UFC 79: Nemesis

So on Saturday night, I grabbed dinner and a show (Spamalot) with my folks, my sister Gina and her husband Andy. Afterwards, they went back to New Jersey while I went home to my apartment. I got home too late for the end of the Giants game, so I decided to watch the UFC 79 card which had started about an hour earlier, which I was DVR'ing.

There were 2 big reasons I wanted to watch this fight, and 1 small reason. The small reason was I was curious to see Sokoudjou fight, as he has gotten a lot of hype in the MMA world recently. Sokoudjou was completely schooled by Lyoto Machida in their fight, which was boring as hell, and eventually lost by submission in the 2nd round. Sokoudjou needs to work some more with Dan Henderson and the rest of Team Quest, methinks.

In fact, the ENTIRE undercard which was televised card was boring as hell, and the card needed to be saved by the aforementioned 2 big reasons: Wanderlei Silva vs. Chuck Liddell after 6 long years, and the third match in the Georges St. Pierre vs. Matt Hughes saga. And save it they did.

A bit of history if you are unfamiliar:

Chuck Liddell was arguably the most dominant lightheavyweight fighter in the UFC of his generation. Tito Ortiz might beg to differ, but Liddell is 2-0 vs. Ortiz, so whatever.
Replace "Chuck Liddell" with "Wanderlei Silva" and "UFC" with "PRIDE" in the first sentence of this paragraph and you get the idea (PRIDE was the Japanese version of UFC until it fell in hard times and was purchased by UFC about a year ago). These two guys fighting each other has been the "dream fight" scenario fans have been wanting to see for a while; UFC President Dana White once even sent Liddell to the PRIDE 2003 Grand Prix hoping these two will face off in the tournament, but Liddell ended up losing to current UFC lightheavyweight champion Rampage Jackson before it got to that.

Both guys have faced some adversity lately though, which has taken a bit of luster from this match up. Liddell lost his belt to Rampage via knockout, then lost to Keith Jardine (who's not that good, for pete's sake). Silva on the other hand, had also lost two in a row going in (both in PRIDE), to Dan Henderson and Mirko Cro Cop.

Liddell and Wanderlei put on a show, folks. These two, after a feeling out period of about a minute or two in the first round, started unleashing bombs on each other. It's amazing neither one was knocked out silly, really. I was surprised Wanderlei did not try to get closer to Liddell or use his kicks more, but it was still a great fight, and a deserved win for the Iceman.

If that fight had happened anytime until about midway through 2007, it would have been the unquestioned main event of any PPV. As such, it was the GSP-Matt Hughes fight which closed the show. Matt Hughes is the most dominant welterweight EVER, but it looks like his time has passed as GSP has completely dominated him now in their last 2 fights. Just like in his fight with Josh Koscheck back in August, St. Pierre used what was his opponent's best skill and specialty and completely owned him. He was taking Matt Hughes down at will. AT WILL, PEOPLE!!! And then he was grounding and pounding on Hughes just like Hughes has done to so many people through the years. And in a nice touch, he made Hughes submit to an armbar, the way Hughes made him submit to an armbar on their first fight.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again, GSP has no business losing to anybody in his weight class. His next fight will probably be in his hometown of Montreal versus Matt Serra for the welterweight title, and it's high time GSP got his title back I say.