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WEC 50 thoughts and analysis
By Zach Arnold | August 18, 2010
I scored the main event 48-47 in favor of Dominick Cruz retaining his WEC Bantamweight title over Joseph Benavidez. After the first two rounds, I had it split even. The third and fourth rounds could go either way. I thought Benavidez closed the fight out strong. His confidence never wavered and his stand-up technique was excellent, balanced, poised. Cruz showed glaring weaknesses in terms of taking advantage of his tools — he let Benavidez close the gap in space and he never utilized a good jab. For someone listed as having a background in boxing, Cruz did not show great fundamentals (in my opinion). He gave Benavidez too many openings.
Miguel Torres on Versus scored the fight 50-45 and said he was shocked that the judges’ scoring was as close as it was and Ariel Helwani didn’t disagree with him. I agreed with the judges who had the fight scored 48-47 for either man, as that was perfectly acceptable. Jorden Breen scored the fight 48-48 a draw, which is fine with me given how tough that third round was score. The 49-46 score I thought was… not right. A 50-45 score, however, would have been absolutely criminal.
Which leads me to the biggest takeaway from tonight’s show and it was a huge negative, which was the announcing and bias on the telecast. It seemed like Todd Harris and Stephan Bonnar had talking points for every fight and by hook or by crook, by golly they were going to force it down the throats of people. 20 seconds into the Brad Pickett/Scott Jorgensen fight and we had them immediately saying the whole round how it was Fight of the Night and so on and so forth. No respectable sports broadcaster in any real sport would get away with this. The bias reeked and forced me to mute a lot.
As far as the bias on commentary went, the cheer-leading for Dominick Cruz by Stephan Bonnar was atrocious. An absolutely toxic combination with Todd Harris working the show. The difference between Bonnar and Kenny Florian is absolutely night-and-day. Florian did such a great job in June and really called the fights down the middle and appropriately described the right technique. What we got on the WEC 50 telecast was commentary that swayed the audience at home into favoring one fighter or another when the evidence on the screen contradicted what was being said.
To be clear, there is a big difference between bias through commentary and a ‘promotional narrative’ when promoting a fight BEFORE it happens.
Other observations
Dana White showing up for the goofy Amp promotional deal on the WEC show sure made WEC out to be the little junior brother of UFC (as if we didn’t already know that). I was cracking up with the way the sports bar in Phoenix was ‘classed up’ with a bunch of blonde Amp Up hooter-style girls trying to make the crowd, ahem, less ugly. All I can say about WEC coming to Glendale is that if you thought you had heartburn from bad judging and referee work in MMA, wait until you see what Arizona cooks up here.
Anthony Pettis made Shane Roller look completely ordinary. When Pettis and Ben Henderson fight (likely in Arizona), I still think Henderson will get the job done and retain his title. That said… Pettis working with Ben Askren is big.
Scott Jorgensen showed more flaws than strengths in his fight with Brad Pickett. He made that fight way harder than it had any right to be. Pickett was literally there for the pickings any time Jorgensen needed a takedown and instead he insisted on a stand-up war and got drilled repeatedly for it. Pickett really showed Jorgensen’s holes in stand-up, but as we saw with Dominick Cruz tonight… I don’t think Cruz will do what Pickett did to Jorgensen when they meet up in their Bantamweight title fight coming up soon.
WEC 50 did not feel like a special show at all. All the talk for months and months going into the event was how it would have a special feeling, feel like it was a celebration of past WEC moments, and nope, just another Versus telecast.
Topics: Media, MMA, WEC, Zach Arnold | 37 Comments » | Permalink | Trackback |
Seems kinda arrogant to say your opinion is the reasonable one and everyone else got TRICKED by Bonnar
Trevor — where did I say my opinion was the only reasonable one?
Watch the fight with the sound on. Then watch it again with the sound off and just the action. The bias reeked on commentary tonight.
And listening to both Torres and (Ariel) Helwani go on and on about how bad the judging for the main event was tonight is just baffling. They were annoyed it wasn’t scored 50-45. What is that about? Tomas Rios’ score card of 50-46 is also baffling.
Look at Zach using first names.
