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UFC Fight Night post-show open thread
By Zach Arnold | November 11, 2006
Have at it. Anything related to Saturday’s night event. Bad judging? Dana drunk?
More thoughts: Here, here and here.
Canadian Press (via CBC Sports): Cote loses Middleweight battle in UFC TV show’s finale
Fight Report has some great short clips from the event.
Houston Chronicle: Has the Ultimate Fighter lost its punch?
Topics: All Topics, MMA, UFC, Zach Arnold | 26 Comments » | Permalink | Trackback |
30-27 for Serra?
Does takedown defense mean nothing anymore?
Takedown defense is defense. You score points with offense. Works that way in every other sport, and it should be that way in MMA.
I had it scored 29-28 Serra.
And Dana wasn’t drunk, its called live TV. Shit happens.
Smith: Best Desperation Punch EVER.
That show was unwatchable. Literally unwatchable. Bad fights and horrendous production. Dana forgets who fights at what weight class, he and Rogan were stumbling over each other in the Octagon. Then it looked like Dana was auditioning for Bob Barker’s job on the Price is Right listing off all the things the winners got. I saw about 25 minutes of the show. Klitschko dispatched Brock in enough time for me to see most of the Serra/Lytle fight and all of the last 2 rounds of it. In some regards the bad fights weren’t totally UFC’s fault since the way the finals for TUF fell in line they were bad style matchups. Bispig pulling out may have hurt, that could’ve been a good fight. But Goldie’s announcing is horrendous, worse than Trigg (though at least Goldie is a polished TV guy). Flipping back and forth between HBO Boxing and UFC on Spike was night and day. It really showed how amatuerish the UFC production was. HBO Boxing is the gold standard for combat sports. But there’s no excuse for UFC to be so bad. There are a ton of experienced TV guys out there. Hire them. I saw a ton of sloppy handheld camera work and bad sound on the broadcast. Bad angles for the post fight interviews, those stupid low angle shots of the Finalists’ families. Do they even have production meetings and walk throughs? Or is eveyone just hanging out by the pool all Friday and Saturday? I was about to hit submit comment, but realized I left out the ridiculous 4 way interview between Goldie, Rogan, GSP and Matt. That was just bad. Stupid questions first off and there’s no reason to do the hard sell with those two. That’s the best UFC fight this year. Just tell us they’re fighting, show the hightlight package and interview them separately or back to back.
I agree that UFC needs to freshen up its production values (get new music, new graphics, etc.) That stated, it’s a Spike TV show. I don’t think people tuning in are expecting a blowaway performance. Perhaps on PPV, but not on free TV.
HBO is powered by Time Warner, which has significant resources to present a much more polished product.
This is a dilemma for all the various wrestling and MMA companies — whether or not to internalize your production set-up or to outsource it.
I thought St. Pierre came off fine. Bad night for Hughes cutting the promo. It was a pretty decent night for fights, especially Scott Smith vs. Pete Sell. But yes, Dana did not have his best night for a performance.
I read that the Smith/Sell fight was good. I love Sell. I hope that’s up on youtube or I’ll try to tape the replay of the special.
Best line of the night was when they asked Serra who he wants to fight and he said, “Hughes is kind of a dick, so I’d like to fight him”. Serra is awesome.
Yes Sells/Smith fight was an UNBELIEVEABLE fight…funny how on these “B” shows they have some awesome gems like Forrest/Bonner and Herman/Groves. My question is…Hughes going to retire or what? Becuase he sure didnt seem like it from his interview.
I’m a little pissed off about the Cote fight. 🙁
Eh, the show was better than Bushido 13 at least.
And if any of you were wondering, the final commercial count is over 60 commercials (over 50 minutes of commercials)
This was a 2-hour show that they managed to stretch into 3 hours, and then proceeded to go over the 3 hour time limit. They couldn’t even manage 3 hours right.
Does your 60 commericals count include Goldberg pimping for Scion during the fights?
Anyway, I thought the Pete Sell/Scott Smith fight was pretty good for the finish. I was really disappointed and surprised that Cote got beat so quickly and seemingly easily.
And I’m pretty flabbergasted that Serra won—I guess the judges are really fond of foot stomps. *shrug*
“Yes Sells/Smith fight was an UNBELIEVEABLE fight…funny how on these “B†shows they?”
It’s an old adage in all combat sports, 2 evenly matched fighters with flaws (your B-level guys) have great fights. It’s becaused their games have enough weaknesses to let the opponent have openings and at the same time they are good enough to exploit the opponents weaknesses with their ability. Many times when two top fighters who are evenly matched go at it they cancel out each other’s ability and you can get a boring fight.
sell smith is one of my favourite fights in recent history. that alone made me not hate this show. new production is key. also why don’t they go to a slightly bigger venue for these fight nights? they could probably make some more $$$.
Roadblock, how can you say it was awful when you havent even seen it all?
Generally, I cant believe the amount of moaning. Well, actually I can because it seems that everyone on the internet does nothing but moan. Yeah there were lots of commercials but so what? Go for a piss in the ad break or something… it’s only a big deal if you get your knickers in a twist about it. I took a piss in one break, made a sandwich in another, got a beer in another and laughed at all the uber-American ads the rest of the time. It’s really no biggy and it’s the reason it’s FREE to you. They aren’t a charity. If you’re so pissed about stuff like that, come up with a better solution and suggest it to them, or shuuuuuuuut the fudge up.
