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UFC 91 (11/15 Las Vegas – Couture vs. Lesnar)
By Zach Arnold | November 15, 2008
AOL Fanhouse | Sherdog | NBC Sports | MMA Junkie | Five Ounces | Observer
So, how much of an issue will weight be, given the result of this fight? If Lesnar is a natural super-heavyweight…
Topics: Media, MMA, UFC, Zach Arnold | 31 Comments » | Permalink | Trackback |
For an undercard that was supposed to be sub-par, it sure is entertaining so far.
Gonzaga with a showcase fight. And Maia is just unreal on the ground. Quarry is no push-over, and he made it look easy.
We could end up with eight broadcast fights tonight. This is nuts.
Protip: that guy at the end of the videogame that’s really really tough to beat is called the “final boss.”
Randy’s looking kind of…skinny? Like he’s sick or dehydrated…that can’t be good.
It would have been so funny to see Randy raise his hands during Lesnar’s interview and watch the crowd totally drown out Lesnar and Rogan. This fight changes nothing…Couture is still the winner, he is still the champ in the minds and hearts of the fans. And that beats a belt any old day.
8 Fights… They could show the 9th if they wanted to.
I was not down on this card as everybody else, but I still admitted that the undercard was a little less then usual. With that said, this ended up being an extremely enjoyable PPV. Some great KO’s, some great subs… The main event was entertaining.
“Couture is still the winner, he is still the champ in the minds and hearts of the fans.”
Before Couture becomes the next Ken Shamrock he should leave while he’s still ‘the champ’ in the heart of Jonathan, and the rest of the Randymaniacs.
And is it just me, or did Randy look a lot like Bruce Willis tonight? (that’s not a compliment – Bruce is 60)
(This fight changes nothing…Couture is still the winner, he is still the champ in the minds and hearts of the fans. And that beats a belt any old day.)
“Show me someone who still has heroes, and I will show you someone who is still in the fifth grade.” A quote from Bert Sugar. And I am sure many others have said this.
I’m sorry man, but come on! It’s not like Couture lost a close decision. He was getting beaten and got stopped. I have always been a Couture fan, ever since he beat Vitor Belfort the first time around over ten years ago. But he lost man, get over it.
Can’t say its surprising but in my heart I wish Randy had won. Something about that ape just sits wrong with me. However Brock will take some doing to beat, Nog has it in him, so does AA, Fedor of course and Josh. really I think to beat Brock you need to be a true heavy, fast, skilled and vicious or just as big and strong. I wonder if Shane could do it. I guess I like the skill fighters better, so War Nog.
Fedor is a true heavyweight?
Let me be the first people to predict that Kenny Florian will beat BJ Penn. I know people are completely counting him out. I was doing it at first too. Here is why I think Florian will win:
1. Kicks – We have never really seen BJ Penn have to deal with lots of kicks. He loves to box, but that is about it.
2. BJJ – Florian is not as good as BJ Penn in BJJ. However, he has good enough submissions to likely avoid being submitted.
3. Conditioning – I’m still not sold on BJ Penn having great conditioning. At lightweight, he has had 2 fights last less then 10 minutes, and the fight against Sherk didn’t force him to really work hard. Florian would push the pace and tire Penn out, and take over during the later rounds.
Kenny Florian over BJ Penn, by either 48-47 decision, or stoppage in the 4th.
Well I gotta say the past three numbered UFC events have been garbage. I seriously hope Affliction sorts their shit and provides a suitable substitute to fans like myself (none of the UFC lifers here) who are sick of this terrible product they are shoving down my throat.
I remember saying MMA should gravitate towards a boxing model and it’s absolutely wrong for UFC. They need to get back on this wrestling wagon and start packing these shitty cards with real superstars. Affliction needs to continue pushing the boxing version of fighter vs fighter. Because tonight for UFC was epic fail (and 89 and 90). I hope it has less then 200k buys especially since there was an FTA pirate satellite fix for all the potential buyers that could have been forced into purchasing this terrible card just before it started.
Fuck you UFC for wasting my night. (I had fuck all to do anyway, not like someone like me has friends)
1. If you didn’t like this card, why purchase it?
2. It’s hard to say the UFC doesn’t stack cards when on one card they will have Griffin/Evans, Nogueira/Mir, & Silva/Jackson.
