It has been a little bit since I have posted, but I have to be honest the fight card was ridiculous. I do not mean that in a nice way either. All of the controversy going on from: Towelgate, Implantgate, Kneegate, and Retirementgate (that last one I made up). So let's start off with what was an eventful week to start.
So we begin with just the weigh-ins first. Daniel "DC" Cormier missed weight by 1.2 pounds, according to the New York State Athletic Commission (NYSAC) he was not allowed to get another attempt at making the weight. Nevertheless DC went to the back for under 3 minutes came back out and lost 1.2 pounds using the towel to leverage his weight. Then we had the NYSAC come back and explain how Pearl Gonzalez was not allowed to fight due to having implants, I get they may rupture and it can be deadly but she has fought with them before...I think she would be okay. Eventually the NYSAC said she could fight against Cynthia Calvillo, and the fight was back on.
Now we move onto fight night, Charles Oliveria came out the gate like a gang buster and scored an awesome tap out over Will Brooks. Thiago Alves reminded us why he was once considered the baddest fighter at one time with a pretty decisive victory over the Canadian Patrick Cote. Cynthia Calvillo got her victory after the on-again off-again on-again fight with Pearl Gonzalez. A fight where Pearl said it was her time to shine, and the luster must have wore off because she tapped out in the third round. It was a good match-up but Cynthia was relentless and got the win because of it.
This moves us to our final two fights of the night:
From the jump when asked about this fight, I felt that Mousasi had all the momentum and would get the win. However how we got the win, even I was dumbfounded. In the first round I felt Mousasi was landing the strikes better than Weidman, the hometown favorite was behind in the card and needed to push the tempo. However Mousasi was getting to Weidman before Weidman could think about landing. Which eventually lead to Mousasi getting into a front headlock position, now Mousasi had landed a knee strike cleanly. It was the second knee that was the problem:
The knee has not connected yet, however when the knee does connect Weidman's hand is off the mat. It use to be when a fighter had one hand on the mat, throwing a knee was illegal. However in the new rules, if a fighter has one hand down, a knee can be thrown. Which it was, the ref then stopped the fight and gave Weidman five minutes of rest, NYSAC does not allow for instant replay in boxing or MMA, so the ref in this instance had to talk with another ref to get his opinion. They came to the understanding the knee was legal and needed to continue the fight, here is where things are funny: the ref asked the doctor to come to the ring and check on the fighter. The doctor then determined Weidman was now unfit to fight after having a long period of rest. The fight was stopped and Mousasi was given the win due to doctor stoppage. Mousasi says he would like to run it again and fight Weidman one more time.
My biggest problem with this fight, will be solved soon and it is the lack of experience with New York and MMA. They need more little promotions to come throw down to help get more experience in the MMA world. You can not use boxing rules to govern MMA and vice versa. Now the NYSAC is doing their best and sure there will be mistakes, I just wish they would allow more promotions to come through to hurry the growing pains process.
Finally we get to the main event for the night:
It was clear from this fight...(spoiler alert) Rumble Johnson was not in this fight. He went out to fight and you could tell his heart was not in it. DC looked like he knew the fight was not gonna take long, and he did not even look like he was in full shape for it. Rumble went out in the fight and tried to wrestle with DC, which confused a lot of people. Even DC was confused at first and was able to defend with ease. In the second round Rumble tried to take the fight back to the ground via take downs, and was unsuccessful, DC was able to score the take down eventually get Rumble's back and get the submission victory. What made things more confusing was the retirement from Rumble Johnson right after the fight. Everyone in the crowd was like:
What made it worse was Sunday morning, Rumble Johnson then hinted at possibly playing in the NFL for the Rams...THE RAMS!!! That too me made me want to pull my hair out, and my head is shaved down.
Hopefully this fight card coming up can help mend the wound the UFC, Dana and the rest of his crew need to start giving quality fights instead of quantity. Sure we like that Michelle Waterson is going to fight this weekend, but we need that fight on the main card for the UFC. There has to be another big name draw than McGregor and Bones Jones (who is not even slated to return till after July, and even then still has to serve an international suspension). So with all of that being said, maybe we can get some quality fights between now and August to help get people excited for November and December's fight cards.
No comments:
Post a Comment