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UFC 69 review post
By Zach Arnold | April 7, 2007
Event reports: Sherdog | Observer | The Houston Chronicle | F4W Online | UFC Junkie | MMA On Tap
ESPN did the hard sell for UFC 69 event coverage on their 1 AM EST Sportscenter show. Linda Cohn and Steve Levy pushed the fact that they would have highlights of the Welterweight title match (GSP vs. Matt Serra), calling it the first time ESPN would cover ‘ultimate fighting.’
Quote of the night from Dave Meltzer:
Dana White is here for the big surprise of the night. Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira was announced. It’s pretty clear 85% of the crowd has no idea who he is.
I’m surprised 15% of the crowd apparently knew who he was in the first place.
From Bryan Alvarez:
Dana introduced UFC’s newest signee, former PRIDE Heavyweight Champion Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira. They dropped the ball in not showing any footage from his big wins, such as his victory over Bob Sapp. As it was, he came out, he spoke, he left, and he was just A GUY.
Tonight, Matt Serra defeated GSP to win the UFC Welterweight title. Matt Serra was +800 at many sportsbooks. This is why more and more gamblers are switching to MMA quickly, simply because the underdogs are far better plays in MMA than they are in any other sport. Even NCAA March Madness.
Topics: All Topics, Media, MMA, UFC, Zach Arnold | 47 Comments » | Permalink | Trackback |
GET THOSE TRAILER PARK WHITE TRASH FATTIES OFF OF MY TV SCREEN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! *talking about the fat bitches during the Swick enterance*
Let’s keep the focus on the fights…
Kendall Grove – First time I have been impressed with him. He looked like a legit threat in the MW Division for the first time.
Yushin Okami – Tough guy. Ranked #4 in the UFC MW Division, behind Silva, Franklin, & Marquardt.
Mike Swick – Showed to be more hype then a legit threat. his reaction after the first round was amazing. He was almost a defeated fighter.
If you look at the Top 5 Heavyweights now “signed” to the UFC….
Randy Couture, Mirko Filipovic, Antonio Nogueira, Tim Sylvia, & Winner of Arlovski/Werdum. Wow, a complete reversal from a year ago. A legit Top 5. And the under belly of the division isn’t too bad either. With up & comers like O’Brien, Gonzaga, & Vera…. The division is at least respectful now.
Judges got it right with Okami fight. But I think it should of been stopped earlier…eh favouritism got own3d anyways. And….Isin’t Nogueira blind? In one eye at least? And some people on chat are laughing that the “rednecks dont’ know who he is.”
Tales of his demise due to blindness look to be greatly exaggerated — but where does this leave the PRIDE heavyweight division now? It’s Fedor and Barnett. Good thing they both want that fight, because that’s the only fight left to make.
I think there’s a higher chance of Barnett vs. Fedor happening in BodogFight than in the Zuffa-owned PRIDE…
The Huerta fight was fantastic. The crowd stunk. There should have been cheering the entire time. They were almost silent during that classic. Not exactly a technical battle, but a lot of heart shown.
I order every UFC PPV. I didn’t have high expectations for this event. So far, i have been pleasantly surprised.
Why does there have to be cheering?
They were intriged.
Koscheck was the heal of heals tonight.
I’m so tired of the “Hey, let’s boo people from other countries!” mentality.
Biggest upset ever?
Poor George……I’m going to cry. If Erin is around, tell her to hold me…….I’m….in SHOCK.
Welterweight Rankings in the UFC now look something like this:
1. Matt Serra
2. Georges St. Pierre
3. Matt Hughes
4. BJ Penn
5. Josh Koscheck
6. Jon Fitch
7. Diego Sanchez
8. Karo Parisyan
After that it is a little tough to rank. What a crazy night.
Fear the east Coast fighters!!!
The worst thing now is that people are going to say that Serra doesn’t deserve the belt, and yada yada yada. He won an 8-man tournament to get a title shot. He took full advantage of his one chance. It is legit. Serra won’t be #1 by the end of the year, but as of right now, he is the #1 Welterweight in the world.
Dear GOD. I DID NOT HAVE TO KNOW THAT LUKE CUMMO DRINKS HIS OWN PISS.
Kudos to Serra. I love that dude. But … why not just legalize rabbit punches. If you’re going to allow a guy to land three rabbit punches and win a title, just take it out of the rule book that it is illegal and make guys train to protect the back of their heads and/or to aim for punching their opponent in the back of the head.
