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UFC 65 post-show open thread
By Zach Arnold | November 18, 2006
All mainstream/broadsheet post-UFC event coverage links will be added to this post continuously. Use full-post view to see the links.
Event recaps: F4W Online | Observer | Fox Sports | Houston Chronicle | Fight Report
Plus, feel free to discuss the Pacquiao/Morales boxing fight (which, to the chagrin of some readers who hate seeing re-matches in MMA, was their third boxing match together) that happened on Saturday night in Las Vegas.
Event recaps: Doghouse Boxing | Associated Press | CBN Interactive | Fox Sports | Fight Report
Post-UFC 65 online media coverage
- Boston Herald: Kenny Florian prepares to fight on UFC Super Bowl weekend event
- Canadian Press (via CBC Sports): Canadian GSP wins UFC welterweight title
- Canadian Press (via CBC Sports): Tim Sylvia defends UFC heavyweight title successfully against Jeff Monson
- UFC HP: Meet the new boss – GSP dethrones Hughes
- Los Angeles Times: St. Pierre takes out the aging Hughes
- Sacramento Bee: St. Pierre ultimate welterweight
- Boxing Scene: Hughes demolished
- Long Beach Press-Telegram: St. Pierre’s plan a winner
- Appeal-Democrat: Local ties save matches and St. Pierre triumps
- Stockton Record: Local fighters try to tap in on MMA success
On Technorati and other search engines, the sites are flooded with blogger feedback already on the GSP/Hughes fight. The reaction tends to break 60/40 in people cheering GSP’s win versus those heartbroken about Hughes losing. (Hint: Male bloggers cheered GSP’s win, a lot of upset female bloggers for Hughes losing.)
A hilarious MySpace user cuts a promo on Matt Hughes after his loss to GSP. Hughes truly is a great heel.
Topics: All Topics, Boxing, Media, MMA, UFC, Zach Arnold | 32 Comments » | Permalink | Trackback |
BEST UFC EVER!!!!!!!!! YES!!!!!!!!!!!! FORZA ST. PIERRE!!!!!!!!!!!
And I think it’s official: Jesus hates MATT HUGHES cause Matt is a huge dick!
I watched Morales/Pacquiao III and I must say: Erik is finished. He was destroyed for 3 rounds and he ended up counting himself out ala Alexis Arguello in his second fight with Aaron Pryor. I will be shocked if Marco Antonio Barrera actually says “OK” to fighting Manny Pacquiao (who is now his mandatory).
A few UFC 65 thoughts:
1. Georges St Pierre absolutely dominated Matt Hughes. It wasn’t even close. I was expecting it to go 5 rounds. The guy is the UFC Welterweight Champion. He is the lineal Champion. There is no disputing his crown. He is the best in the world at 170 lbs. What an animal…. In the body of a very nice guy.
2. Joe Stevenson’s quick submission over Mishima has to put him as the #1 Contender in the Lightweight Division. Stevenson vs. Sherk would be a great fight.
3. Vera vs. Sylvia would be an interesting fight, but I would like to see Vera get 1 or 2 more fights under his belt first. I know this sounds stupid, and fans would complain about it, but I wold rather see Sylvia vs. Mir first. This way Sylvia avenges all of his losses and then goes in to fight Vera.
Thank You GSP!!!
That had to be the best UFC-show of the year, and IMO may just beat anything PRIDE has put out in 2006 too. Even Sylvia and Monson went five rounds with only one of those being dull. GSP, Stevenson and Vera VERY impressive. I’m lost for words and need to try calm down for some sleep. 7AM in Bergen, Norway. HEYYYYY 😀
I think I should play The Fabulous Rougeau Brothers theme song on the next radio show.
I think Monson v. Sylvia should be a good arguement in getting a penalty system instated.
For two years, I’ve railed against Fabricio Werdum being the most boring heavyweight fighter I’ve seen.
I take back what I’ve said about him. He would be highly entertaining to watch destroy all the major UFC heavyweight names.
