Sunday, November 18, 2012

UFC 154 Review

UFC 154 Review

Hello, everyone. Well, it's Saturday, I have nothing better to do and I'm hoping I can get some extra viewers so I'll be reviewing UFC 154. I apologize if you don't like MMA, but I promise, it's not taking away any pro wrestling reviews. I will be covering Survivor Series tomorrow so make sure to stick around for that.

Lightweight match - Sam Stout vs John Makdessi
Stout is 18-7-1 and has a muay-thai kickboxing background. Makdessi is 9-2 and has a karate background. They are almost identical reach and weight wise. Makdessi easily for the first round here. Lots of nice defensive jabs with Stout being more aggressive. The cornermen told Sam to watch for the jab. Good call there. Stout hit more shots and a takedown here which led to him getting the second round in my book. Mak was a little too defensive here. The trainers told Stout to counteract and to move his head more. Mak's corner told him he was doing great and needed to do more of the same. Makdessi won the third round here IMO and he hit more significant shots. Stout was really aggressive but Makdessi played it cool and stuck to being on the defensive. The judges scored it 30-37, 29-28, and 30-27 for John Makdessi. I might have gone 29-28 but the winner would have been the same.

Light-Heavyweight Bout - Cyrille Diabaté vs Chad Griggs
Cyrille is alot older but has a huge height and reach advantage. Cyrille dropped him early after Griggs rushed in. Cyrille was in side control but got tossed off then slammed Griggs down. Griggs' nose then got busted open. Cyrille hit some knees then got taken down by Chad. Griggs fell back with Cyrille on him and Cyrille got the win with a rear-naked choke from behind for his first UFC submission win. Really good match here that was all action at a fast pace. Joe Rogan interviewed Cyrille Diabate after. Cyrille said he wanted the knockout but took the choke.

Bantamweight Bout - Ivan Menjivar vs Azamat Gashimov
Azamat took him down about 40 seconds in. Menjivar was in the guard then wrapped his legs around Azamat as Azamat went up and quickly put him in the armbar. He got flopped down on the ground but held on and got the armbar win. Rogan thought that Azamat may have hurt his arm here with the way it snapped back.

Middleweight Bout - Patrick Côté vs Alessio Sakara
Cote has about a 3 inch reach advantage here. Cote got a huge flurry in early and the Sakara followed with many knees, elbows and 5 illegal hammer fists to the back of the head for the Alessio Sakara win. This is the first time Cote has been KO'd in UFC. The announcers are talking if Sakara will be DQ'd or not. Sakara got DQ'd for the illegal hammer fists to the head giving Patrick Cote the win. Cote said he would take Sakara again if Joe Silva made it as he wanted to have a war. Sakara said he didn't intend to hit him in the head but he was in the zone. Sakara then apologized to the crowd to get them to stop booing him.

Featherweight Bout - Mark Hominick vs Pablo Garza
Garza had a 6 inch reach advantage and a 3 inch height advantage. Mark tripped Garza for the takedown and got put in an armbar but got out. Mark dropped Garza with a shot to the stomach but he didn't finish well at all. Garza ended up getting up and cutting Hominick under the eye and hit hit with a good shot. I'd have to give the first one to Hominick. Goldberg mentioned that Garza once did 150 miles round trip to get to his gym everyday and called it dedication. Rogan called it "move". Garza was on top for all of this round and cut Hominick under both eyes. He just took him down and pounded him for the whole round. That was an easy Garza round and probably should be a 10-8. Garza's now hit more than double the strikes of Mark and he stayed on top, getting shots in. Garza hit 125 of 141 strikes here at one point. Hominick tried another armbar but got slammed down. Easy win here for Garza with him getting the 2nd and 3rd rounds.  Decent match here. Garza was on top for over 8 minutes here and hit 205 strikes. One of the judges even gave Garza the win at 30-26 along with a 29-28 and a 30-27.

Lightweight Bout - Mark Bocek vs Rafael dos Anjos
Both of these guys are really good at jiu-jitsu. Bocek has a 4 inch reach advantage. Very little happened in the first round here. They tried but no one could get anything going. I'd maybe give it to Anjos. Anjos got kicked in the nuts but didn't look too too hurt from it. Bocek got busted open around his nose and left side of his face. He got taken down and mostly owned in the 2nd round. This was a total squash especially in the 3rd round. Anjos was in control the whole time and even did a slam with a drop on Bocek's head.  Anjos won it 30-27.

Middleweight Bout - Francis Carmont vs Tom Lawlor
Tom Lawlor was supposedly dressed up as one of the Dudleyz. Carmont has a 3 inch reach advantage and a 4 inch height advantage. They were fighting near the cage then got seperated which Rogan didn't like. Lawlor jumped up on Carmont's knees and hit a guillotine but Carmont got out before time was up. Lawlor probably got the first round because of it. Lawlor got the first takedown in the second round with the ref pressuring them to do something. Carmont hit some shots fron the bottom but Lawlor quickly put another guillotine on, but there wasn't much behind it. I'd have to give this one to Lawlor also. No on had much going on in the 3rd round so its really hard to score. Either way though, I think Lawlor wins it. it was 29-28 for Carmont and Lawlor, with the third judge giving it to Carmont at 29-28 for the win. Tough fight to call either way but I did think Lawlor won it.

Welterweight Bout - Martin Kampmann vs Johnny Hendricks
Martin has 3 inches height and reach on Johnny.  Hendricks hit a HUGE left hand to knock out Kampmann. Awesome shot and a one hitter quitter.

UFC Welterweight Title  - Georges St.-Pierre vs Carlos Condit
Condit has a 3 inch height advantage but the height is the same. Condit got a really nasty cut from an elbow and was mostly GnP'd for the whole first round. The 2nd round was again all Pierre. He took him down and got up top and got some decent shots on the stand-up. Condit is now really bleeding everywhere. Condit got a huge kick on Georges that sent him down and almost sent him out. Georges hung in there though and got it back up in the 3rd round. In the 4th round, it was really even. Condit got some good submission tries but Pierre had better wrestling and may have been able to take it. The 5th round was hard fought with Pierre on top. He surely won this. They had Anderson Silva on camera watching this for most of the last two rounds. This should be about 49-46 for George. George won with 50-45, 49-46 and 49-46. Good match here with tons of heat.

Rogan asked George about a match with Silva but George said he'd have to talk with his agent and see. Condit said he thought he did good but needed to go back to the drawing board.

Overall thoughts: It was a good night of fighting. Only the last two matches were memorable, but there was good stuff all around.

No comments :

Post a Comment