UFC Fight Night Live

All I’ve heard down through the grapevine seems to indicate this this year’s TUF cast is pretty weak. Irregardless, I like the new formet, and you couldn’t find two guys with more personality than Rampage and Forrest. When Rampage said he thought some of them shit themselves I was giggling for the rest of the show.

[quote]Donut62 wrote:
All I’ve heard down through the grapevine seems to indicate this this year’s TUF cast is pretty weak. Irregardless, I like the new formet, and you couldn’t find two guys with more personality than Rampage and Forrest. When Rampage said he thought some of them shit themselves I was giggling for the rest of the show.[/quote]

Is it something with the middleweight division? Every other division, other than heavyweight, seems to have a bunch of talented fighters. Is it just a weird weight class, where small guys figure “screw it, I’ll drop to 170” and the bigger guys stick with 205? Has Anderson scared everyone away from 185?

[quote]Doug Adams wrote:
Donut62 wrote:
All I’ve heard down through the grapevine seems to indicate this this year’s TUF cast is pretty weak. Irregardless, I like the new formet, and you couldn’t find two guys with more personality than Rampage and Forrest. When Rampage said he thought some of them shit themselves I was giggling for the rest of the show.

Is it something with the middleweight division? Every other division, other than heavyweight, seems to have a bunch of talented fighters. Is it just a weird weight class, where small guys figure “screw it, I’ll drop to 170” and the bigger guys stick with 205? Has Anderson scared everyone away from 185?
[/quote]

Im just throwing this out there but maybe the reason that this season is turning out to look pretty bummed talent wise is because we havent seen them fight without the “professional” training of those guys. Im not gonna give all the credit to the coaches in the other ones, but they just got put into a trial by fire, literally. But i do love the new format. Nothing like a great nice of fight night live complimented by 8 more fights jammed into one hour.

Yep, I was there live last night. Sat about 5 feet from the Octagon on press row. You definitely get a different experience seeing the fights that up close as opposed to being on TV.

I posted this in the MMA Training Hub thread but figured I’d copy it over here:

I won’t get into a play-by-play of the event, since most already know what happened. Instead, I’ll give you some thoughts on what took place over the course of the evening in Broomfield:

-Forrest Griffin received, by far, the biggest crowd reaction of the night. Guy is a legit superstar. Rampage got a lot of love, too, but there was a smattering of boos when he was shown on screen.

-Frank Mir, Diego Sanchez, Rashad Evans, Stephan Bonnar, Nate Marquardt and Eddie Bravo all in attendance. All of them were great with the fans, taking pictures and signing autographs.

-Matt Hughes cornerned Tommy Speer and Josh Neer, while Randy Couture was in the corners of Karo Parisyan and Gray Maynard. Did they show Randy much on TV? It sure looked like they were trying to avoid filming him at all costs.

-Fans in attendance really seemed to know their MMA. There was no booing or calls for a stand-up during any of the ground fighting; even when there was little to no action going on.

-Only 2 fights went the distance and they were the only 2 to get out of the second round, so fans definitely were treated to an exciting night of fights.

-I just watched the Alexander-Irvin fight again. Watching it on TV it’s hard to see if he’s really out or not, but I can say sitting just a few feet from the Octagon that it was pretty clear to all of us at press row that Alexander was out.

-After the Parisyan-Alves fight, Karo was screaming and pacing around the cage during the entire commercial break. Couture tried to calm him down, but Karo wouldn’t listen. That knee was definitely a solid blow, but the punches didn’t seem to really connect. I thought it was stopped a bit early, but who knows if Karo would’ve recovered. He didn’t look to be in great shape, either.

-Fans really loved Clay Guida, Joe Lauzon and Nate Diaz. The place exploded when Diaz gave the double-bird and started flexing after sinking in the triangle choke. It was an awesome moment. Cool to see Nick Diaz there, too. He was a cool dude; he walked by press row and shook everyone’s hand and said hi.

