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UFC 165 made everyone’s head explode – Jon Jones retains title by unanimous decision
By Zach Arnold | September 21, 2013
Click the image to view the now infamous UFC 165 ad that stole the show
The judge who scored Jon Jones 49-46 over Alexander Gustafsson was Chris Lee. Richard Bertrand & Doug Crosby were 48-47 each.
— FightOpinion (@FightOpinion) September 22, 2013
Event: UFC 165 (Saturday, September 21st from the Air Canada Centre in Toronto, Ontario, Canada)
TV: Fox Sports 2/Fox Sports 1/PPV
- Heavyweights: Daniel Omielanczuk defeated Nandor Guelmino in R3 in 3’18 by KO.
- Bantamweights: Alex Caceres defeated Roland Delorme after 3R by split decision.
- Welterweights: Michel Prazeres defeated Jesse Ronson after 3R by split decision.
- Lightweights: John Makdessi defeated Renee Forte in R1 in 2’01 by KO.
- Bantamweights: Mitch Gagnon defeated Dustin Kimura in R1 in 4’05 by submission with a choke sleeper hold.
- Welterweights: Stephen Thompson defeated Chris Clements in R1 in 1’27 by TKO from punches.
- Bantamweights: Wilson Reis defeated Ivan Menjivar after 3R by unanimous decision.
- Lightweights: Myles Jury defeated Mike Ricci after 3R by split decision.
- Lightweights: Khabib Nurmagomedov (-250, 5 to 2 favorite) defeated Pat Healy (+200) after 3R by unanimous decision.
- Middleweights: Francis Carmont (+160) defeated Costa Philippou (-200, 2 to 1 favorite) after 3R by unanimous decision.
- Heavyweights: Brendan Schaub (EVEN) defeated Matt Mitrione in R1 in 4’06 with a choke.
- Bantamweights: Renan Barao (-600, 6 to 1 favorite) defeated Eddie Wineland (+450) in R2 in 35 seconds by TKO.
- UFC Light Heavyweight title match: Jon Jones (-750) defeated Alexander Gustafsson (+600) after 5R by unanimous decision to retain the title (48-47, 48-47, 49-46). A judge gave Jones four rounds!
Outside of UFC 165, Anthony Pettis vs. Josh Thomson is now booked because TJ Grant is recovering from a concussion. Move makes sense in that Thomson is a regional guy and will help out some ticket sales at Arco Arena in Sacramento. There’s a vocal group of fans suggesting Pettis vs. Aldo in a title vs. title match for the Fox broadcast but Pettis looking strong on network television is not a bad thing, either.
Only minor headache for UFC here is that Thomson will attract some political heat for the organization because of his prior comments about gay marriage.
Three big finishes saved a brutally long UFC FS1 Brazil show
Event: UFC Fight Night (Wednesday, September 4th from Jornalista Felipe Drumond Stadium in Belo Horizonte, Brazil)
TV: Fox Sports 1 (starting at 5 PM EST/2 PM PST)
- Welterweights: Sean Spencer defeated Yuri Villefort after 3R by split decision.
- Welterweights: Ivan Jorge defeated Keith Wisniewski after 3R by unanimous decision.
- Middleweights: Elias Silverio defeated Joao Zeferino after 3R by unanimous decision.
- Lightweights: Lucas Martins defeated Ramiro Hernandez in R1 in 70 seconds with a choke sleeper hold.
- Featherweights: Edimilson Souza defeated Felipe Arantes after 3R by split decision.
- Featherweights: Ali Bagautinov defeated Marcos Vinicius in R3 in 3’28 by TKO.
- Middleweights: Rafael Natal defeated Tor Troeng after 3R by unanimous decision.
- Lightweights: Piotr Hallmann defeated Francisco Trinaldo in R2 in 3’50 by submission from kimura.
- Bantamweights: Joe Benavidez defeated Jussier da Silva in R1 in 3’07 by TKO.
- Middleweights: Jacare Souza defeated Yushin Okami in R1 in 2’47 by TKO.
- Light Heavyweights: Glover Teixeira defeated Ryan Bader in R1 in 2’55 by TKO.
Teixeira will now face the winner of the Jon Jones/Alexander Gustafsson fight. Chael Sonnen will fight Rashad Evans in the semi main-event of the UFC 11/16 Las Vegas card headlined by Georges St. Pierre vs. Johny Hendricks.
