Category — TUF

A knee to the face is how most people will remember featherweight champ Jose Aldo’s win over challenger Chad Mendes at Saturday’s UFC 142. That, or Aldo’s post-fight sprint into the crowd. Certainly both were memorable, with Aldo ending Mendes’s night with one second remaining in the first round and then celebrating with the Rio crowd before returning to the cage for the post-fight interview (Jesus deserves His props, after all).

But also noteworthy were the times that Aldo illegally grabbed the fence to prevent himself from being taken down by the highly decorated wrestler, something which could’ve have been a game changer considering how successful Mark Hominick was against Aldo once he got him to the ground at UFC 129. Aldo probably still would’ve found a way to win, but maybe not. At the very least, a takedown or two against the toughest UFC fighter to take down would’ve changed how the rest of the fight played out, if not the final outcome.

Now this is an Ultimate Fighter that I would tune into for every episode. Wanderlei Silva, Vitor Belfort and a house full of crazy Brazilians. So what  if I’d need subtitles. I need to brush up on my Portuguese anyway.

The pairing of Silva and Belfort as coaches makes perfect sense. When they fought at UFC 17.5, Belfort steamrolled Silva with a chain of punches that lasted just 44 seconds. So the grudge match aspect is very appealing (although more sparks would probably fly if they tossed Michael Bisping or Chael Sonnen into the mix). Silva, of course, is coming off a knockout win over Cung Le just last month.

What’s strange, though, is that Belfort is already scheduled to face Anthony Johnson at UFC 142 before he takes over TUF coaching duties, which also puts his desire for a rematch with middleweight champ Anderson Silva in jeopardy (especially when you consider Bisping wants a crack at the belt if he gets past Demian Maia next month at UFC on Fox 2).

TUF Brazil coincides with the 15th season of The Ultimate Fighter, featuring bantamweight rivals Dominick Cruz and Urijah Faber as coaches.

I didn’t watch more than two episodes of season 14 of The Ultimate Fighter, and that’s with the imbecilic, infuriating and occasionally entertaining verbal jousting of coaches Michael Bisping and Jason “Mayhem” Miller. I can’t imagine how dull season 15 will be with milquetoast coaches Urijah Faber and bantamweight champ Dominick Cruz. Unless the plan is to focus more on training and less on fratboy antics.

Once the show wraps up,Cruz and Faber will meet for a third time in a five-round title fight. The two are 1-1, with Faber handing Cruz the only loss of his career back in 2007 in a featherweight title fight via guillotine choke. Cruz extracted a measure of revenge earlier this year when he defeated Faber by unanimous decision and defended his bantamweight title. Which has me asking, Why the threepeat? I barely remember their first two fights and it’s not like their second fight was particularly exciting or controversial. What am I missing?

I only watched a couple of episodes from season 14 of The Ultimate Fighter so I had only the vaguest recollection of Diego Brandao and John Dodson going into Saturday’s TUF Finale. But I’ll certainly remember them now.

I do recall thinking that Brandao was a Brazilian beast and he proved to be exactly that in the featherweight final against Dennis Bermudez. After trading heavy blows for half-a-round, he smelled blood, charged recklessly in and ate a short straight right that dropped him on his ass. As Bermudez rushed to finish, Brandao threw up one of the most technically precise and brutally efficient armbars I’ve ever seen — quick and slick — to tap Bermudez out with nine seconds left in the opening round.

While both men picked up the $40,000 Fight of the Night bonus (one of the shortest fights to ever win that particular honour), Brandao also took home the well-deserved Submission of the Night.

The diminutive Dodson, meanwhile, clinched the TUF bantamweight crown with a pair of powerful lefts that ended TJ Dillashaw’s night before it had really started. Although Dodson’s celebratory spinning backflips off the fence were a bit more memorable.

So it seems Chael Sonnen won’t be facing Mark Munoz at the January UFC on Fox event. Instead, he might be meeting the winner of Saturday’s Ultimate Fighter Finale main event between Jason “Mayhem” Miller and Michael Bisping.  At least, that’s what Sonnen appears to be hinting at when he says he’ll be watching Saturday’s card very closely. Then again, you can’t believe anything Sonnen says anyway.

My interest in The Ultimate Fighter waxes and wanes more than the moon and until I watched this season 13 promo video I was in serious wane mode. But now, my curiousity has been piqued. What kind of coach – i.e. how big of a dick – will Brock Lesnar be? That’s the question that needs answering.

Looks like Brock Lesnar will have a new chapter to write in his autobiography (in addition to the one about his epic beard).The former UFC heavyweight champ isn’t scurrying from the octagon for the relative safety of a WWE ring, as some have (heavily and seriously) speculated.

