Search This Blog

Tuesday, March 1, 2011

UFC 127: Poor Judgement

Well. I had no Internet for the past five days, which is thrilling. I have a crappy phone, so while I can do minor Twitter updates or Facebook posts, it is far from possessing the capability to do anything more complicated than that. This phone is ancient, in technology standards. Two whole years old!! Time to upgrade.

We had our UFC party Saturday night, which was a lot of fun. A lot of fun. There were the usual expected flake-outs (not to say that I expected these people in particular to flake out--quite the opposite, actually, since those people were in charge of bringing the beer), but someone always flakes out and bails. It's inevitable. My birthday last year was a prime example. About twenty to twenty-five people RSVP'd to our BBQ/pool party since my birthday is in June. So we went out and spent about $100 on food and drinks and come party day, I'd say about six people actually showed up. Lame.

I wore my lucky BJ necklace (I know how that sounds...let me explain: The first BJ Penn fight I watched with Jordan, we went down to Hennessy's in Dana Point. When BJ won, this massive Samoan guy gave me a Hawaiian Kukui Seed Bead necklace. He said it was tradition that you give it as a gift to someone so he gave it to me. Ever since then, it's been my lucky BJ necklace. I try to always wear it whenever BJ Penn is fighting.

So...BJ enters the building. He looks good. I mean, he looks focused and ready to go. He has that look in his eyes like, "Let's just effing do this already." Throughout the arena, you see Penn's white, black and red "Just Scrap!" t-shirts and you hear chants of "BJ! BJ! BJ!" Clearly, he's the crowd favorite. Fitch comes in. He looks good too. Although BJ is the favorite, Fitch doesn't exactly walk in to the sound of crickets. He's got his fare share of supporters out there too. And so they square off after Bruce Buffer's usual introductions (I just love him).

Round 1:
BJ flat-out rushes Jon Fitch. Fitch is clearly not expecting this and isn't prepared to defend against any kind of grappling or wrestling. BJ gets a couple take-downs, gets a couple dominant positions (including taking Fitch's back, getting the body triangle and starting to go for a rear-naked choke in a Kenny Florian repeat). BJ clearly got the first round, in my opinion. UFC president Dana White agrees with me.

Round 2:BJ starts slowing down a little. Cardio has always been an issue for him and really the only time I've seen a vast improvement in his cardio is when he fought Diego Sanchez (ahhh now THAT was a beautiful fight). BJ gets a take-down, Fitch reverses it, but Penn quickly gets back to his feet. Penn again takes Fitch's back and almost locks in another rear-naked choke and had it not been for Fitch's darn good wrist control, he would've gotten it. I'd say round 2 goes to Penn also. Again, Dana White agrees.

Round 3:This is not a good round for BJ. Fitch takes him down and keeps him down for the entire round. However. While Fitch does keep him down the whole time, he never assumes a dominant position. He doesn't pass BJ's guard once; doesn't get side control; doesn't land devastatingly damaging blows. While he definitely did handle BJ, there wasn't a point in time where BJ was in any serious danger of a submission or referee stoppage.

So the fight goes the distance and we go to the judge's scorecards. Judge #1 scores it: 29-28 Fitch. So we're thinking split decision victory, right? But for which fighter?? Judge #2: 28-28. Judge #3: 28-28. Result: A majority draw. Are you effing kidding me?!

A draw?? AGAIN?? This is the second time this year that a huge fight has ended in a draw (the first fight was the title fight between Frankie Edgar & Gray Maynard on New Year's day). BJ, however, was utterly disappointed in his performance and seemed near tears when Joe Rogan interviewed him. BJ flat-out said that he thought he'd lose by decision and made references to the possibility of retiring from UFC, but did say he'd be willing to do a rematch.

I read on UFC Octagon Girl Arianny Celeste's Twitter that the 'bosses' (clearly referring to Dana White and other big wigs) were NOT pleased with the judges that evening. There was another fight on the prelims (Nick Ring vs Riki Fukuda) that ended in an upsetting call. Ring clearly LOST that fight. I mean, he got a few punches in here and there, but he just did not win. Yet the judges gave him the victory in a unanimous decision.

This is yet another prime example of why Dana White constantly tells fighters to finish the fight. Never leave it in the hands of the judges.

2 comments:

  1. love the play by play - i don't watch a whole lot of UFC so i appreciate your help - thanks MJ and keep it up

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks!! :) I think I might try to do this kind of recap for fights from now on.

    ReplyDelete