The GSP NOS drink commercial was … curious.
The officiating was all over the map at the Brazil show. Glen Trowbridge working as a judge…
Small crowd at Brazil show that was absolutely deflated when Trinaldo got submitted. Eerily quiet. Crowd thankfully went home on a pretty happy note.
As for The Ultimate Fighter debut with Ronda Rousey and Miesha Tate… one was ice-cold ruthless one minute, pouty the next minute, and one was quite the chatty social butterfly. Ronda’s in Bulgaria right now… Ronda picked Shayna Baszler right away. Roxy Modafferi shined on TV.
I'm glad they got someone to do their hair, what a pain in the ass to have it all up in yo face.
— UFC (@ufc) September 5, 2013
Topics: Media, MMA, UFC, Zach Arnold | 54 Comments » | Permalink | Trackback |
[…] this high frequency of cards is that the publicity train peters out. FightOpinion named this the “Mystery UFC Fight Night card,” but maybe that is being a little harsh. I am not in Brazil, so I don’t know what kind of […]
1) I find myself not really caring too much about these Brazilian cards besides the top 2 or 3 fights. This one isn’t much different. I don’t mind that. If the UFC is going in the direction of a weekly show, then not every card is going to be to my liking.
2) The PPV Main Card is really good. Excited for 4 of the 5 fights.
3) Adding all of the prelims to FOX Sports 1 is great since I don’t get FS2 in HD. They actually added FS2 to the HD channel line-up but it is in Standard Definition. Makes me wonder if an upgrade is happening soon. While I think main card stuff needs to be doing over 1 Million viewers… The prelim stuff is going to be at weird times and really is just a bonus to give fighters more exposure.
Poor Bader.
The prelims are weak for this card but the top three fights are all PPV quality fights and you got Ali B making his debut which is interesting.
also Ivan Batman on the prelims. So for a Wed free card I dont see why anyone would complain.
If the UFC is eventually going to have a weekly show… They are going to have to end up doing a monthly show from Brazil. Same time zone makes it much better then Europe.
12 Brazil Shows
12 Vegas Shows
That takes care of half of the show already…
They can’t do a weekly show in big arenas, there isn’t enough star power. The show in Brazil tomorrow night has apparently sold only 4,000 seats, and that show is headlined by a top 5 LHW in the world from Brazil.
Fox will have to throw a lot of money at them to make that happen, because UFC is quite image-conscious, and having shows in empty arenas doesn’t make the organization look good. On the other hand, if UFC is willing to run in WEC-sized arenas, it could work, but I don’t know if staging fights in tiny arenas is good for the brand either.
Listening to Dana at one of those scrums he does, they seem to know that it will be hard to do big gates on weeknights.
Combat sports fans usually will travel long distances at weekends and don’t seem to mind paying higher ticket prices but it’s a different story mid-week as most people can’t do that because of work.
Traditional team sports are different as usually the full city at least has has a passing interest in the team and they know most of the players, it’s a little different with a UFC fight night, Glover and Jacare are decent names in Brazil but guys like Anderson and Vitor are the superstars that would sell to the casual fan in a Wednesday night.
I can see them eventually doing two shows at once if they want to hit more markets, so say one show in Brazil and the other in the US and they just alternate matches that air live on TV.
I think they could make up a large difference in comps. Which might hurt in the long running. If people see that the UFC comps a bunch of people all the time they might not care to pay a bunch anymore.
I know I personally am just going to wait out the GSP-Hendricks card for Vegas. It’ll probably be sold out, but the chances of getting some free tickets compared to just watching at the bar aren’t that bad to me.
The future of the UFC isn’t big arena shows.
The future is having around 5,000 fans in an arena each Wednesday night… And then making their money from all of these international deals.
If each show is getting some money from FOX, Brazil TV, UK TV, Canadian TV, and then add in the gate…. I’m sure they can turn a profit on each show.
The problem for the UFC is that they wanted to dominate the entire MMA space… From Heavyweight to Flyweight and including females. When you have that many weight classes, things will suffer.
How long is too long for a Wednesday card? The answer is certainly 5 hours. Especially when you don’t know basically the entire card outside of 7 or 8 fighters.
I ended up fast forwarding through much of the prelims. I did watch the last 3 fights as those were the ones I was interested in from the start.