-Crowd was also on its feet for the entire Lauzon-Florian fight. It was electric, especially in the first round. Place went nuts when Lauzon went for those heel hooks. Definitely had a main event atmosphere.

-Given the hot crowd and quick sellout of the near 7,000-seat arena, it wouldn’t surprise me to see the UFC return to Denver in 2009, this time running at the Pepsi Center for a PPV.

Only negative was that my photos didn’t turn out that well.

If anyone has the fights on tape or is watching the replay, you can see me at the front of press row. I’m wearing a striped-gray polo shirt and have long dark hair.

That was totally worth missing a workout. I can hardly wait till the 19 of April, GSP is going to rock. Monteal, fastest UFC sell out to date.

hey DJ, did u meet any of the fighters of celebs in attendance watching the fights?

[quote]apwsearch wrote:
Overall it was kind of a disappointing night for me. I just thought there would be more to a lot of those fights.

Diaz impressed the hell out of me as did Florian. The Speers fight looked like a vet fighting a wrestler who had never been taught stand-up. After he got rocked and did that half-assed takedown attempt I actually felt sorry for the guy. He had nothing.

Absolutely love the new TUF format. However, it will be interestig to see how it shakes out as I have had two different gym owners tell me, based on fighters they have sent to audtiion, they were casting for character over skill. It would be very interesting to watch a season of focused, no BS fighters training and fighting hard but will that entertain the broader viewers?

I guess my point is I am wondering if the new format will appeal more to the people who actually like the training and fighting vs. the character development and drama which I assume is the minority of viewers.[/quote]

I’m guessing Dana doesn’t really give a fuck if entertains or brings in more viewers. I’m not saying he doesn’t want the company to make money, but I think he’d rather have real fighters than the “posers” he’s always talking about. I like the guy, seems to be pretty true to himself.

Looked like a good season as well.

Monopoly

[quote]Pipes06 wrote:
hey DJ, did u meet any of the fighters of celebs in attendance watching the fights?[/quote]

Yeah, I met a few. Talked with Diego Sanchez for a bit (got my pic taken with him) and also chatted with Forrest for a bit (my other pic).

Matt Hamill was a cool dude (he lives in the town I grew up in). Florian was real nice as was Thiago Alves. Spoke to all of them at the post-fight press conference.

[quote]Djwlfpack wrote:

If anyone has the fights on tape or is watching the replay, you can see me at the front of press row. I’m wearing a striped-gray polo shirt and have long dark hair.
[/quote]

I thought I saw a filthy hippy sitting there.

[quote]Monopoly19 wrote:

I’m guessing Dana doesn’t really give a fuck if entertains or brings in more viewers. I’m not saying he doesn’t want the company to make money, but I think he’d rather have real fighters than the “posers” he’s always talking about. I like the guy, seems to be pretty true to himself.

Looked like a good season as well.

Monopoly[/quote]

Maybe. Perhaps it is an attempt to retain his base in the wake of all these organizations popping up on premium, and now network, TV.

I should point out the info I got on casting for character rather than skill came from previous seasons. I have no such info for this one…

[quote]Djwlfpack wrote:
Pipes06 wrote:
hey DJ, did u meet any of the fighters of celebs in attendance watching the fights?

Yeah, I met a few. Talked with Diego Sanchez for a bit (got my pic taken with him) and also chatted with Forrest for a bit (my other pic).

Matt Hamill was a cool dude (he lives in the town I grew up in). Florian was real nice as was Thiago Alves. Spoke to all of them at the post-fight press conference.[/quote]

Gotta say I’m remarkably jealous. That’s pretty cool. Ringside and bumpin’ elbows.

Pretty sweet.

man,

i really get a kick out of watching mark hammil fight. it is just such a great story, if he was not deaf, such a nice humble guy finding success in MMA would be a good story, but add that on top of it all, just too cool.

his punches seem to come slow and telegraphed, but he connects, and he does not get countered often, even against good strikers like bisping.

wonder why. he is hyped as having really heavy hands and natural power in his strikes, maybe it is not hype?

