UFC 129: The only thing missing was a fire eater and a midget clown on a unicycle

[Ed. note: Following is the UFC 129 piece I wrote for Toro Magazine]

It took 38 semi-trailers’ worth of equipment, including 21 TV cameras, 14 jumbo HD video screens, hundreds of spotlights and a 1.4-million-kilowatt sound system, to turn Rogers Centre into something out of Close Encounters of the Third Kind on Saturday night. Beneath all of that gleaming stadium rock technology, the most basic and primal of human endeavours played out, a two-men-enter, one-man-leaves scenario familiar to, well, just about everybody by now.

UFC 129 opened with the biggest choke since the ’91 Blue Jays and ended with an apology. In between, the record-setting crowd of 55,724 rowdy MMA fans were treated to five highlight-reel knockouts, two slick submissions, one overwhelming display of heart in a losing cause, one underwhelming display of tactical efficiency in a winning effort, one fear of fight-induced labour, and Steven Seagal. Yeah, that’s right, Steven frickin’ Seagal. He was there, too. The only thing missing was a fire eater and midget clown on a unicycle.

Dana White, the PT Barnum of the UFC’s big top, promised his first foray into Ontario would be the greatest show on earth, or at least in the promotion’s history, and he – and his fighters – delivered. UFC 129 ended a week of MMA mania that saw dozens of UFC fighters – including all seven current champions – sweep into Toronto for autograph signings, photo ops, seminars, Q&As and the two-day Fan Expo. Indeed, the biggest question after the dust had settled and the chants of “GSP” had died down was, When will the UFC be back?

Not that the show is without criticism. And no, I’m not just talking about the way live fights bring out every MMA fan’s inner douche bag. Indeed, mixed martial arts has the douchiest fanbase in professional sports after NASCAR, but at least those fans have the good sense not to try to tell the drivers how to turn left. If you weren’t seated beside – or more likely behind – an obnoxious MMA know-it-all, his badly tattooed Michelin Man physique stretching his $90 Affliction T-shirt to its limits, then you probably were that obnoxious MMA know-it-all. And with them came their girlfriends, in pushup bras and fuck-me pumps, strutting around like they’re Snooki’s BFF. At upwards of $800 a ticket, you’d think they’d want to spend more time sitting in their seats and, you know, watching the fights. Or at least watching the screens because unless you were in the first 20 rows that was about the only way you were going to see what was going in inside the cage.

And the fights were good, so good in fact that it was one of the few times the preliminary bouts outperformed the main card. It started with Pablo Garza’s flying triangle choke of Yves Jaboiun, which earned him the $129,000 Submission of the Night bonus. It continued through John Makdessi’s spinning backfist that stiffened Kyle Watson like a sheet of plywood and Jake Ellenberger’s one-punch knockout of Sean Pierson. And it ended with 21-year-old Rory MacDonald repeatedly tossing UFC vet Nate Diaz to the mat like a ragdoll and sending him scurrying back down to the 145-pound division.

By the time the main event got under way, the sea of Affliction and Tapout T-shirts was a roiling mass of booze and bloodlust. Vladimir Matyushenko took just 20 seconds to give them what they wanted by knocking out Jason Brilz.

Then came 47-year-old Hall of Famer Randy Couture’s retirement party – a flying crane kick straight out of The Karate Kid delivered by the elusive and unpredictable Lyoto Machida. Couture’s eyes rolled back, his mouthguard and a single tooth flew across the cage and he was unconscious before he hit the canvas. In the post-fight interview, Machida credited the devastating kick not to Mr. Miyagi but to Seagal, with whom he’d trained. The squinty C-list action star with the soot-black ponytail was in the front row alongside middleweight champ Anderson Silva, who’d used a similar kick to the chops to knock out Vitor Belfort two months ago. The jury’s still out as to whether Seagal, a good martial artist and a bad actor, is actually improving Machida and Silva’s already formidable arsenals or whether it’s all a publicity stunt. Either way, it’s about time another aging star of chop-socky cinema besides Chuck Norris got some attention.

Fight of the Night bonuses – and the biggest cheers and greatest respect – went to featherweight champ Jose Aldo and Mark Hominick of Thamesford, ON, who waged a five-round battle that left both men staggered and bloody. Aldo clearly got the better of multiple ferocious striking exchanges in the first four rounds, opening up cuts around Hominick’s left eye and raising a hematoma the size of a grapefruit over his right. Even though Hominick looked like he should be ringing a bell in Notre Dame Cathedral, the doctor and referee allowed the fight to continue and Hominick put on one of the gutsiest near-comebacks in MMA history as he took Aldo down and pummeled him with fists and elbows until the final bell. During the post-fight interview, Hominick apologized to his wife, who is pregnant and due this week, and hoped that the fight didn’t send her into labour.

And that wasn’t the night’s only apology. The second came after welterweight champ Georges St. Pierre failed to finish challenger Jake Shields and had to settle for his fourth straight unanimous decision. “I’m sorry to the fans. I wanted a knockout,” he said afterward, while also admitting to vision problems in his left eye from one of Shields’ punches.

While GSP used his superior technical striking against the grappling ace, he wasn’t able to land the knockout overhand right he desperately wanted to. The result was a tactically efficient yet wholly uninspiring and occasionally boring 25 minutes that played out like a glorified sparring match and left fans continuing to wonder if he’d lost his killer instinct. After all, GSP is the most dominant fighter in the world and has finished the likes of BJ Penn and Matt Hughes, two of the toughest fighters the sport has ever seen. Yet he never came close to putting Shields away. Not exactly the performance you want from your biggest star in the biggest event in history. But at least it looked and sounded amazing thanks to all those screens and speakers.  Welcome to Toronto.