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« | Home | »

UFC 130: Night of the one-sided main-events

By Zach Arnold | May 28, 2011

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Dark matches/Spike TV bouts

Main card

Random thoughts

Biggest news of the day wasn’t even UFC 130-related. From Josh Gross:

“Sources: Fedor takes home $1.5 M while Henderson makes $800k for their fight in July. Huge purses. Zuffa will have hard time making money.”

That fight on July 30th at Sears Center.

Best person to follow on Twitter tonight during UFC 130: MindofGoldberg. Simply great. Even Mike & Joe (Rogan) had no energy and were flat for the pre-fight hype tonight. You could just feel the flatness. Dana didn’t even scream on TV tonight as he is wont to do. The empty seats on camera and on display tonight at the MGM Grand Garden Arena was quite a sight.

Judging controversy of the day: The judging for the Demetrious Johnson/Miguel Torres fight. What’s the point of having the Unified Rules if no one wants to go by the letter of the law? Torres was active off his back, was far more aggressive on offense, went for submissions, and did several reversals. DJ ended up getting rewarded because he was on top for two rounds. Position. Being on top. I like both fighters and I picked Torres to win a razor-thin decision, but the 29-28 unanimous decisions across the board was … something.

Did you know that Clay Guida vs. Anthony Pettis is happening next weekend on Spike TV? Don’t worry, nobody else does at this point, either.

Who should Brian Stann fight next? One idea – he fights the winner of Mark Munoz/Demian Maia (which takes place at UFC 131 in Vancouver in two weeks). Lots of fans online very apprehensive about idea of booking Maia against Stann, however.

Cain Velasquez was busy getting married while Rick Story was taking it to Thiago Alves and Stefan Struve was getting blitzed with a superman punch by Travis Browne.

Jon Jones is a -305 favorite early on the sportsbooks to beat Rampage Jackson (should they fight). In other words, 75/25 favorite.

Topics: All Topics | 47 Comments » | Permalink | Trackback |

47 Responses to “UFC 130: Night of the one-sided main-events”

  1. 45 Huddle says:

    Great card. I am interested in every PPV fight. And each fight is close on paper.

    The SpikeTV Prelims are probably the best ever in the history of that one hour show. Two Top 5 fighters…. That’s great.

    • Mike says:

      Whoever decided fight of the night at UFC 130 needs rehab for crack counselling. Torres vs Johnson was the CLEAR pick to anyone with even a semblence of knowledge of MMA.
      Worst UFC I’ve seen.

  2. EJ says:

    I’m really interested in Mir vs. Nelson and Rampage vs. Hamill and of course the Main Event.

    To me Mir vs. Nelson is probably the most interesting fight because i’m really curious to see where Mir’s head is right now. He has a tendency is overlooking guys and not putting in the work neccesary to deal with them and Nelson while not great has a big right hand that can do damage. So the question for me is which Mir will show up for the fight because Nelson is at least dependable win or lose he’s coming to fight.

    Page vs. Hamill is also very interesting because I think Matt can expose alot of Jackson’s bad habits. Like Mir he tends to overlook his weaknesses and just shows up to knock guys out and if Matt can wear him down like Rashad did he can pull the upset.

    Now as for the ME, I think Frankie is going to put on a show he laid the blueprint to beat Maynard in the last 4 rounds and won that fight handily imo. He needs to come out and imposse himself on Gray and send a statement right from the start and end any questions about Gray being a bad style match up for him.

    • EJ says:

      One more thing, this might be the best prelims the UFC has ever had on Spike TV. Mighty Mouse vs. Torres and Story vs. Alves will both be fireworks and have nice starpower which should be a hell of a lead in to the PPV.

  3. 45 Huddle says:

    And now this event is without a main event. Both Edgar and Maynard got injured. Fighters need to learn how to train better without getting injured so often.