Instead, he will join Junior Dos Santos as opposing coaches on the 13th season of The Ultimate Fighter, which will focus on welterweights. UFC boss Dana White made the announcement on Wednesday, squashing the rumoured coaches, lightweight champ Frankie Edgar and Gray Maynard.

Lesnar and Dos Santos will then square off for yet another interim heavyweight belt, which has been contended for more times than the unified strap the last couple of years (an entirely unnecessary interim belt, I’ll add, considering that champ Cain Velasquez is expected to be out just 6-8 months with the shoulder injury, meaning he could be back in action in time for the UFC’s annual July 4 weekend event).

The Lesnar vs. Santos bout would likely take place at UFC 131 in Vancouver on June 14. The locker rooms at the Rogers Arena in Vancouver could get a little crowded – Shane Carwin confirmed on his blog that he will face a yet-to-be-determined opponent on the card after a UFC 130 bout with Roy Nelson was scrapped so Nelson could face Frank Mir. (Presumably, Nelson’s legal woes have been resolved to the UFC’s satisfaction.)

So who could Carwin face? Well, scratch Brendan Schaub and Mirko “Cro Cop” Filipovic off your list. Those two will slug it out at UFC 128, headlined by a light heavyweight title tilt between Mauricio “Shogun” Rua and Rashad Evans.

Okay, back to The Ultimate Fighter. While I think it’ll be entertaining for viewers to watch Lesnar and Dos Santos as coaches (imagine how many doors Lesnar will rip apart), I wouldn’t want to have Lesnar as a coach. Not just because of his personality. I just have to wonder, after just seven fights, Lesnar could possibly teach his proteges?

It takes balls – pun intended – to claim low testosterone and delayed puberty as the reason for a failed drug test. It’s a little bit embarrassing, actually, for a professional fighter to admit. But Chael Sonnen is convincing – he’s a politician, after all – even if medical experts aren’t exactly taking his side (after all, one primary cause of abnormally low testosterone levels in otherwise healthy males is prolonged steroid use).

Meanwhile, some state athletic commissions are preparing for a possible increase in fighters seeking approval for using Testosterone Replacement Therapy and who knows how that will turn out. Two fighters – 40-year-old Dan Henderson and man-monster Todd Duffee – have already received approval for TRT in Nevada.

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I’m sick of folks falling back on “never leave it in the hands of the judges” whenever a fighter loses a close decision. The judges are exactly who fighters should be able to rely on so that all they have to worry about is implementing their game plan and fighting their style of fight. They have enough on their minds without thinking, “Shit, I better take some risks and finish this guy in case the fuckwits with the scorecards are taking a nap.” Judges are exactly who fighters and everyone else should be able to rely upon when a fight goes to a decision.

But then Saturday’s Ultimate Fighter 12 Finale gave us Leonard Garcia’s split-decision win over Ultimate Fighter semi-finalist Nam Phan, an abomination among judging abominations that puts the nail in the coffin of MMA officiating.

We all saw the fight go in Nam Phan’s favour, all of us except two of three judges (Tony Weeks and Adalaide Byrd), who inexplicably saw it for Garcia. How can we take officiating seriously when this is allowed to happen.

According to the stats, FightMetric’s formula produced an “effectiveness score”of 496 for Phan, compared to Garcia’s 279, while Phan landed 102 significant strikes, about 59% more than Garcia. Similarly, Compustrike had Phan outstriking Garcia 122 to 66. Half of Phan’s blows were counted as power strikes, versus 39 for Garcia. Both statistical measures had Phan landing more strikes each round, and on the ground, there was little question about Phan’s superiority – in the only significant mat action, Phan took Garcia’s back and had him on the defensive for the last minute of the second round.

Commentator Joe Rogan took jabs at the judging throughout the rest of the broadcast: “There’s a few very good judges surrounded by a bunch of incompetent morons who know nothing about the sport… it’s ruining MMA… it’s sheer and total incompetence.” Much to the dismay of Keith Kizer, executive director of the Nevada State Athletic Commission, who admits he also saw the fight in Phan’s favour: “”You get people who love to overreact. Obviously there are people who want to feel superior than others, trash others. Maybe they are full of some self-hate, some self-pity; maybe that’s Rogan’s piece as well.”

Hell, even UFC boss Dana White says the judges got it wrong and he’s putting his money where his mouth is by awarding Phan a win bonus in addition to the Fight of the Night bonus.

1. to learn how many pounds Stephan Bonnar cut in three hours to make weight.
2. to discover the secret to Bonnar’s wife’s Christmas stuffing and learn how many pounds he’ll gain before New Year’s.
3. to hear what Jonathan “Encino Man” Brookins thinks of his now-famous loss to Jose Aldo.
4. Bonus: notice the lack of questions from the peanut gallery. I wonder if it was because many MMA journalists decided (rightly, in retrospect) they’d rather cover the Strikeforce event so there just weren’t many people there to ask questions.