« Josh Barnett: Hey, I always wanted to fight Fedor in Japan anyways | Home | ESPN’s dreamy WEC news headline »
WEC 8/9 Las Vegas
By Zach Arnold | August 9, 2009
Event Results: Fanhouse | MMA Junkie | Bloody Elbow | Sherdog | MMA Frenzy
Hard Rock Hotel & Casino
Dark matches
- Featherweights: Diego Nunes vs. Rafael Dias
- Bantamweights: Rani Yahya vs. Kenji Osawa
- Lightweights: Ed Ratcliff vs. Phil Cardella
- Lightweights: Marcus Hicks vs. Shane Roller
- Featherweights: Fredson Paixao vs. Cole Province
- Featherweights: Leonard Garcia vs. Jameel Massouh
Main card
- Bantamweights: Takeya Mizugaki vs. Jeff Curran
- Lightweights: Ricardo Lamas vs. Danny Castillo
- Bantamweights: Joseph Benavidez vs. Dominick Cruz
- WEC Bantamweight Title match: Miguel Torres vs. Brian Bowles
The show is facing tough sports competition on TV (Buffalo vs. Tennessee NFL game on NBC, Sox/Yankees on ESPN).
Topics: Media, MMA, WEC, Zach Arnold | 33 Comments » | Permalink | Trackback |
I’m predicting Bowles to win. Torres is tough, but something tells me Bowles is going to tag him and knock him out.
And if Curran loses here, he should be out of the WEC.
Curran shouldn’t be out of the WEC if he loses. It’s not like he’s losing to scrubs here. He lost fights to the (then) consensus #1 FW and then to the guy who ran over that guy twice. Then he lost to a very talented Benavidez. If he were absolutely shitting the bed against nobodies I would agree with you, but he’s not. There are still many fights for him at BW in the WEC should he win or lose against Mizugaki tonight.
Curran vs Benavidez was a great fight. I’d rather see graceful losers than lackluster winners. I’m excited about tonights matchups and would hate to see the WEC merge into the UFC.
“but something tells me Bowles is going to tag him and knock him out.”
How the hell do you figure this? Bowles is mainly a submission guy, and unless I am incorrect, I don’t remember Torres showing signs of a glass jaw. Sure anything can happen, but Torres is probably leaving that cage with his belt.
Miz vs Curran was a great one. Tough decision, IMHO. Miz won two rounds, maybe Curran won the fight.
“Miz won two rounds, maybe Curran won the fight.”
Um, what? It was a three round fight, and you said yourself that Mizugaki won two rounds (I agree. Rounds one and two.) and Curran took the last round. So how would Curran take the fight, going by THAT logic? He didn’t win the round 10-6. He won it 10-9 on all judge’s scorecards. Because he was seemingly close to submitting Mizugaki you can argue a 10-8 round. But even then if would be a draw going by how I (and you I guess) scored the fight.
Apparently you’re new to this concept. Just because that’s how the fight is scored doesn’t mean that’s how the fight went.
“Apparently you’re new to this concept. Just because that’s how the fight is scored doesn’t mean that’s how the fight went.”
Oh, you are going by the PRIDE way of scoring then? Then I am not new to “this concept”. Actually this year would mark the ten year anniversary of me seeing PRIDE for the first time. Well, WEC goes by the 10 point must system, and Mizugaki won two rounds to one (all being 10-9) so the decision is fair. Would Curran win the fight if it was under PRIDE scoring? Maybe because of the last round. But that is purely academic. Mizugaki via 3 round split decision.
Nothing to do with Pride, I never watched Pride event live, and the entire thing was a hilarious sideshow to me.
It was very easy to score Mizugaki/Curran a draw – 10-10 R1, 10-9 Mizu R2, 10-9 Curran R3. 29-29. Would have been perfectly valid.
“Nothing to do with Pride, I never watched Pride event live, and the entire thing was a hilarious sideshow to me.”
Then what are you going by? How did you score the fight? No offense but you are making little sense.
