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UFC 112: The Invincible road to Abu Dhabi
By Zach Arnold | April 10, 2010
News & Notes
Earlier in the week, I noted that you can check out which bars/restaurants in your area will be airing the UFC 112 Abu Dhabi event on Saturday. One of the trends that I’m noticing with UFC 112 is that fewer bars are picking up the tab to get this show. It’s a far cry from the huge demand there was for UFC 111 a couple of weeks ago (an estimated 750,000 PPV buys).
Speaking of UFC and programming distribution, there reportedly is a war going on between WWE and UFC in Europe.
Regarding the medical condition that Thiago Alves had corrected during his 8-hour surgerical procedure, he is dealing with issues related to arteriovenous fistula. Here is some more information on the surgery done to correct the matter. If you are wondering why the surgery for Alves took so long, read this for more details.
The event card line-up:
Dark matches
- Heavyweights: Jon Madsen vs. Mostapha Al-Turk
- Lightweights: Paul Kelly vs. Matt Veach
- Welterweights: DaMarques Johnson vs. Brad Blackburn
- Welterweights: Nick Osipczak vs. Rick Story
- Welterweights: Paul Taylor vs. John Gunderson
- Light Heavyweights: Alexander Gustafsson vs. Phil “Mr. Wonderful” Davis
Main card
- Middleweights: Kendall Grove vs. Mark Munoz
- Lightweights: Terry Etim vs. Rafael Dos Anjos
- Welterweights: Matt Hughes vs. Renzo Gracie
- UFC Lightweight Title match: BJ Penn vs. Frankie Edgar
- UFC Middleweight Title match: Anderson Silva vs. Demian Maia
Topics: Media, MMA, UFC, Zach Arnold | 128 Comments » | Permalink | Trackback |
3 judges all had it for the same fighter. Penn looked like a beaten man. Edgar’s camp was saying he was the new World Champion. All signs pointed towards an Edgar victory.
All the same stuff you said was done by the machida camp and the judges in their fight. There have been many incidents of this in the past and it comes directly from boxing, thats why in almost every boxing match that goes to decision you see both camps go into the ring and hoist their fighters up.
Also your thoughts are a little skewed on cage side stuff. There is a reason dana and most of the other guys at ring side watch the monitors while they’re there.
45 you are really sliding towards the slope of less-than-coherent-thought with your argument that BJ looked beaten at the end and had 2 cuts. BJ definitely was tired by the end of a 25 minute prizefight in the middle of the desert in which he clearly came into in less than full health. However, most mma fans understand that Pride scoring isn’t used in the UFC, but rather that round by round scoring is utilized. So the fact that BJ looked more tired than Edgar at the end doesn’t really change the fact that for the majority of the fight, he was landing the harder, more accurate, cleaner punches, stopping Edgar’s takedowns (at times literally throwing him off), and moving forward most of the fight. Edgar’s best moments were landing 2 left hooks in the 5th round that had no efffect on BJ, getting 2 takedowns that brought the fight to the ground for a total of 3 seconds, and moving laterally a lot. The fact that BJ had cuts is about as relevant as to who deserved to win as any of Edgar’s failed takedown attempts.
1) 3 judges gave Machida a UD over Shogun, but most people disagree.
2) By all accounts the best thing about judging at ringside is being able to hear the connection of the strikes to judge impact. You can still get that at ringside while watching a monitor that isn’t playing the human shilling machine and the squawking parrot.
3) I’m not suggesting they get a replay and we have to wait another 25 minutes before they’re sure of their decision or anything. The point is even right next to them in a cage much less sitting in a chair without a chance to move if your viewpoint is bad you can make mistakes and very good professionals in the UFC make sure the best camera angle possible is the shot you see.
Per AS, it sound like the answer might be referees being a bit more liberal in docking points due to inactivity. If a guy is going to back up for 5 rounds, dock him 5 points and there goes the victory.
First, FightMetric is just a guy watching the fight counting events like “punches”, “kicks” and “takedowns” in a fight. Just like the rest of us, except he writes down everything he sees. It is fallible but at least tries to be objective.
Second, 45, I think you’re just plain wrong as far as not being able to judge a fight unless you see it in person. That’s about the stupidest, most trollish thing you’ve ever stated. If anything, the judges views are WORSE than a TV view, simply because they get a view obstructed by the cage posts, the fence, and body parts. How in the world is a judges’ view on one side of a cage BETTER if the fighter are grappling on the other? It cannot. On top of that, they see the action at an extreme, oblique angle.
