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Favorites win big at #UFC 133, but who will Rashad face — Bones or Rampage?

By Zach Arnold | August 6, 2011

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Topics: Media, MMA, UFC, Zach Arnold | 47 Comments » | Permalink | Trackback |

47 Responses to “Favorites win big at #UFC 133, but who will Rashad face — Bones or Rampage?”

  1. 45 Huddle says:

    Really solid PPV without a true main event. The PPV numbers will show that. I bet it does around 275,000 buys.

    I like the entire PPV card except Rivera/Sakara which is a pointless fight.

    Winner of Evans/Davis should get the next title shot. Winner of Franklin/Nogueira should fight Tito Ortiz next. After Belfort beats Akiyama, he should either be forced to cut to Welterweight or be cut by the UFC.

    I’m interested in seeing how MacDonald handles a wrestler.

    • The Gaijin says:

      Does Sakara have naked pictures of Joe Silva’s wife? Seriously that guy just does nothing for me at all. He’s supposed to have good boxing, but I’ve never seen it. He has a cool beard and tattoos I guess?

      I think it’s on the main card because it’s a no ground affair.

      • edub says:

        I actually think he’s got very good boxing, just a terrible chin to go along with below average power. But I agree I don’t understand how the dude is still in the UFC. He seems perfect for MFC or Dream.

        • David m says:

          Edub is correct. Watch his fight with Leben, he dominates the entire fight but you can’t coach a chin…

      • mr. roadblock says:

        I think the Fertittas have a warm place in their heart for him because he’s from Italy. It’s their company and they like watching the dude fight. I think that’s really all there is to it. For what it’s worth he’s never in a bad fight.

    • Kelvin Hunt says:

      It will absolutely do more than 275K PPV buys…the baseline for domestic PPV’s seems to be around 325K with or without a title on the line…decent card…I’ll be watching at BWW.

  2. Nepal says:

    Good card overall. Main card is great other than Sakara/Rivera.

    I’m really interested to see if Nog has anything left. Franklin is still a good fighter, Nog looked bad last fight.

    Akiyama has little chance in my opinion. He’s a ww fighting a LHW…. although they both will weigh 185 day of.

    I think I’m looking forward to the Rory/Pyle fight more than Davis/Rashad. Rory has looked great, it will be interesting to see how he does against a really good BJJ guy like Pyle. Standing Rory should be better but on the ground??? We’ve yet to see Rory hold anybody down after he takes them down. Actually I guess he did submit Guyman but not sure that means anything. Pyle’s grappling is excellent.

  3. The Gaijin says:

    Weirdly, I’m a lot more interested in this card now that Tito has stepped up. Really shouldn’t be since Evans/Davis was far more relevant, but it seemed like they were rushing Davis here – his fight with Lil Nog showed that he’s got some holes in his game he needs to shore up and has some work to do before he’s a Bones Jones young gun.

    Tito will probably lose here, but it would be a pretty awesome redemption/comeback story if he pulls this off and gets a title shot out of it. Sports fans are a weird breed, they spend years building a guy up and then clamour to tear him down and get so close to “snuffing him out” and then they’ll cheer his efforts to climb back to the top.

    • mr. roadblock says:

      I’m with you. Evans/Davis had B-O-R-I-N-G written all over it. The first Rashad/Tito fight sucked. But this one I have a feeling Tito will be letting it all hang out. He’s got nothing to lose and millions of dollars to gain if he wins.

  4. David m says:

    I think Gustafsson is going to absolutely ravage Hamill.

    I dislike Tito but will be cheering for him just because it would be an amazing story of redemption.

    I expect Vitor to win and Franklin as well.

  5. 45 Huddle says:

    Count me in as one of the people who likes this main event a lot better.

    If Rashad Evans wins…. We get either Jones/Evans or Rampage/Evans 2. And we get to see Ortiz get beat again….

    If Tito Ortiz wins, we get one heck of a comeback story.

    Either example is WINNING!!

