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UFC 83 in Montreal
By Zach Arnold | April 19, 2008
PBP: Sherdog | The Fight Network | MMA Junkie | Observer | AOL Fanhouse
Topics: Media, MMA, UFC, Zach Arnold | 89 Comments » | Permalink | Trackback |
WALES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Sorry guys – over here it#r massive.
For us this is the biggest fight since Hatton My when I was over in the MG
Got money on hopkins as a saver. But by fuck JC is the boy.
Drop him joe!
Before watching the fight i’ve just yelled across my flats at 3am LGRTR. Oh dear. we’ve v reservered.
1. Kenny Florian is a really good announcer. Much better then Frank Mir. Not as good as Rogan, but with some experience would likely be better.
2. Bruce Buffer spoke the natives language. Pretty good.
good defensive boxing
I know McCarthy isn’t a top tier Middleweight, but Bisping looked oustanding. He could be a real threat at 185 lbs. Probably not beat Anderson Silva, but likely Top 5 to Top 10.
joe’s going to have going him out
I’m enjoying the effort people are making to throw in some French.
I’m actually watching this from Dubai, where it’s about to turn 7am. I wonder how many other Dubaians are watching – and how many post on Fight Opinion?
cunt boxer
Decision?
Nate Quarry is my new favorite fighter
Does it even need to be mentioned that Kalib Starnes will be fired tomorrow?
Disappointing efforts by McCarthy, Starnes and Lutter. Only Bocek deserves credit for his loss tonight.
Not a surprising night.
Another one-sided fight. There was nothing competitive tonight, at least on the main card.
Does anyone want to see a third GSP/Serra fight?
I know that I do not want to.
If I third fight happens, I see it being like Gatti/Ward III…
Dana White has to be happy…
1. GSP wins in Canada
2. GSP vs. Fitch
3. Serra vs. Hughes
And who knows, at this rate, we might see a mega-showdown between GSP & Silva at some point… The 2 P4P best fighters in the world.
And 45 Huddle, I agree with you about Starnes being fired later tonight…not tomorrow.
Starnes being fired should be reported on for epic lulz. And people has been spamming the url of his website to send hate mail too lol.
Only 1 lost for me tonight, not counting prelims. Fuck Lutter.
I like Serra, in victory and defeat. I hope he kills Hughes.
I’m not sure what Starnes was doing at all in the cage tonight. His game plan got thrown out the window in Round 1 – fine, but he didnt do anything different in Round 2 or 3 for that matter. As I was watching the show with a friend, he said that they should just stop the fight in the middle of the second round and explain that Dana White has just fired Starnes. Funny and probably not far from the truth.
“If I third fight happens, I see it being like Gatti/Ward III…”
How? The third Gatti/Ward bout was great, and only a nudge worse than the first fight.
I saw the press conference. Was funny. Someone asked about GSP’s shorts. He said it was sponsorless then finally explained that Affliction was banned from the UFC and they’re paying him to wear sponsorless shorts.
Dana White: “There you go, you got your plug in.”
Everyone: lol
“I saw the press conference. Was funny. Someone asked about GSP’s shorts. He said it was sponsorless then finally explained that Affliction was banned from the UFC and they’re paying him to wear sponsorless shorts.
Dana White: “There you go, you got your plug in.”
Everyone: lol”
Thank you so much for sharing your wonderful insight into what I call the “good minds think alike” group.
D-Dubya is such a bastard man, such a cheap bastard!!
I hope Starnes never fights MMA again. If he does, I hope that it’s against Anderson Silva in an 8′ x 8′ square cage. What a gutless display, I was embarassed watching it.
The way GSP is going, he ain’t gonna have no problems with Fitch.
There is nothing Fitch does that GSP isn’t significantly better at, other than cutting weight, and even with that weight cutting, Fitch still won’t be as strong as GSP.
The only person at 170 or under who can beat GSP is BJ.
I didn’t watch the show last night other than the second round of the main event; all the fights seemed terribly obvious and not-compelling. I watched the Calzaghe-Hopkins fight, which (for a Bernard fight) was fantastic. Hopkins was completely delusional in defeat; I lol’d at him.
UFC 83 was sort of just embarrassing on many fronts. It was a poor card by any standards, and failed to deliver on just about every level. We had Lutter going into a fight completely unprepared. A guy like BJ Penn could do this as he was a naturally gifted guy, but even this bit him in the ass eventually, Lutter just made a fool of himself.