  4. edub says:

    It’ll be interesting to see what happens in this main event. Maynard clearly blew most of his energy early trying to finish (in what should have been scored a 10-7 round). Frankie took advantage in the second, but lost the third. He wrestled more in the 4th, but the 5th was realy close. I scored it 10-10 the first time I watched it, and gave a slight edge to Frankie the second. Still Maynard should have easily taken the decision.

    (Just saw that fight is scrapped. Shitty Terrible event now unless something is added.)

    • 45 Huddle says:

      Nothing is being added. Rampage/Hammill is the main event. According to MMA Fighting that is…. Which is a weak main event.

      But overall the PPV is not that bad….. I would assume…

      Rampage/Hammill, Mir/Nelson, Struve/Browne, Stann/Santiago, & Alves/Story. Which is a really really solid card was absolutely no main event.

      I’m 50/50 on buying it now. Probably depends on how my Labor Day Weekend’s Saturday goes….

      • 45 Huddle says:

        It also probably means Edgar will be fighting in August on the Jersey Show….

        • edub says:

          True, any idea what both injuries are?

        • 45 Huddle says:

          Edgar’s ribs…. Which is why he should be available so quickly.

          Maynard’s knee…. Which could be short like Evans or long if he blew something out.

      • edub says:

        Yea I’ll buy it. As you pointed out it still has a lot of good fights. However, this was a terrible blow.

        High profile training in MMA needs to be tweaked to stop these things. This is becoming an alarming trend IMO. “Sometimes fighters get injured” is not a good enough explanation, or excuse.

        • David M says:

          Their buy rate is going to get cut by 1/3. Rampage v Hammill is a Spike TV main event, not a PPV main event, especially with no marketing push behind it at all. Nobody buys ppvs for undercards, they buy for main event. Weak main event = weak buy rate.

      • The Gaijin says:

        “I’m 50/50 on buying it now. Probably depends on how my Labor Day Weekend’s Saturday goes….”

        Not so fast – give me back my summer @$$hole! 🙂 I think you mean Memorial Day.

        This will probably be a go to the bar with some buddies event for me, pretty strong undercard and these are the cards that usually deliver b/c you re-jig your expectations. BTW – any Manhattanite’s here have recommendations on bars to watch UFC events in? The ones I have gone to so far leave a lot to be desired in terms of clientele and atmosphere (Firefly looks like an Affliction convention).

  5. Mark says:

    Yeah, it’s funny. It’s a pretty strong show, just with a crappy main event. They really should be pushing Mir/Nelson as the main event. Mir is still one of their bigger stars (even though his career would probably be in critical condition if he loses) and Nelson is fairly popular. But on the other hand, Hamill is not popular with anybody, and Rampage already has already shown with the Jardine fight that he can’t pull blockbuster numbers against a C-level star fighter like GSP can.

    As for the fights, I think Nelson can beat Mir, since JDS couldn’t knock him out and he’s good enough wrestling to give Mir problems. And I don’t know what else they can do with Mir afterwards. I guess he has to hope Lesnar gets destroyed by Dos Santos so they can do a 3rd fight. Other than that he’s just going to be a punching bag for the new heavyweights until he gets released.

    Hamill has heavy hands, but Jackson has superior striking, he’s bigger, and I don’t think Hamill is a better wrestler than he is. So I really don’t see how Hamill wins this fight.

    Buy prediction: 300,000.

  6. mr. roadblock says:

    I guess there’s no way to do this with PPV. But it would be good for UFC to put this event on Spike TV.

    It would be a nice gesture for the fans. I think you might end up getting a bunch of new eyeballs too because people are going to be on vacation or at a friend’s house/party for Memorial Day. Pretty much everyone gets Spike. But if you’re on the road a lot of times you can’t access PPV.

  7. The Judge says:

    I don’t anticipate these fights to be too competitive and interesting at the same time.
    Alves, Struve, Stann, Nelson, Hamill.

  8. Zack says:

    Yawn.

  9. edub says:

    http://www.lowkick.com/UFC/The-first-edition-of-LOWKICK-PICKS-12832

    Also got Torres by decision, and Grove by sub on the undercard.