Wow the Herring fight must have sucked … they didn’t even replay it.
It means that the Pride HW division is pretty much dead. They will start up a super heavyweight, with Fujita, Sylvia, Hunt, Zulu etc….
Pete Sell looks like the Elephant man. I’d like to see how that happened to his grill. Geez.
[…] FightOpinion.com thoughts […]
Do you really think Barnett and Fedor are going to go to Bodog? That seems way bogus. It would be humourous and sad if they did.
I think they fact that they got Nog means it’s only a matter of time before Fedor makes the right decision. After all, before Nog was seated next to Dana White at UFN, he was also a prime candidate to go to Bodog.
It wouldn’t surprise me if Fedor replaces management teams, because a big part of why he is hooking up with Bodog is because is manager has ties to it. I think he will pull a Vera and fire his manager and get a new one and fight in UFC.
I think Barnett should try to fix some of the bridges he has burned. Maybe he can get that match with Kawada he has always wanted.
Zach,
You are counting the Fertittas out too soon. I would bet they get both those guys to fight. It is just a question of if Pride will be alive in Japan by that time.
The way upsets have been going around this sport, I could see Fedor signing with Bodog before his fight with Lindland, and then losing.
“Dear GOD. I DID NOT HAVE TO KNOW THAT LUKE CUMMO DRINKS HIS OWN PISS.”
That’s the sort of thing that should get edited out. After all, it’s not as if that fight was live.
Tito and Rashad had to get pulled apart just outside of the cage, evidently.
Still nothing on SportsCenter about UFC — going to keep watching and hope to see this coverage.
Tito gets in a lot of pull aparts for a guy who throws about 6 punches per 3 round fight. Work.
True Roadblock, but this one didn’t even make it to TV.
Good point. I wonder if a TV camera caught it though. I thought the Diego/Kos shoving match was tasteless and hoped UFC wouldn’t play it up. Then they put it on their website and opened the show with it. Diego should lose 20% of his purse for that. And it shouldn’t be encouraged. Maybe I’m half a fag but I prefer to see guys like GSP and Serra who respect each other, respect the sport and just want to go out and prove their the best. Not two guys who engage in Myspace wars with each other.
I totally agree with you on the respect point. Puts the “martial arts” into mixed martial arts
There it is! They just teased the UFC highlights on SportsCenter!
Serra took his opportunity…he knew that he was going to win, and I think that that is why he was so calm after the fight. GSP is down a few notches…and Hughes know that this means he will be champion again. Hughes can, without a doubt in my mind, beat Serra, and I think he knows it to.
Okami took it to Swick and took away alot of his luster….and I not sure what this does to Swick’s profitability. Fitch has got to be higher up there in the rankings after tonight. Cannot say enough about Okami’s skill and toughness.
Both Sanchez and Koscheck lose points in my mind. Absolutely boring fight that had way too much trash-talking behind it to end up the way that it did. Maybe Sanchez isn’t the same without the weed? Absolutely horrible.
Huerta and Garcia was an amazing bout…reminded me of Lawler/Lytle in the type of action that it portrayed. Definitely a candidate for fight of the year. Great fight, fun to watch, and proof that two guys who want to win put on a good show….the OPPOSITE of Sanchez/Koscheck.
Kendall Grove impressed me ALOT…and considering that I had zero clue as to who he was that is saying something.
All in all, outstanding PPV…and man oh man, Pride looks done for. Here’s hoping not.
UFC is the first segment after this commercial break on SportsCenter. Put it on people.
Fitch is a Welterweight, so the Okami fight shouldn’t effect him in the rankings. in the UFC:
Top 4 MW’s are: Silva, Franklin, Marquardt, & Okami.
As for Fitch at Welterweight, I would rank him above Parisyan & Sanchez. He could be the best, but we need to see him fight some of these good fighters to rank him better.
The UFC on ESPN clip was short but good. A nice start.
Good explanation of what “ultimate fighting” is — who would’ve thought the first-ever UFC clip on SportsCenter would be Serra beating St. Pierre? I’ve got to say, seeing that kind of mainstream exposure, as brief as it was, really puts all this speculation about the risks associated with the PRIDE sale into perspective, doesn’t it?
I’ll cream when they do highlights for 70.