The 5th round sucked, but I didn’t have a problem with the first 4. Tim showed a nice sprawl (although probably aided by his size advantage) and improvement on the ground. Arlovski vs Sylvia 3 sucked all 5 rounds, Tim gave us 4 decent rounds this time around.
Tim Ruloned that match.
The guy who said that nice guys finish last, clearly did not have any idea who Georges St-Pierre was!
I’m excited as much has I would be if the Montreal Canadiens just won the Stanley Cup!
What the hell happened to Matt Hugues. The guy was sligthly favorite and he get destroy like that?
This was the FIGHT OF THE YEAR!!!
Bummed that they didn’t show the Nick Diaz fight. He & David Loiseau are my fav UFC fighters (or were I guess I should say.)
Best UFC card I’ve ever seen on PPV. I was at Couture/Liddell II. That’s the only UFC I can think of that might have been better. They did a great job getting the fighters into the Octagon one after the other. It must have been awesome to be there live.
Every fight on TV except Syliva/Monson was great. Sylvia/Monson had it’s moments in the third and fourth.
GSP/Hughes went exactly as I expected it. Matt’s a bully and GSP isn’t scared of him. Matt can’t shoot on GSP and that makes him a target. Excellent job finishing it by the Quebecer.
My only complaint of the night was the approach of the Tito Ortiz ads.
UFC is really doing the hard sell that Tito caught a thumb to the eye and that Chuck’s victory over him is thus tainted. From a marketing perspective I understand this may be the only way they feel they can sell Tito as having a chance. But this not only reeks of Pro Wrestling but they did virtually the same “screw job” finish angle to sell Tito/Ken III. With Ken claiming he was wronged by a quick stoppage. This feels a little like WCW circa 1999/2000 when no matches ended clean and nobody definitively won feuds. You don’t want to start that trend because it takes away from their first fight. A fight fans paid for and invested time in. You need definites as the outcomes of fights. Oct 2004 Hughes cleanly beat GSP. Nov 2006 GSP dominated Hughes. I can’t wait for fight three. That’s all I need.
I think a better sell would be Tito saying, “Chuck thinks he’s so tough I decided to knock him out standing. That isn’t my game. He beat me. December 30th I’m going take him down, hold him down and put him down. Then I’m going to put my belt back where it belongs. Around my waist.”
Looks the UFC will be in Montreal next year because after the fight, they were telling GSP that he would be fighting there and he was going crazy.
YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEESSSSSSS!!!!
I was buzzing my tits off last night – didnt get to sleep til 7am (event finishes at 6am here). Awesome performance from an awesome guy. WAR GSP! 🙂
Yes this was a great ppv! Ranks up there with the owgp finals!
I saw this at my BJJ gym and 95% of the people were french canadians the place was going absolutely mental. SUCH A GREAT TIME!
Sakara wtf?
Mishima giving up the guillotine a second time? wtf?
Everything apart from the Sylvia fight was great!
The UFC has absolutely no faith in Tim Sylvia. Three of his last 4 fights have put the fans to sleep. His last 3 PPV cards have had other important fights on the card to draw the fans: Ortiz/Griffin, Ortiz/Shamrock 2, & Hughes/GSP 2.
This is the UFC’s Heavyweight Champion. He is the biggest champion they have. And they could care less about him. And I couldn’t agree more. He is bad for the sport.
Great show from UFC, but the guy who said that PRIDE hasn’t had a good event in 2006 really needs to watch the 9/10/06 OWGP finals, that was one of their greatest shows ever.
Why hasn’t Tito brought up the thumb to the eye thing before now? That looks very desperate on UFC’s part and they need to scale back the 1 million buys prediction. Maybe it will equal Ortiz-Shamrock II but nothing beyond that. I’m sure it will go over big to new UFC fans who weren’t around for UFC 47. Which is the majority of their audience.
Can we start a countdown for Frank Mir getting fired?
