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Thoughts on the aftermath of UFC 118
By Zach Arnold | August 28, 2010
Shaquille O’Neal challenges Choi Hong-Man to an MMA fight, says that’s the one MMA fight he wants
Let’s start with Nate Diaz. He was a minor favorite going into his fight (-200) and I was surprised. The key to beating him is to overpower and out-wrestle him, which are not features that Marcus Davis possesses. The Davis bandwagon was growing in the last couple of days and I wasn’t sure why. Diaz did exactly what I expected him to do and he put it all together. Good for him. Nice win.
Dan Duggan: Tough go for Marcus Davis; Maine man not cut out
Watching Nik Lentz vs. Andre Winner was horrible. One of the most painful fights I’ve seen in a long time.
The one fight I picked incorrectly on was the Gray Maynard/Kenny Florian bout. We know the book on Florian now and the book says that he can be overpowered and dominated. Just like Sean Sherk in the past, Gray Maynard did the same thing here. I like Kenny, but I’m willing to slot him in the 2nd tier of UFC LWs for now. As for Maynard, he’s a unique fighter in that every time he wins a fight, he loses more and more fans. After Maynard won, I immediately felt that we were going to end up seeing Maynard/Edgar II.
ESPN: A frustrated Kenny Florian
Demian Maia vs. Mario Miranda… the less said, the better. Maia’s stuck right now in the MW division.
What can I say that hasn’t already been said about the Couture/Toney fight? I laughed when I saw ESPN running a breaking news banner on the result of Couture choking out Toney. Reportedly, Toney got paid $750,000 for the fight. (That’s appalling, if true.) Easiest money he’ll make in his life. The only aspect of this fight that intrigues me is to see how angry some boxers are getting about Couture winning and now challenging MMA guys to get into the boxing ring.
- Franklin McNeil (ESPN): Toney taught cruel lesson by Couture
- Chris Mannix (SI): Lackluster debut proves Toney’s finished and little else
Watching Joe Silva crack a smile at cage side when Couture did the low takedown on Toney was funny. He was almost bursting out in laughter.
Main event… I picked Edgar by decision and he won 50-45 on the cards. He’s just quicker and smarter than Penn. I know everyone wants to write their eulogies for Penn as an elite fighter, but time to give Frankie credit for the wonderful showing he put on tonight. There were local sports reporters who noted that during the third round of the fight, fans were heading to the exits (ala Sarah Kaufman’s fight in San Jose a while back). Edgar may have gained some respect tonight, but not a lot of fans. He was getting a lot of boos mixed in with Jersey Shore wisecracks. If UFC is going to headline a PPV with Edgar/Maynard II, they will desperately need a strong undercard to support it. On MMA Live, Maynard described his fight as ‘one of my easiers.’ Yes, he said easiers.
Josh Gross (SI): BJ Penn’s future is dim
Overall, a lackluster showing tonight from UFC but the week in Boston was a huge success. Talked to some friends who live in the area who said that UFC dominated the advertising on TV, billboards, taxis, stores, and anywhere you could go in terms of ad spots, posters, and so forth. I think a lot of eyes were opened this weekend by the UFC in terms of how they do business, what the whole package entails, and why they are good at what they do.
Topics: Media, MMA, UFC, Zach Arnold | 27 Comments » | Permalink | Trackback |
Saw this show in the theater. Overall, it was a decent experience. Still prefer my own place to watch the fights. The audio was almost completely coming from the front which meant it gave no feel of being in the stadium. I’m not sure if it is the theater or the HD Stream providers, but the audio needed serious improvements.
Besides that, the theater was about 2/3rds filled. The crowd was respectful and knowledgable. It’s a nice cheaper option for some events.
As for the event itself…
1) Couture/Toney was a NECESSARY fight that needed to happen. Was it painful to watch? Oh yeah! It still needed to be done. To show the boxing fans what happens when a boxers goes into a MMA fight with only punches. Even boxing experts like Jim Lampley are dumb enough to believe that only boxing is needed to win a fight.
2) Frankie Edgar now did twice what I predicted was the perfect way of beating BJ Penn… Which was to out work him. When Penn is forced to stay out of his comfort zone in terms of pace, he does horrible. I actually thought Diego Sanchez was going to be the first person to do it, but I was wrong on that fight.
3) Maynard & Maia are tough to watch.
4) Diaz still suffers from the same exact problem his brother does, which is a weakness to wrestlers. And his fight proved more that Davis isn’t very good, not that Diaz is great. The Diaz brothers would still get picked apart on their feet by good younger boxer types like KJ Noons all day long.
5) Florian can’t handle takedowns. It’s that simple.
