Breaking down a weekend of MMA

Date May 26, 2009

Very busy week with the WAC Baseball Tournament and Memorial Day, so with Dream 9 now finished, let’s take a look at some of the big fights from the last few days.

UFC 98

Brandon Wolf vs. Yoshiyuki Yoshida

Tough times for X-1 champion Brandon Wolf, who suffered his second loss in as many as UFC fights and couldn’t make it 3 minutes after being submitted by Yoshida with a guillotine choke. Two quick fights for Wolf who looks like his UFC career may be short lived.

Lyoto Machida vs. Rashad Evans

Lyoto Machida became the new UFC light heavyweight champion with another impressive performance, this time a left hook that knocked Evans out in the second round. Machida has still not lost a round in the UFC and forget the fact that he’s the champion now, where does Lyoto stand on the P4P list? He’s easily in the same class as Fedor, GSP and Anderson Silva now and I would put him at 2 behind Fedor. Anderson hasn’t looked impressive in his last 2 fights and Machida is undefeated while we’ve seen GSP taken out by a much lesser opponent in Matt Serra. GSP can climb above Machida if he’s impressive in his UFC 100 fight with Thiago Alves, but for now, my top 5 is Fedor, Machida, GSP, Anderson, Miguel Torres.

DREAM 9

Jason “Mayhem” Miller vs. Jacare Souza

Very unfortunate ending as the fight is ruled a no contest after an accidental kick caused a huge gash on the head of Souza, forcing the referee to stop the fight and rule it a no contest. Not much to say about this other than Miller looked extremely bummed after the fight. This was probably the biggest fight of his career and to train and train for a fight and have it end that way no doubt is tough.

The ending didn’t take away from a card that saw a crazy fight between Abel Cullen and Hideo Tokoro, a shocking split-decision loss by Norifumi “Kid” Yamamoto and a fight between Hong-Man Choi and Jose Canseco.

Yes, that Jose Canseco. MMA was set back about 10 years, although Jose actually showed something for the first 20 seconds, stepping in and throwing a punch before stepping back out and running away. Unfortunately the running away part became a lot more frequent and in one instance, he looked to have hurt his knee. Choi pounced and Canseco tapped from strikes to avoid from getting hurt. For his troubles, Canseco took a lashing from panelists on ESPN’s Around the Horn today.

Oh, and Gegard Mousasi is the real deal. Destroyed Mark Hunt in a fight and is quickly becoming a star in MMA. I wonder how long until the UFC comes calling his way?

Category Posted in Fights