3. This was an extremely entertaining card.
I should have had an “or’ in there. I think Fedor can beat Brock via skill and visciousness. Kind of How Wand haz been able to fight at LHW when by all rights he should fight at 185.
Bill Bob? Seriously?
Nine fights, most of them extremely good…this was as good a UFC show as there has been all year.
Ya I bet you enjoyed this event lol. UFC can do no wrong in your eyes. Glad you enjoyed this glorified fight night and hope you paid for it. I know I didn’t.
Maybe next months UFC is worth money, or next Affliction, but not this stinker. They didn’t show every fight because of early finishes, they wanted to make sure people didn’t get gypped and pissed (all low class bum fighters imo).
Big Bill Bob needs to go find himself a hooker and get laid. Anybody who didn’t enjoy that night of fights needs to relax.
Good event. Some great fights and a good showing. Randy actually did better than I thought. I picked it to end in the first with Brock as the Champ. Even if you didn’t like the main event, the rest of the card was great, very entertaining matches.
On a side note, Big Bill Bob is very juvenile. His posts so far have been worthless dribble. If he can’t find anything in the last few UFC’s worth enjoying, then he’s not a fan of MMA and needs to find another sport to complain about.
With all due respect, I wouldn’t pay much attention to Big Bill Bob. Having read yesterday through all 100+ posts in the thread where Zach’s headline was about why Affliction gets so much press, the one consistent thing was that every possible position that was negative towards the UFC (or positive towards Pride, or positive towards Affliction) was offered by Big Bill Bob in such a way that it actually de-legitimized the point or disproved the point.
I can imagine it would be hard to spot if you were only reading the thread a few posts at a time like normal, but when you read through all 100+ posts in one painful sitting, it’s pretty by-the-numbers “straw man argument” stuff that you’d learn in psychology class.
And if the trend throughout the posts hadn’t already made it clear, I think the line about finding more like-minded people on the Sherdog Forums was a troll slip-up because the author got a little too cute and it served as a pretty clear give-away.
In short, I don’t think it does anybody any good to pay attention to or feed into what Big Bill Bob says.
On a separate note and a separate post, in response to what Zach wrote: “So, how much of an issue will weight be, given the result of this fight? If Lesnar is a natural super-heavyweight…”
I don’t think it will have too much of an effect. It will just mean that anyone who is 230 or lower will be cutting to light heavyweight, but that is what already happens in the majority of cases anyway, so that’s why I say it won’t change too much.
Small heavyweights can’t hang with the bigger guys unless it’s Fedor. Fedor is 230+ but he has extra body fat and when he was in his best ever shape in PRIDE, I think he was down to 224.
Fedor, despite his small size, would beat Lesnar for sure. Sure Choi is slower than Lesnar but if a 365+ pound monster was made short work of by Fedor, the 275+ pound pro wrestler should be beat easily by the GOAT. Nogueira, Barnett, Arlovski and Mir (again) would all beat Lesnar too.
That really was an awesome card.
Every fight was great, with the possible exception of Gonzaga vs nobody. I don’t like witnessing executions.
To top it off, Joe Rogan said post-fight that the win put Gonzaga close to a title-shot, what, for beating Hen-who?
Werdum certainly deserves a shot before Gonzaga, but then again, Jardine deserved a shot before Griffin for the very same reason! Since Werdum’s out, Gonzaga needs at least 2 real wins.
Match him up against one of the young up and comers, like Carwin or Velasquez, then against the loser of Nogueira-Mir, and then we’ll see about a title shot.
My subjectivity is completely valid. These blogs and comment sections always become the same regurgitated rhetoric, important to have differing ideas.
It is completely unacceptable that all the blogs and MMA media are singing the praises of this last UFC event. This is sending a direct message that the quality of fighters they put on this card is fair for fifty dollars. That is not the case at all as this was chalked full of TUF faces that deserve to be on TUF cards.
Then we hear word about the 4.8 million gate plus the supposed 1.2 million PPV buys. I bet Randy is feeling even more like the victim now with his probable $250k baseline pay, considering Affliction is spending money like water. UFC will continue paying their marquee athletes chits and bits until they have no choice otherwise due to negotiation leverage.