Starnes and Quarry were embarrassing in there, too. Starnes for obvious reasons, and Quarry for being so one-dimensional. There are a lot of things he could have done outside of the same jab, hook, low kick combo that Starnes kept running away from. There were a few times when he had Starnes up against the cage and backed off to go for the combo again. A clinch against the cage, a takedown, anything would have been better. Were they going for the stand-up classic that Dana White probably pep talks guys into having, or were they just afraid of taking it to the ground and getting booed? I can’t even tell at this point.
In contrast, though, I am looking forward to the next show.
I can’t believe no one is talking about the blatant DIVE that McCarthy took last night.
He totally jumped to the ground in about as obvious a fashion that everyone was calling out Bo Cantrell for last year.
I’m not saying he was diving for Bisping’s sake, but because he has absolutely no heart and didnt want to take any punishment – pathetic.
Well, nobody really expected much from him. I think he figured he could just give up and nobody would care. I liked how he taunted Bisping when he was clearly getting the shit beaten out of him, like he was somehow unaffected.
I thought it was a good PPV. The UFC haters always come out of the sewers after every show. The only bad fight was Starnes v Quarry.
lol@UFC haters.
I love how there is always some dude who crawls out to say anybody who didn’t like a show is obviously just a negative person. The internet is really a wonderful place.
If that show was worth 45 dollars, your average PPV must be worth 65. Next month’s should be about 125.
Gotta have a good laugh at that Rollo. Even Huddle, who’s the staunchest UFC supporter was able to say this card was weak from the outset.
Even the main event was a squash match – granted Serra upset GSP previously, but it was Serra’s first fight since and GSP has looked more tuned than ever in his fights since. To me there was a small question of GSP’s mental strength, but I thought he should have been even more favoured than the first fight.
That card was full of 1-sided showcase fights and Canadian fighter X vs. random TUF guy Y that you generally see on UFN cards, not PPV’s.
It was a bit of a weak card, but it turned out better than I expected. Worth my money, although I think I would have paid an extra $10 for them to not air the Kalib Starnes fight. I don’t see how you could hate it if you watched it.
“Gotta have a good laugh at that Rollo. Even Huddle, who’s the staunchest UFC supporter was able to say this card was weak from the outset.”
Yes, but you saw the line up coming in. If you really hated it, you wouldn’t buy it. After you bought it, was it really horrible? Far from it, imo. People are acting like it was a disaster of a card. I don’t disagree that on paper it wasn’t as good as most of the recent and upcoming cards.
Fact is, there are haters out there who just want to bash the UFC and Dana for some personal reason.
Starnes should be black listed from ever fighting MMA again. I will never watch another event with that douche bag on it. I almost threw a beer at my TV last night. Dana needs to weed out the “posers” from their UFC event as well. Get your house cleanin’ done, Dana!
I’m glad I didn’t pay for this one. It’s a shame that the best fights were on the preliminary. On paper, the main cards sucked and it actually did.
At least Fedor is fighting Timmy. That should answer a lot of questions.
Fact is the card sucked on paper and the card itself sucked in execution.
None of the fights were very exciting and for the most part were none of them were “good fights” either.
– like Cyph said, the prelims were the best fights
– Starnes x Quarry was a total joke
– Danzig x Bocek was decent enough
– Bisping x McCarthy was terrible and “Chainsaw” took a blatant dive
– Lutter x Franklin was shit too – Lutter gases halfway thru the first round and it takes Franklin forever to finish a guy that can barely carry his own weight: this does nothing for the MW division
– GSP x Serra – was an absolute squash.
I’m all for GSP’s win and the crowd was ballistic for it, but the fight itself was nothing to write home about after the build-up. GSP now looks like Hughes v. 3.0.
I was about as excited for this card as I was for UFC 78. However, there were two main differences.
1. UFC 78 felt like it never had a main event. And the fights in general were really boring.
2. UFC 83 had the feeling of a mega Main Event. I mean Rich Franklin was a star as the semi-main event…. And GSP was the Superstar of Superstars for the Main Event. And the fights were actually remotely entertaining, despite it being piss poor on paper.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not going to ask for Zuffa to put on more of these types of cards. And UFC 84 is completely the opposite with a lot of good fights. But UFC 83 wasn’t a total bust.
45 has become the most reasonable poster on this site or maybe the rest of you have become bitter nasty, and irrational.
“- Starnes x Quarry was a total joke”
Yes
“- Danzig x Bocek was decent enough”
A little more than that. Do you really like MMA?
“- Bisping x McCarthy was terrible and “Chainsaw” took a blatant dive”
It was a mismatch. It wasn’t boring. MAybe you should call the FBI to look into the “dive”
“- Lutter x Franklin was shit too – Lutter gases halfway thru the first round and it takes Franklin forever to finish a guy that can barely carry his own weight: this does nothing for the MW division”
Sh*t? Strong words for a fight that I thought was halfway entertaining at least. Lutter was a disappointment but for the time he lasted, he made it interesting.
