Archive for the ‘Recaps’ Category
It may be a week late, but here I am with my live recap of the UFC’s latest pay-per-view offering. Attending the event live, at the Bell Centre in Montreal, I had a great time watching the fights and a really awesome vacation timed around the event. After checking out some others’ opinion of the show, it seems like the broadcast commentary differed a fair bit from what I saw transpire at the arena.
tonight, the UFC returned to Japan, featuring a collection of prospects and veteran stars from the PRIDE. The preliminary bouts started at 7:50pm EST, with Fuel TV beginning the main card broadcast at 10pm, similar to a pay-per-view broadcast. Aside from the fact it must have been odd for the audience in Japan showing up for fights early on Sunday afternoon, the fact I had to stay up until 1:15am EST to see the whole thing was a bit of a pain.
Another UFC pay-per-view is in the books, and all-told a great night of fights was delivered. While not a perfect card, featuring a strange co-main event and a few lull moments, overall the fights delivered. The preliminary bouts saw one of the most violent — and possibly reckless, from a referee / health standpoint — bouts in MMA history, between Matt Grice and Dennis Bermudez. Really, though, a lot rested on the results of the main event — the UFC debut of the women’s bantamweight division.
Make it two weeks in a row, thanks to some health problems and random nonsense (read: unprovoked dog attack), that my usual recapping was not done for Bellator’s latest fight card. That said, I was able to watch the event and it turned out to be one of the best TV fight cards I can remember watching.
The UFC returned to England, with the seventh installment in the UFC on Fuel series of fight cards. After a six-year drought of title bouts, the interim bantamweight title would be contested, with support from a solid undercard. While lacking in big-name recognition, the entire fight card was packed with exciting prospects and compelling match-ups from top to bottom.
Due to an unfortunate back injury, I did not do any sort of live recap, aside from some snarking on Twitter. The fight card was quite good, with Bellator’s next iteration of their middleweight tournament kicked off with a quick KO win for Doug Marshal (which have have been a bit of a premature stoppage), and a solidly entertaining scrap between Brian Rogers and Dan Cramer.
Presenting another installment in their ongoing series of MMA tournaments, Bellator 88 also featured a battle between two tournament winners in an effort to crown a new middleweight champion. (The belt having been left vacant when Hector Lombard left for the UFC.) The bulk of the card was made up of featherweights, both in the current tournament and potential prospects for future brackets.
Another night of fights is in the books, and the UFC definitely started the year off in an interesting manner. Despite the fact that UFC 156 featured a lot of seemingly lopsided match-ups, some major upsets did in fact occur this evening. The upset train got moving early on the under card and wreaked havoc on a lot of gamblers’ plans throughout the night.
For the next while, I will be covering Bellator’s weekly MMA offerings on Spike TV. Each week Bellator offers streamed preliminary fights via numerous MMA media sites, as well as on Spike.com. The undercard and main card air on Spike TV at 10PM EST every Thursday.
In a week jam-packed with MMA content, the UFC deliver it’s sixth edition of UFC on Fox headlined by a five round tilt for the organisation’s Flyweight Title. Rounding out the card is the alleged farewell bout for Quinton “Rampage” Jackson, and a throwback fight for WEC fans in Donald Cerrone versus Anthony Pettis. Sprinkled over Facebook / YouTube, FX Network and Fox Sports, UFC on Fox 6 featured a really solid line-up of new talent and tenured veterans.