  10. Norm says:

    IMO, this is a great card because so many of the fights could go either way.

  11. 45 Huddle says:

    Rampage, Nelson, Struve, Stann, Story, Johnson, & Boetsch.

    I could see myself going 7-0 or 0-7 on this card. A lot of close fights on paper.

    I wanted to pick Hamill but he doesn’t have high enough takedowns to beat Rampage. Plus Rampage looks to be in hood shape. I am picking Nelson because of his punching power and conditioning. Struve because I think he is slowly growing into his body and has the toughness to gut out a victory. Stann was tailor made to beat Santiago who I think is very very overrated due to his time in Japan. He barely beat Misaki a few times. Stann is going to KO him in the first.

    I’m picking Story in the upset. This will be a true test for him. But his body punches and takedowns should be enough. This is the pick I am least sure of.

  12. 45 Huddle says:

    Bisping and Mayhem as coaches on TUF. I love it. I’m not a fan of TUF anymore but those are 2 great choices.

    1) No titles are held up.

    2) Both are great trash talkers.

    3) Their fight should be off the wall entertaining.

    • RossenSearchTeam says:

      Not a fan of TUF or mayhem, but it is a shrewd choice.

      It will appeal to its demographic.

      Heck I might even check it out at least once just because Bisping doesn’t seem to have a sense of humor.

      His reaction to mayhems BS might need to be seen.

  13. Nepal says:

    Brian Davidson dominated Jens Pulver. Was way faster and accurate striking. Forced Pulver to go for takedowns, Davidson took his back and RNC’d Pulver at 4:04 first round. Not good for Jens.

  14. RossenSearchTeam says:

    Story/Alves is probably the most interesting fight on there.

    Come on Santiago.

    Mir/Nelson is the second most interesting fight.
    But I still have a hard time picturing Nelson as HW champ as long as he’s sticking with the fatso schtick.
    And I’ve still never liked Mir.

    But it should be a pretty watchable clash of two talented supersized grunts.

    Hammill/jackson is stupid IMO.

    Its sure no replacement for Thiago/jackson.

    God bless Hammill, but his fight IQ may not be sharp enough to take his only chance and lay on jackson for an ugly W.

    And thats probably the most that can be salvaged from matchmaking misfire.

  15. The Gaijin says:

    I actually think this card for all the flack its getting has a lot of interesting fights. It’s not a box office draw by any means and I can see people’s legitimate complaints about it, but I think there will actually be some good tilts.

    I’ll go with:

    Rampage – far better stand-up, good TDD to make Hamill pay for his unrefined striking and likely attempts to shoot from too far out. Probably a UD or late TKO.

    Mir – I suck at picking Mir fights, so Nelson will probably steam roll him and I could easily see him winning. Nelson is actually a pretty solid striker with heavy hands, surprisingly good conditioning and a really underrated grappler, but seeing them at the weigh-ins, Mir looks like he’s back “on his good diet” *wink wink* and will probably be able to bully Big Country around. Nelson should get serious about his diet and add some muscle to his frame rather than arsing around with the big belly gimmick…but this really is the test to see how far up the ladder Nelson belongs.

    Stann – I like Santiago and think he’s vastly improved and a technically sound fighter, but he’s got a shite chin and his heart can be questioned. Stann is heavy handed and a big strong dude at 185, I don’t see this going well for Santiago.

    Alves – this is like the Mir/Nelson fight, in that I can see either guy having very legitimate arguments for winning. Alves looked really great at the weigh-ins, less bulky and importantly looked to have a lot of energy. He’s been able to fend off better wrestlers than Story so I think he’ll punish him standing and even finish him off in the 3rd.

    Struve – I think we’ll see the continuing maturation of the big man here and he’ll start using his length and not allow himself to be blasted out by Browne.

    McDonald, Tibau, Boetsch, Escovedo and Johnson.