Overall, the last 2 fights save this card from being a snoozer. The Couture/Toney fight was short but fun, and Edgar/Penn was more exciting then their first fight.
On a side note… For all of those people asking for #1 contender fights being 5 rounds…. The last 3 #1 contender fights were….
1) Gray Maynard vs. Kenny Florian
2) Jon Fitch vs. Thiago Alves
3) Junior Dos Santos vs. Roy Nelson.
The Maynard & Fitch fights would have been even worse if we had to deal with 2 more rounds of that. And Santos/Nelson didn’t need 2 more rounds to prove anything.
“I’m not sure if it is the theater or the HD Stream providers, but the audio needed serious improvements.”
You would think that a highfalutin theater quality sound system would be able to at least reroute a stereo signal if thats all they received to the front and back speakers.
But I’m just assuming.
I’ve always found high end effete sounds systems to be more trouble then they justify.
I have a 7.1 Onkyo Home Theater In a Box. High quality enough to have some good sound, but not too high quality that it takes away from doing what it was meant to do…. Which is give surround sound for watch my TV.
With that said…. The UFC outputs 5.1 surround for the PPV’s, as I get it at home. And it sound decent. Far better then the low grade stuff I heard in the theater today.
45,
What time did your theater say that the PPV would start? My AMC had it at 8:00pm, but it did not come on until 9:00pm. It seems like there was some kind of mis-communication between the theater and the company.
And my theater was about 2/3 full as well. There was alot of hooping and hollering going on in mine however.
I’m on the East Coast. It was advertised for 10pm.
They started showing the preview show at 9:30pm and then the PPV starte right at 10pm.
I saw the fight at AMC Theaters. Even though it started an hour late, about 100+ people showed up.
I was wrong on the Davis/Diaz, Maynard/Florian,and the Penn/Edgar fights.
At least I got the Toney/Couture fight right!
“We know the book on Florian now and the book says that he can be overpowered and dominated.”
Also the case in the final against Sanchez on TUF 1.
Lots of skills that often make up for it, but not consistently enough to capture and keep the title.
Maia seems like a nice kid, but I found Miranda more interesting to watch in losing then Maia was in winning.
I wonder if Toney will be the most accomplished professional boxer to get cut by the UFC after putting arguably 15 seconds of effort into earning up to a million dollars.
I guess there where a few points to be made and promotional coups to be won that made it worth that much for the UFC.
But that seems to be kind of all done now.
Edgar winning is good news IMO.
I didn’t think he would and that we would be stuck with a log jammed LW class behind Penn again.
Although having an undefeatable champ is impressive and nice bragging rights for the UFC, it can get kinda boring.
This opens it back up and makes it interesting again.
Nate Diaz looked great outboxing the alleged boxer (poor Davis just cant get a break, its been over for awhile IMO).
I thought I was becoming a New Nate Diaz fan for a sec there, then I saw his marc ecko shorts.
(Which have nothing to do with anything except irrational yet insurmountable feelings of seething anger and hatred. Maybe thats why he wears them).
During the post fight press conference, Helwani asked Couture if he would not fight Toney in boxing like Gossen had suggested.
Couture said he would respectfully decline. That it would be as stupid for him to fight in boxing as it was for Toney to fight in MMA. And that he would likely lose in the 1st just like Toney lost in the first here.
1. The fighter of the night is Joe Lauzon. His fight was a display of devastation through striking, wrestling and submission.
2. Davis definitely sucks, but at the same time, Nate Diaz is a badass. I wouldn’t take that away from him and I’m excited to see him fight again. At LW, I’d like to see him vs Lauzon or Stout; at WW, against Hallman or Swick.
3. I’m not very excited about Edgar-Maynard II. For one thing, I dislike rematches. For another, the style match-up is pretty wretched. I love GSP’s style and I even enjoy watching Fitch, but Maynard is the absolute worst of the “boring wrestlers”.
4. I’m glad CroCop got called up to replace Nog against Mir, which frees up Couture to remain at LHW where he belongs. He should fight Franklin, or the winner of Ortiz-Hammill.
I don’t think the UFC can really sell Maynard as a ME yet but I think Frankie became a star tonight. A lot of people were in denial after the first fight but nobody not the crowd who originally booed him nor any BJ apologist can deny him after how he performed tonight. Frankie was a guy who I initially thought was too small for LW but he has used his size to his advantage and gotten stronger too. He’s going to have a real game plan against Gray in the rematch and unlike Kenny he doesn’t choke in big fights he gets better I think he’s going to be champ for a good while.
I don’t know, Joe Lauzon did pretty damn well for himself tonight and got shown directly after the main event in one of the most impressive performances I have seen in a very long time.