Bundt = Trevor
I of course, am Jonathan
Ed. — My assumption is he’s from FB so I figured I’d address him by name. Sorry.
I wasn’t offended or anything.
Stop breaking kayfabe, Zach.
I don’t know what FB is and it’s ok to call me Trevor.
Zach saying the other viewpoint is biased is pretty obviously calling it unreasonable as well. And that’s what you imply Bonnar is for thinking Cruz won the fight handily. Actually, you go further and say he was schilling.
Come on now, you might not have used the exact phrasing “These scores aren’t reasonable” but when you accuse that side of being biased, you ARE saying that
Honestly, if you think Benavidez stand up technique looked “excellent” i think Bonnar isn’t the one with a bias
Completely agree with Bundt/Trevor here.
It was obvious Benavidez had a much better plan for this fight. He waited for Cruz to move in and timed his flurries pretty good. However, I still had the fight 49-46 Cruz. Compustrike has the numbers for striking at 40-38 for Benavidez but Cruz landing at a much higher percentage. Every round was very close in the stand up, but Cruz got a takedown in every on of em. If the stand up is even and a fighter gets a takedown in a round it is pretty obvious the round should be scored to the fighter who got the takedown and achieved a leg up in cage control.
I think 50-46 is a lot closer to reality than 48-47.
Also if Benavidez was given the decision in this fight it would be even worse than Alexander getting the decision over Kotelnik a couple of weeks ago.
FightMatrix scored it 50-45 Cruz and showed him with a definitive advantage in both striking volume and takedowns in every round.
50-45 is a reasonable score for that fight. Cruz did just enough to win every round by the slimmest of margins. It was a very close fight, but I don’t think I saw a single round where I said to myself ‘Benevides definitely won that round’.
Which rounds in particular did you think Benevides clearly won?
Did they even promote this as WEC 50? Its not like it was on the poster.
Are you referring to the name or the number or both? WEC is on the poster, just not “50”
Anybody who is certain who won Cruz/Benevidez by watching their television screen is full of it. It was nearly impossible to tell which strikes hit and who was winning during multiple rounds.
It reminded me of Penn/Edgar, only more fast paced. Could have gone either way. If I had to choose a winner, I would have said Cruz, but that is purely based on how I thought they reacted to shots, but that is basically BS….
And I didn’t think Bonnar did a bad job. He ha a front row seat, and if Cruz looked better live then he did on the screen, then Bonnar would have been able to pick that up.
And Jordan Breem is irrelevent. He knows they don’t do 10-10 rounds but every event he likes to get 1 or 2 of them minimum on his score cards. He is just a troll at this point looking for attention. Plain and simple, 10-10 rounds don’t happen, so keep them out of your scoring.
Let me also point out that there is a FightMetrix stats out there on this fight that show Cruz winning each round.
1) Those people are not ringside.
2) I couldn’t tell half of which shots landed. They don’t have some special views.
Therefore they are meaningless stats.
Ed. — The computer said 50-45, but it was closer than that.
Yes, that is retarded. In a sport where most fights end in JD, why should we waste our time watching it if we have to give the benefit of the doubt to those at ringside and can’t have an opinion.
And do you have a cut off section about which row is the last one who correctly sees it? Do those who have to use binoculars or the jumbotron just waste their money by even going? *eye roll x infinity*.
“The computer said 50-45, but it was closer than that.”
Huh?
A guy can win a super close fight 50-45 if he does just enough to squeak out each round. A 50-45 score doesn’t necessarily mean it was a shellacking.
If you really think Benevides clearly won a few rounds, point out the specific rounds and why you think he won them in spite of landing fewer strikes and takedowns. The argument can be made that Benevides landed more effective strikes, but I don’t see you making any round-by-round arguments. You’re just saying that the fight ‘felt’ like a 48-47 fight.
I wasn’t listening to the audio and I thought Cruz won most, if not every, round.
Your justification in the Benavidez/Cruz fight and the Mendes/Swanson fight seem to revolve around what the winners could have done better, but don’t touch on what the losers actually did. In what round do you think Benavidez or Mendes did more to win their fights? And consider that both of those fights included a significant amount of striking, which means that winner should have had more effective striking?