  16. 45 Huddle says:

    UFC’s website had a video feature on the 8 best one punch knockouts.

    Dan Henderson vs. Michael Bisping was #3.

    Nice to see Henderson being un-erased from the history books.

  17. 45 Huddle says:

    Thoughts so far:

    1) Boetsch looked solid at Middleweight. He still needs to improve his conditioning slightly, but he will make a solid upper level gatekeeper at this weight.

    2) I’m shocked at how many people thought Torres won the fight. Half attempted submission attempts where your opponent isn’t even that close to being caught really has little impact on my scorecards. And at the end of the fight, look at each fighter and his corner….. Torres and his camp KNEW he lost. It was written all over their body language.

    3) If it isn’t inside the Zuffa matchmaking machine, it shouldn’t be ranked. It’s as simple as that. Zuffa has the best eye for talent and tests it’s fighters properly. Santiago looked like an unstoppable monster in Japan. He got KO’d in the UFC by Brian Stann.

    4) Brian Stann should be one fight away from a title shot now. Not sure who to give him next as most of the top contenders are already booked.

    5) Time to cut Kendall Grove. 7-5 in the UFC and it’s obvious he is never going to get better. And he’s not that exciting lately either. Too many holes in his game.

    • Jonathan says:

      To point number three 45 Huddle,

      That already is the case, in regards to not being counted or ranked if it is not a Zuffa contracted fight. And in Japan, Santiago had two VERY close fights which happened to both me FOTY candidates. Obviously the talent level is 100x higher in the UFC than in Sengoku/DREAM, but to say that he looked UNSTOPPABLE is a bit of a misnomer.

      • 45 Huddle says:

        I guess my biggest problem with Santiago was that he was being ranked as high as 6 or 7 in the world…. Which as we saw yesterday was just wrong.

    • Nepal says:

      Honestly, Santiago didn’t look that great even in Japan. He was losing both fights to Misaki big time before he pulled the wins out in the 5th rounds. He’s an ok fighter but he isn’t anywhere close to UFC level. He can be a gatekeeper for a while but that’s it, he’ll be gone in 2012.

      Torres vs Johnson: To me this is a case of judges not scoring the full 5 minute rounds. In round 2, Torres was dominant in the first half of the round, aggressive sub attempts and he was under Johnson for the last 2 minutes or so with zero damage being done to him. To give either round 1 or 2 to Johnson is impossible if you had the ability to watch the fight 2 or 3 times (which of course is impossible) but if you have to make a judgement call after 5 minutes of action, the last 2.5 minutes are going to mean a lot more than the first 2.5 minutes… it’s just normal human sense of recall. After watching that fight twice, it was clear that Torres won the first 2 rounds.

      Somebody who posts regularily here (I forget who) recently suggested 5 x 4 minute rounds fights and 7 x 5 minute rounds for championship fights. That would help the judging problems to some degree. Judges have enough on their plate without the addition of such long rounds.

  18. David M says:

    Roy loves his gimmick of being the fat guy who can fight, but he needs to seriously get his shit together if he wants to stay in the UFC and be a contender. He has power, chin, heart, and good standing technique, but he just needs to get himself in shape.

  19. spacedog says:

    Roy is a sideshow right about now. I find my self wanting to root for him but I just can’t respect him at this point.

    A little like Fedor although I am a huge Fedor Homer. Both need to make some simple and fairly obvious changes but for some reason just won’t.

    Rampage will get slaughtered against Bones. He has exactly nothing for him.

    Overall card was meh. Some fun enough fights but nobody came out looking like they’re ready to be a star or challenge for a belt. Stann is the best of the bunch but I really see nothing from him that makes me think he could handle Silva.

  20. mr. roadblock says:

    UFC 130: Crapfest

  21. David M says:

    I’m glad I didn’t buy this pile of shit. Matt Hamill has about as much business in a UFC main event as Dan Severn does.