“- GSP x Serra – was an absolute squash.”
He squashes everyone at this point. Should he just not fight?
And you forgot Hironaka v Goulet. Yeah, that was a snoozer.
I suppose Zuffa should just fold and leave the MMA world to Larry Flynt’s twin brother and that guy from Ringling Brothers Yamma Circus.
“I suppose Zuffa should just fold and leave the MMA world to Larry Flynt’s twin brother and that guy from Ringling Brothers Yamma Circus.”
Seriously, what is wrong with you? Nobody is saying ‘FUK UFC I WILL NEVER BUY FROM THEM AGAIN’ or anything, just pointing out this card was weak on paper and in execution it was lacking as well. The next 3 PPV cards looks great, this was obviously just filler.
UFC just needs to stop presenting these 1 or 2 fight cards with worthless filler or they’ll turn into boxing in a hurry (although they might want that).
Crappy event.
I’m not saying the event was a total disaster by any means. I’m just saying the fights weren’t good on paper and the fights were quite bland/boring/terrible when they happened.
The actual “event” came off very well, but that’s by and large a product of a nuclear hot crowd where the UFC was making it’s debut and had the hometown boy headlining it. The atmosphere and crowd were definitely electric and added to the event, but these guys were just cheering and raucous for whatever you showed them. Their reactions weren’t really a function of anything other than – “we’re at the first ever UFC and gonna cheer for anything that happens, especially anything GSP related.”
IMO the event was saved by the crowd in many ways – if this same event played out in LV or somewhere that they’re used to UFC cards, I guarantee it would have come off looking BAD.
Actually Rollo,
I said right off the top – the prelims were the best fights. Of course that wouldn’t play to your whole “you hate everything UFC” argument, which is really far off from what I’m saying. And you’re telling me that in your opinion Lutter/Franklin was “entertaining enough…until Lutter gassed”, so that means I’m wrong? No. In my opinion fights were a guy blows his wad in the first two minutes and cannot mount any offence or hold his hands up, but his opponent takes 2 rounds to finish him are sh*tty fights. Hey if you enjoy that stuff all the power to you, but sorry – not for me.
Am I not entitled to an opinion that the card was a real dusterfest from the get-go and lackluster in its execution? I hardly think I’m in the minority here – in fact the bar I was at watching the fights was full of people grumbling about how bad the fights were. The bars I went to afterwards and chatted with random strangers had the same feeling on the event and I got texts from buddies telling me how sh*tty they thought the event was – so trust me, I’m not doing this to “hate on the UFC”. I’m saying so because I think the card was a total filler card that they knew would play out b/c it was their first foray into Canada and they could have sold anything so long as it had GSP attached to it.
I think that Dave, Gaijin and the rest of the hardcores need to take a step of the hardcore mma bubble. Have any of you guys looked at how the real world reacted to the card?
The show was huge. There was a AP article. The top story on all the new websites including si.com and yahoo.com. There was a huge response from people whom overed the ppv on every webstie. Numerous people say that the bars were packed.
By the end of the show UFC seemed like it was a super hot sport and GSP came across like a top superstar.
I never denied the success of the event and UFC’s penetration into the Canadian market, nor GSP’s appeal.
Quite the contrary – just stating that this card’s fights THEMSELVES, weren’t good.
I’m glad it was successful, it was pretty obvious they’ve made a huge splash in Canada – I just hope they don’t try to make every Canadian card as weak as this one.
1. Did anybody get the latest Wrestling Observer? What did Meltzer say about the UFC Roster Shake-up?
2. Any truth to the rumor that DREAM lost their primetime slot for the next show?
3. The UFC is in a great position at this point. It would help to get Toronto & New York Sanctioned, and then they will be set-up for years to come. In a given year: 3 UK, 3 Vegas, 2 NYC, 2 Canadian (Toronoto & Montreal), 1 CA, 1 OH, & 1 Chicago.
That is 13 major shows a year with basically guaranteed $2 Million gates or more. Plus, it guarantees that each market won’t be overused. And that doesn’t even include Boston, Hawaii, Miami, or one of the few Texas Cities. You go to each of those cities on an every other year basis, and they should be good money makers.
Meltzer said they’re going to cut the roster from 200 down to 150.
The only fight I had any interest in was the GSP-Serra fight. Yes, GSP squashed him — but that’s why he’s fun to watch. His total manhandling of his opponents is fascinating; he just makes it look so easy. I mean, Serra (who had good fights with Karo and Penn) literally had no offense. Zero.
FF