I had a look for a Mixed Martial Arts megathread but I couldn't see anything from the last couple of months. And seeing how there's how for things as esoteric as anime and pro-wrestling, why not MMA? It's a growing sport, it's on network TV in the US, and in 2015 you can find events in most nations around the globe. Obviously things are focused largely on the Ultimate Fighting Championship, the market leader by some distance since they bought out the largest Japanese organisation Pride FC in 2007, but there are smaller groups we can talk about too! I won't list them all, I'd be here all year.
Last weekend we had UFC 184, a fairly weak card that seems set to cement Ronda Rousey's status as perhaps the biggest star in the sport today. She beat the last serious challenger in the division in 14 seconds and now she's going to go away to Hollywood for a while. In the co-main event the apparent Great White Hope Holly Holm was underwhelming in a decision win over Raquel Pennington. Elsewhere on the card there were good wins for Jake Ellenberger over a sadly depleted Josh Koscheck, Tony Ferguson over the tough Gleison Tibau, and on the prelims Tim Means won with violent elbow strikes over Dhiego Lima.
Other talking points include negligible refereeing leaving Mark Munoz completely unconscious after a choke for a few seconds longer than necessary, and the hilarious and awkward grappling between Derrick Lewis and Ruan Potts in round 1 of their fight. Heavyweight MMA at its most eye catching. Less funny was the corner of Potts not ending the fight when he told them "I'm finished" repeatedly between rounds. He spent round 2 just turtling up, wanting out but not wanting to quit because he's a fighter. Very unfortunate.
And outside the Octagon there was an impressive win for Cristiane "Cyborg" Justino, and fight of the weekend between Straweights Alexa Grasso and Mizuki Inoue on the Invicta 11 show, Bellator had the Light Heavyweight title change hands Brit Liam McGeary beat up Emanuel Newton over 5 rounds.
LETS TALK ABOUT FACE PUNCHING? Who do you like watching? What cool shit have you seen? How broken is Fight Pass's search function after over a year? How excited are you for UFC 185 and a chance to see star of Wheaties boxes Pretty Tony Pettis back in action? Plus Johny Hendricks against Matt Brown should be action packed madness, Carla Esparanza's first defence of the UFC Strawweight belt against Joanna Jedrzejczyk, a Heavyweight brawler between "Big Country" Roy Nelson and Alistair Overeem and a lot of cool undercard stuff too. On paper this blows 184 out of the water, so it's going to suck when it's not so successful. The most exciting undercard bout has Olympic gold medal wrestler Henry Cejudo attempting to cut to Flyweight again, up against Chris Cariaso who fought for the title last time out.
Thought it might be worthwhile putting up a list of what's on this weekend. If you have AXS TV then RFA 24 is on Friday 16th March at 10pm EST. And on Saturday and you are absolutely desperate for facepunching then there are 5 events available as iPPV on GFL.tv. But if you are sane you have better things to spend your money on.
Log in to comment