    Rampage has a shot against JJ because he hits hard and has great wrestling defense and strength. He will be a big underdog and deservedly so, but he at least should be able to hit JJ occasionally.

  22. EJ says:

    “From Josh Gross-Sources: Fedor takes home $1.5 M while Henderson makes $800k for their fight in July. Huge purses. Zuffa will have hard time making money.”

    Not really Showtime will pay for Fedor’s purse, hell they might even pay for Hendo’s depending on how his deal was formatted.

    “Judging controversy of the day: The judging for the Demetrious Johnson/Miguel Torres fight. What’s the point of having the Unified Rules if no one wants to go by the letter of the law? Torres was active off his back, was far more aggressive on offense, went for submissions, and did several reversals. DJ ended up getting rewarded because he was on top for two rounds. Position. Being on top. I like both fighters and I picked Torres to win a razor-thin decision, but the 29-28 unanimous decisions across the board was … something.”

    There was zero controversy about how that fight was scored. While Torres was very active he was taken down several times and his submissions ammounted to nothing since Mighty Mouse was able to control him and work him for pretty much the whole round. The fight was close but the right guy won for once, for the life of me I can’t figure out how staying on your back and failing at submissions for a round eqauls winning a round. All you had to do was look at Torres face and you saw that he knew he was beaten and outworked by Johnson.

  23. kutti says:

    mir-fight: boring
    rampage-fight: boring
    enough said..

  24. 45 Huddle says:

    Overall, I enjoyed the fights last night. The main event was painfully boring, but that was the fight I was least looking forward to anyways.

    The Light Heavyweight Title Contender picture is a complete mess, but that doesn’t matter much. Eventually the best will rise to the top and we will see the champion fight those guys.

    I am glad Dana White is attacking Roy Nelson publicly. Nelson is not acting like a PROFESSIONAL ATHLETE and needs a true wake-up call. He needs to either compete at around 230….. And still probably struggle against the bigger Heavyweights but will at least be in better shape….. Or, he should lose all of the weight and get down to Light Heavyweight and really take his career seriously.

  25. Kelvin says:

    “Judging controversy of the day: The judging for the Demetrious Johnson/Miguel Torres fight. What’s the point of having the Unified Rules if no one wants to go by the letter of the law? Torres was active off his back, was far more aggressive on offense, went for submissions, and did several reversals. DJ ended up getting rewarded because he was on top for two rounds. Position. Being on top. I like both fighters and I picked Torres to win a razor-thin decision, but the 29-28 unanimous decisions across the board was … something.”

    Yep…it was something..it was the right call…you guys make it seem like Torres was throwing up submission attempt after submission attempt…he wasn’t…he may have had like 3-5 legit attempts…and none of them were particularly close(no way to determine that anyways.

    While the fight was standing…Johnson landed the better shots there…thing is…anyone with common sense KNEW Johnson was going to take Torres down repeatedly because Torres has horrible takedown defense…so it’s not like it was unexpected…the decision was by no means a robbery…

    Also…Stephan Bonnar went apeshit on Twitter about this decision saying Torres got robbed….*newsflash…he should admit that his decision win over Keith Jardine back in the day was bullshit then…if that’s the case.

  26. RossenSearchTeam says:

    Dana (and probably also joe Silva) sure seem to have a crush on rampage jackson sometimes.

    So Dana says that he’s dissapointed in Mir but jackson looked pretty good?

    Yeah, the Mir/Nelson fight was pretty bad, but that was 70-80% because of Nelson.

    The jackson-hammill fight was bad because of both of them.

    Mir looked better in his stinkir then jackson did in his IMO.

    • Mark says:

      Jackson sells fights. Same way they excused Tito putting on predictable dull fights for years. And Mir is out of the title picture until at least a half year to year from now, Jackson will be fighting Jones (or Evans) very soon, so they need the hype machine behind him.

  27. CapnHulk says:

    The biggest problem with the Hamill/Rampage fight was Jackson’s tentativeness. If he had just committed a little bit more he probably could have put Hamill away in the middle of the second round, if not sooner.