The thumb to the eye was major news back when it happened … remember that Chuck has a history with that kind of thing.
Man, Dana White looked pissed off when he was in the ring for the Sylvia win announcement. Was it just me, or did it seem like Monson was the only one pushing the pace and Sylvia was just reacting and counterstriking? IMO after 2 rounds Sylvia should have been comfortable swinging. Not a snoozefest, but I would never ever watch the bout again.
Whoever said Mir should fight Sylvia … man, the dude got totally owned by Vera, he doesn’t deserve to be back in the UFC, let alone given a title shot. I think Vera is the only guy in the UFC right now past Arlovski that could challenge Sylvia.
That is of course unless the UFC follows through with the rumours and brings in Alexander E … 🙂
On a side note and i don’t want to spam, but check out the new and improved http://www.fightlinker.com site, we’ve just overhauled the system and it’s now 100 times better. Expect major cosmetic overhauls later this week, but the content is there and of course I’m all about shouting out love to Fightopinion, ’cause the articles are good and the posters are (for the most part) very educated on MMA.
“Nick Says:
November 19th, 2006 at 8:22 am
Great show from UFC, but the guy who said that PRIDE hasn’t had a good event in 2006 really needs to watch the 9/10/06 OWGP finals, that was one of their greatest shows ever.”
—
If you’re referring to me, you need to re-read what I wrote.
Now then.
Sylvia is improving. Clearly. And along with that improvement should come a more aggressive fighting style. Faring as well as he did on the ground here may be just the confirmation he needed. It’s too early to chop the guy’s head off when all he’s been doing is to improve in the areas he used to be heavily critisized for being weak in. Good for him and good for the UFC. NOW he needs to not be another Rizzo or Randleman and actually go for it in his fights. Miletich himself had to learn this the hard way.
Some positives, for what it’s worth: Assuerio Silva, Andrei Arlovski x2, and Jeff Monson makes for a pretty impressive hitlist for the UFC heavyweight champion in 2006. And after a couple of disastrous years for what used to be the most prestigious title in the UFC, they now have a belt that means something again, and an undisputed champion to go with it. The division itself is still in shambles, but the UFC are trying to build it and are concious of the issue. For their sake I really hope they pick up one or both of Herring and Alexander next year, to add to the contender/champ group that after dec 30th will consist of Sylvia, Vera and Arlovksi/Cruz.
Mir should still be milked of course. Him and Kongo, please.
JThue:
I wouldnt exactly call Sylvia’s latest streak “a pretty impressive hitlist”. Those guys wouldnt exist in the title picture in Pride in any way whatsoever. If anything it speaks to how completely shitty the HW division has become. The continual push of Mir should be one of the biggest indications of that – however Vera looks to be a real promising star and has amazing skill…thats what the UFC should be pushing asap.
All is relative, and it’s been ages since a HW had a run like that over opponents this good in UFC. By UFC standards it’s impressive indeed.
Tim Sylvia is the John Ruiz of MMA.
Win streaks mean nothing. It is the quality of the opponents and the wins that mean something.
I give Jeff Monson credit for winning 16 in a row. Very few people can do that. But look at the level of competition. He didn’t beat even ONE Top 20 Heavyweight during his streak. So those wins have very little meaning.
Tim Sylvia, with the exception of Ricco Rodriguez, has never beaten a Top 5 Heavyweight. And yet he is the champion of his division.
He could win his next 20 fights. If they aren’t against quality opponents, then it doesn’t mean anything…. With a belt or no belt.
Ya agreed JThue…having someone who appears dominant/competent as HW champ is always a good thing for an organization. IT will make someone, like Vera who can take him out look far more credible.
UFC Fight Night,
Tengiz was top-20 when beaten by Monson during his streak, but your comment about quality of opposition is still appropriate.
Thoughts:
GSP needs to fight Penn again, who many people think beat him in their first matchup.
