UFC 97

[tim2100]

UFC 97 on tonight. WIll be watching tomorrow morning.

Heres my predictions

Main Event – UFC Middleweight Championship
Anderson Silva (182) vs Thales Leites (185) - Silva

Chuck Liddell (206) vs Mauricio “Shogun” Rua (206) - Rua
Cheick Kongo (232) vs Antoni Hardonk (249) - Kongo
Steve Cantwell (205) vs Luiz Cane (206) - Cane
Krzysztof Soszynski (204) vs Brian Stann (206) - ???? Soszynski

What you think?

[Slagathore]

Quite looking forward to this.

Not very up-to-date with what is going in the the UFC world at the moment, can't really make any guesses, other than I expect Silva to win

[Ross1988]

Dammit, i forgot to sky plus it...

Kongo is a machine, really promising fighter.

Don't tell me who won.

Only recently got into UFC, but its a quality sport.

GSP is sick

[deevlash]

well, chuck looked awful, I hope he hangs them up now, and silva lived up to my opinion of him being the dullest fighter on the planet.

[Don1]

Silva? Dull? Really? Damn, I've missed his last few fights, but never thought he'd be dull. We're talking about 'The Spider', yes?

[deevlash]

Don1 said:

Silva? Dull? Really? Damn, I've missed his last few fights, but never thought he'd be dull. We're talking about 'The Spider', yes?

yep anderson "please dont hit me, Im going to back pedal for 5 rounds, the spider" silva. Ive never liked watching him fight, lyoto machida is more engaging to watch.

[deevlash]

dana white has actually publicly apologised for the silva lietes fight being horrendously dull;

dana white said:

I can honestly tell you that I’ve never put on an event that I was embarrassed to be at until tonight. I want to publicly apologize to all the fans. I apologize. I personally apologize for what happened tonight. You guys know, this isn’t what the UFC was built on and this isn’t the way the fights usually go. Listen, any night you can have an off-night. When a guy is that talented and can literally end a fight whenever he wants to, wow. We’ve got to do something. Watching that was hard. That was tough to take. It was embarrassing, honestly. It was really and truly embarrassing.

[Don1]

Damn, that's a shame. He was good to watch in Pride. Mind you, I haven't seen any UFC since the fight network closed down in the UK.

[deevlash]

this fight he kept avoiding contact whilst his opponent just continually tried to pull guard. It was a horrible match up really but I blame silva, his last 3 fights have all been like this with him jumping in getting his attacks in then getting on his bike.

[130R]

The problem was that Thales Leites was massively outclassed, he should never have been in the ring with Silva in the first place. Silva needs to fight GSP or a top light heavy like Rampage. I thought Maia might be a good opponent but it could end up another farce since he is a similar fighter (although a lot better IMO) to Leites.

[deevlash]

leites would have won on the ground imo, but couldnt compete in a stand up war. If silva really wants to claim to be the top p4p he should be able to beat anyone anywhere, hes a bjj black belt himself afterall. No way will joe silva sanction a silva vs maia now, which is a shame, maia deserves a shot. Bisping vs Silva would be dull too, both counter punchers. which leaves wanderlei but hes done nothing to deserve a title shot lately, still it'd be fun to watch, wand wouldnt be afraid to get stuck in, I reckon anderson would st himself too.

[130R]

To be fair to Silva you fight to your strengths and he was never going to lose that fight standing. Silvas ground game is very good but taking on an elite bjj fighter would not be very clever.

[deevlash]

true but silva didnt even press the fight, he doesnt seem to actually like finishing fights even when he's totally dominant.

[tim2100]

putting Silva to one side for a moment

Pretty good card. Kongo looks mean, although don't think he could live with top levels of HW such as the 2 champs, gonzaga & carwin. Would like to see him fight Gonzaga next.

Chuck & shogun. Although I predicted Shogun to win I WANTED Chuck to win the fight. Unfortunately for Chuck the MMA game has moved on significantly, and fighters know what chuck will do. I think and hope that that will be the final time we see Chuck fight. Dana practically retired him. Shogun, was good to see him getting back to form. Although Chuck had the measure of him, it shows what he can do. Future looks bright.

As for the Silva & Laites fight...... Well What a dire fight, Everybody knows that Laites has world class BJJ, so why he thought that Silva would want to join him on the ground every couple of minutes. Silva is a very smart and very gifted fighter. He will not jump into an area where your opponent has the upper hand. however we know that Silva has fearsome power and technique. Some of the speed that he moves is like watching the matrix. How he can so quickly dodge punches is amazing. But He did not want to engage, he wanted to step in and step out. He landed a hell of a lot more punches that laites, but then didn't follow up. I think he wanted to show he can go the full 5 rounds, but to do this he needs to put a show on.

Yes it was a victory but not an impressive one. If he wanted to show off his boxing skills for his transition to boxing next year, it was not the right way to do it.

apologies if not making sense, typed quickly and very tired.
Tim

[tim2100]

Matt Hughes wasn't impressed

Matt Hughes said:

on’t have much to say about the fight. Thales obviously wanted to fight on the ground and even took Anderson down, but couldn’t keep him there. I really disliked it when Thales would just fall to his butt and expect Anderson to jump on top of him; but even more disappointing was Anderson’s lack of aggressiveness. He never seemed like he wanted to finish the fight. Halfway through the third round, I looked at Audra and we just decided to go home. It’s not the first time that Anderson has done this to me. When he fought Cote, it was about the same thing. Next time we have a party and Anderson is on the card… well, I’ll just say that at least I can expect to take a bathroom break or to go grab a refreshment when it comes time for him to fight. I heard Dana’s comments after the fight and how he was embarrassed. I don’t think Dana should be embarrassed all he can do is put the fighters in the octagon and once again I was a little surprised to hear Dana say this; but Dana White is a man who speaks what’s on his mind.

From his blog.

[deevlash]

bloody hell, matt hughes actually talked some sense for once!