Carneiro rolls to his side, but he can’t quite roll all the way through, and Fitch manages to escape! Fitch gets on top, and they come back up to the clinch, where Fitch lands three good knees. They muscle against the fence and Fitch blocks a takedown, but Carneiro keeps working and gets him down again. He works to pass the guard, and Fitch rolls into a front facelock once more, as the round ends with Carneiro looking to secure the anaconda again. Not the best round for Fitch there at all.
2nd round and Fitch comes out more aggressively, pressing the action and avoiding a brief clinch. Suddenly he stuns Carneiro with a HEAVY combo, landing a clean right and then a left that put the Brazilian down. Carneiro looks hurt as Fitch takes top position and pounds away, and then Carneiro gives his back. Fitch gets both hooks in, lands some punches, and then takes a rear naked choke for the tapout.
Huge turnaround for Fitch in the second; it looked like he was just nervous or unsure of himself in the first round and Carneiro definitely capitalized, but after surviving a scare Fitch came out far more aggressively in the second round and just rolled right over him. Really good grappling-oriented fight, and despite a sticky opening round, Fitch cemented himself as a strong contender at 170lbs with that victory.
Lightweight Fight: Thiago Tavares vs Jason Black
This was another prelim from earlier on; I guess they had time to show a few more fights this time after McFedries finished in such quick fashion. This was one of the most intriguing bouts of the night, with Miletich’s Jason Black – a guy who was talked about forever as being super-tough – making his UFC debut against another fighter pushed as the “next big thing†from Brazil in Thiago Tavares. Tavares had made his debut some months prior, but it was a slow fight that he won by decision, so he was looking to impress a little more this time around.
First thing that’s noticeable here is how thin and gaunt Black looks at 155lbs. Jesus that’s a scary sight, one of the leanest looking fighters I’ve ever seen. They begin, and after circling Tavares shoots in for a takedown. Black stuffs it and Thiago tries to pull guard, but Black ends up in side mount. He chooses to stand though, and after getting to his feet Thiago shoots again. Black sprawls, but this time Tavares hits a beautiful switch and ends up taking the back! Black rolls and scrambles, but Tavares ends up in side mount. Black tries an arm triangle from the bottom, but ends up being mounted. He gives his back and escapes to his feet, but Tavares grabs a guillotine and uses it to sweep over into full mount again. He lands some nasty elbows from the mount, before Black tries to scramble free. Tavares holds him down, but Black gets half-guard, and then full guard. It does him no good however as he eats some more heavy elbows and punches until the round ends, and it looks like Black’s right eye is swollen shut.
They circle to open the 2nd, and Tavares slips to his back on a high kick, but Black lets him back to his feet. Thiago shoots in, and lifts Black up, before getting a HUGE RUNNING SLAM down to side mount! Whoa. He tries to take the back, but ends up in Black’s guard, where the Miletich fighter tries a kimura. Black uses it to reverse and gets on top in half-guard, but Thiago avoids and gets full guard, and from there he suddenly throws his legs up and locks up a tight triangle, which is enough for the tapout.
Well, Tavares certainly lived up to the hype there, that’s for sure. Absolutely dominating performance against a very experienced veteran, and the surprising thing to me was that he found it so easy to put Black on his back. Once they were on the ground Black was basically schooled by Tavares’ BJJ. Really impressive showing from the Brazilian and he’s another name to be thrown into the hat of contenders at 155lbs.
-Quick recap of the night thus far follows. We didn’t really need to see McFedries kill Radev again, but man is it a cool knockout.
Lightweight Fight: Spencer Fisher vs Sam Stout
This main event was of course a rematch of a 2006 fight between these two; an exciting fight that could’ve gone either way and saw Stout take a split decision victory. The telling point though was that Fisher took the fight on less than a week’s notice and had to cut 20lbs to get to the 155lbs limit, causing him to tire out much quicker than he normally would. Intriguingly though, the kickboxing-oriented Stout had been training for this fight with Randy Couture’s camp in an attempt to get his ground game tuned up. Pretty unbelievable too that after five years of having no marquee slots, the Lightweights ended up headlining two cards in three months!
Round 1 begins and they exchange from the off, with Fisher tagging Stout with a combination. Fisher shoves him to the fence and they muscle in the clinch briefly, before breaking, and Spencer catches him with a swift one-two. The exchange continues, but Fisher gets the better of it, landing the cleaner shots and tagging him a few times as Stout tries to fire back. Stout looks bloodied up, but then he lands a combo ending with a knee that opens a nasty cut over Fisher’s right eye. They continue to trade, with Stout again eating more punches, but he answers with a body kick and a good right hand. Another swift exchange ends the round, and it’s definitely Fisher’s round despite his right eye being badly bloody now.
2nd round begins at the same crazy pace, with Fisher’s hands still the quicker of the two, as he lands the better shots as they just keep on exchanging. Nice leg kick from Fisher lands as the Miletich fighter mixes everything up, landing different combos as well as kicks and knees, as Stout struggles to keep up. Fisher lands a big right hand into a low kick, as Stout tries to counter, but Fisher defends well and nothing really gets through. Another good right lands from Fisher as they continue to exchange, and we get more of the same until the round ends.
Third and final round, and Stout comes out more aggressively, but Fisher continues to win the exchanges with his superior hand speed. Big left hand stuns Stout, and Fisher follows with another, before deflecting an answering combination. Right hand from Fisher drops the Canadian to a knee, but he comes back up only to be tagged again. Stout comes back with a good kick to the body, and another exchange follows with Fisher again coming out on top. Crowd begin to cheer loudly as they just keep on trading, and Stout looks exhausted at this point. Another trade ends the fight, as the crowd give them a standing ovation, and rightfully so too.
Judges all score it 30-27 for Fisher, and that’s definitely the right call, as despite it being a hugely exciting fight, Fisher definitely got the better of Stout in all three rounds. The hand speed appeared to be the difference as Fisher was able to mix up his combinations better and catch Stout cleanly, while Stout’s combos were more predictable and allowed Spencer to defend better. Unbelievably exciting fight though, despite it not hitting the ground once, as both men kept up an insane pace and just went toe-to-toe from start to finish. Play-by-play was almost impossible due to the speed of the exchanges, and here that wasn’t a bad thing. Not quite a high-level FOTYC, but definitely up there with the lower-level ones I would say. Just goes to show how many great fights 2007’s had.
-And we end with a highlight reel of the action.
The Inside Pulse
UFN 10 is easily the best free TV show the UFC has ever put on and it’s probably a contender for best show of 2007 as well. We got two incredible, highlight-reel knockouts to open the show, two great grappling-oriented fights in the middle and a main event that ended up being a war from start to finish and a low-end contender for Fight of the Year to boot. If you missed this one you need to find a way to see it ASAP. Thumbs way up.
Coming Soon….
UFC: 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, Fight Night 11, and the TUF IV Finale.
King of the Cage: 23, 29, 30, 32, 33, 36, 42, 48, 52, and 58.
Until next time,
Scott Newman:
NewmanMMA@gmail.com