Classic all-hype, no-substance BS from ESPN. They hyped that the entire show like it was going to be one of the major stories on Sportscenter, then delivered about a 15 second segment. Oh well. I did see enough to see in the half-hour I spent waiting to tell I haven’t been missing anything while in the couple years or so since I stopped watching Sportscenter.
I agree with the post above about the rabbit punching. Serra landed a huge forearm hook to the back of GSP’s head that had the champion out on his feet. I guess McCarthy didn’t see it, or he didn’t care. I hope it is the former, because if he had seen it, he should have called time out and given GSP time to recover as if he had been hit in the nuts.
Seeing Diego get dominated was fantastic, and I am now a Koscheck fan. His hands looked very sharp, he was slipping punches and keeping his distance well, and I think he would give Hughes or GSP a run for their money.
Well, that stinks, because of technical problems with my cable company (Cox Cable) giving not only UFC 69 and the replay as one block, I can’t order and watch Pride 34. Well, I could call and order it, but the DVR box wouldn’t record the show (and how am I going to stay awake at 3 am to watch it?), and the video was very crappy, and skipping.
IMO, if Zuffa is going to run Pride and UFC this way (and not alert cable companies over glitches like this), I don’t think Pride is going to last that much longer. I know I for one won’t be ordering a Zuffa Pride PPV for a while. Especially if they run a “Live” Pride show the same day/night as UFC.
Serra vs. Hughes might actually be closer then people think. Hughes can’t overly out strike him on the feet. And Hughes has always had issues with submission guys on the ground. Perhaps a much better fight then people think.
And if you look at Serra’s record, he is now 16-4. You could really say 18-4 if you count the 2 fights from TUF4. His loss to Carter was avenged. His loss to BJ Penn was literally razor thin. The Thomas fight was close. And if he had better cardio, he would have beaten Parisyan. It’s not like he has ever been truly outclassed.
I’m not going to say that he is the next great threat at Welterweight, but if you actually look at his record and what he has done, it is more impressive then the hardcore fans give him credit for.
1) Kendall Grove is possibly the most improved fighter in the history of time itself. The fact that this is the same guy who got choked out by Savant Young and KO’d by Sick Dog Ramirez astounds me. Frigging astounds me.
2) Okami needs to look at the tape of the Japnese fighters in the last CAGE FORCE card and see what a mounted elbow can do.
3) It’s awesome that Nogueira’s last operation/surgery/laser whatever came out successful, because the idea of Nogueira in a 25 minute title fight is something I can rally behind.
4) MMA needs more Mexicans, ASAP.
5) MMAtt Serra is president.
After the Koscheck/Sanchez snoozer, I was fearing that this should would be the next UFC 61. No one besides Kendall Grove seemed to be able to finish a fight. I can now agree with Erin that Sanchez is an idiot…he put all that time behind hyping his fight, then he goes in and does literally nothing. Meanwhile, Koscheck does next-to-nothing, which is more than nothing, so he wins. His little promo was good, I’ll give him that. Horrible way for Sanchez’s streak to end, and I’m now awaiting his excuse.
Serra upsetting GSP saved the show for me. Not that I don’t like St-Pierre, but I’ve taking a liking to Serra, and he trains a friend of mine, so…bias.
Ooh, some revisionist history from Jordan “Noguera is blind” Breen
“Ooh, some revisionist history from Jordan “Noguera is blind†Breen”
Not at all. I was told by the same guy who told me is vision in his eye was ganked that he’d had another surgery/treatment/laser whatever done and that it was successful. I really have little reason to distrust the word of Brazil’s best MMA journalists and Brazilian MMA managers.
It’s not like you couldn’t see the huge white ball of shit over his pupil in past Pride events. I always thought the guy looked like a brazilian frankenstein.
Well, this is God’s revenge against Dana White for TUF4 … the show has now officially fucked him every way it can, from tanking the series ratings to not generating any hot commodities to the farce of a non-title match to Matt Serra now being the champion of the UFC’s flagship division. No disrespect to Matt Serra, he won fair and square. But the division is now in the hands of a guy that can’t sell PPVs. The only upside is this sets things up nicely for a fight vs Hughes and then the winner faces GSP.
“But the division is now in the hands of a guy that can’t sell PPVs.”
What does that matter when he can easily be paired with someone who can (ie, Hughes, Penn, or GSP)?