UFC 94: St. Pierre vs. Penn II (31-Jan-09)

The live gate for this event is $4.3-million, making it the sixth highest grossing live event in UFC history. Three of those six events featured GSP in the main event.

Nearly 15,000 fans attended the sold out event. The MGM Grand and other hotel/casinos begged the UFC for more tickets. It set a new record for attendance at the Garden Arena.

 

Thoughts on the event:


-- It must've been great to be there live. Talk about getting your money's worth. When I was at UFC 92 at the MGM, we had a lot of great fights and the night flowed perfectly. We were there from four to nine-thirty but it never dragged because the show is so well put together. The fans at this show got to see 145-minutes of fights, which I think is unprecedented. Probably an hour more than we got to see. Lucky!

-- Clay Guida hugged Nate Diaz for three rounds and did absolutely no damage. Giving him fight of the night is an atrocity. Guida only looks good when he's fighting another wrestler who negates his lay-and-pray (ie. Guida/Griffin, Guida/Melendez). I want to see him fight Frank Edgar, Sean Sherk, or Gray Maynard. This was a terrible match-up for Nate. Guida has made Diaz and Danzig look like shit. Fun fact: Clay Guida once fought a guy named Clay Guidiolla.

-- Karo Parisyan has lost it. He needs to either drop down to lightweight or actually commit himself to training. The pace-pushing ground and pound monster he once was is gone. Since losing to Georges St. Pierre in 2004, eight of his eleven fights have gone to decision. His next fight should be against Jon Fitch in four months, but Parisyan has ducked him this long, so we don't know if that will happen.

-- Jon Jones is awesome! The guy is a creative and risk-taking striker with crazy suplexes. His Greco-Roman background, combined with handspeed and a daring attacking style make him a serious package. At only 21 years old the sky is the limit for him. Hopefully the UFC keeps building him up and doesn't put him up against too tough an opponent too soon. He outworked and outclassed Bonnar. Where does Bonnar go from here? I dunno. Seems like he's destined to be a middle of the road fighter. His submissions are good (which is why I thought he could tap out the inexperienced Jones) but he couldn't (and wouldn't) take down Jones. Back to the drawing board for the charismatic American Psycho.

-- Joe Silva should get props for being the only one to recognize that Jones elbowed Bonnar in the back of the head, which led to the knockdown. Jones's striking is good but clumsy.

-- What can you say about Machida? I've been on this guys bandwagon for a while. He is super talented. He's been getting some scathing criticism for his counter-attacking style but Saturday he demonstrated why it is so effective. Silva, who has been a one man storm during his UFC tenure, was totally extinguished by Machida. Maybe they will have Silva fight Bonnar in four months? Machida should make any light heavyweight restless.

-- Georges St. Pierre described the way BJ Penn attacked him verbally as 'reflexology'. Everything BJ said about Georges, he meant about himself. How can anyone disagree now? BJ is the frontrunner. He starts fast and when things aren't going his way he quits. The fight was very similar to BJ Penn/Matt Hughes 2, except that BJ wasn't winning the stand-up battle either. The scientific way that Georges and his trainers approached the fight was incredible. If you didn't catch it, Georges said the strategy was to wrestle and clinch with BJ so that the blood would flow into BJ's shoulders, making his hands slower. That is some serious gameplanning Randy Couture would be proud of. Nothing BJ did worked. Did anybody expect this?

-- Georges' strength and conditioning coach John Chaimberg hugged GSP after the call was made to stop the fight. Then, he shouted into Georges' ear, "I love you!" and nestled his head against Georges' shoulder. Umm... take it easy, fella.

-- BJ Penn skipped the post-event press conference to go to the hospital to have karma removed from his rectum.

 

-- One more note. A male fan wearing a BJ Penn t-shirt jumped up to BJ as he was making his way to the Octagon and kissed him. Never seen that before.

 

Payouts (includes bonuses):

Georges St. Pierre ($400,000) d. BJ Penn ($125,000)
Lyoto Machida ($185,000) d. Thiago Silva ($29.000)
Jon Jones ($14,000) d. Stephan Bonnar ($22,000)
Karo Parisyan ($80,000) d. Dong Hyun Kim ($26,000)
Clay Guida ($105,000) d. Nate Diaz ($85,000)

Jon Fitch ($68,000) d. Akihiro Gono ($28,000)
John Howard ($71,000) d. Chris Wilson ($80,000)
Thiago Tavares ($26,000) d. Manny Gamburyan ($14,000)
Jake O'Brien ($?) d. Christian Wellisch ($?)
Dan Cramer ($16,000) d. Matt Arroyo ($8,000)

 

Jon Jones has a BRIGHT FUTURE if he isn't thrown to the sharks right away. The UFC needs to bring him along slowly and give him opponents on his level, not better than him. They can't Sokoudjou him.

 

Bonnar is on a second or third UFC contract. Jones is just starting.

But odds are Jones got a nice bonus from Dana after that fight. Dana's been known to throw five or six digits around for good performances.

 

Thiago's (sweet) entrance music:

http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=PSvxSkD4KNY

 

The guy that kissed BJ is Mickey Avalon.

 

http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=4DUNxVpK4Zo