I completely lost what I had in my first paragraph…
*I thought Frankie did good tonight and hopefully him being the face at Lightweight gives UFC a chance to make some new stars by setting up different matchups. They haven’t been able to do that with Penn, GSP and Silva clearing out divisions.
As for other star making performances…*
All that was lost. There’s the context.
And I think that this point, saying that a fighter is a “Brazilian Jiu Jitsu Black Belt” is kind of overdone and somewhat worthless at this point in time.
Florian still hasn’t beaten a top 10 LW.
I was really excited for this show, but now I realize 117 was better by far.
Davis is a C-level fighter over inflated because he pops crowds in a world of Gray Maynard’s. But at long as he plays “dumb brawler” he’ll keep being brought back. Diaz proved nothing by beating him, so please stay off his bandwagon. He’d be embarrassed by anybody in the WW top 10 just like his bro.
Toney-Couture was a joke as expected. If they bring Toney back for another fight, I never want to hear one single complaint about Japan again. Seriously, that would make the Sakuraba-Mayhem fight look like a good idea. The sad thing is some people may have seen MMA for the first time in seeing that crap and think we’re all idiots for wanting to see this.
Maynard vs. Edgar isn’t worthy of headlining a Spike show, much less a PPV title fight. Who wants to see that besides the usual suspects who pretend like every MMA fight ever is amazing to keep their internet cred?
I hope it’s the worst fight ever that makes Couture-Coleman look like a blockbuster main event and makes UFC realize they’ve really got to slow down on signing every wrestler who ever went to college because they’re going to slowly turn UFC into AAUFC and kill fan interest. What made MMA great in the first place was the variety of flavors brought in. Now everybody is “NCAA wrestler with a BJJ purple belt who has kickboxed for 6 months.” And you wind up with fights like the Mortal Kombat “mirror matches” if you’re not careful.
“Maynard vs. Edgar isn’t worthy of headlining a Spike show, much less a PPV title fight.”
Bullshit.
Like ’em or not, boring or not, they are clearly the best two guys in the division. If this sport is going to retain any semblance of legitimacy, fights like that have to be made and featured like any other title fight. The NBA had endure the Spurs championships, the NFL had to endure to Ravens championship, and MMA has to endure guys like Edgar & Maynard fighting for the title.
The only other alternative is to go the same direction pro wrestling went in the early 20th century and start working fights to make sure they are always exciting.
I didn’t say they weren’t the top two ranked Lightweights in the UFC, I said they weren’t worthy of headlining a free show, much less a pay per view championship fight. Edgar may have convinced people he has Penn’s number, but are they going to be excited to see him fight more? I don’t know if they’re exactly the same thing.
To me, that fight was kind of like Keith Jardine versus Chuck Liddell: he had a great gameplan that he stuck to, he completely took apart a legend who had no answer for him, but are you excitedly marking your calender for his next fight? I’m not. I’m sure people are and they’ll all reply under me about it, but he’s not going to draw.
You bring up the Baltimore Ravens boring their way to a Super Bowl if you don’t like defense, or the San Antonio Spurs being a vanilla basketball team going all the way and them keeping fans. But the NBA and NFL do not charge viewers $45 a game like the UFC does. That’s a huge, huge difference and not even in the same ballpark as “working fights like pro wrestling.”
If UFC aired every show on free television you would have a point. But since they’re expecting their viewership to pay $45 they have to give them what they want to see. And that isn’t contenders like Gray Maynard, Jon Fitch and possibly Yushin Okami if he beats Vitor. And imagine if Fitch, Okami and Maynard were all champions at the same time? That would be a disaster and Dana would be praying to God that Lesnar never loses to they have something left beyond the AAUFC~!
I should also point out the boring sports teams are kept to regional viewing, especially in the NFL. Every team has to be on (I think) two Monday Night Football games a season, but CBS and FOX will almost never show a team who is only doing field goal games nationwide, unless they’re playing a NFL-favored team like the Patriots, Vikings, Cowboys, Colts, ect. So that would be like UFC keeping the boring fighters in the prelims where if you want to see them, go to UFC.com.
I got pretty excited for this card and was let down by lackluster fights. I think MMA is in a real funk right now with the in the cage product.
Edgar/Penn was interesting to see BJ completely dominated. Another example of the ‘old guard’ simply not being good enough athletically to hang with a new talent.
Part of the appeal of MMA has been these flawed fighters that were solid but not great athletes (Fedor, Nog, Liddell, BJ and on down the line) that put on exciting fights. Now that better athletes are coming along those guys are getting beaten and in some cases blown out. But the new style of fighting is not very fun to watch.
MMA has become point fighting with the occasional stoppage.
