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Elite XC 9/15 Hawaii
By Zach Arnold | September 15, 2007
Event reports: MMA Weekly | Sherdog | MMA Madness | Observer | (here and here) | Fox Sports | Fight Report | CBS Sportsline | F4W Online | Honolulu Star-Bulletin | Honolulu Advertiser
Dave Doyle:
Diaz took scores of 30-27 and 29-28, while Aina won by a count of 29-28 on one judge’s scorecard. Y! Sports scored the fight 29-28 Aina. The judge who scored the match 30-27 Diaz was spotted chatting on his cell phone at one point during the fight and spent a chunk of round 1 with his back turned to the fight, engaging a woman sitting at the press table in a conversation.
Between the Gina Carano weigh-in shenanigans and this incident, not a good reflection upon enforcement of regulation in Hawaii. Plus, a ridiculous amount of fights at catch weights and Gary Shaw’s desire to add more weight classes – enough already.
Topics: Media, MMA, Pro Elite, Zach Arnold | 26 Comments » | Permalink | Trackback |
It was a terrible idea for them to use the same three judges all night. 30-27 Diaz was retarded, and Fukuda should have got the victory I thought. Lawler did exactly what I, and most, thought he would, and looked sensational doing it.
I agree with everything Jordan said there. How you could give the first round to Diaz is beyond me, and Fukuda clearly won the first two rounds, though they were fairly close. Above all though, this was a good card on paper and had great, competitive fights. A card like this every month or two alone is worth more than the price of Showtime.
Mauro ’25 cm’ Ranallo is now an official Gina perv… 🙂
Someone needs to start issuing death threats to terrible judges.
That 25 cm comment by Mauro was unbelieveable. i didnt know whether to laugh or be disgusted. Ranallo was not on his game. and speaking of which, Goldberg has got to go. He is really terrible and just has no credibility as a fight commentator. Did you see him deny the president of ICON the microphone? just shaking his head. That was hilarious. but it looked unprofessional.
I thought the Fukuda decision was bad. I thought the Diaz decision was fine.
And no big announcement. They had been hyping it up yesterday.
I wonder if something fell apart at the last minute.
Good show. I thought the commentating was horrible, especially Ranallo. That 25 cm. comment was out of line but I laughed because it was unexpected. The fight professor was decent and Goldberg was Goldberg. I thought Fukuda and Aina won their fights. I like Lawler’s game plan to let Ninja punch himself out. My fav. part was the pace of the show. After one fight was over they gave the next fight right away. No annoying 15 min. movie trailor ala UFC.
Lawler looked patient and good. You could tell at the beginning of the 2nd he was going to win the fight. Both split decision fights were close…not really worth complaining over. Same with all the bitching about the 160lb weight class. For the last several years before UFC brought back 155, 160 was the premier LW weight class. There are a lot of guys who are perfect at that weight but can’t make 155 and are too small for 170. I say after 170, just drop 10lb per weight class. 170, 160, 150, 140, 130, etc.
The weights organizations come up with are so arbitrary, its semi-retarded to argue one way or the other. If Sakurai, Gomi, and Diaz are best at 160, thats where I want to see them. I’m sure dudes like Sherk wouldn’t complain either.
Regarding the catch weights:
Diaz towered over Aina and looked to have a sizable weight advantage.
Any problems Diaz had at 170 had little to do with weight and more to do with the things that cost him the first round last night.
Gomi and Sakurai both walk around at over 180. Sakurai can’t even make 160 any more.
The 160 weight class made sense in Pride because they did not have a ww division, it went from 183 to 160. But with the WW class, I don’t see the need for it.
I agree about the weight class thing. I have said it already. this sport needs to be unified in North America… Not fractured just to help out one fighter at a time.
If a judge was chatting on his cell phone… then obviously Hawaii or Pro Elite did a terrible job getting these judges. How horrible.
So far, I have been extremely underwhelmed by what EliteXC has done. in fact, they have done more bad then good at this point.
I thought the Diaz decision was fine. I don’t like it when people automatically take a round just because they get one knockdown (round 2).
I had it two rounds to three for Diaz. He lost the first round but was dominant in the 2nd and 3rd. That knockdown was flash in the 2nd, and he clearly won that round (I have no idea what Quadros was watching here) . He dominated round 3 to the extent I almost had it 10 – 8. Aina was game and showed flashes but did not deserve the decision.
I just got done watching the Lawler/Rua fight. Lawler was the one impressive performance on a rather lacklust event. I say lacklust because:
1. Mauro’s comments are pathetic. It is bad enough they have a “sex symbol” as a woman’s fighter and not a legit top tier lady like Tara LaRosa. To hear comments like that is just wrong.
2. The girls on the entrance ramp made it look like a strip club. I’m not even a fan of the ring card girls, but the 6 glorified strippers was just bad
3. Commentary – Bad, Bad, Bad. Keep in mind I have only heard the commentary during the fights, but I was unimpressed. Quadros & Mauro aren’t very good. I know some hardcore fans enjoy them, but to a casual fan, they just come off as a some 3rd tier duo. And Goldberg is even worse.