Also, I put significant stock in what FightMetric produce.
After the first two rounds, I thought it was even.
The third round was a total toss-up. I could see the use of a 10-10 score, but 45 is right — those simply aren’t used. So, if you had to give it to Cruz, that works for me.
The last two rounds I thought were split, with Benavidez winning the last round. He was more poised in the pocket and was the beneficiary of Cruz simply not using proper boxing technique.
Realistically, that fight should have not been as close as it was. The end result of Cruz winning is what I saw. When I saw Cruz finally take him down and start pounding on him in R4, my first thought was, “Where was this earlier in the fight?”
Compustrike numbers.
So if you’re not ringside you can’t tell who wins fights now? Why even watch the sport then?
I can’t comment on the event because I forgot to watch.
haha zach some people are never happy! whats the url? fightOPINION.com….. guess a lot of people miss that opinion word in the url!
Watched Cruz-Benadvidez with 3 other people and at the end all 3 of us had Cruz winning 50-45 and one 49-46. After decision read, we watched again and didn’t change our scores. You could ‘rationalize’ or ‘make a case’ that was Joe winning some of those rounds, but that’s not a legitimate way to score rounds. (One could ‘make a case’ that genocide is good but it don’t make it true.) Cruz was more effective with almost every exchange, dominated cage control, dominated takedowns and landed more significant damage. No doubt he won 50-45 in my mind. I wasn’t shocked of the split, but I was that it was Doc Hamilton. Now seeing the FightMetric numbers it gives solid evidence of this outcome.
10-10 rounds are weak. That’s for fanboys who can’t admit when a close round didn’t go their way. Put your man pants on and pick a winner already. I’ve seen more fights than I care to admit and its extremely rare that I would see a 10-10. Totally irresponsible and shows lack of discernment.
Commentary on WEC 50 = atrocious.
This fight has surpassed Penn/Edgar I in terms of scores wildly completely all over the board.
Recorded the replay and asked it to go 30 minutes over. Still wasn’t enough – I didn’t get round 5 of the title fight. Oh well; based on the PBP it sounds like its probably a Cruz round.
I had it even at 2 apiece after 3, Benevidez winning the 2nd and 3rd and Cruz 1 and 4. Benevidez had the timing down on Cruz’s jumps in and was landing some great punches – body shots, head shots, etc.
Cruz has horrendous footwork. Some of the worst I’ve ever seen in an “elite fighter”. Dude definitely should not be in the P4P discussion and it almost invalidates the division that he’s on top of. He’s got solid wrestling I think – I say that I think he does because he looks two weight classes bigger than Benevidez. In that instance he may just simply be overpowering his opponent with size. Striking though is phenomenally awful. He gets outjabbed by a guy with a huge reach disadvantage because he’s face on with him constantly. He can’t decide if he wants a lead hand and punches like he’s changing stances EVERY TIME. It makes for a huge ass target to hit.
In his 6 WEC bouts and wins, at least 3 of those wins are against guys who would be in a 125lb weight class if it existed. I know they were pushing a fight with Jorgenson – might not be the worst idea. Its not like they’ve really created a solid next contender. They’ve just got a pool of random fighters unless they want to do rematches.
I’m glad you brought these points up.
Jon Anik was saying last night that “I can’t help you” if you don’t like Stephan Bonnar’s enthusiasm and then said that Dominick Cruz deserves to be on the P4P best fighter list after last night. I nearly had a coronary.
The thing about Cruz that is so alarming for someone listed as ‘boxing’ as his discipline is the fact that he has terrible spacing issues when striking (he allows opponents to close the gap quickly) and when he does have space, he’s got no jab at all to keep the distance. He can’t even do rudimentary striking.
In the end, I think the WEC is happy about the outcome because now it sets up Faber vs. Cruz and Faber will pretty much dominate and get the Bantamweight belt.
Strange his bad footwork allowed him to dance around Benavidez and land a ton of clean shots!
Yea, in the 3rd and 5th round there were multiple exchanges where Cruz darted landed two or three times and was already 3 feet away when Benavidez started to counter.