    There was little upside to a raw Davis winning. I’m a big fan of Phil Davis and picked him to beat Evans based on the style matchup…. But wasn’t big on the fight.

  6. Jonathan says:

    I do not understand why people are saying that Davis is not “ready”….even if he were to beat Rashad Evans. You guys talk about him needing to “patch holes” in game, but that is something every fighter needs to do, and how could he not be ready if were to be a top 3 LHW?

    I do not get it…as if you guys are grooming him to be champion. He “grooms” himself by winning a big fight. I cannot help but remember the people who said that Jon Jones needed more time before fighting for the championship…and look how that turned out.

    Can someone please explain it to me.

    • The Gaijin says:

      His striking is not very good and needs a lot of work, his instincts/cage IQ is still developing – it took him around 1/2 a fight to figure out how to take down Lil Nog, a fighter with notoriously terrible TDD.

      There was a chance he beat Evans, but I honestly didn’t favour him in that fight like 45 did – but that was a style thing more than anything else. At this point in the game I still think he gets torched by Jones, Shogun, Rampage, Machida and loses to Evans, Franklin, Griffin.

      There’s a log jam in the title picture at 205, so I don’t know why they’re rushing him – not everyone is Jon Jones. I just believe Davis is better served accumulating ring time and working on his skills in a real fight (like Daniel Cormier is doing – I think that’s going to pay big dividends for Cormier down the road) while not getting tossed in with the sharks and possibly losing (or even winning) where he pretty much fights purely on his base skills.

      • edub says:

        Completely agree with all of this.

      • 45 Huddle says:

        It all comes down to money and the length of the contracts.

        That is whyby the time a fighter goes 5-0 in the UFC, they are quickly brought up a higher level. They want to make sure they are worth a potential increase before the next line of negotiations.

  7. Jonathan says:

    Rogerio Nogueira is out of his fight against Rich Franklin.

    • Mr. Roadblock says:

      They should see if Leben will fight him. That’d be a lot of fun. I know the fight is at 205. It’d be a no-lose kind of thing for Leben. Both guys fighting at basically their natural weight.

      That fight would be more fun than Franklin vs Nog.

      • Nepal says:

        …. or Sonnen.

        That would be fantastic!

      • 45 Huddle says:

        Franklin vs. Leben would be a great last minute replacement.

        These fighters are going down like flies.

        A TV executive who is watching this can really view this two ways:

        1) MMA is far too unstable to put substantial money behind it.

        2) The UFC, through all of the adversity, still provides top level cards when even the worst case scenerio happens.

        • Alexander Mogue says:

          Yep this goes back to what i was saying a week ago. People have to look at this and wonder if UFC ever has a good backup plan or if they check to see if these guys are legitimately injured. Without a replacement, it just goes to show UFC really never had a good backup with all these cards they continuously keep running.

  8. DQ says:

    Yikes:

    Main Televised Card

    * Rashad Evans vs. Tito Ortiz
    * Yoshihiro Akiyama vs. Vitor Belfort
    * Jorge Rivera vs. Alessio Sakara
    * Rory MacDonald vs. Mike Pyle
    * Brian Ebersole vs. Dennis Hallman

  9. Stel says:

    Considering they’re paying Tito a lot more than that other replacement guy, whoever he was… they most likely dropped the Franklin fight due to budget constraints.

  10. 45 Huddle says:

    With 2 UFC PPV’s in August…. And Franklin now out…. This becomes an easy PPV to skip. I’ll watch the Facebook and SpikeTV telecasts.

    This card has been cursed from the beginning. They should have cancelled the show when Jones didn’t want to defend his title…

  11. David m says:

    This main event is only 3 rounds right? That sucks. I am looking forward to Rory and Pyle, Vitor v Akiyama should be a war, and the main event will be interesting.

  12. RST says:

    Well we lost Sexiyama, but we gained shad.

    One down…

  13. Tradition Rules says:

    I wanted Akiyama to win, but really thought Belfort would get the KO.

