Re: UFC 105: Couture vs. Vera (Nov. 14th) Nice. I usually root for Bisping but I am gonna have to go with the Canadian tonight.
Results: Andre Winner def. Roli Delgado via KO at 3:22 of the first round. Alexander Gustafsson def. Jared Hamman via TKO at 0:41 of the first round. Dennis Siver def. Paul Kelly via TKO at 2:53 of the second round. Nick Osipczak def Matt Riddle via TKO at 3:53 of the third round. Terry Etim def. Shannon Gugerty via submission (guillotine) at 1:24 of the second round. John Hathaway def. Paul Taylor via unanimous decision after three rounds. Ross Pearson def. Aaron Riley via TKO (cut) at 4:38 of the second round. Matt Brown def. James Wilks via TKO at 2:27 of the third round. Michael Bisping def. Denis Kang via TKO at 4:24 of the second round. Dan Hardy def. Mike Swick via unanimous decision after three rounds. Randy Couture def. Brandon Vera via unanimous decision after three rounds.
Some thoughts... Ross Pearson looked great. He is a serious fighter in the lightweight division. Love to see him fight Frankie Edgar. James Wilks looked bad. Not the same guy who steamrolled Demarques Johnson. Matt Brown tooled him. Should've used his BJJ right away as Brown has been susceptible in the past. By the time he got to work he was too tired and hurt. Denis Kang is not a big fight performer. He is the ultimate hot and cold fighter. Mike Bisping recovered well from a bad first round to put away a very tired and damaged Kang. Dan Hardy impressed the hell out of me. I gave him no chance against Swick. He wasted a tremendous amount of time and energy trying to take Swick down (a theme of the night). He might've knocked Swick out had he kept distance and used his counter striking. I'm very surprised at how this fight turned out. He'll be at a major odds disadvantage against GSP next year. Swick didn't look himself. Should've tried to get Hardy down (though Hardy's TDD was very effective). Didn't have the power on his shots we're used to seeing. We might find out tomorrow that Swick wasn't close to 100%. Couture vs. Vera was atrocious. Neither fighter deserved to win. I've heard of lay-and-pray... what about lean-and-pray? Couture was extremely ineffective with his offense for the vast majority of his fight. He was able to keep a lackadaisical Vera against the cage much like Tim Sylvia was. He couldn't get Vera down and when he did it was short-lived. Vera put almost no effort into circling off the cage and allowed Couture to walk him from the centre of the octagon into the cage all night. Very unimpressed with Vera--as usual. I had the fight 29-29 with round one going to Randy, two to Vera, and a draw in the third, yet I don't agree with Rogan's somewhat unwarranted outrage over the decision. Couture may not have done enough to win but Vera put in a bare minimum effort that shouldn't be rewarded. I watched the event on Rogers SportsNet who cut out all of the UFC's commercials and showed the five fights in about two and a half hours. I flipped over to Spike to see they were lagging behind with almost their entire main event yet to be shown when RSN had already finished up. There were two fast knockouts on the undercard that didn't get shown because of the wagon-load of advertising.
The main event was so boring...I don't even know if I want to see Randy fight again. Denis Kang disappoints again, that guy needs to see GSP's sports psychologist to get his mental game right. Oh well, overall a decent night of fights, now to see if I can't find myself a good Pacquiao vs Cotto stream.
Fight of the night... Bisping/Kang Knockout of the night... Dennis Siver Submission of the night... Terry Etim $40,000 bonuses.
Horrible event. But then again, I didn't watch half of it and the other half, I was flipping back and forth between this and the Paq/Cotto card.
I got the impression Hardy was extending the fight to continue beating up Swick. I think he really enjoys inflicting pain his opponent. Every time he rocked Swick and had a chance to end the fight he'd tie him up and allow Swick to recover just enough to beat on him some more. Anyone catch that?
It basically amounted to stalling because he couldn't get him down. I doubt he wanted the fight to go to decision, he just had a bad gameplan.
I'm not familiar with that strategy. I thought if Hardy wanted to he could have kept throwing punches and forced the ref to stop the fight or knock Swick out, but he would intentionally grab Swick and allow him to recover.