********
The UFC has certainly been building up Glover. I would say he probably needs one more legit Top 10 win to earn a title shot, but with a division that has been partially cleared out, I can see why the UFC has gone the route they have with him. Jones needs challengers.
Last nights UFC Ratings were:
Prelims – 270,000
Main Card – 539,000
TUF – 762,000
mmalogic made a post on The UG about how bad the ratings were. This was Dana White’s response:
“Distatorous? MMALogic is pretty good but he’s way off on this one. We were #1 on all of cable with M18-34 and M18-49. We also beat out the US Open and the Detroit vs. Red Sox MLB game. This is all part of the building process. We’ve made a commitment to work with FOX to build this network. If you look at all the other networks we’ve ever been on, we consistently pull strong ratings.
The first time we put our prelims on FX, we pulled 880K viewers and it grew, depending on the fight, up to 1.9 million viewers for UFC 156. Also, the TUF season with Carwin and Big Country averged 822K viewers, then Jones vs. Sonnen averaged 1.3 million viewers.
We currently hold the top 4 most watched telecasts on FS1 since the network launched. To be honest, our Prelim and Fight Night numbers weren’t bad considering we started on the west coast at 2pm in the afternoon on a Wednesday. The most important thing is last nights fights were awesome and this season of TUF is great.
Yes, we didn’t pull 1 million+ but we will. But, we also fucked up last night by not starting the main event later so that we could get a live lead into TUF. The bottom line is FOX couldn’t be happier with the UFC and the ratings we’re pulling and we couldn’t be happier with the way we have been treated by the network.
Yes fuckers my secretary typed this not me. :)”
UFC 167 is the best UFC card since UFC 100. GSP v Hendricks, Chael v Rashad, Mir v Reem, Rory v Lawler, and Woodley v Koscheck. WOW! I am blown away, that is officially an amazing card. I can’t remember the last time I gave a fuck about all 5 main card matches. Kudos to matchmakers Chael Sonnen and Joe Silva.
Hendricks has yet to file his VADA paperwork even though the testing is free. That leads to a strong presumption of guilt, let’s not be naive.
I was wrong–I didn’t realize how substantial the ties were between GSP and VADA.
They aren’t that substantial. Its been pushed by Kizer and Hendricks that they are substantial, but Goodman already came out and debunked one point (his pic on the website).
IMO, Hendricks didn’t want anything to do with extra testing. And GSP just wanted it to prove he’s been clean this whole time (although that is impossible).
Pettis vs. Thomson is a good title fight for FOX.
It is amazing how dumb some of the fans can be. Some people claimed that TJ Grant was paid to sit out against Ben Henderson. And now they are claiming he is getting paid even more money to sit out now.
Haaaa yea, because Josh Thomson is such a big star.
I actually dislike the fight a great deal. I say let the superfight between Pettis and Aldo happen, and let some contenders at 45 and 55 fight it out for the next shot.
I say Super Fights are “pure bullsh#t”.
Wait…. Anderson Silva says that. I just agree with him. It clogs up the divisions too much. Aldo has 3 or 4 legit challengers waiting to fight him. Should they not get a shot? Why should the division be put on hold for a super fight? If he wants to fight Pettis, he should vacate the belt and move up to Lightweight.
I wouldn’t mind that at all. He’s talked for literal years about moving up to 155 eventually. However, that could be more along the lines of GSP’s talk pre 2010.
I understand Aldo has 3 or 4 challengers, but area all of them gonna get to fight for the belt eventually? I don’t think so. Fights are already made so what I’m about to say would never happen, but I think you give us Mendes-Lamas and Edgar-Swanson. Then you have two viable contenders to choose from if Aldo comes back down. If Aldo decides not too, and holds on to the LW belt do the winners for the title. If he does to the fight that makes the most sense financially.
As for LW, meh. Thomson doesn’t really “deserve” a shot. For his nice little streak neither does Dos Anjos. Melendez just lost to Henderson. Gray just lost to Grant. Henderson just lost to Pettis. The only guy I really care about seeing fight for the title is a Aldo. Or maybe even a Penn comeback there instead.
This is a much better year for title fights in the UFC.
If everything goes as scheduled, the UFC will have 20 title fights in 2013. That is 2 title fights per division, with Lightweight & Flyweight each having 3.
And 6 of the title fights will be on Free TV.
