UFC 214 was undoubtedly the most stacked MMA card of the year so far. After a lackluster first half of 2017, UFC could use an event where everything came together, all fighters showed up to their scheduled bouts, and delivered enterntaining action. The MMA gods were on our side – while it was’t perfect, UFC 214 turned out to be pretty damned good. The televised prelims were all exciting fights, capped off by Ricardo Lamas destroying Jason Knight in what was in my opinion the best performance of Lamas’ career. Here are my thoughts on the Pay-Per-View bouts.

Volkan Oezdemir vs Jimi Manuwa

This fight didn’t last long, after the fighters clinched up Volkan rocked Manuwa with some dirty boxing, forcing Jimi to back off. Volkan landed another hard shot, tossed his opponent to the ground and finished the fight with a few follow-up strikes that were probably unnecessary and left Manuwa grappling with the referee. Another quick knockout for Volkan, who is now 3-0 in the UFC with back-to-back first round knockouts over very game opponents. Way to make a name for yourself! Oezdemir called for a title shot, which he is not likely to get at this point in time. More on that later.

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Once again… it seems like a weekly segment can be written about fouls and their mishandling in the world of MMA these days.

On Sunday night, Stockholm time, a potentially very intriguing fight between Alexander Gustafsson and Glover Texeira took place. Both have been at the top of the light heavyweight division for  a long time, and this was one of the few fights between the very best in that division which had yet to be made. So, apart from the fact that they both already fought for the title and lost, it was a very interesting fight.

And the fight indeed started quite interestingly. Unfortunately, in the middle of the very first round Gustafsson apparently poked Texeira in the eye. Marc Goddard stopped the action, called in the doctor and told Texeira emphatically that he doesn’t have any time to recover and that he needs to decide immediately whether he can continue to fight or not.

Fighters are usually very reluctant to say they cannot fight. They prepare for months for these fights, their livelihood depends on these fights and it’s very important for fighters to have success in their careers to always feel like they can overcome any adversity. Plus, they usually get a lot of scrutiny from fans and promotions alike for quitting mid-fight. So while it may be the smart move for a fighter to quit for any reason that would compromise his fighting ability, most times fighters try to push through and keep fighting.

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Having just discussed the fiasco involving the result of the co-main event on Saturday’s card, there was actually another big story surrounding the main event.

As is well known, Daniel Cormier first weighed-in at 206.2 pounds, 1.2 pounds above the required limit for a championship fight. He then went back to the dressing room, came back less than 3 minutes later and weighed-in at 205 pounds on the nose, while holding the towel that was used to cover his privates and was held by two other guys on both sides.

Since obviously something was out of order here, allegations were immediately thrown Cormier’s way for cheating, claiming that by leaning on the towel, Cormier was able to lighten the weight he was putting on the scale by exactly those 1.2 pounds he needed to make the required weight. And in fact, when looking at Cormier weighing-in the second time it does look as if he is pushing down on the towel while looking at the scale as if he is trying to decide exactly how much he should be pushing down on the towel in order to get to the desired weight.

While it’s easy to blame Cormier for the incident, and he probably should be blamed, Cormier did what he did in plain sight. It wasn’t some smart trick he pulled behind the scenes. There couldn’t be a chain of events which would make it easier to understand that something was not right in the process, yet the people who were responsible for monitoring those proceedings, the New York State Athletic Commission, don’t get a whole lot of flak for the way they dealt with the situation. That’s not to say that they haven’t been criticized, but most references I could find about the incident direct the blame on Cormier, as if the Commission’s role in the situation is secondary.

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At UFC 210, the Mousasi-Weidman fight ended rather controversially, when it was ruled as a TKO win for Mousasi after an apparent mistake by referee Dan Miragliotta when he stopped the fight due to an illegal knee, in order to let Weidman recuperate.

The most important thing to remember here is that New York State Athletic Omission doesn’t allow the use of instant replay in order to determine what really happened, which means that the immediate referee decision is final.  There is no reason to change it later due to use of replays.

Doctors were let in to the Octagon to check on Weidman, while Miragliotta was notified, in direct violation of that New-York rule, that after checking the replays it was discovered that he had made a mistake and the knees were legal.  He then decided, in light of this new, forbidden information, that the fight must continue immediately. The doctors who were checking Weidman found meanwhile that he has trouble recollecting what day or month it is, and therefore decided he cannot continue. Since the Miragliotta decided that fight should continue immediately and it the doctors decided that Weidman was not fit to continue, it was declared a TKO win for Mousasi.

