There is a man named Dan Hardy. He told us tales of how he is GSP’s kryptonite and that he planed on catching GSP in the third and leaving with the belt. None of this however would come to pass at UFC 111 as Hardy was tackled, controlled, hit, bent, wrenched, and pretty much owned for lack of a better word for 5 rounds at the hands of GSP. It was a sick reminder of what happened when GSP went up against Thiago Alves at UFC 100 when Thiago said he would “knock GSP out” only to suffer the near same exact fate as Dan Hardy. The old saying goes “fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me” so we can admit that we’re a little at fault for believing Dan Hardy’s claims that he was going to stay standing and knock GSP out, but that doesn’t let this match off the hook. In my opinion this match will go down as one of the most disappointing matches in UFC history.

Keep in mind, disappointing does not necessarily mean bad even though the terms usually follow one another. The match itself wasn’t bad nor am I knocking how GSP wins his matches. Disappointment happens when the hype is build up so much by the parties involved only for the finished product to ultimately not live up to what we expected. I can’t really blame UFC for wanting to push it’s product, after all the point of a business is to make money and boosting the hype helps sell more views. That being said the prime time previews they did may have been a bit much. We actually believed that GSP was scared of Dan Hardy’s stand up. We actually believed that Dan Hardy being trained by Matt Serra was going to equalize the match on the ground. We believed that Hardy was going to be able to keep the fight standing to give us a thrill fight where we would see GSP do some boxing. So when none of that happened come fight time, it was no surprise that the looks on everyone’s faces in the bar was that of just sheer indifference. It was like everyone was thinking “Damn we really thought that THIS time it was going to be different”. I know I was. When will the UFC finally get a challenger for GSP that will actually challenge him. That will make all the hype be worth it. Who knows. It may be that we’ll just have to wait until GSP v.s Silva. Until then UFC either stop the hype or get a fighter that’s worth it because I don’t think your audience can take much more of this.

I know it’s been a long time since I have written an opinion piece, mainly because I write at my best when there is a good topic to talk about that I feel pretty strong on. I’ve already caught a little flak for this stance and most likely this article will catch me even more flak, but whatever screw it I’m gonna talk about it anyway. This issue is about Jon Fitch and apparently everyone’s problem with his fighting style. For those of you that aren’t in the know, Fitch gets criticism because of his lackluster and boring approach to his fights. Basically he gets on top, controls the fight, and eeks out a decision. In his 12-1 record in the UFC, Fitch has won by decision 8 times, with his last 7 fights in a row going to the judges (with one being the loss to GSP). I will agree that it’s not exactly the most entertaining show on earth when Fitch fights, but with 12 wins in the UFC can you blame the man for using what is an obvious winning system?

I’m not even gong to address the double standard between Fitch and GSP, that’s another story in itself. To me this there is a concept that seems to have tapered off recently in the UFC and that is fighting is your job and your job is to win. Plain and simple. This was no more apparent then the turn of events that transpired before UFC 111 took place. It began with Ben Saunders stepping in to take on Fitch when Alves pulled out. As soon as that happened the Twitter sphere went nuts with praise and admiration for Saunders. I however was the black sheep. I felt that while Saunders move was indeed ballsy (which is of course commendable), his move was not smart. He chose to go up against a fighter, who fans are arguing is currently the best fighter not to be holding a title, with two days to prepare? Sure that’s brave, but it’s stupid. To me Saunders lost perspective as to what fighting is about. It’s about winning. If Saunders wanted Fitch, that’s fine, all I am saying is if you’re planning on fighting the man you could at least put yourself in a position where you would have a decent shot at it. By taking the fight with 2 days notice you’re not leaving yourself enough time to prepare for such a consistent and solid fighter. Saunders pretty much wasted a shot at glory.

Now granted I could be reading too much into this, and to a point I would agree with you. The tipping point was when after Fitch won the Twitter sphere went off again not congratulating Fitch on another well earned win, but instead ridicule for just doing the same thing he always does. The man has a 12-1 record, 8 wins in a row, and his only loss is to the best pound for pound fighter in the world. To me that is the fighter who is really worthy of praise. In my opinion we should be praising the fighters that develop solid strategies and consistent wins, and not fighters who make, what I feel, are reckless moves just so they can say they had the balls to do it. Then again what do I know.

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The UFC has a huge fan base, no doubt. It’s filled with everyone from the die hard fan who saw the older UFC’s live in the front row while sitting next to Mask Lewis, to the relative new comer. Any fight club knows that getting more fans and followers is key. It’s what pays the bills after all. So it makes sense that the UFC would want to give free programming on Spike TV every now and then to let people get a taste of the sport. However, as we all know there is one drawback to having free content and that is … it’s not free. Without the PPV buys the program has to be paid for SOMEHOW right? Of course it does, so enter in advertisement, we get to watch a free night of good fights all for the low cost of having to watch some target commercials for a little bit. Pretty sweet deal right?