    Akiyama needs to fire his striking/boxing coach. I told my friend who I watch all the UFC events with, “If Akiyama backs strait up, anytime, but especially if Belfort is ‘machine gunning’ his punches he is gonna get KO’d pronto. If he moves laterally/side to side, he has a chance”.

    The way Belfort “machine guns” his punches, it is both especially important not to back strait up when avoiding to not get KOd, and also especially EASY to avoid those strikes. If Akiyama moves sideways, Vitor has to pull his arms in more or throw more hooks when persuing, otherwise, he would be off balance. If Akiyama (or anyone else) backs up strait against this type of barrage, you run out of space QUICK, and are at a loss on how to avoid those crazy fast and powerful punches of Belfort. It should have DRILLED into Akiyama’s head to not do that one thing. Not saying Belfort wouldn’t have won, just that otherwise, Akiyama would have had a much better chance.

    Forget the fact that the two punches that KO’d Akiyama were blatantly in the back of his head, the KO was coming no matter what.

    And, again, I was really pulling for Akiyama.

    • RST says:

      “Akiyama needs to fire his striking/boxing coach”

      From what I’ve gleaned peripherally, boxing is somewhat popular in Japan.

      They HAVE Japanese boxing!

      But for some reason I’ve never seen a Japanese boxer compete with a western boxer.

      Not even at light weights?!

      • Tradition Rules says:

        “From what I’ve gleaned peripherally, boxing is somewhat popular in Japan.
        They HAVE Japanese boxing!”

        Exactly my point.

        It wasn’t a question of Akiyama’s striking skill or ability or power, he has improved leaps and bounds in those areas.

        But, he never should have backed strait up like he did. anybody who does that against Belfort has exactly what happened to Akiyama happen to them,….or in the case of a grappler vs a striker match up, they make that same defensive mistake,because grapplers generally approach an opponent directly or straight on.

        Strikers will both work angles or move head on, but are also taught to move laterally or diagonally when retreating or on defense,never move back in a straight line. That is what Akiyama SHOULD have done and the #1 rule his striking coach SHOULD have drilled into his head.

        • RST says:

          “But, he never should have backed strait up like he did.”

          And that gave us one of our/Belforts all time classics.

          😉

          I’m not sure that Japanese fighters study tape like we do.

  14. Mark says:

    Tito looked way better than I expected. I wasn’t expecting him to win or anything, but Dave Meltzer and Mike Coughlin totally discounting the Bader win as a fluke (saying something to the effect of “Oh, he was just stunned from the punch when he got submitted. Uh, yeah, welcome to MMA) but he shouldn’t be ashamed even though he got outclassed. Rashad is in his prime, Tito had a short training camp and he still hung in there. I don’t like the guy, but I’ll give him credit since he could have gotten humiliated Shamrock style.

    Akiyama needs to drop to 170. I don’t care what Japanese tradition is about cutting weight. Tell him if he wants a paycheck, he needs to drop 15 pounds or go work for peanuts (or the promise of peanuts) in DREAM. He’s way too small.

    • Tradition Rules says:

      I really like Akiyama, and think he, with the exception of last night’s fight, has been extremely competitive at middleweight,….but I agree and have been saying the same thing.

      He may have been a champ at his weight in judo but MMA is different from judo, and I believe he would retain a great deal of the striking power he has developed and his speed would probably improve as well. I think “He is already very good,imagine him being even MORE competitive!”

  15. Kelvin Hunt says:

    Mark…don’t know what fight you watched…but other than the guillotine and like one knee in the clinch…Tito had nothing…and I mean nothing…the Bader win wasn’t a fluke…just showed us where Bader is a fighter.

    • Mark says:

      I am looking at it in context: one of the top guys in the sport in his prime going up against an older guy who just about lost his job because everyone thought he was washed up, who took the fight on short notice should have led to a Wanderlei/Leben level destruction. And it was a little more than that, which impressed me.