Now let’s look at what should have happened.

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It’s been a while since I did one of these event review blogs. I was actually going to write up a preview as I was very much looking forward to the event. Just as I was finishing up, the news got out that Khabib Nurmagomedov was hospitalized after a failed weight cut, cancelling his interim lightweight title bout with Tony Ferguson, which on paper was the most interesting matchup of the card. I was too bummed to re-write my preview, and decided to spend the evening playing video games instead.

Despite losing the co-main, and the main event which turned out to be a stinker, the card wasn’t bad overall. It had a couple of fun come-from-behind finishes, a good heavyweight scrap (in addition to two bad ones), and an early candidate for fight of the year in Vannata-Teymur. Here’s how the televised UFC 209 fights went down.

Preliminary Card (Fox Sports 1)

[#72 HW] Mark Godbeer def. [#164 HW] Daniel Spitz by unanimous decision

A sloppy heavyweight striking battle to start off the night. Godbeer had the clear power advantage and landed some good shots but could not put Spitz away. Both fighters gassed badly halfway through the second round. Not much else to say about this fight.

Aftermath: Can we just pretend this fight didn’t happen? It’s pretty clear at this point that Godbeer will not make it past being a low-level gatekeeper in the UFC, if he doesn’t wash out in his next few fights. Spitz is young and has plenty of time to develop, but his career would be better served by doing this development in smaller leagues. But the UFC’s heavyweight division needs all the warm bodies it can get, so both guys are guaranteed at least one more fight in the Octagon. I have very little interest in watching their next fights, whoever the opponent might be, so I’ll take the lazy approach to matchmaking with a winner-loser matchup against the participants of the other sloppy heavyweight bout of the night (Tybura – Henrique).

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Conor McGregor is fast becoming the athlete that MMA has been looking for all along. He knows how to play the crowd, and when you look at MMA lines, it’s clear that his attitude drives his popularity.

McGregor appeared triumphant even before the fight begun. He raised his hands, playing to the crowds’ expectations even as he approached the ring. He even went so far as to do a victory lap before the first punch was thrown. No wonder people were touting him as the greatest champion the UFC has ever seen.

He wasn’t just confident and cocky; he actually delivered, overwhelming Eddie Alvarez before knocking him out in the second round. The self-Proclaimed King of New York took the UFC Lightweight title home on that Saturday.

And, as a two-class champion, the title ‘King of New York’ is definitely deserved. All anyone wants to know now is McGregor’s next destination. Where is he going next?

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Very Strange!

That’s all I can say.

Before the fight between Ronaldo Souza and Vitor Belfort I pretty much accepted that unless the Belfort’s performance against Chris Weidman was a gigantic fluke, Belfort has very little chance against grappling master Ronaldo Souza.

Chris Weidman took Belfort down easily with a simple double leg take down pretty early in the fight, quickly moved to half-guard and proceeded to hammer Belfort to oblivion. Belfort didn’t seriously try to escape the position, didn’t hip-escape or try to hold Weidman down. Didn’t really show any grappling skills, as if he didn’t even train for that – and that’s when he was fighting a wrestler. He even tried to punch Weidman from the bottom – the kind of tactic you’d see in the early days of MMA employed by absolute novices to grappling, who thought they had a chance of doing damage this way.

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Saturday night turned into the biggest winning moment for Cris “Cyborg” Justino after many of her fans had patiently waited for her UFC debut. Her exceptional skills clearly reflected most online MMA betting odds as the favorite fighter between the two. Her hometown fans in Curitiba, Brazil cheered jubilantly as she delivered swift, powerful and dominant kicks and punches to demolish her opponent, Leslie Smith after 81 seconds of punishment.  However, the victory over a former training partner at UFC 198 did not answer the most vital question of the bout: Can “Cyborg” lose more weight to make 135 lbs and qualify for the bantamweight division? With a win to loss ratio of 16-1, Justino is currently the 145-pound Invicta champion and the ex-Strikeforce champion.

Some of the big names in WMMA did not grace the occasion, including Ronda Rousey, the former UFC bantamweight titleholder; Miesha Tate, the current champion; or even the “Rousey conqueror” Holly Holm, who defeated the former champ in March to claim the belt which she lost to Tate in her first title defense. However, Justino showed her lack of interest in shifting to bantamweight. During her post-bout interview, she said that her mission is to defend her belt as the Invicta titleholder and eventually fight in UFC’s catch-weight category.

