UFC 77: Wrap-up

Well, I only man­aged to cor­rectly pick 5 out of the 9 fights, but it turns out I did about as good a job as the book­ies, so I don’t feel too bad.

As men­tioned, I got to take my first trip to Hoot­ers. I had a sand­wich that was labeled “Probably Iowa beef” which I should have taken as a warn­ing, and it was dis­gust­ing. Maybe the menu should read, “probably meat.” They were show­ing fight on plenty of TVs and you could kind of hear the play-​by-​play over the crowd, but as usual it’s the people that let you down. Our wait­ress seemed like a nice kid, but she was really dumb. Like crim­i­nally dumb. Like I expected her to set down our drinks upside down dumb.

There was an idiot sit­ting in our line of sight (sport­ing some very promi­nent man-​boobs) that seemed really upset that people would root for Ander­son Silva against Rich Franklin. When Rich came out he yelled, “Amurica! Whooooo!” and when Silva came out (to much applause from the local crowd) he booed. When the crowd qui­eted I said loudly, “Don’t boo until after he gets done kick­ing Rich’s ass.” Sadly, I don’t think he heard me.

Speak­ing of which, Silva com­pletely destroyed Franklin. At the end when he had him up against the cage, Silva was mixing kicks, knees and punches in one of the most dev­as­tat­ing dis­plays of pun­ish­ment I’ve ever seen. It looked like he was dis­man­tling a toy or some­thing. Hope­fully Franklin will go back to teach­ing or some­thing, because he’s just not in the same league as Silva. For fun, here’s a clip of Silva knock­ing out Tony Fryk­lund with a stand­ing elbow. Ouch.

It was also a bad night for Franklin’s Jiu-​Jistu coach, Jorge Gurgel, who spent two rounds on the ground eating leather. I’m gonna sug­gest that Rich get back any money he paid this guy until Gurgel can prove he knows what a closed guard is.

Bran­don “The Truth” Vera let me down with his 3 round dirty danc­ing ses­sion with Tim Sylvia. Vera’s kicks looked great, but he didn’t seem like he had a game-​plan for han­dling Sylvia’s reach advan­tage other than to hug him for 15 min­utes. Evi­dently the truth is dull.

Stephan Bonnar proved that steroid abusers can have cardio too, sur­viv­ing a rear naked choke attempt to make it into the second round where he bea the crap out of Eric Shafer on the ground.

Speak­ing of steroid abusers, former pro­fes­sional “wrestler” Brock Lesnar was on the PPV to announce that he’d signed with the UFC. For those of you who don’t watch grown men play dress up to act out child­ish melo­dra­mas, take a look at this awe­some pic­ture of Brock. That’s one unfor­tu­nate penis-​looking tattoo between his boobs. And it’s also good evi­dence of why steroid use should come with a life­time ban from all sport­ing events. Even if that gorilla stops fill­ing his veins with human growth hor­mone today, do you think that extra hun­dred pounds of muscle might give him an unfair advan­tage in the future?

Anyway, it was a pretty good night of fights - what did every­one else think?

October 21st, 2007 · Category: Sports · Tags: , , , , , , , , · 5 Comments »