Penn can and will beat GSP if he actually tries to take GSP down and get the top position, instead of simply stuffing takedowns and throwing jabs (and yes I know what you are thinking, Hughes couldn’t take GSP down, so how will Penn? Because he is better than Hughes. Penn’s takedowns are very different and rely on his incredible jiu jitsu rather than simply rasslin’ power that Hughes uses).
Tim Sylvia was backing away from Jeff Monson. I mean, wow. How can he talk so much shit about his power and how good he is, and then back away from a guy he is an entire foot taller than, a guy who is known almost entirely for his grappling? I hope they get “little” Fedor in the UFC to knock Sylvia out.
If Matt Serra lasts 2 minutes vs GSP, I will be surprised.
Since we know Zach won’t allow people to make comments in articles on PRIDE, I will post this here.
I must say that when I first started going on puro power a few years ago and here since its inception – that Zach in fact does hold some sort of grudge with PRIDE as he only posts negative articles about the organization, takes anything seen as good news and tries to put a negative twist/slant on it and revels in any sort of newsbyte or rumour that might make PRIDE look weak.
I just figured I’d post this link to show that it appears the meeting b/w DSE and the WWE in fact probably had A LOT MORE to do with WWE/Hustle than WWE/PRIDE. Zach declined to make ANY mention of a possibility of the meetings being about Hustle when for just as many reasons its likely that that’s what these meetings were about.
And as *I* pointed out – WWE is starting to mention Hustle along with DSE and PRIDE…another “bait and switch”, not too surprising.
http://www.wwe.com/inside/news/34401241
“Tim Sylvia, with the exception of Ricco Rodriguez, has never beaten a Top 5 Heavyweight. And yet he is the champion of his division.”
Yet? Why shouldn’t he be? He only defeated the unbeatable untamable “only legitimate HW in UFC” twice this year. It is not Tim Sylvia’s problem that UFC doesn’t dish out more money for HW contenders. He is himself the #1 HW, and he’s defeated #2 and #3(now 3 and 4). Those are the facts if you’re going to assess his status as UFC Heavyweight Champion. FC København are still the worthy football champions of Denmark even though there are a ton of better leagues in other countries. It is just so completely irrelevant to judge someone’s status within one company based on what you may or may not find in other promotions.
As for win-streaks, I agree, which is why I wrote who he beat this year rather than nothing-meaning W-L-D-numbers.
The Gaijin: Thanks for the link. I had given up on any updates on the WWE/PRIDE front for today.
Tim Sylvia should not be listed in any all promotions Heavyweight Top 10 lists. Though Arlovski should be in the 9 or 10 spot.
I understand that Monson didn’t do enough “to take the belt from the champ” via decision. But Sylvia didn’t do enough to win that fight. Monson outfought him, including out boxing and out slugging him.
I tried to rewatch that fight (I’ve seen the Hughes/GSP fight 7 times now and most of the rest of the card 2-3 times) and Tim fought awfully bad. Tentative, slow and defensive. He is not a worthy champion. Hopefully Vera removes the belt from him promptly. UFC bosses cannot be happy with Tim as the champion.
Well, that seems to be the case. Case in point here is how they billed it as the “co-main event.” It appears that they don’t think they can base a PPV around him. Hughes/GSP stands on it’s own, as does Liddell/Ortiz. But any time Sylvia fights (unless it’s Arlovski, and that PPV was built on HIM) didn’t stand alone.
By the way…
GSP ROCKS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I’m very impressed with GSP’s win over Hughes. He simply owned him. I also enjoyed all the other televised fights with the exception of one. Because TIM SYLVIA SUCKS. The UFC shields him from any legitimate competition, the only true contender he ever fought was Andrei Arlovski; he is one of the most boring and hesitant fighters in the sport; any PRIDE heavyweight would destroy him; All he has is size and no skill, yes it is very hard to double leg a man who stands 6’8, what is simply needed is a master striker that UFC can afford, like Gilbert Yvel, and Sylvia is finished.