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John Dodson is a happy, fun character, and I actually think this is exactly the attitude needed to beat Demetrius Johnson. Demetrius Johnson is a fighter who moves a lot, keeps an incredible pace and relies on volume and variety of attacks for controlling his opponents and making them vulnerable. He is very quick and elusive and that’s why it’s very hard to land a knock-out strike on him. The way to beat him, in my opinion, is to control the cage, limit his movements and take him down and control him on the ground if possible. John Dodson was presented to us again and again as the only guy who can match Johnson’s speed. This, together with his fun, animated attitude made me believe that this is exactly the approach he would take for this fight. In the first fight he knocked Johnson down three times, but wasn’t able to finish him or even really hurt him, so I thought it’s obvious he wouldn’t focus on trying to do this, and instead try use his natural speed and movement to control the cage and shut down Johnson’s movement.

So when I saw him walk to the cage with a serious “determined” look, it immediately seemed to me like the wrong kind of attitude he should be coming into this fight with. This kind of attitude is suited to a guy who is looking to go after their opponent, hunt them down, and hurt them. Not to a guy who should be moving all over the place, attacking from all directions but avoiding throwing too much into every shot in order to save energy to last the entire fight.

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Joe Rogan is well-known for his objection to stand-ups. Presumably, he is a supporter of “real” fighting where there are no stand-ups, and sees it as the fighter’s job to stand up rather than getting stood up by the referee, thus being “saved” from a bad position. He remarked on the matter a little more than usual this past Saturday during the Camozzi/Santos fight.

I thought I would address some of his remarks:

In the second round, when Santos was in side control, Rogan said that once he’s got him in side control he’s got to do something about it, and that he can’t just hold the guy there. I wanted to ask him “why not?” He is winning the fight by “holding the guy there” so why does he “need” to do something? That’s exactly the problem, in my opinion, with the current situation: that you can just hold the guy there and still win the fight.

In the third round when Santos was holding down Camozzi and Camozzi looked at the referee, Rogan said there shouldn’t be stand-ups: when a guy holds you down, he is still beating you. Stand-ups are not realistic because there is no referee in a street fight, when your life depends on it, and so they shouldn’t be used in order to find out which marital art is the best.

First of all, there are no judges in a street fight either. No fighter in a street fight would just take the other guy down and hold him there, because there are no judges to decide who won the fight, and anyway neither fighter cares who “won” the street fight. They both just want to hurt each other – not “win”.

Second, there is no danger to your “life” anyway when a guy just takes you down and holds you, and the absence of a referee doesn’t change that fact.

Finally, this isn’t a street fight. This is a show, and the purpose of all of this is entertainment. If everybody would just hold their opponents down in every fight, nobody would watch their fights. Even if it is more realistic (which it isn’t, as I explained), and even if this proves that wrestling is the best martial art (which it doesn’t, since beating a guy in a real fight means hurting him too, not just holding him).

I don’t like stand-ups, either. I don’t like when anyone interferes with the fight. But the current situation is that the judging system promotes this style of fighting, so need to be stand-ups, or people will lose interest. Abolishing the stand-ups wouldn’t solve this problem – it will worsen it. The only solution is changing the judging system to one that significantly favors damage over control.

Watching the fight I was surprised by Carl’s strategy: not only did he let Palhares get the takedown relatively easily, after that he had full guard and yet decided to go for a Triangle choke against one of the best BJJ artists in the game.  It’s not like he got lucky and Palhares fell into a Triangle position and Carl tried to capitalize on it.  He tried to manufacture it out of thin air.

I have to admire him for his courage and risk taking, but this was very foolish against a guy like Palhares.

Palhares, of course, quickly turned the situation into another spectacular heel hook, showing once again his amazing submission skills.

Palhares again seemed to hold a little too long, though nothing that would jeopardize his future in WSOF.  But the fact that even after he was released from the UFC for this behavior he still seems not to be able to entirely not do it, shows, in my opinion, that’s it’s a bit out of his control.  He is so focused on the moment that he is just oblivious to what happens around him.   When most submission artists feel their opponents’ tap they continue to hold the position but release the pressure, waiting for the call by the referee, thus allowing themselves to continue to squeeze in case the referee doesn’t stop the fight, and the opponent tries to continue to fight, which is not such a big risk since the cameras usually catch the tap (Anderson Silva Vs. Chael Sonnen 1).

But not Palhares.   Not only does he continue to squeeze after the tap, it even takes him some time to notice the referee is pulling his hand away.  It’s not done maliciously, but that doesn’t make it any less dangerous.