I really wanted to see Couture get clobbered, but I had to laugh at James Toney. He stole money tonight. God bless him. Nothing else on the show was particularly fun to watch.
I agree with you. But I think we’re in a lackluster middle period before we get a breed of fighters who never knew anything but MMA, and that could be great. They won’t be “did this then decided to jump into MMA.” They spend their whole athletic lives knowing that is what they were going to do. And I think they’ll really start coming in heavy in the next few years.
But right now we are in the AAUFC era where due to the lackluster scoring system any NCAA wrestler off the street can come in and win a fight. And that’s great when a heavily credentialed fighter wants to use that to a well-rounded game like Couture, Koscheck, Sanchez, Jones, Lesnar, Velasquez, ect. But when they’re playing for Octagon control points because they know that is all they have to do, like Fitch and Maynard, they could really hurt things. There’s a reason why amateur wrestling can’t draw flies on ESPN for free: because it’s always only going to appeal to a tiny minority of viewers because most people think it is painfully boring.
But in a few years I am certain things will change.
How would the scoring need to be changed in order for wrestlers to be more exciting for your tastes?
No matter how you score the Maynard/Florian and Fitch/Alves 2 fights…. The wrestlers are winning it. They both DOMINATED their opponents.
It’s not as much about control as it is shutting your opponent down. And that’s what wrestling does. And that won’t change no matter what scoring system you put in place. And it won’t change with a new breed of fighters. Having a strong wrestling base will ALWAYS put a fighter in a better position to win the fight because THEY CAN DICTATE WHERE THE FIGHT TAKES PLACE AND PLAY TO THEIR OWN STRENGTHS!! And that is the thing that gets lost in these bashing wrestler discussions.
Non-wrestling fighters need to learn how two things…
1) How to do a better job at learning positions. That means learning how to stay out of certain positions that will put them in a place that they can receive damage.
2) Learn how to get off their backs quicker.
I thought Sonnen/Silva was a fantastic fight. Edgar/Penn 2 was much more exciting then their first fight. There aren’t many wrestlers out there as boring as Fitch & Maynard.
Besides, the UFC has two awesome cards in 116 & 117. One decent one and people are ripping them apart again…. I think that’s unfair. What would you rather have? MMA like Strikeforce or Pride where they cherry pick fighters based on styles and don’t invite back the ones that aren’t pleasing to the fans? Pride did this with guys like Okami & Sherk. Strikeforce has done this with guys like Hieron. It gives a distorted sense of reality where guys like Nick Diaz look invincible because they refuse to get good wrestlers to challenge him and to show the holes in his game.
The toney v Coture fight was pathetic. Predictable but still a joke!!
I’ve been a huge James Toney fan since he began fighting prelims on TOP RANK BOXING on ESPN back in the latter ’80s.
I’ve stuck with him through many lackluster efforts, the dramatic rise in weight, the PED scandals, the whole nine yards. It hasn’t been easy, but …
So, what to make of last night?
Was it a foolish endeavor that he actually believed he had a chance at succeeding in?
Or, did the 5’9″, 50 lbs overweight, 42 year old pull the greatest con ever & parlay it into a three quarters of a million dollar payday?
Whatever it was, it was painful watching the beached whale-like Toney put up such a futile struggle against Couture.
But, at least he lost to an all timer & a class act in Randy Couture. Someone who made a rather quick & easy exhibition out of it rather than prolonging Toney’s agony & further embarassing him.
I don’t know about anyone else, but for that I’ll always remain greatful to Couture.
UFC paying Toney 700,000 dollars is just a spit on the face to all their fighters.
I just see on Twitter all the people saying the event was boring, and that have to be a patron. And really, the event was boring.
And yeah, i know all the people here is gonna defend Edgar win, but period, UFC loose a headliner on B.J., all the staff wants him for the win.
Surely I’m not the only one here who had Toney slightly ahead on points at the time Couture pulled out that flash submission.
Anyone?
Nope, you aren’t.
‘Cause I just happen to agree.
Infact, just prior to Toney’s almost Sonnen-like heartbreaker of a loss, I just about leapt out of my seat after he landed a near crippling left hook to Couture’s armpit!
LOL
Drug testing was all anyone could talk about before and after Alistair Overeem’s most recent fight. But in the wake of James Toney’s (embarrassing) fight in the UFC this weekend, has anyone even asked the question of whether this steroid cheat (who has tested positive for steroids after two different fights) was subjected to any drug testing? I’m not asking that question sarcastically; I really want to know.
Who cares. I really doubt he was on the juice seeing as he was fat and slow and anyway RC beat him like a rented mule so if he was juiced it did no good.
Anyway RC might well be eating the horse headed candy so glass houses and all that.