Great main event. Razor close. 3-2 either way was fine with me. Gustaffson stopped every single takedown attempt until the last round (when Jones took him down for 5 seconds before Alexander got back up), and took Jones down (but similarly couldn’t keep him down). Alexander had better hands, Jones had better kicks and elbows. I don’t really get how a judge had that 4-1 Jones.
A few websites had Jones winning 4 rounds…. But I thought it was 3-2 for either fighter.
Just a great fight.
With takedowns like that I think Carmont would be a bad matchup for Silva after Weidmans done with him.
I wanted Jones to win, but I thought Gus won.
Gus had a speed advantage, but Jones isn’t the fastest fighter. Lyoto was way faster than him also.
Jones isn’t that fast but he’s got good timing.
Jones looked rusty IMO.
Thats what happens when you take a great fighter and waste his talent fighting vitor and chael for no reason. Its been awhile since he’s had to actually perform his skill.
It was still a great fight though.
Thats what happens when you take a great fighter and put him in there with another great fighter.
Love to see a rematch.
I *REALLY* had Gus winning the first three rounds and Jones winning the last two. That being said I also thought round 3 was the closest round and could have gone either way. One of the BEST fights I’ve ever seen. Even though Gus lost he looked like a champ/winner with that performance. Dana White MUST be ecstatic.
I don’t think they should do an immediate rematch….
But it would make sense to do Jones vs. Teixeira… And Gustafsson vs. a top contender….
Do it on the Super Bowl Weekend card in Jersey.
Then if they both win they can rematch in July.
Both Jones & Gustafsson went to the hospital. Jones stretchered out. Dana wants to do rematch. Super Bowl weekend makes a lot of sense. Would Fox be willing to pay big bucks to get rematch on free TV night before Super Bowl? I think it would be worth it for Fox to pull out the checkbook.
“Both Jones & Gustafsson went to the hospital. Jones stretchered out. Dana wants to do rematch. Super Bowl weekend makes a lot of sense. Would Fox be willing to pay big bucks to get rematch on free TV night before Super Bowl? I think it would be worth it for Fox to pull out the checkbook.”
I noticed after the fight that Jones was limping considerably more the Gus during the post fight interview and when he left the cage. I winder if he re injured his toe or foot or if Gus’ few leg kicks he threw really did that much damage?
Mike Winklejon posted that Jones’ foot is ‘shattered’, whatever that means. I presume it means multiple fractures.
I agree.
Where I saw the fight last night, there was a group of fans SOLIDLY behind Jones. By the end of the fight, most had switched to hoping Gus won, and those that didn’t were gushing how great a fight he put on and that he proved that he deserved the title shot.
Some comments, I kept telling my our group who watch the fight, if Gus tried to land a few elbows on the breaks with Jones, and a few more knees a few time when HE had Jones back to the cage, he would have landed more damage. Another group, all men, overheard me and wondered aloud to me the same thing.
Imagine if Gus improves his wrestling, Muay Thai (even if only in they clinch) and BJJ only moderatly: he will be even MORE of a beast.
Steve4192 says:
“September 22, 2013 at 7:36 am
Mike Winklejon posted that Jones’ foot is ’shattered’, whatever that means. I presume it means multiple fractures.”
Hmmmm, that’s interesting, because I told my one friend, “I wonder how much Jones’ legs can take a beating, cause his legs are so thin and when he broke his toe in the Sonnen fight, it was just the pressure from pushing forward on the canvas.”
I was thinking that he is probably the most athletic and naturally gifted fighter, but DURABILITY may be an issue with him over the long run.
That may indeed NOT be the case, but he may be better served in the long run moving UP to heavyweight, as carrying the extra weight may make him more durable.
And losing a great deal water weight, bones (the part of the anatomy, not the fighter!) DO become more brittle.
Adding more weight is not a good idea for a guy with fragile feet.
“I saw a crowd solidly behind Jones,
and by the end of the fight they were solidly behind Gus.”
By,
perchance,
were these people dude-bro’s?!
Dude, did you just debunk your own comment? Or is there two different Steve4192’s? That was just weird.
Steve was responding to a comment that had copied and pasted one of Steve’s comments.
Yeah, this is pretty much what I’ve been saying to people; if Gustafsson had better striking from the clinch he’d be Light Heavyweight Champion right now. Jones really didn’t have any defense for that and Gus could have done some serious work from there.