    I think the real story of the night was Roy Nelson’s glorious mullet though.

  28. Mark says:

    Quinton was probably afraid of having to stand and trade with a guy who could knock him out, since he hasn’t had to do that in ages. Machida clearly wasn’t looking for big exchanges, Evans just wanted to wrestle, Jardine and Forrest aren’t known for throwing bombs, nobody is afraid of trading with Wanderlei anymore, so that leaves Dan Henderson, which feels like an eternity ago when that fight happened.

    Anything Mir had as a draw has to be in the toilet now for the time being after two boring fights in a row. You can clearly argue that Cro Cop was at fault and definitely that Nelson being in lousy shape didn’t help, but fighters have lost fans for much less. Although with Lesnar gone, Struve derailed, and either JDS or Carwin about to be eliminated from title contention, I guess they can’t shake him off just yet. Remember when this Heavyweight division was the strongest, deepest, bestest division in the history of the galaxy to the hyperbole prone? Yeah.

    Stann owning Santiago is definitely an upset, but people claiming the internet conspiracy to elevate him in pretend rankings need to get over it since Dana officially owns the universe now, remember? The peak of Santiago’s rankings were when everybody agreed the Middleweight division in the UFC was their weakest division. Pre-Chael run, when Okami and a bunch of guys Silva already beatdown were top contenders and his fights weren’t selling. So having him in the lower-top 10 was a big deal? Who cares. Nobody got slighted.

  29. EJ says:

    Don’t know what some people including Dana were watching but Mir looked great and put on one of his best overall performances in the UFC. He dominated Nelson and made him look out of his league, Mir is a legit contender and is probably 1 fight away from a title shot. It continues to amaze me how far people will reach to put him, his performances and wins down. It reminds me of the Lebron haters no matter what he does it’s never good enough even when he’s dominant but in the end neither care and both just continue to prove haters wrong.

    • Mark says:

      I don’t hate Frank Mir. I’m just saying that after two fights in a row that the fans thought sucked, fans might not be interested in buying a card that rests on him being the major draw (and since Mir is a bigger star in the division than anybody but Lesnar, that’s basically any fight.)

      And I’m not so sure Mir being “one fight away from a title shot” is something to be happy about. The new Heavyweights were talked up as being able to instantly kill off the oldguard, remember? We were going to see nothing but a Velasquez-Dos Santos-Carwin-Struve rotation of title fights, and now we’ll probably just get Velasquez-Dos Santos before Mir (and maybe Lesnar depending on his health) come back in. Although a lot of that is due to Velasquez about to go a full year without a title defense. But still, all the end of the year MMA talk was “2011 is the year of the new Heavyweight”, and it has been anything but. And that’s too bad because I was looking forward to seeing them live up to the hype.

    • The Gaijin says:

      I do have to say, while I’m not the biggest Mir fan in the world I don’t really get all the hate being heaped on him. He ran roughshod over a double-tough and durable fighter in Nelson who has literally been finished ONCE in his entire career.

      Maybe people expected more from the fight but Nelson’s conditioning sucked and he was only looking for the OHR all night and Frank tee’d off on him with shots that would have taken out most guys and made him look like an amateur grappler (makes that Grappler’s Quest match look like an aberration, though Roy’s horrid conditioning didn’t help him). I think people are forgetting these guys are legit good friends with each other so Mir might have been pulling a RJJ and not totally going for the kill, knowing he was going to win (and apparently he had a broken jaw).

      Problem for me is that Mir has fallen in love with clinching and his MT knees and I think that while he’s able to physically bully the Nelsons and Cro Cops of the HW division, he’ll get demolished (again) trying to implement the gameplan from those two fights against true top tier guys like Carwin, Lesnar, JDS and Velasquez.

      I’m officially done with Struve. As much as we hope he’ll be the next Semmy Schilt, he’s just a mediocre HW on the big stage (for now).

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