4. The quality of fights. No doubts that Jake Shields is good. But he continues to be fed real scrubs. Renato was solid like 3 years ago. Trigg knocked to fight out of him and he hasn’t been anywhere close to the same since. Diaz looked like crap against a nobody (and almost .500 fighter). Gina Carano was fed another woman fighter coming off a loss. Even the main event had Rua, who isn’t exactly Top 10 material as of late.
Like I said, Lawler was the one impressive thing about the show. He had a fantastic game plan looked good throughout. He has really matured as a fight. Not sure if he can beat Anderson Silva, Paulo Filho, Dan Henderson, Denis Kang, or even a Yushin Okami. But he is a legit Top Ten fighter at this point in his career.
What was Hughes feaking out about at the end of the Lawler-Rua fight?
I think he was pissed about the late stoppage.
Not sure about hughes but it was a late stoppage. It was one of those Japanese Sakuraba late stoppages where they let their guy get pounded on until he’s totally out cold.
45 Huddle.. by ‘quality of fights’ do you mean how highly ranked the two fighters are or how good the fights were??
Because I would have to say that while this card did not necessarily have top-10 fighters, the fights themselves were, for the most part, highly entertaining. Real fight fans like good fights. period. Not just top-10 fighters. I believe thats called frontrunning.
Zack Says:
September 16th, 2007 at 2:44 am
For the last several years before UFC brought back 155, 160 was the premier LW weight class.
Huh? What are you talking about?
70kg was and is the premier LW class. That’s where Gomi/Shaolin/Hansen/Kawajiri et al fought in SHOOTO. 160 was only around for like a couple of years in Pride, and was only created so Gomi didn’t have to cut.
The only reason why the 161 lbs weight class was used in Pride was because Takanori Gomi, their posterboy, either didn’t want to or couldn’t make the weight. That is the only reason. Shooto has used 154 lbs (70KG) forever. The 155 lbs limit in the US has been around since the UFC introduced it as the “Bantamweight Division” before the weight class restructuring. Even K-1 uses 70KG. So there is really no excuse to have a 160 lbs division in the United States…. Unless you are Gary Shaw and you have exactly ONE fighter who competes best at that weight class and you want to tailor it to your “house fighters”. Just like they tailored it to Jake Shields fighting at 175 lbs because he doesn’t want to cut as much either.
As for the quality of the EliteXC card….. It wasn’t high quality because the best weren’t competing against each other. For example:
1. Verissimo had no business in the cage with Shields. Renato has not been a contender since Trigg beat the fight out of him. That is not a competitive fight.
2. Nick Diaz’s opponent couldn’t even win 2/3rds of his fights. And this isn’t a Jason MacDonald who improved as his fight career went along. The guy just wasn’t that good. The fact that the fight was entertaining doesn’t matter. It still was not a high quality fight.
3. Gina Carano’s opponent was a joke. She didn’t even win her last fight coming into the show, and yet she is given a shot at their “Golden Girl”? Give me a break….
Lastly, it is not frontrunning to want to see the best fight each other. It is called being a fight fan. I love baseball, but I don’t want to watch a AAA game. That bores me. I want to know that the game I am watching is between the best. Same thing for MMA. I love MMA, but I don’t want to watch a KOTC. That is the minor leagues. I want to see top tier competitive fights. That is what makes me want to watch. And the last EliteXC show did not do this on a whole. The Lawler/Rua fight did… but the rest of the card did not.
LOL @ the repeated rumor’s that 160 lbs in Pride was for Gomi’s sake. It was moreso for the sake of the metric system.
93 kg = 205 lbs
83 kg = 183 lbs
73 kg = 161 lbs
Now what’s more likely, that they put 10 kg between each weight class or they whimsically decided to make push up the LW limit to accomodate fat Gomi and it turned out that nicely by mere coincidence?
Who trusts the metric system??? God knows I don’t!
Hopefully Gary Shaw doesn’t go the boxing route and have weight classes every 4 pounds each with its own champion.
45…yes I can’t wait to watch the Superbowl of MMA next weekend to finally get to see the best fight each other. Jardine vs Liddell. Shogun vs Forrest. Yippie.
I thought the matchmaking on the card was solid. Lawler vs Ninja was a good fight on paper and played out well too. Showtime cost me $6 to get…totally worth it.
Shields vs. Verrissimo and Diaz vs. Aina were not AAA baseball my friend. As I just said, there is a world beyond the top-10.
Charuto “had no business” being in the cage with Shields. OK. Whatever.
Yeah, Charuto definitely deserves to be in the cage with Shields. His ‘arms flailing wildly’ defense against GnP was beautiful. Really showed that he was a game opponent.
What they’re doing with Carano is no different than what the UFC has done with Liddell, Franklin, Bisping and Huerta…women’s mma is in it’s infancy, like it or not they need to nurture her along and have a star to carry the division. Plus she’s freakin HOT!
As she goes, the division will go.