UFC 104

Last night I went to my buddy Dunne's house to watch UFC 104, and I'm not sure if I gonna watch another ppv again. That statement is probably false, I've been watching UFC closely for about a year now, and I'm pretty sure I'm not gonna bail. The reasoning behind it though, I can make a reason for being pissed. The Main Event, Shogun vs. Machida, was a great fight. The undercard started out well. Then quickly turned to crap. First of all let's visit this entire idea of a Pay Per View. When you ask people to spend money to watch your sport on TV, your asking for trouble. Boxing used to be in the top 3 sports in the country. Then the 80's came and you had to pay to watch the best fighters in the world, and it was ok because Tyson was carrying the sport. Nowadays though who watches boxing? Who's the heavyweight champ? I don't know either. It's hard to gurantee a great night of fights when you have a PPV, it's not like wrestling where you can build it up, and then have good scripted matches all night long. These are guys trying to make a paycheck and guess what if they can knock you out in the first round that's what your gonna get. I love KO's as much as the next guy but watching them all night gets redudant. However, I guess I'd rather watch KO's all night as opposed to the couple of crap fights that the middle of the card had last night.

The first two fights were fun to watch. Anthony Johnson looked awesome, with a great KO of his opponent, the ref stopped it early according to Dunne, but I thought the dude was out. The second fight Joe Stevenson took it to Spencer Fisher, and got a 2nd round TKO, once again dominating the fight. The the UFC showed a fight from the undercard, not sure why they do this but it went all three rounds and frankly took the wind out of the room. We were all excited from the first two KO's and then we had to watch a snorefest for 15 minutes, not sure who was even in that fight. So, when we got back to live fighting we were all ready for another action packed fight, we were dissapointed. Gleison Tibau decisioned Josh Neer in a lackluster performance. Tibau just kept taking Neer down and then getting back up, this isn't wrestling you don't get points just for a takedown, I thought the object was to hurt the guy. Well after two 15 minute fights we were really realing. The fact that Machida was still to come kept us going. Then the undercard wound up with Cain Velasquez, fighting for a shot at Lesnar, fought newcomer to the UFC Ben Rothwell. Rothwell is a big dude, that's all we figured out about him Velasquez took the fight to him and was whipping his ass all the Octagon. Giving the room some life for the first time in an hour, then in the second round the ref stopped the fight. I thought he stopped it early, but whatever that big dude was a few seconds away from being knocked the F out.

So finally we made it the main event. They show the stats of Machida, never lost a round in UFC, never been taken down in UFC, been hit the least of any fighter ever in the UFC. He looked unbeatable and you wondered if Shogun Rua had something for him. Well he had something for him, and it was one of the best fights I've ever seen. It was like two surgeons picking each other apart, neither making mistakes for the other to capitalize on. I'm all for watching two champions have it out, and not just one dominating and knocking the other guy out in the first round. Rua kept landing kicks to Machida's legs and body. Machida kept counter striking to the body, just a great battle. It was pretty even until the 4th round when Rua started to dominate the fight, in the 5th round Dunne left the room because Machida wasn't fighting well. So I was feeling pretty good, Shogun looked like he was gonna wear some gold out of the ring tonight. When the final bell came, Shogun raised his hands in victory and Machida half heartdly raised his arms. Then the judges came down, Rua with his head up, Machida's down awaiting defeat, and all the judges score the fight 48-47 for Machida. WHAT the hell, what fight were these judges watching. The crowd at the fight was booing, the 5 people at Dunne's house couldn't believe what happened. Machida was surprised as hell, he thought he lost. I thought Machida won one round and Rua won four rounds apparently I was wrong, until I got home and looked at the ESPN/Sherdog blog of the fight and each guy scored the fight for Rua, including one guy give Shogun every round. This is where fighting in general gets a bad rap, if a dude doesn't get KO'd it goes to the judges. Well when you have people judging the fight if opens you up for scrutiny and the possible ideas of a fix. I'm not sure if this fight was fixed but it looked awful fishy, I thought Shogun won and so did about 90 percent of the people watching, just not those 3 judges, what crap. I want a rematch tomorrow.