There were 6 fights, 4 of them were really good fun and only one of them for me was anything approaching boring. Take it for what it is – an entertaining show.
Nothing wrong with the 4 way interview, nothing drastically wrong with the production, Dana White got tongue tied – so what? He’s a plank but again, so what? Great entrances and flashing lights don’t make a great show as illustrated by the last Bushido.
Dewes v Riveira – good fight
Sell v Smith – best ending ever
Thomas v Clemente – Din was impressive. Good fight
Kampman v Lietes – really good fight. (sorry if i butchered the names)! 😀
Cote v Lutter – disappointing but Lutter was impressive
Serra v Lytle – really boring in my opinion but i’m sure not everyone thought so.
Anyone know the ratings yet?
roadblock is a sherdog troll.anybody complaining after those fights last night should just find another hobby.it was better than bushido last week and 30 bucks cheaper.there are just some fans who will never give credit to the ufc no matter what its a joke.why dont you guys just go follow pride exclusively and leave us real fans alone
Every hour of television is slotted for 16-18 minutes of ads. A three hour show is going to feature 48-54 minutes of ads.
This is nothing new.
Lynchman is correct. I typical hour program is only 42 minutes long. Some people will complain about anything. There are free fights on TV. Nuff Said.
I had Matt Serra winning 30-27. I see a lot of complaining about the official scoring. To me, it was the most realistic scoring for this fight. You either saw the aggression of Matt Serra as being more then the defensive Lytle, or you saw Lytle’s defense being the most important factor. Depending on how you viewed the fight, each round was very similiar.
Overall, it was a good night of action. The UFC showed as many fights as they could. The main event was a disappointment, but that isn’t the UFC’s fault. The last Bushido card had some solid fights on paper, and it became a bore.
One additional thing about the commercials:
If you have a 15 minute fight, you will typically have a quick introduction and then 3 rounds. During this time period:
-18 Minutes of UFC Coverage
-2 Minutes of Comercials
This means for the rest of the hour:
-24 Minutes of UFC Coverage
-16 Minutes of Commercials
This is why it seems like there are so many commercials. The way the fights are set up, there are just going to be a lot of commercial time between them for SpikeTV to get them in.
We should just be happy that we have the UFC on Free TV.
First half was pretty terrible but the second half was enjoyable. Anyone who says Joe Rogan isn’t a good commentator should watch Kampmann/Leites and then apologize to Joe. The guy’s got such an understanding of MMA and his breakdowns of styles and tactics were really impressive.
I agree that some parts of the show were a bit rough production wise, but thank god that’s not why i watch these things. So long as the camera work during the fights shows me what i need to see and the announcers don’t piss me off then I’m happy.
Overall I’m glad that TUF4 is over, what a stinker of a season.
I agree with everything fight linker says. TUF4 was definitely a stinker too! 😀
One thing that your post reminded me of is how annoyed I’m beginning to get with Goldberg. He constantly talks (promos or “you know one thing Joe, blardy blardy blar”) over exciting parts of the fight. Like fighter A will land a 5 punch combo which nearly KOs fighter B and Goldberg will still be jibbering about how he met Matt Hughes last week and he was wearing a nice pair of sunglasses and looking ripped.
Does anyone know which judge had the fight 30-27 for Lyttle?
I dunno, but did anyone notice one of the judges was a 70 year old woman? Now not to be sexist, because I’m equally prejudiced against all dinosaur judges who were probably around when boxing was a segregated sport. There seriously needs to be a shakeup in the judging department … BOXING JUDGES SHOULD NOT BE GIVEN MMA EVENTS. Even a regular viewer of MMA doesn’t have the ability to be a good judge. As the playing field widens I think you’ll see more and more very close fights, and we need people scoring who know what they’re talking about.
Overall, I liked the show. If you’re recall, I simply stated Cote could not handle Lutter. Which sucks for me as a Cote fan, but I could see it coming. Lutter better make out his last will and testament before the Silva fight.
I actually enjoyed the Serra/Lytle fight. It was a grappling match, and probably less exciting to fans of striking matches because of that, but they were very evenly matched. I gave Serra the fight 29-28. And 30-27 Lytle? Wow, can I have some of THAT ganja? for a 30-27 score, he would have had to dominate all three rounds. Neither of them did that…I actually figured we were looking at round 4 (and I think Lytle would have finished Serra if that had happened, Serra I don’t think had enough gas left in his tank. Best call out ever: “I think Matt’s a Dick, so I’d like to fight him.” Go Terra!
Smitty/Sell – Oh…my…GOD! I was thinking “draw” because they KO’d each other! (Yes, I realize that Smith won that fight, I’m just saying…) My God, best last gasp punch EVER!
I was good with all the commercials. Hey, you have to get rid of the beer sometime, right? Did they ever give viewer ratings?
“And 30-27 Lytle? Wow, can I have some of THAT ganja? for a 30-27 score, he would have had to dominate all three rounds.”
It doesnt mean he would have to dominate ANY round at all, it just means that judge thought he edged each round.
OKay, you have a point, he wouldn’t need to dominate. But no way I look at that fight does Lytle actually win three rounds. Neither does Serra. (What I should have stated was it’s the 30-27 scores I found problematic.)