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UFC Fight Night: Silva vs. Irvin (7/19 Las Vegas)
By Zach Arnold | July 19, 2008
Reports: Observer | Sherdog | MMA Junkie | MMA Mania | Bloody Elbow | Five Ounces | Kevin Iole (Yahoo Sports)
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If you’re watching the TV broadcast, you will notice right away that Spike TV has upgraded the graphics and labels used on-screen. You will also notice that the UFC acknowledged the IFL and used IFL video footage to build up Reese Andy.
Personal highlight so far: Mike Goldberg sounding as if he said “Juan Carneiro” when talking about Kevin Burns defeating Roan Carneiro during a video package to hype up Burns/Anthony Johnson. One thing we learned about Kevin Burns — that man has a mean eye-poke.
Cain Velasquez absolutely smothered and destroyed Jake O’Brien with about 100 shots to the face from side position. The irony of seeing someone labeled ‘the human blanket’ getting smothered was quite obvious.
Although the fight didn’t turn out as good as I had hoped, we should all give both Frankie Edgar and Hermes Franca credit for their effort tonight. Amazing how Franca was dominated throughout the fight and almost pulled it off at the end. BTW, not a single steroid mention about Franca and the fans at the show didn’t boo him.
On a side note, all this talk about how ‘all the media’ and ‘all the MMA fighting stars’ being at the Affliction show… how is this supposedly damaging to UFC? It means nothing in the grand scheme of things. I find it silly. Quinton Jackson is at the Affliction show only days after Dana White reportedly bailed him out of jail?
The UFC has done a better job of promoting Reese Andy within the time span of two hours than all of the months he spent in the IFL. Maybe a total of three combined minutes of air time has been devoted to talking and putting over Reese Andy and UFC has managed to make him seem more important than the IFL ever did. So, of course, Brandon Vera dominated Andy in a very boring fight.
That was a devastating and lightning-fast knockout by Anderson Silva on James Irvin.
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A Peruvian Necktie, eh? I’ve never seen one, but it was very impressive.
On another note, the time between fights for the Affliction show seems a little excessive to me. The fights have been pretty decent so far, at least.
The crowd has been a little raucous though.
Wow, is this going to be a DQ?
Wow, really?! That’s pretty nutty.
For those not watching, Burns poked Johnson at least 3-4 times during the course of the bout. The final poke was so bad that Johnson fell down, covered his head and shouted in pain. It looked like Burns’s finger went INTO the socket. Absolutely revolting to see the replay.
Then, to top it off, they declare it a TKO for Burns.
Why on earth was that not a DQ? I want my money back.
Cain “Real Deal” Valasquez.
Yeah, that was a weird ruling considering the warnings.
Cain Velasquez looked rather impressive over Jake O’Brien though.
You want your money back for a free show?
s/b “Sugar” Cain Velasquez
Frankie Edgar is quickly becoming a favorite of mine. He’s a smart fighter, but he’s never boring. I’m a little disappointed in Franca, but he has great heart.
Vera looked super tentative. He probably put a lot of pressure on himself after his back-to-back losses, but Andy never posed a threat. Very disappointed.
Vera looked much better at light heavyweight. Boring fight but Vera looks hard to beat at this weight.
Who didn’t see that coming? Great job.
It was basically leg kick, leg kick, circle, catch Irvin’s kick, end the fight. Silva at 205 opens up a lot of interesting fight possibilities.
was it just me or did anderson silva look big
Silva and Fedor…. gods among men.
Couldn’t agree more.
Irvin and Sylvia looked like total amateurs tonight and that is in no way a slight to them.
Spyder and Fedor > All
I don’t want to see Frankie Edgar again until he finishes an opponent.
The difference is that Sylvia is a legit top 5 fighter and Irvin isn’t anywhere near the top 10, Gaijin. Irvin is about as good as Alex Stiebling, who Silva similarly beat (well, Stiebling went down to a cut from a high kick, Irvin was out cold), and so its kinda tough to consider this a major victory, IMO.
Where did I say anything about what you’re talking about?
Silva came up 20lbs, when he’s actually been able to fight at welterweight and cleaned house on Irvin. Regardless of him being top 10 or not Silva looked absolutely impressive. Clearly Fedor’s win was a bigger accomplishment because Sylvia is a top 5 HW, but that’s really beside the point, of course I don’t need to tell YOU that since I had to listen to you lecture about how Sylvia had this fight in the bag and Fedor never dealt with a fighter like Sylvia before. He looked to have serious trouble getting inside that reach didn’t he?
Well, Sylvia and Irvin did look like amateurs. The difference is that Irvin isn’t, you know, very good. There may be amateurs fighting better than him. Bombing him out like that is no surprise. Sylvia is a different story.
Also, I never said he had it in the bag. I just said that the people about this being a for sure win were crazy. Well, as it turns out, Fedor blew him apart like it was a cartoon. For as impressive as it was for some, it was damned impressive to me. Fedor might as well be #1 and #2, because the gap to everyone else is big.
True, true - apologies for putting words in your mouth. I also did say in the other thread that Fedor defeated the better competition last night and that he’s deserving of the p4p crown again after last night’s performance.
I also concur with you that I really didn’t expect Silva to lose, but I really didn’t think he’d take it so quickly or without taking one shot. Granted you saw a ~top 10 HW move DOWN to LHW and look horrendous against equally “talented” competition. So it’s nothing to sneeze at either…but I guess we’ll reserve judgment until we see him fight someone of somewhat higher caliber. The one thing this does show us is that the UFC will have something to do with Silva other than continue to fight the already cleaned out 185 division.
Andy has better tools than him for MMA, honestly, but Vera looked, as he had in other bouts, pretty mediocre. If he was a top 10 heavyweight, it wasn’t by a whole lot.
Silva has at least two guys to fight right now, even if neither one is likely to be a great challenge. Plus they have options of getting some of the IFL talent and building them. I’d like to see another 4-5 defenses first, then worry about Silva being pushed into the light heavyweights. There’s so much talent there already, why rush? Or set up a fight with GSP if you need someone to move up at some point in the next 1-2 years….
I was not terribly impressed with this UFC event. The Silva fight was over disappointingly fast for a main event with no real co-main to support it, and the most interesting actual fight of the night for me was probably Dollaway.
Which isn’t much to hang your hat on.
Watched it again, not as bad as it was Saturday night. The Franca - Edgar fight was still disappointing to me (I’m not seeing fight of the night here…not sure what everyone else is loving), and back to back with the Vera - Andy snorefest, that hurt the show. Otherwise, good fights, and assuming that the majority opinion about Franca - Edgar being teh awesome is correct, it was a pretty successful card.