[quote]heavythrower wrote:
man,

i really get a kick out of watching mark hammil fight. it is just such a great story, if he was not deaf, such a nice humble guy finding success in MMA would be a good story, but add that on top of it all, just too cool.

his punches seem to come slow and telegraphed, but he connects, and he does not get countered often, even against good strikers like bisping.

wonder why. he is hyped as having really heavy hands and natural power in his strikes, maybe it is not hype?

[/quote]

I dont understand how the guy wins fights. he always look so sloppy and uncoordinated. Also, for a superstar wrestler, he doesn’t control and GnP opponents like other awesome wrestlers. He does have a good chin though, and getting hit by those meat hooks probably doesn’t feel good, no matter how slow they are coming.

[quote]Pipes06 wrote:

yeah, but what interested me was on the replay the little superman barely connected. I think houston kinda fell outta it anticipating the rock to the jaw. Now mazzagatti made a quick call on the thiago alves(sp) fight. Im not a ref, but he seemed to call that quick.

The diaz fight was great. I was impressed by diaz too, BUT i think it coulda got called when his face was getting rocked. I mean it was bad, but he had his arms pinned down to his sides.[/quote]

I agree that alves-parisyan was stopped too soon. karo got dropped but as soon as he hit the ground he was moving. houston dropped and then went limp on the second strike on the ground. i dunno, it’s all debatable, but that was my take. Speaking of stoppages, i understand why teh lauzon-florian fight was stopped, but i was hoping they’d let it go.

It didnt look to me like lauzon was taking too much damage, he did good keeping his hands high and moving. Clearly there was a good chance florian would send one down the pipes and ko lauzon, but I thought there was an equal chance that florian would shoot his load and gas throwing all those punches. What do I know tho.

[quote]KBCThird wrote:
Pipes06 wrote:

yeah, but what interested me was on the replay the little superman barely connected. I think houston kinda fell outta it anticipating the rock to the jaw. Now mazzagatti made a quick call on the thiago alves(sp) fight. Im not a ref, but he seemed to call that quick.

The diaz fight was great. I was impressed by diaz too, BUT i think it coulda got called when his face was getting rocked. I mean it was bad, but he had his arms pinned down to his sides.

I agree that alves-parisyan was stopped too soon. karo got dropped but as soon as he hit the ground he was moving. houston dropped and then went limp on the second strike on the ground. i dunno, it’s all debatable, but that was my take. Speaking of stoppages, i understand why teh lauzon-florian fight was stopped, but i was hoping they’d let it go.

It didnt look to me like lauzon was taking too much damage, he did good keeping his hands high and moving. Clearly there was a good chance florian would send one down the pipes and ko lauzon, but I thought there was an equal chance that florian would shoot his load and gas throwing all those punches. What do I know tho.
[/quote]

Florian wasn’t even close to gassing, at least from my vantage point. I came away really impressed with his aggression. Once he saw Lauzon was in trouble, he went in for the kill. Lauzon’s face wasn’t that beat up afterwards, but Dean had to stop it b/c Lauzon couldn’t get out of that position after trying to buck Florian several times.

[quote]Donut62 wrote:
Djwlfpack wrote:

If anyone has the fights on tape or is watching the replay, you can see me at the front of press row. I’m wearing a striped-gray polo shirt and have long dark hair.

I thought I saw a filthy hippy sitting there.[/quote]

I showered, and shaved, yesterday. I am in need of a haircut, though. Guida’s still got me beat in the length department by quite a bit.

I felt so bad for Tommy he was basically already knocked out on his feet… he was dazed out of his fucking mind

The Anthony Johnson vs Speer fight looked like when Silva took out Leben…

I think TUF 7 is obviously looking for character in their show because ratings have gone down for that show. Of course theyre looking for personality and character, why u think they brought Rampage and Griffin?