UFC 85 report card...

Among the many other things that were going on last weekend, there was also a UFC PPV. It was UFC 85 Bedlam, at the O2 arena in London England. Because of it's location, the live airing of the fights was 12:00pm (noon) that Saturday. I needed to watch and record it on DVD so I could take it to Kevin's house on Sunday so he could watch it, and then he would send it to Kristi and Jason in Bullhead.

The fight card was stacked with great match ups. I'll get to that in a minute. Here's my report card...

The report card indicates my picks. The red I got wrong, the green I got right. There's an awful lot of red on there. Out of 11 fights, I got 6 of the winning fighters right. That's not too horrible.

Here are the official results...

My rants on the fights:

Matt Hughes vs. Thiago Alves : First of all, Thiago didn't make weight for the fight. He came in at 174 instead of 170. He has to cut a lot of weight to fight at 170, which makes him a big 170-er to begin with. Then add that he didn't look at all dehydrated, which is a common weight cutting technique, which to me says he didn't try that hard to lose that last 4 pounds. If you're not dehydrated, you retain a lot of your energy. There's a trend in fighting that an opponent will purposefully not make weight, so he retains his energy or size, and the guy he's fighting, who cut the weight, takes the fight anyway because he's spent the time training and cutting, and the guy with the extra weight now has an unfair advantage. Sure the guy that didn't cut the weight gets a percentage of his winnings taken away and/or fined, but he still gets the win. I don't like that. In addition to the fighter giving up a part of his winnings, I think the guy that can't make weight "forfeits" the fight, meaning he has the loss, and if his opponent takes the fight and loses, he still gets the "W" because he made weight when the other guy didn't. I think that would force guys to have to make weight. I hope that makes sense. There's a part of me that thinks Thiago knew that Matt would take the fight even if he didn't make the weight, and used that as an advantage in the fight.

Thiago had good punching, good take down defence, and just out fought Matt. The reality might be that Matt hasn't been able to keep up with the level of skill needed to be successful in the UFC anymore. He says he wants to fight Matt Serra before he retires, so I'm sure we'll see that this year sometime.

Brandon Vera vs. Fabricio Werdum: This fight was shaping up to be a war. There was going to be a lot of action and so on. I guess no one told the ref that these guys were going all out and that they can take the abuse. Shortly after the first round began, Fabricio found himself in a mount on Brandon and was unloading. Brandon looked to be defending well enough, though he wasn't able to do anything offensively, and before you know it, the ref stops the fight! What?! Right away you see Brandon upset at the stoppage, yelling at the ref, and complaining. Yes, the refs are there to protect the fighters from taking unnecessary damage when they aren't able to defend themselves anymore, but Brandon was defending, just not returning any punches. Man, that sucked. I'm sure we'll see Brandon again soon, he didn't get injured, and I'm sure he'll want to fight again to now get redemption for two fights (losses). Oh yeah, that was the first fight of the night, so it wasn't a great start for the PPV.

Michael Bisping came out guns blazin' and put Jason Day away rather quickly.

Marcus Davis and Mike Swick had a war! Swick had fast hands, and Davis' face was proof of that. Davis got beat up, or at least that's the story his face told. He hung in there though, and showed a lot of heart. Swick looked good, though he wasn't able to put Davis away. It was a good fight.

Nate Marquardt wasn't able to put Thales Leites away either. Thales' face told the same story Davis' did in his fight. He got beat up! Thales did land a few pretty devastating punches. One put Nate on his back for a moment, but I thought Nate, over all, dominated the fight. Unfortunately, Nate had not one, but TWO point taken away during the fight. One was for an illegal strike to the back of the head, though the replay clearly shows that it was not, and I missed the other one somehow (I must have had to help Anna at that time for something). With those 2 points gone, and the fight going to decision, Thales took the win. Man, that was lame too.

Martin Kapmann took care of Jorge Rivera pretty quickly with a choke in the first round. Kapmann has a kickboxing back round, but has terrific submission skills. He'll be contending for the belt soon, I'm sure.

Matt Wiman and Thiago Tavares had a very technical jiu jitsu style fight going for most of the first round. I like seeing two guys so well versed in MMA jiu jitsu trade positions and submission attempts. But in the first minute of the second round, it was a punch that ended the fight. A huge KO win for Matt.

We saw UFC newcomer Luiz Cane put Jason Lambert away in the first round with a TKO win.

We got to see a clip of UFC newcomer Kevin Burns triangle choke brazillian ju jitsu black belt Roan Carneiro. I believe it was the "submission of the night", meaning he got a bonus from the UFC.

We also got to see some clips of the Eddie Sanchez - Antoni Hardonk fight. I guess Eddie was getting the better of Hardonk, but Hardonk landed a huge punch that marked the beginning of the end for Sanchez, and gave Hardonk the TKO win.

We didn't see any of the Paul Taylor, Jess Liaudin fight. But I'm glad Paul Taylor won.

All in all, not a bad night of fights. There were definitely some unfortunate outcomes though, and that's never fun for the viewer or the fighters. I know my score card would look a whole lot greener if Nate and Brandon didn't have the referee mistakes interfere with the outcome. But that's how it goes.

The next UFC event is the season finals for the Ultimate fighter. That takes place Saturday, June 21st. We'll know the finalized fight card after Wednesday, the 18th, when we find out who the two finalists are. Should be good stuff.