UFC will continue beign exceptionally avarice henceforward only providing elite fighters stretched across multiple cards stuffed with undercard unknowns, thanks to all the goofy media and bloggers that continue to appalaud this subpar effort from them. (its because they generally dont have to pay to watch these events in the first place, especially with Yahoo offering online streaming now)
I guess UFC must see value in the boxing PPV model ever since they’ve started swimming hand over fist in cash, and will undoubtably continue to want that little extra taste more, and more, and more.
It’s almost like a grand dash for UFC credentials, commensing an Ultimate Ass Kissing competition to see who can earn them with the most blatently obvious shilling. Couple that with the many many naive UFC fanattics and you have yourself the perfect recipe for future lackluster matchups.
I’m sure if you asked 45 though, he’d tell you “Oh well, atleast it has the shiny lights and neat production, plus I get to hear Joe Rogan!”
And I thought I should throw it out there for people that bitch and whine about Afflictions pay scale, how else does business work then? You offer top people comparable pay to their current, with hopes they will accept? Affliction is forced to curb pay to compete with UFC and make their product appealing to fighters. In many ways, I think their pay is alot more fair then UFC when you take into comparison that back in John L. Sullivans era of 1882-1992 he became the first American sports hero to become a national celebrity and the first American athlete to earn over 1 million dollars.
Now thats well over 100 years ago essentially right at the very start of boxing. So a man who originated with the sport was making substantial money, yet another who did the same (Randy) makes whatever his master scratchs off their chin.
1. Guys like Couture get a portion of the PPV Buys
2. What message are we to send to Zuffa? To not put on cards with Griffin/Evans, Jackson/Silva, & Nogueira/Mir? They have no reason to put on loaded cards like this, but they still do. They get the sport and their fans.
3. Affliction spends too much for their talent. Hence why they haven’t even announced a second card yet. They don’t know how to run an MMA organization.
The second card is coming together quite nicely actually. And they are forced to put on a grand spectacle for their year end show, lets wait and see how the undercard for BJ vs GSP shapes up, then you can talk. And like I said, if you want the top persons in any field you have to pay more for them, something Affliction is trying and hopefully successfully working.
And how do you know how much Randy gets? All we know is the figures released, maybe thats why he was trying with every last morsel of effort to get released to make Affliction paydays, since thats guarenteed cash, and he deserves it.
I don’t like the fact that the talent is spread thin on UFC cards except for NYE events. But Zuffa does it because they can get away with it. Whatever they put out, they can always count on a dedicated 300k+ buying US PPVs and 200k+ buying UK PPVs. Dana has figured out how to make the brand bigger than the fighters and the sport and that’s why they can do this. There is absolutely no incentive for Zuffa to do what PRIDE did. PRIDE had only 10 events a year in total, which allowed them to stack their PPVs. Zuffa is spreading their talent across 12 PPVs, 1 free UFC, 5 UFNs and 2 TUF Finales. That is a lot. And keep in mind that PRIDE had their marquee names fight more often (partly because of tournaments). That’s why PRIDE was stacked and UFC isn’t except on NYE.
Ideally, as a fan, I’d like to see them cut down to 10 PPVs, have marquee names fight 3 times a year if injury-free and stack the cards. Free TV could have the left overs.
Affliction spends too much for their talent. Hence why they haven’t even announced a second card yet. They don’t know how to run an MMA organization.
It was announced as was the PPV distributor.
Big Bill Bob— Trolls are not necessarily meant to offend people. Trolls are meant to elicit a specifically intended response (in this case, prompting F.O. board members to easily knock down the straw man arguments that you intentionally set up for them). You’re pitching softballs and they’re swinging at them hard.
I agree BBB is a sorry attempt at trolling, just dont get much of it on F.O. I see no reason to respond to or even attempt a debate. Must have joined the underground and got banned in in a day.
I’m sure the owner of this site would take appropriate measures to moderate or remove me from all discussions if I was such a troll, or having my “frivolous arguments” torn to shreds.
It’s simply a different point of view with varying opinions from your own, which is what internet bulletin board systems were built upon. Please ignore my future comments if you disagree and by all means I won’t be directing any future comments (nor had I previously) in your direction to hear your “superior acumen”.
P.S. Ivan
I got you back, Zing. (Fitch Thread)