Two big events couldn’t have turned out more oppositely and the fact that they took place across the globe from each other makes it even better.
This past Saturday’s UFC 98 from Vegas offered a fight of the year candidate, a title change, and some cool submissions. Tuesday’s DREAM 9 from the Yokohama Arena saw a lot of first round endings, and with one notable exception was a pretty weak show.
It was a year in the making, but Lyoto Machida finally has made people understand why he is the best light heavyweight in the world, and he has the belt to prove it. The fact that it came in the UFC’s first ever title fight between unbeatens made it all the more special. Machida went through Rashad Evans with such ease and efficiency that all of Evans’ improvement as a fighter over the last year was lost amidst Machida’s punches and karate movements the had Evans at a loss for how to defend against Machida’s strikes. The fact that Machida controlled the movement, pace of the fight, and the cage for the fight’s entirety showed just how in control he was as Evans got in one flurry, but before and after it was just Machida picking his spot and striking with a kick or two or maybe some punches; whatever it was, it was landing.
The fact that Evans was up and talking and didn’t seem to be knocked out the same way others have been—Liddell at Evans’ hand is an example—does show a lot about Rashad Evans’ resolve. This was a guy who I believed was mostly hype after Evans was saved against Tito because Tito couldn’t let go of the cage, but Evans did earn his place amongst the light heavyweight best in my view with the knockout of Liddell and the win over Griffin in an even fight that I believed Evans, in his first title fight, was going to blow. The fact that he lost here doesn’t mean he should be sent back to the bottom as one more knockout win gets him another shot at the gold more than likely.
It may seem almost poetic, but there was a bit of Royce Gracie from the early UFC’s in Machida this past Saturday. When you think about how Gracie dominated people during those shows; now look at how Evans, whose majority brawling style is the one that UFC seems to embody more than any other, having no clue as to how to move or how to engage Machida and looking almost helpless despite being on his feet at certain points during the fight. The comparison from a style-meets-performance standpoint is there.
After Saturday, I really do hope Matt Hughes fights again. Going into the Serra fight, I did believe that Hughes would likely lose as his age had been showing in the fights against GSP and Alves, but after that performance, I hope there’s still one more left in him. As for Serra, he helped make this fight a legit fight of the year candidate with defense and comeback ability unseen in Serra’s career. There were several moments where either man looked to be done only to come back and come back fighting. Hughes in the first round defied time by escaping Serra’s onslaught that should have finished him, shaking off the cobwebs, and nearly finishing Serra by round’s end. The second round and most of round three saw Hughes pull a Randy Couture and dominate a brawling opponent on the ground to the point of embarrassment at times; to Serra’s credit, the old Matt Hughes would’ve finished Serra in the Rear Naked-Choke near the end of round two that Serra got out of. Serra surprised me yet again with his final assault on Hughes to end the fight where for a few moments I was actually afraid controversy would rear its ugly head in the form of a stop. That was not be the case as this fight, like most great ones, had a conclusive finish with the right man getting his hand raised. A close decision, action throughout, back and forth throughout, it sounds like a fight of the year candidate to me. Forget the bullshit “hatred” that had faded so much in 2008 that it was almost comedic that they framed the fight around it. I know they had to because of the fact that the two actually have a history thanks to the reality show, but with no public verbal assaults or anything in ’08 worth noting, there didn’t seem to be too much hatred, even in the UFC version of hatred.
The rest of the card was the usual UFC smorgasbord of submissions and noteworthy moments. Drew McFedries’ thirty seven second domination of Xavier Foupa-Pokam would’ve been another quick TKO, but was made surreal not by the brutality of the strikes McFedries dished out (I think it was stopped a tad late), but by the fact that Foupa-Pokam never stopped moving forward and was clinging to McFedries’ leg as the fight was stopped while McFedries began his celebration. Brock Larson got a nice submission for a win, but submission of the night would go to Tim Hague’s win over Pat Barry that saw him execute a roll over while having Barry in the choke that allowed him to grapewine Barry’s body almost like a pretzel assuring the win. More examples of how the undercard can sometimes provide the most entertaining, noteworthy, or memorable moments of a show.
Machida/Jackson was a given after Machida’s win as Jackson has certainly earned a shot at the title I don’t think he ever lost (I scored the Griffin fight a draw) with the knockout of Wanderlei Silva and going the distance in Keith Jardine. Taking into account that Evans just lost the belt, Griffin is slated to fight Anderson Silva in August, Liddell is done, Shogun isn’t title worthy without at least one other big win, and Jardine has lost to Wanderlei and Jackson in the last year, Rampage is the only one left standing. As for Hughes, I do think he will fight one more time in UFC (likely a Chicago show, which is what he hinted at right away) and call it a career. I will say that the thought of Strikeforce or Affliction snagging Hughes for his retirement fight does intrigue me—I don’t think it’ll happen—just because of the fantasy bookings that go along with what either promotion could potentially offer Hughes. But there would be no better spotlight and no bigger platform for him to go out on, so he’ll stay put and it’s the right call.