      I didn’t say it was a revelatory showing or anything. But he did not get blown out as badly as people were expecting. Going in the talk was this was going to be a mauling, like the Ortiz/Shamrock 2 and 3 fights turned over on him where they’re done in 2 minutes. It wasn’t that. He got his ass kicked, but it wasn’t embarrassing. And obviously he showed he has zero chance against anybody but maybe the occasional mid-level fighter who doesn’t take him seriously and gets caught. But he did more than 2 moves in a 10 minute fight. And most of the people I’ve seen enjoyed the fight way more than they expected. That’s all I’m saying.

  16. 45 Huddle says:

    Go watch the Dana White and Ariel Helwani post fight interview at UFC 133….

    The last 3 to 5 minutes, Dana White rips into Fedor Emelianenko’s management. He also says in hindsight he is glad the deal wasn’t done after seeing what Fedor could actually do.

    • Mark says:

      If Dana hasn’t moved on with Fedor forever out of his life, then he’s addicted to bashing him. And it’s sad. Dana is so busy and has accomplished so much, why is he wasting time trashing a washed up Russian and a failure of a promotion? That should be way beneath him. He got what he wanted, he was proven right, he even kind of got to fire him. What more do you want? His first born child?

      • 45 Huddle says:

        It’s not like he brought it up…. He was asked….

        And he has probably spent the last week or so bashing Fedor. That’s about .05% of the time the Fedor fans bashed the UFC for not signing him….

      • Steve4192 says:

        Dana will stop talking about Fedor as soon as people stop asking him about Fedor.

  17. Stel says:

    Its hard for Dana to accept that chase card Fedor was not included in the strikforce lot and therefore STILL not in his collection.
    He bought pride to get a “Fedor” but Fedor had been sold to a serious collector.
    Then Dana bought the affliction lot in hopes of getting that rare card. Again stymied, and jealous of other collectors who experienced the joy a Fedor can bring.
    No doubt, even if Dana did aquire the rare Fedor he would just stick it in the spokes of his bicycle and go peddling down the road yelling “I got a motorbike now! watch me drive! listen to the sound!” “RRRRRR…RRRrr”

    • 45 Huddle says:

      Fedor has very little worth left.

      The live gate for Fedor/Henderson was around $500,000. The place was highly papered. The ratings were down fom his last few fights.

      And he has been stopped in 3 straight fights, and looked good in none of those fights.

      I’m sure Dana White is happier to be rid of Fedor and M-1 instead of having to deal with them moving forward…. He even said in the interview that in hindsight he is happy the deal wasn’t signed….

      • smoogy says:

        The ratings were not “down from his last few fights”. You might want to look up such statistics before making them up?

        Fedor vs. Hendo didn’t break the record set by Fedor vs. Silva, but it did better than Fedor vs. Werdum. This is the real source of Fedor’s value, the audience he continues to bring in on Showtime… as inconvenient to your perspective as it might be. Fedor still has six figure value as a star for Showtime.

        • 45 Huddle says:

          Not at the price tag and the problems he causes….

          Werdum is a nobody. He was fighting a guy who had much more star power then Rogers or Silva…. And he couldn’t draw much….

          And the gate was also poor. If he was still worth it, they wouldn’t have had to paper so much of the arena. Another point you ignore…

  18. 45 Huddle says:

    Hallman going to get cut because of his shorts?

    His ball sack was exposed at 2:42 of round 1…. or so i have been told….

  19. Oh Yeah says:

    You say six figures… Reminds me of a six figure contract for winning some reality show.

    If you said seven figures, you’d actually be saying something.

  20. RST says:

    Although everyone says Shad looked great, and he did look good, THAT Shad WONT beat Jones.

    Or Machida.

    I have to agree with Jones’ cruel but Honest assesment; “The same old stuff”.

    Thats just Shads style.
    Some tigers get better when they get fed, but they dont really change.

    Despite his speed and power (his physique did look better, stronger), he still bobs too much while he’s juking, which is an awful tell and how lyoto caught his Rythem.

    And Jones will see it just as bad.

    Personally I think he should get back to boogalooing even more like he used to at first, but the haters will howl for the stars and thats unpopular for the promotion.

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