“It was very easy to score Mizugaki/Curran a draw – 10-10 R1, 10-9 Mizu R2, 10-9 Curran R3. 29-29. Would have been perfectly valid.”
Yeah I could see that. But you know damn well that American judges would almost never give out 10-10 rounds. It’s almost sacrilegious. Or 10-8 rounds for MMA for that matter of fact. Man, the 10 point must system makes no sense for MMA.
I’m not scoring the fight. I’m not a judge, why should I score it?
I think Miz won round one, I think Miz one round two. If you asked me who won the fight, I’d say Curran.
“I’m not scoring the fight. I’m not a judge, why should I score it?
I think Miz won round one, I think Miz one round two. If you asked me who won the fight, I’d say Curran.”
Okay, I officially give up. I guess we just have to agree to disagree (even though by your criteria, you are very incorrect, but I won’t argue the point).
Cruz has some interesting potential. He’s gotta get a cap on that ADHD though.
I wouldn’t be surprised if Cruz is next in line for a bantamweight title shot. He dominated Benevidez well enough.
Well, two formerly undefeated fighters losing? Fun card tonight!
Cruz has a lot to learn if he’s gonna be a contender. I mean, a real lot. Mizugaki would be a way better choice for a title shot next given that he just won and had that FOTYC with Torres. Let him develop a finishing game. Right now he’s sloppy with his grappling and his striking, and it doesn’t look like he hits too hard either.
On a completely unrelated sidenote, is anyone else having problems with MySpace since they revamped their design for the inbox, new friends, etc.? The site doesn’t work with Firefox now. Not good.
Wow.
“How the hell do you figure this? Bowles is mainly a submission guy, and unless I am incorrect, I don’t remember Torres showing signs of a glass jaw. Sure anything can happen, but Torres is probably leaving that cage with his belt.”
Torres has always taken way too many shots in his WEC title defenses. The difference is that Bowles had the punching power to make it count. Torre is far too wreckless….
This is why I predicted Bowles winning. Looks like I was right.
Bowles did it! First round TKO! Holy shit! And right before Bowles did Torres in Torres hurt Bowles and Bowles reeled a little from it. But God DAMN did Bowles recover. Awesome fight for how short it was!
This was a pretty awesome card. And I can’t fucking believe 45 Huddle called it. Did you pay Torres to take a dive so you can tell everyone here “I told you so!”?
So do you schedule Torres vs Miz rematch right now, winner fights for the title again?
The Cruz/Benevidez outcome was the best possible for the WEC. Cruz can become the next title challenger and Benevidez can drop down to 125 lbs where his body frame is much more suited. He just needed a loss to push him in that direction.
Overall, a very good night of fights. The Garcia & Mizugaki fights were both close and I didn’t mind either of the decisions. I will say I can’t stand Curran’s style. Trying to win off your back fight after fight is no way to beat top competition.
“So do you schedule Torres vs Miz rematch right now, winner fights for the title again?”
I would. And maybe have Cruz go for the title in the meantime while Torres and Mizugaki battle it out for number one contender-ship.
Torres made two critical mistakes:
1) He gave too much respect to Bowles initially and was tentative, more defensive than on the attack.
2) Once he attacked, he went inside and gave Bowles a chance to counter-punch. Torres had the reach and every other advantage going in — but he negated the advantage and Bowles had the power to win.
Maybe as an undercard attraction to Bowles making a title defense. Its not a fight that is gonna sell to anyone, as good as it might be. Tamura/Page winner would be good for Bowles while they let Cruz develop.
Miguel is definitely one of MMA’s biggest talents, but I am not surprised at what happened tonight.
Mind you, I haven’t seen his fight tonight, but as has been said he is far too reckless. He has a certain cockiness as is represented in his many interviews – “I want to beat them at their strength.”
Miguel brawled with Mizugaki for no reason at all. He got hit when he walked forward, he hit Mizugaki at will when he waited for Mizugaki to come forward and retreated. With his 76″ reach when most guys in the division are 5’6″, Torres should not be getting hit at all.
