UFC 80 is officially in the books, and here are a few of my thoughts on the fights. (Spoilers will follow, so do not click the link below if you do not want to know the results yet.)
Looking at the floor of the Octagon after the fight, one could easily mistake the bloodied floor as the site of some sort of ritual sacrifice. Both Joe Stevenson and Paul Taylor unfortunately played the roles of the sacrificial lambs, sustaining nasty cuts on their foreheads in the process of losing their respective bouts.
Kendall Grove versus Jorge Rivera
Kendall Grove, once thought to be a promising prospect in the weak middleweight division after winning the Ultimate Fighter, has suddenly found himself in limbo after a big loss tonight, his second consecutive. Jorge Rivera took Grove to the floor and hit him with some ground and pound to lead off the bout. Kendall unwisely thought it would be safer to eat a few punches in an attempt to stand up, a decision that later saw him crumpled to the mat with his knees folded back behind him as Rivera punished him with strikes in Kendall’s attempt to get up. Where does Grove go from here? His success on the Ultimate Fighter is likely obsolete after losing twice by knockout. Luckily, he’s in a relatively weak division, but he won’t be around for long with more performances like this.
Wilson Gouveia versus Jason Lambert
In the light heavyweight bout between Wilson Gouveia and Jason Lambert, Lambert appeared to be the better of the two fighters after one round, as he set the pace and worked Gouveia over with some good strikes from the ground. Before the start of round two, Gouveia’s mouthpiece mysteriously disappeared–within an area of about two square feet, as Joe Rogan noted. Somewhere in the Bermuda triangle, Amelia Earhardt is no doubt examining a saliva-covered plastic object. At any rate, Wilson obviously didn’t lose his desire to win, and despite losing the first round he nailed Lambert with a huge left hook very quickly in the second, ending the fight with his hand raised. Jason Lambert looked good at the start and had been propelled up the ranks with a recent win over Babalu, but this loss certainly sets him down a notch.
Marcus Davis versus Jess Liaudin
In a welterweight showdown, Marcus Davis once again looked very good after defeating Jess Liaudin. It looked as if Liaudin was content to just hang back and nail Davis’ legs with kicks for the rest of the night, but eventually Davis closed the distance and uncorked a left hand to the side of Liaudin’s head. Liaudin immediately went stiff and fell like a redwood being hacked at by beavers. So Davis continues his winning streak with a good show of power, although his flashy knockout was largely offset in the fan’s eyes by his lengthy speech at the end of the fight describing the bout to Joe, which for some reason caused the crowd to boo menacingly. He needs to take a lesson from BJ Penn and say virtually nothing, blurting out only the name of his website. Fans are not accustomed to seeing fighters actually describe the fight when Joe tells them to do so, and are less likely to boo the familiar blank silences, incoherent cursing, or irrelevant drivel that usually follows this query.
Paul Taylor versus Paul Kelly
Paul Taylor and Paul Kelly looked as if they were recreating a Rocky movie for the first thirty seconds of their fight, stepping up to each other and attacking with all the elegance of Rock ’em Sock ’em Robots. To be fair, Taylor looked to be getting the better of the furious striking, having better precision. In the end, though, Kelly ended up taking control of the first round when Taylor pulled guard in an attempt to secure a guillotine, and Kelly capitalized by controlling him on the ground, ultimately winning the round with a good course of ground and pound. He applied the same formula to the later rounds, knowing that Taylor lacked the ability to get out from the bottom, and cruised to a decision after fifteen minutes of beating on Taylor from the ground, even putting a two-inch gash in his forehead. All judges scored it 30-27 for Paul Kelly, who claimed before the fight that he tried to fight with Wanderlei Silva’s relentless striking style. He looked more like Tito Ortiz here, but he still comes away with the win, regardless.
Gabriel Gonzaga versus Fabricio Werdum
The heavyweight bout of the night got started with a rather serious stare-down between Fabricio Werdum and Gabriel Gonzaga. This is the kind of stare you give someone who has just killed your dog, folks. As the fight starts, it looks like Gonzaga is going to win the fight with leg kicks. He repeatedly kicks Werdum’s legs and buckles him many times, even sending him to the floor at one point. The first round ends after Werdum took down Gonzaga after a missed high kick and Gonzaga attempted a knee bar that Werdum effectively nullified, leaving the fighters standing there holding each other from either end in an awkward stalemate as the horn sounds. In the second round, it is obvious that Werdum has received good advice from his corner, because he comes out and keeps out of reach of Gonzaga’s leg kicks, only closing the distance to land strikes of his own. Werdum ultimately finds Gonzaga’s kryptonite in the form of knees in the clinch. He nails Gonzaga with a couple of good knees and punches, and Gonzaga sort of slouches to the ground, but he’s not hurt too badly. Once Werdum gets Gonzaga on the ground with his head pressed against the cage, though, he drops a number of hammer punches on the bigger man and the ref has to step in to stop the fight. Werdum wins, putting that travesty with Andrei Arlovski behind him. Provided he wins against whoever the UFC matches him with next, he may soon find himself in contention for the title. Who could he fight next? I’d like to see him take on Brandon Vera, or perhaps he and Cro Cop could put on a show for the fans by pitting a student against his master.
