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UFC 89 (10/18) card line-up
By Zach Arnold | October 16, 2008
TV: Spike TV, 9 PM
- Lightweights: Per Eklund vs. Samy Schiavo
- Lightweights: David Baron vs. Jim Miller
- Lightweights: Sam Stout vs. Terry Etim
- Lightweights: Jess Liaudin vs. David Bielkheden
- Heavyweights: Shane Carwin vs. Neil Wain
- Welterweights: Dan Hardy vs. Akihiro Gono
- Welterweights: Paul Kelly vs. Marcus Davis
- Welterweights: Paul Taylor vs. Chris Lytle
- Light Heavyweights: Sokoudjou vs. Luiz Cane
- Light Heavyweights: Keith Jardine vs. Brandon Vera
- Middleweights: Michael Bisping vs. Chris Leben
Headlines going into the show:
- ESPN the Magazine: An interview with Rachelle Leah
- The Telegraph (UK): Michael Bisping relishing Ultimate Fighting challenge
- The Telegraph (UK): Paul Taylor’s chance to hammer home Ultimate Fighting talent
- The Canadian Press: Michael Bisping, Chris Leben come into UFC 89 each with compelling stories to tell
- Yahoo Sports (Kevin Iole): Michael Bisping uses bout as barometer for Anderson Silva
- USA Today: Thoughts of Anderson Silva departure plague middleweight field
- Steve Cofield: KO ‘The Crippler’ is Michael Bisping’s focus (radio interview)
- MMA HQ: UFC 89 – Bisping vs. Leben preview
- AOL Fanhouse: UFC 89 preview & predictions
- Yahoo Sports (Dave Meltzer): Brandon Vera set for crucial test against Keith Jardine
- Mike Coughlin: Leben, Bisping, and fighting your way to the guillotine
Topics: Media, MMA, UFC, Zach Arnold | 20 Comments » | Permalink | Trackback |
Not that my opinion matters, but this card has little of interest on it.
This card looks not much better than a Cage Rage card. Thank god it’s not PPV.
Vera/Jardine is a good matchup. Bisping/Leben is a solid main event for a Spike broadcast. Looking forward to DVRing this.
It might not have the marquee value of some of the recent and forthcomming PPV’s, but there should be some really competetive, exciting fights top to bottom.
I’m going to be there live and I can’t wait 🙂
It’s a very good UFN, but with a PPV name. The five main fights are solid match-ups and have the potential to be very entertaining, depending on which Vera shows up. I’m looking forward to it.
Excellent “free card”. Better than the equivalent “free cards” you get with boxing. I think Leben/Bisbing and Vera/Jardine are excellent, fan friendly fights. You should see nothing but standing and banging in both of them.
Some interesting undercard fights too with Sam Stout and Dan Hardy vs Gono.
Should be a very entertaining card.
This one has as much or more talent on it than any non-UFC card. Sokoujou, Carwin, Miller, Vera, Jardine, Gono, Bisping, and Leben are all “named” fighters. Half of them are future stars.
Sure, if you compare it with a regular PPV, it could be found lacking. However, I’ll be hard pressed to find a better card from EliteXC, Dream, or Sengoku.
Am I the only one who are interested in Jardine/Vera, Kelly/Davis, Sokoujou/Cane, and Bisping/Leben?
These fights will separate the contenders from the pretenders.
For some reason I can’t post on the previous thread. To answer D Cap’s question on why the UFC doesn’t just go and report what they pay in bonuses, the answer is simple: they don’t want other fighters to use it as leverage in renegotiation.
I’m not saying that’s right or wrong. But there is a real business reason on why secret bonuses are not reported. I’m sure the guy making 50k doesn’t like the fact that the guy he just beat negotiated a secret bonus for an extra 200k because he is a “name” fighter.
the card sucks !!! i´m looking forward for ufc 93..colman vs rua II..a happy new year everyone
Then why didn’t Dave just say that? Oh, that’s probably because it wasn’t what he meant.
As for why the thread was closed, something was said that clearly Zach finds too controversial to mention in any way, shape, or form, because three posts were deleted immediately along with said closure. I guess the demands for hard hitting journalism only go so far.
So did you just ask Dave Meltzer over the phone and he told you exactly what he meant to say? Or are you mind reader?
Dave Meltzer apparently is the new Pride.
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I’m hoping that some of these fights will result in some fighters getting pink slips, even though I know that’s unlikely.
Even if it doesn’t, it should help to at least relegate some guys to the dark matches.
Funny that many of the ‘hardcore fans’ need a big-name, storyline-driven main event, or they complain about the entire card being “Cage Rage” in quality, or not interesting enough.
I used to think that real fans just wanted exciting fights that are competitive and evenly matched…to me, UFC 89 looks pretty solid (especially for free, living in Canada).
So did you just ask Dave Meltzer over the phone and he told you exactly what he meant to say? Or are you mind reader?
We get it, cyph. Zuffa does no wrong. I explained pretty throughly in the aformentioned closed thread what points one towards the obvious. If Dave wants to be clear, he is. If he wants to obscure something, he does that too and he does it with fair regularity.
As for the hardcore fans complaining about the card, well, its a step between UFN and a PPV level card, and thankfully we don’t have to pay for it to see it, because precious few would.
Ultimo Santa has spoken the correct.
All this speculation on what Dave Meltzer implied in his newsletter is ridiculous. Why not email Meltzer or post a question on his message board to ask him to clarify what he meant exactly? He’s pretty good at getting back to any questions.
Meltzer and Vince McMahon talked on a regular basis last decade yet it never stopped him from criticising any aspect of WWE. When the product started to decline and the criticisms got harsher McMahon blackballed Meltzer and others like him but did that dry up sources? No. So what exactly has Meltzer to fear by being critical of Zuffa? Nothing, unless you’re implying that Meltzer is obscuring UFC information because he’s being paid off to…
When the product started to decline and the criticisms got harsher McMahon blackballed Meltzer and others like him but did that dry up sources?
Reasons are:
-WWE has a creative team because it isn’t a real sport
-the people most affected are the ones giving him all his leads
-he doesn’t have alternate people that can feed him info. Really. Look around now: name some guys offering the kind of SCOOPZ~! that Dave does for MMA. Funny thing is that the guy who wrote Ring of Hell is the guy who was helping forward so much of the backstage info for the Observer.
So what exactly has Meltzer to fear by being critical of Zuffa?
If he gets cut off, he has to rely on actual analysis of the sport itself, which, in case you haven’t noticed, he is not at all good at.
Baron/Miller, Hardy/Gono, Sokoudjou/Cane, Vera/Jardine, & Bisping/Leben are all competitive fights on paper. That’s the most important thing for a card.
Michael “The Count” Bisping will take on Chris “The Crippler” Leben at UFC 89 on Saturday, Oct. 18. Sportsnet is the only network in Canada to broadcast the event live and in HD starting at 3:00 p.m. (ET)/12:00 p.m. (PT) from the National Indoor Arena in Birmingham, England.
Canadian sports networks is doing the right thing.