Makes you wonder how Gustafsson would have performed if he wasn’t on the shelf for nearly a year. I was kind of surprised he didn’t try to strike Jones when his back was against the cage, instead of stepping back and getting back into a medium range distance. Still waiting for an opponent who can blast low kicks on Jones and take advantage of his spindley legs.
Still, a great fight. I thought the fight may have been a draw. It was hard to tell if Gustfsson was checking some of those kicks or if they were getting through and hitting him due to the camera work.
Gus lit Jones up. He won the fight. But you have to beat the champ convincingly! I dont have a problem with that.
Once again I was very lucky enough to score floors seats through a business partner at the last minute and man what a treat. Those last two fights were awesome and I had the privilege to bear witness to maybe the best lhw title fight of all time. Seeing it live was mind blowing, especially the “humanizing” of Jon Jones. He really made Jones second guess himself all night and he was very tentative. Jones also REALLY telegraphs his kicks. Badly. Gus is a star in T.O. And made a ton of fans…the live crowd loved him by the end of it. I had it 3-2 for Gus by the razor thinnest or margins, but said before the scorecards were read out that Jones was getting the nod and I wouldn’t mi no it one bit. Jones really won it in those last two rounds and you could see after the desperation spinning back elbow that he knew he had to do so. The deep waters really seemed to effect Gus and he was on fumes in the 5th when Jones stamped the win. Such a great fight and cannot wait for the rematch.
That is awesome. You probably saw the 2013 FOTY.
But what does that mean? Something MMA should always do? Or the exception, between dana/twitter fights.
That was probably the best live fight I think I’ve seen to date. It’s certainly a candidate for FOTY in my book.
I don’t understand your comment, RST. They can make the fights but when the cage door closes it is up to the fighters to put on a performance.
Did I hear correctly last night that Mitrione ntentionally CHOSE to train with the Blackzillions? Who would do that?! I guess he really is a meathead.
The fight was so good I almost cried. It’s amazing to witness 2 people give their all.
Gaijin, I’m jealous you got to experience it live.
Like some other folks above, I gave the first 2 rounds to Gus, the last 2 to Jones and the 3rd was a toss up.
I actually went
Rd. 1 – Gus.
Rd. 2 – Jones.
Rd. 3 – Gus.
Rd. 4 – Jones (though it was all Gus until the last 90 seconds or so, Jones actually looked like he came close to finishing him there at least once).
Rd. 5 – Jones. Gus didn’t help himself with the poor body language, couldn’t keep his hands up and looked really gassed…it was actually a close round but Jones just looked like the fresher and more aggressive fighter.
I had the same scoring as Gaijin and same rationale for 4th round going Jones. 2nd round to me was a total toss up, and I could understand it going to Gustaf.
I should note that this was my scoring after re-watching the fight on Sunday. Night of the fight, with the live crowd I went: Gus, Gus, Gus, Jones and Jones – thus the razor thin 3-2 for Gus I referred to in my initial post.
Just want to make sure I clarified in case anyone paid attention and wondered how I changed my mind in two posts!
Didn’t score it the night of the event as I had just got done judging on the local level, and just wanted to enjoy.
Thought Jones edged it.
Just got done scoring the fight on my DVR. I gave Jones 4 rounds. 1, 2, 4, and 5. Even thought there was an argument for Jones in 3rd. His activity rate really did trump Gus all fight. Every single round was close, but I thought Jones just did a little more in most. If Gus would have kept up his game in the fifth he could have walked away with the split.
Jon gearing down his benzo into first gear,
to pud around with vitor and chael,
and play reality show,
makes a Ferrari backfire and carbon up the engine.
I had it 49-46 Gustafsson.
On second viewing with the sound turned off, 50-45 Gustafsson.
Really? I thought Jones won the 5th round on everyone’s card.
To be honest, I don’t think I would have a big issue with any score in favour of either fighter. It was very close throughout and you could make a solid argument for seeing almost any round for either fighter.
Yeah, the third, fourth and fifth were close rounds so 48-47 Jones is plausible I guess. but the Las Vegas judges travel with the octagon; it’s very much a travellin’ road show so what actually happened inside that cage mattered little. As I said on the FightSport.net event thread on fight night, 49-46 Gus-the judges will give it to Jones. There was little suspense over the way that decision was going.
Those are CJ Ross type scores.
LOL 🙂 Nice.
I’m actually a self-styled anti-CJ Ross. Or that’s my intention anyway!