Weekend Thoughts

Going to discuss some of the highlights of the weekend.

•  MFC 32 was a disappointing show on Friday night.  It was disappointing to see that Antonio McKee missed weight by so much. He had some cool side kicks and some great takedowns but he was so gassed in the third round. It was kinda embarrassing how tired he was in the third round, he got his back taken easily by Brian Cobb. Wilson Gouveia reminded us that he has some solid legkicks and hurt Dwayne Lewis with his striking. The highlight was probably Ryan McGillivray pulling off that great armbar from off his back against Diego Bautista. Bloody and good fight. Not bad but far from must see event.
• Badr Hari showed how great he is when he destroyed Gökhan Saki on the It’s Showtime event. It was a fond farewell kickboxing fight for the enigmatic Badr Hari. If you missed his great performance, here it is:

• The UFC prelims were fantastic. Lavar Johnson has scary power, he’s going to be putting people like Beltran away on a regular basis. Was surprised to see Michael Johnson beat Shane Roller, it was upsetting after seeing how highly I thought of Roller in his WEC days. Oliveira’s calf slicer on Eric Wisely is an early candidate for submission of the year. Beautiful stuff. Swanson’s knock out of George Roop was awesome stuff, nice to see that considering Swanson is one of the most consistently entertaining fighters. The less said about Russow-Einemo, the better. Finally, the Dunham-Lentz fight was an awesome fight. This new aggressive Lentz is insane, and Dunham is one of the more violent guys on the roster. Great fight, best fight of the night.
• The main card was a mixed bag. The highlight was this extremely close fight between Chael Sonnen vs Michael Bisping. I would give Sonnen Round 1 and Round 3, and Bisping the second round. This fight proved something a friend told me, Bisping is better than he often gets credit for and he showed in this fight. But I still think Sonnen was the rightful winner and so does FightMetric. The promo at the end was pretty entertaining. I expected Maia vs Weidman to be the best fight of the night and I was totally wrong! Horrible striking in the third round, really embarrassing to watch to be honest. I’m high on both guys but that was bad and tough to watch. Weidman does have an excuse of taking the fight on late notice but what happened with Maia? Evans vs Davis was an okay fight, not much to say except that Evans was the clear winner over the course of 25 minutes. Evans did have some nice crucifixes, but Jones is going to eat him alive.
• I needed to get that awful taste in my mouth that Maia and Weidman left so after the UFC on FOX 2, I watched Jackie Nava vs Shanttall Martinez. Jackie Nava proves that it is possible to win a man’s heart with masterful boxing combinations. Fantastic performance from Nava, those combinations she was landing on Martinez were spectacular and the striking highlight of Saturday night.