BJ Penn versus Joe Stevenson
And then it was the title fight, BJ Penn versus Joe Stevenson. Anyone worth their salt had to see Penn winning this. Penn has fought championship-caliber fighters like Matt Hughes and Georges St. Pierre at a higher weight class and looked very good. Meanwhile, Stevenson, despite showing very good submission skills, has never been tested against a top tier fighter–until today. BJ came out to his familiar Hawaiian theme music. The only thing less intimidating than that music is perhaps Joe Stevenson’s nickname, “Daddy.” Cro Cop’s theme music is a close second, although Duran Duran can indeed be pretty frightening for anyone who had the displeasure of growing up in the ’80s. When the fight starts, BJ comes out and nails Stevenson with some good strikes. Stevenson escapes to the ground, but BJ is on top. He controls him from the top, lacing him with good ground and pound and momentarily gaining better position in mount and half-guard for the rest of the fight, but Stevenson defends relatively well despite getting his forehead cut open with a glancing elbow from Penn that leaves a blast radius of blood of about fifty miles as it spurts from the wound. Luckily, as doctors are examining him at the end of round one it looks like the blood won’t affect his vision as it is situated in the center of his forehead and drips right between his eyes. At the start of the second round, it’s just more of the same, the only differences being the red stripe down Joe’s face and his aggressive start. He came out throwing strikes with loud grunts and yells, perhaps mistaking himself for a women’s tennis player hitting baseline shots. Ultimately, though, Penn gets the better of the striking and gets Stevenson to the ground once again, where he works for position and softens him up with punches. Penn mounts him, and Stevenson flounders in vain, forced to choose between letting Penn take his back or eating strikes with Penn mounted. In the end, Penn gets Joe’s back and easily slips his arm under his neck for the choke, submitting Stevenson in the second round.
After Penn received the belt at light heavyweight, making him only the second man to hold belts in two different weight classes, Joe Rogan asks BJ about Sean Sherk, to which Penn says, “He’s dead.”
Uh oh.
Sherk, of course, is there, and he enters the octagon, and he is visibly upset by what Penn said. Then the crowd boos him relentlessly as he tells Penn that he will make him stop talking crap. He lets the fans know, as well, that they can boo him all they want. Sherk is obviously pissed. This is going to be a great fight.
Interestingly, no mention was made of the “S” word (that being steroids) by anyone. It was obvious that Rogan and Goldberg were tip-toeing around the issue, perhaps because Sherk was sitting right next to them and would surely smash them to pieces if anyone mentioned it.
Penn has expressed a desire to go back to welterweight, and I wonder whether he plans to do that immediately after fighting Sherk or not. If he successfully defends the title against Sherk, I’d like to see him fight at least one more lightweight fight against one of the up-and-comers in that division. (I strongly suspect that it will be Frankie Edgar who ends up on top, and I hope they pit Edgar versus Roger Huerta for a number one contender match at some point.) Then, of course, I definitely wouldn’t mind watching him beat up Matt Hughes again, or even better, take on Georges St. Pierre in an attempt to avenge his decision loss to him.
For as much complaining as a lot of people did about this card, it sounds like it was a very entertaining event. Unfortunately, I had to miss it due to a rugby game in Oklahoma City. Some fun. Our team played the role of Joe Daddy to the OKC Crusaders’ Penn.
Heh, sorry to hear about your team, PW. But, yeah, the event was pretty exciting. The battle between the two Pauls was pretty good, and Penn and Stevenson put on a pretty good show as well. Fans of knockouts certainly got their taste tonight.
Of course, it doesn’t live up to the last UFC featuring Wanderlei and Chuck, as well as Hughes and St. Pierre, but not much could!
Some of these less star-studded events turn out pretty decent. The most recent Ultimate Fight Nights have been pretty consistently entertaining, for example.