Dream’s Openweight (Super Hulk or Whatever The Fuck It’s Called) and Featherweight tournaments were the focus of DREAM 9, but the non-tournament matches provided headlines as well. Tatsuya Kawajiri earned yet another big win by out pointing Gesias “J.Z.” Cavalcante in a close fight that should be considered an upset despite J.Z.’s recent woes against Shinya Aoki dominating the last year of his life in fights. Then there’s the fact that another Dream main-event ended with a no-contest when it absolutely couldn’t. The first that I cite was the first Shinya Aoki/J.Z. Cavalcante fight, the main-event of DREAM 1. That was a tournament fight, but Tuesday’s main-event between Ronaldo Souza and Jason Miller was for the recently vacated Dream Middleweight title. If it were Pride rules, Souza may have gotten a TKO win for the belt, but with the new rules, it ended the fight as a soccer kick from Souza to Miller while Miller was on the mat (now illegal) caused a gash on the top of Miller’s head that brought the fight to an end. A finish that Dream didn’t need, but will likely result in a rematch for the belt in Saitama in July.
The Openweight tourney got underway with every fight going the way I believed it would, but the fashion in which it happened wasn’t quite according to prediction. While Canseco going down in 78 seconds doesn’t surprise me, I’m not going to go into a whole thing about him fighting because I don’t want to dignify it in any way. It was a freakshow, it was advertised that way, it was the only way it could go down, and it’s what everybody wanted it to be, so I’m just going to leave it be. Mousasi dominating Hunt and Soukoudjou dominated Jan Nortje didn’t come as a surprise to me as both Hunt and Norte need to focus on kickboxing only or just retire at this point. The only surprising thing about Minowa winning was how quickly he did it. Yeah, Sapp outweighed him by almost 200 pounds—as he did against Tamura way back when—with the main difference between this fight and Sapp’s fight with Tamura was that Sapp was in the best physical condition he was ever going to be in at that time; now he’s a shell of that guy looking for any appearance he can get, hence the fight with Lashley at the end of June. Minowa has faced bigger men before and have submitted them (Butterbean, Frye) as well as lost to them (Cro Cop, Zulu, Min Soo Kim). The main appeal with Minowa at this point in his career I the fact that he will take on guys much bigger than him in the same way that Sakuraba used to. And as the opener to just about any major show he’s on, Minowa acts as the perfect opening attraction, hence why Minowa/Choi wasn’t a hard guess for a semi-final fight when the first round was all said and done and will likely open the Dream show in September that the tournament semis are on.
The biggest shock of the whole weekend came from a man named Joe Warren. In only his second career MMA fight, Warren used the spectacular grappling and amateur wrestling skills that brought him to MMA to neutralize and win a decision over the returning Norifumi “KID” Yamamoto. It was the high-profile fight of the night because of Yamamoto’s popularity in Japan, but Warren was content on fighting a smart fight and not playing into Yamamoto’s gameplan. While the fight was close, it was Warren who came out the victor with an impressive performance that Yamamoto can chalk up to the seventeen months in between fights (injury kept him out of action last summer), but Warren can use as a momentum builder going into the tournaments final rounds later this year. It was a shocking loss that even ring rust can’t mask as even with seventeen months off, a guy of Yamamoto’s caliber should be able to beat a man in only his second career MMA fight. I’m not trying to take away the fact that Warren is a world-class caliber athlete, specifically in wrestling, but MMA isn’t about one style, it’s about all styles, and that is something that usually takes a few fights to work yourself into if you are at that high of a level at your certain style (it took members of the Gracie family years to mold a more modern MMA style while others never did). Yes, Warren did do exactly what he’s always done in competition and outwrestled Yamamoto to the point of dominating him for instances in the fight and deserved the win, but it was still an upset even with Yamamoto’s rust and had nothing to do with stature; this was Yamamoto having an off night ala Gomi last November and biting it because of it proving once again that every fight counts and nothing, repeat nothing, is for sure in the fight game.
The silver lining that came out of this show has to do with the possibilities for Dream on New Year’s Eve. The Openweight tourney’s final will be contested on that night and I’m picking a Minowa/Mousasi final as I believe Mousasi will expose Sokoudjou the same way Babalu and Machida did as being a guy without a ground game of any kind as a quick knockout make serve to rebuild Sokoudjou’s confidence, but it shouldn’t mask the fact that he is a one-dimensional fighter; Minowa on the other hand will use his ground game the same way he’s done with every big man that he’s been able to earn a W against to beat Choi as Choi is even less of an all-around fighter than Sokoudjou is and like a lot of plodding big men that have made their way into MMA, if you take their legs out they basically are a tree at that point. Yamamoto’s loss, combined with Faber’s loss to Brown last December, should all but guarantee that the biggest featherweight dream match the weight class has with Faber/Yamamoto should take place New Year’s Eve. I understand that if Faber beats Brown a week from Sunday that he’ll be champion once again, but that’d be irrelevant as Yamamoto wouldn’t be worthy of a title shot at the moment anyway. The main problem is the potential territoriality that the fighters’ home promotions would have towards this dream fight. On that issue, I believe that Faber/Yamamoto should happen in Japan for several reasons: the crowd at the event would be bigger, the fight would get more hype in Japan than it would in the U.S., and Japanese fans know who Faber is because the fight was rumored for last year while most U.S. fans have no idea who Yamamoto is. As a fight fan, I’m hoping for Faber/Yamamoto to grace Dream & K-1’s New Year’s Eve card whether Faber is WEC’s featherweight champ or not. As a realist I’ll believe it when I see it.