45, I know you like to play Devil’s Advocate, but people would take you a lot more seriously if you didn’t say so many moronic, trollish things just to be difficult.
Thirdly, Penn won the fight. Outworking doesn’t mean shit if you get hit way more often than you hit the other guy.
As much as 45 marks out for Zuffa, give credit where it’s due; he called the fight for Edgar, I only hope he put some $ down.
I don’t bet. Too bad!
I’ve been seeing Penn losing this way for a while. I actually thought Sanchez was going to be the one to do it, but I was wrong. I never bought into his great cardio. The only reason he has been able to go into the late rounds with Sanchez and Florian is because he was able to dictate the pace. Edgar was able to dictate the pace and Penn couldn’t keep up.
Penn is the master at horrible gameplans. He had multiple rounds with Florian were it was practically even just because he wasn’t putting the fight where it should have been.
To break it down I had 1-Penn 2-Penn 3-Penn 4-Edgar 5-Edgar.
On the other hand, one infallible judge had 1-Edgar 2-Edgar 3-Edgar 4-Edgar 5-Edgar which is insane. And it would be equally insane if you said Penn won 4 and 5. I cannot take that group of judges seriously if you have one that stupid. I cannot find a listing of what judge that was unfortunately. Is Mr. Peoples accounted for yesterday?
And most of the “damage” Huddle is talking about happened in 4 and 5. Which then maybe creates a whole new judging criteria that if you win 3 out of 5 rounds if you get cuts in the two you didn’t win you lost the entire fight I guess. In PRIDE scoring that would count. In UFC whoever wins the most rounds wins the fight.
Penn had a cut under his eye after the 1st from a head kick. His damage was from throughout the fight.
Not sure why people are getting one me so much for the Edgar/Penn decision. I have said it is close. But Penn, who is about as sore of a loser as they come, has not disputed the decision at all. Seems to agree with it.
Which is why I find it funny that people are making such a big deal out of it.
I knew Silva vs Maia would be another Silva vs Leites.. Dana is such a loser for pretending to be upset lol!!
+1
“Do not mistake activity for achievement.” – John Wooden
I think people should really think about that quote when they’re assessing Edgar-Penn.
I like this quote better:
“People are seriously delusional if they think Edgar is going to outbox/outstrike Penn. That’s pretty much grounds to be committed.
Stop saying Edgar is a “live underdog” because you’re dying to make this fight feel relevant for whatever reason.
Edgar is not a better boxer. Edgar does not have more power. Edgar is not bigger than Penn. Penn easily has the counter-wrestling to nullify Edgar’s wrestling, to the point that he won’t have to be worried about it. Edgar doesn’t have a better top game. Edgar doesn’t have better BJJ. Edgar doesn’t have a better chin.
Penn has shown ZERO issues with his cardio @ 155 and his biggest cardio challenge barely made him break a sweat and is still trying to close the axe wound to his forehead.”
*Edgar proved that you can win a major title fight by shucking around a lot and looking busy, even if the other guy is actively out-punching you for the duration.
Edgar would bounce a round for a while, step in to shoot or throw a quick combination, get shrugged off/miss, and then Penn would swat him away with short punches. Penn seemed to land more left hooks on the inside than all of Edgar’s attacks combined. So basically Penn stood in the middle of the cage all night, and Edgar couldn’t do anything to get to him. I don’t get the argument that Penn was “out-worked”. Apparently he was obligated to throw in a bunch of wasted movement to keep pace with Edgar’s pantomime between every exchange.*
– Edgar didn’t outstrike or outbox him
– Edgar certainly didn’t have more power than Penn. Penn landed almost all of the meaningful punches in the fight and walked through every punch Edgar threw.
– Edgar most definitely wasn’t bigger or stronger than him.
– Penn shrugged off 99% of his takedown attempts with ease and the two “successful” takedowns led to about 3 seconds of BJ being on his back before he got back up…so that basically hits counter-wrestling and top game.
– I didn’t really see much BJJ going on.
– The chin issue never really came into play.
Like I said previously…the only issue that I might have been half way wrong on was that Penn’s cardio didn’t look like it did in every one of his previous 155 fights. I can’t run or hop on his bike for him, so what am I going to do other than use past fights for reference?
I’m glad you’re not totally biased b/c you made some longshot pick out your rear-end to get yourself excited for this fight card. And I’m really glad you’re one of these guys that scores jumping around and twitching spastically as some type of criteria for winning rounds. Boy he sure looked busy out there…didn’t really do anything, but did he ever look active!
But on the plus side of this, at least if the brain damage of fighting gives your Parkinsons you can still have a good career.
How very tasteful.