UFC 119 and more Disgaea 3
By Daroki 3 Comments
Not that I'm actually THERE yet mind you, but my god, the X Dimension missions are giving me heartburn. I thought I read somewhere that you needed to clear 24 levels in the X Dimension in order to open it, and now I'm reading 25, which makes me pretty damn sad. I have 26 tickets right now and two of them are way over my character's heads, so it's going to be another long Item World Grind up to the 50s to try to hunt down Pirates that I haven't faced off with yet or hopefully hit the ticket store in the 50-99 level area (I've cleared out the tickets in the 1-50 area) to get some more options on unlocking the Land of Carnage and getting past Rank 34 weapons/armor. I'm a bit loathe to really do a lot of Item World Grinding with the Rank 34 stuff but I'll probably have to boost some of those items up a bit in order to power up enough to finish the only level which looks remotely possible. Waking Nightmare looks flat out impossible at this point with the characters I have, and the other one (not sure the name, I keep thinking Freezing Soul but I cleared that) where you deal 120K damage to the Enemy Boost x3 guy has left me about 20K short. Damn that game and my insistance on doing the power leveling thing through it.
Took some time out tonight to head down to Green Street Social Club with my wife to watch UFC 119. It sucked that they "didn't have Spike" and therefore, no prelims which meant no watching some nice submissions which came from the Dalloway fight and two undercard fights that got shown. I figured that there'd be time somewhere where anything outside of the 5 PPV fights would be shown. Damn, was I ever wrong on that one. The Guillard/Stephens fight was kind of a mess. I kept waiting for Melvin to follow in on one of Stephens' looping leg kicks which constantly kept spinning him around, but it never happened. Later in the fight one of those kicks landed finally, unfortunately right between Guillard's legs. This of course means we had to see him get kicked in the junk about 3 times in super slow motion (please... for the love of God... STOP THAT), and the bounce looked like it was out of Guillard's step at that point. He had still done enough to get the win, but man, it looked less like a fight and more like a clinic in evasion.
Someone just randomly came up and talked to me and my wife before the Sherk-Dunham fight and he asked me who I thought would win. I said that I felt about this fight the same way I did about Lytle-Serra and Cro-Cop-Mir. I wanted Dunham, Serra, and Cro Cop to win those fights, but my heart told me that they would all lose. I felt like my first prediction of those three was going to come true when during some ground and pound, Sherk opened up a cut over Dunham's eye with an elbow. It was bleeding pretty badly and the doctors checked it with 10 seconds left in the first round and let it continue. Dunham survived the round and when they went to his corner, the cut's full damage could be seen. The cut was DEEP and WIDE and I figured that this fight was going to be over in the next minute and Sherk would get the win that I didn't want him to have. Dunham looked pretty bad in the opening of the second round, but then he just snapped into focus and started blistering Sherk with some good stand up. The third round saw Dunham just take it straight at him and by the end fo the fight Sherk would barely hold himself up. He was eating combinations, kicks, and some NASTY knees which had him reeling. I figured that Dunham just pulled off one of the best comebacks I've seen in a long time. A judge agreed with me too, but two didn't and Sherk got the split decision. I agree with Dana White, it's complete bullshit, but also another lesson on why you finish fights.
The Serra-Lytle fight was pretty disappointing. By the third round my wife, (who LOVES Serra not only for the coaching job he did during the season of the Ultimate Fighter when he was a FIGHTER, but for knocking GSP silly when he got the title fight with him the first time) was shaking her head at the way the fight was going. "Take him down already!" Lytle had vastly better standup, was fighting in front of his home crowd, and with Serra not testing him on the ground where he beat Lytle the first time, the home crowd went home happy with a clear 30-27 across decision for "Lights Out". If Serra was coaching himself, he would have been screaming until his face turned blue to take that guy to the ground, but unfortunately he's a stubborn SOB and wanted to hang in the pocket and throw hands even though that wasn't the best plan of action for this fight. Rubber match outside of Indy maybe?
Bader and Nogueria was a strange fight to watch. An inadvertant eye poke in the second round seemed to really slow "Darth Bader" down a few steps and I thought that Nogueria came back to at least make the fight very interesting, and possibly take it. I was stunned that it was 30-27 across for Bader. I thought that he won, but 30-27 seemed a bit overboard, as I could swear that judges could have given at least one and possibly two rounds to Little Nog. Good fight for Bader though and showed that he's definately ready to step up in competition. Unfortunately he probably gets my favorite MMA fighter going right now next in Jon "Bones" Jones, and as much as I like Bader and think he's got the potential to be a top 5 Light Heavyweight in a few years, I think that Jones is a potential #1 P4P guy if he keeps developing the way he is. If he keeps his head straight, keeps working, and keeps learning, I think within five years he'll take that baton from Anderson Silva as the best fighter in the world. The guy's just that sick.
The main event was next, and Cro Cop and Mir put on an awful display of circling and clinching against the cage. Mir could put him against the cage, but couldn't get Cro Cop to the ground to finish him, and Cro Cop after another low blow on this night seemed tenative to do anything during the fight. I don't know how much the eye injury hurt his training, but he just didn't look like he was willing to engage with Mir and Mir wasn't able to do much except lean on him against the cage until the last minute of the third round where he hit a wicked knee on the button and followed it up with two strikes on a KTFO'd Cro Cop before Herb Dean could jump between them and stop the damage from becoming permanent. I don't blame Dean for being a bit late in the stoppage, he was probably put to sleep like everyone else was during the first 14 minutes of the fight.
Of course with the four fights going to time and the fifth one going 14m, that meant no recap of the prelims. Sad stuff since I wanted to see what the heck Mittrione did to earn a Fight of the Night bonus and if that fight really stood up to the Dunham/Sherk fight which also received that honor and deservedly so. I'll definately have to head back there again, hopefully with a bit more planning and get some friends together to go out, drinks some beers, be social, and watch some fights next month.