To think that people complained when Anderson Silva ran circles around Cote and Leites. Now we know why – even the best can get dropped. Not getting hit is the key to staying upright. Sometimes you need to KO your opponent quickly if he is a dangerous fighter, sometimes it is safer ride it to decision over 25 minutes.
—
Having now seen the fight, it is obvious that Miguel was looking to put on a show. I can count on one hand the number of times he threw a jab at Bowles, while Bowles would do so even though he knew he wouldn’t land. There is no reason Miguel couldn’t have landed a stiff jab on Bowles if he wanted – at least to control the distance. Instead, Torres was content to let Bowles right into the pocket where he would try and land a big combination starting with a right hook (this started the chain of events ending in the KO).
Miguel is one of my favourite fighters and I considered him capable of being the most best fighter in all of MMA. But through his increased exposure it’s clear he doesn’t gameplan or train as well as he could. He definitely puts in the work, don’t get me wrong, but the results have been there largely because he’s a natural. Perhaps this sets him on the right track.
Sounds like a ton of controversial decisions on the undercard from the Sherdog PBP.
Sherdog (and MMAJunkie as well) do a horrible job at judging. Worse then the actual judges.
Is anybody else sick of people calling Brown & Bowles wins “shocking” or “major upset”. Neither of them were hardly upsets or shocking.
Both Brown & Bowles were legit Top 3 in the world coming into their title fights. Both had solid chances to win against champions who have careless styles.
Not to mention that both the Feather & Bantam division are still about 2 years away from seeing a dominant champion. Just like it took years for the UFC Divisions to find guys who were dominant…. Same thing will happen in the WEC. The divisions are too new in the states for anybody to think that even Brown or Bowles will be long term champions at this point…
People don’t analyze WEC as strongly as they do the UFC or even Sengoku, so because they aren’t the three or four marquee names it qualifies as an upset to them. Remember when Pulver came into the WEC everybody just assumed he was going to clean out the promotion and then go back into the UFC, but in actuality time had clearly passed him by and he fought a bunch of younger fighters who were more evolved than he was. But very few people predicted that going in because they just assumed it was a little man’s farm league meant to pump out a few stars and get Pulver back on track. But everyone saying Torres is far too reckless to be a guaranteed winner is correct.
That is the problem with WEC; nobody other than the champions were ever put over as the stars. So when said stars inevitably lost, everything is screwed.
The competition has always been tight, I’m just not sure if it has ever been presented like that. Sure, Frank Mir might sell every fighter in the company like the legitimate fighter that they are, but the company has only really promoted a few select fighters.
With Torres, I wasn’t shocked whatsoever last night. It has been said a lot, he is reckless. Also the fact that he has had a bunch of “FOTYCs” with guys that really aren’t top level contenders, with them going to tight decisions hasn’t sold me on him. Torres is a great fighter and always has entertaining fights, but his style just isn’t akin to somebody who will stay on top for a long time.
Think about the Maeda fight, they looked pretty even, right? He is 1 – 2 since then, with the last two fights being in Japan where they are treating him like a star for fighting in the US and protecting him. Manny Tapia is kind of the same thing, I’ve never been sold on Tapia as a great fighter.
“I will say I can’t stand Curran’s style. Trying to win off your back fight after fight is no way to beat top competition.”
It was a thrilling end. Mr. Miz wasn’t expecting that. It’s just too bad he was able to stay awake until the end.
“Torres has always taken way too many shots in his WEC title defenses. The difference is that Bowles had the punching power to make it count. Torre is far too wreckless….”
That’s why it’s silly to pretend you’re a boxer in an MMA match. Mir often says that people don’t want to go to the ground with Torres. The sad part is that Torres doesn’t want to take people to the ground. MMA at it’s best is a mix.
Somewhere in Grand Rapids, Floyd Mayweather would have been laughing pretty hard….actually he probably wouldn’t as I guess he doesn’t give a toss about Miguel….