Isn’t it possible that Cruz’s footwork didn’t look as good tonight because Joe had a pretty good game plan to negate the effectiveness of it?
Benevidez’s gameplan seemed to be “time predictable rushes from Cruz, throw right hand”. It wasn’t anything more than that. Cruz wasn’t giving him any alternate looks. Its not like he was working off the stick or trying to keep distance with the front kick. Cruz has every advantage and used none of them. Its great if you’re fighting the same flyweights over and over, but I won’t be shocked at all if he gets his head taken off by the first guy of equal size he fights.
People need to stop pretending that 135 is this endless bastion of great talent. Torres was supposedly the second coming, but in retrospect, he’s a guy who got in totally unnecessary slugfests and ended up paying the price for it eventually with his belt and then his status as top contender. Everyone already forgot Bowles existed. Last time I saw Chase Beebe, he was on a milk carton.
I wish they’d do us a favor and pull Bonnar out of his charity announcing gig now that he’s (supposedly) relevant for the next few months. He’s a bad announcer, has no television presence, and cannot stay unbiased. Go give the one fight wonder his Jake LaMotta nightclub charity gigs and leave him off of television until he next time he’s ready to lose in his next mediocre performance, please.
Bonnar definitely does not deserve all of the media time he gets. He doesn’t say particularly insightful things, cheerleads, and is generally unimportant to the discussion (Bonnar + McNeil makes me wish Anik would just ask himself questions). This UFC charity + his relative entrenchment in the media (for a fighter) means that we may have to suffer for another decade.
More Ken-Flo please.
He’ll be back soon. Kenny taking time off to take fights is really getting annoying.
Cruz has bad BOXING footwork. Cruz has fantastic MMA footwork.
Cruz’s footwork for MMA is a thing of beauty. Get out of the boxing mindset here.
Cruz’s footwork does 4 things:
1) Allows him to avoid most strikes.
2) Makes it nearly impossible for his opponents to if he is going to throw a punch or kick next.
3) Allows him to get fluid takedowns by getting deep in on shots.
4) Makes is nearly impossible for his opponents to get deep on his hips to finish takedowns.
People can bash it all they want if they are comparing it to boxing. This isn’t boxing. His footwork is a thing of beauty for MMA.
Cruz looks so unconventional, but I think his package is greater than people give him credit for.
Tall, long, and strong for 135.
Very good wrestling for a tall fighter, effective and diverse striking with good power.
Top-shelf mobility and cardio.
Not that he can’t be beaten, but it’s certainly more than most 135ers have going for them.
Agreed on all points
If Cruz’s footwork allows him to avoid most strikes, I sure as hell didn’t see it last night. I saw a dude who had every imaginable advantage getting hit by a guy who should have been getting run over. No one above 135 fights like that because if they did, they don’t have more than a .500 record.
A guy who should have been getting run over? The same guy who had thrashed everybody else he’d ever fought, including the former champ?
When you have physical advantages like Cruz does, if you are supposed to be a “pound for pound” level fighter, you should be dismantling smaller men. Benevidez might be as good a bantam as Sean Sherk was a welterweight. That’s not hate, because Sherk was a top welterweight for YEARS. But when Sherk fought bigger men with actual P4P skillsets (Hughes, GSP) he got trounced. GSP ran through him like a hot knife through butter.
Now people are acting like Cruz viciously outstruck and outmaneuvered his much smaller opponent while the numbers they point to show that he was less active (and yet the one pressuring) and outlanded his opposition by 1-3 strikes most rounds. LOL at that.
Cruz randomly keeps his power hand low and seemed entirely unable to throw combos while set or use his reach advantage or throw a straight jab.
I’m sorry but are some of you blind?, there was nothing close about that fight after seeing the replay it’s even clearer that Cruz ran away with the win. Benavidez gave a better acounting than he did last time but he still came up short and couldn’t figure Cruz out in the rematch. I have a hard time giving Joseph more than 1 round not to mention the idea that he won the fight is insane almost as insane as the Bellator decisions tonight. Seriously mma judges are really hurting the sport more than anything else these guys are fucking horrible and are costing guys money and careers it’s disgusting.