Well if you were watching UFN 20 last night, you weren’t just subjected to the standard commercials, you were also subjected to countless amounts of references to “Blue Mountain State”, the new TV show on Spike TV about college kids on a football team partying every day. Now I will admit. It worked on me, I watched BMS and it was actually quite entertaining. But this is not the point. The point is, this commercialization stick was not only brought out but they freakin beat us over the head with it until our brains were hemorrhaging BMS sneak peak clips. I swear to God. Mike Goldberg would be in the middle  of commentating a fight and would literally stop mid-sentence to promote BMS. “Looks like Nate Diaz is going for the straight left and don’t forget to watch the premiere of Blue Mountain State coming up right after this match.” Ok I get it Spike, you want us to watch your show, you can leave me alone now.

Now look, I get it. I am totally fine with commercials and advertisements. If that is what it takes to allow us free fights then I say bring it on. The point I’m making is that the way BMS was promoted really brings to light what we have to deal with to get free programing. It wouldn’t have been as bad if it was JUST commercials of the show when there was down time in the fights, but it wasn’t just that. They would play extended clips of either BMS or Legion during the fighter walkouts which many fans at home like to see. They also took like a good ten minuets of the show in between fights to interview the cast of BMS, I mean seriously. My message to UFC? Pull back a little bit on the plugging. I’m not saying I want you guys to lose money, I am just saying if UFN 20 was the first MMA match that I had ever seen, I most likely would not have come back because of all the plugging. If your goal is to get more fans then this might be something you want to think about you know .. food for thought.

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If there is one part of MMA that is never going to go away, it’s the trash talking. In fact, that’s half the fun. It helps build the tension between the two fighters, which makes a great fight even more enjoyable. However, there are a couple of fighters that sometimes just don’t know when to pull it back a bit. The general rule of thumb is that when the match is over, that’s usually the end of the drama because differences are settled in the ring. Brock Lesnar and Shinya Aoki sort of took this rule and threw it out the window in their most recent fights. So the question is which fighter had the worst post fight antic? Brock or Aoki? Let’s break it down.

First, Brock. The match was 100% clean. Since there was nothing dirty done we don’t have to mark any points off him yet. His immediate celebration may have been a bit much but nothing to yell at him for. He did go straight to Mir while Mir was recovering to rub the win in this face. This was a classless move. Your opponent just took a brutal loss and is trying to pick himself back up, you don’t need to tear him back apart. Or at least not right away. The flicking off of the crowd was of course unacceptable. These are the people that are writing your paycheck, so it’s not smart to piss them off. Throw in the fact that Brock then slammed the main sponsor and gave us WAY too much information on what he wanted to do to his wife and you had a pretty bad post fight antic. However he did apologize the next day and although that didn’t take away what he did, it at least felt genuine.

Next we have Aoki. I am not going to count the breaking of Hirota’s arm against Aoki. Hirota did not tap, plain and simple. if you don’t want to tap and go all Renzo Gracie, fine, but then you accept what that will mean for your limbs. The flicking off in Hirota’s face is absolutely horrible. I thought that getting in Mir’s face after he lost was bad, but at least Mir was WALKING. Hirota was on the mat motionless with his freaking arm broken. It’s like the ultimate insult to injury. Followed up with a little flicking off of the crowd and Aoki is definitely on the same plane if not worse than Brock at this point. Aoki saves himself a little bit by not continuing to dig himself deeper in a hole like Brock did. His apology though was a bit half-a**ed. He said that he did something rude that he should apologize for, but that it was just because of his excitement over the win. I mean, sure excitement is one thing, but middle fingering a guy you just broke, literally, I would say is a bit malicious.

Final vote? I am going to go with Aoki. Though Brock’s antic was longer, Aoki’s was more malicious. When you have broken someone’s arm I think it’s far to say that your opponent has gotten the point. Especially if what Hirota was bashing you on was your ground game. At that point there is no need to keep going. Couple that with the fact that Brock made better amends and you have Aoki with the worse post-fight antic.

Wow. Just wow. I don’t even know where to start on this awards show. Everything from the set, to the host, to the writing, to the research was absolutely terrible. Now granted I’m sure that MMA in general doesn’t give a crap about award shows so the bar was most likely set pretty low. That being said even going in with my expectations not that high, the show still management to blow my mind at how awful it was. So if you missed it, don’t be sad because you didn’t miss much, but go ahead and read on if you are curious as to how bad this awards show actually was.

First, the host. Ok I’m sure that John Heffron is very funny when he does stand-up. However he is NOT funny when he hosts. All of his jokes fell 100% flat. Sure there were some chuckles now and then from the audience but overall you could hear crickets. One question to UFC, did you guys forget about the comedian that you ALREADY have on your payroll? Not to mention Joe Rogan has hosted a television show before, which leads me to believe that he would be able to pull this off better than Heffron. Also who the hell was in charge of writing? Seriously, I want to know who in their right mind thought that the material put out there was even remotely close to witty or funny. It wasn’t. I’m willing to give the fighters slack because well, they were never meant to be presenters, but everything was just so forced and delivered so badly that it just amplified the crappiness.

Oh and who the heck is working the research department? Some of the categories they put up were just plain stupid. No offense but I don’t REALLY care about what the best GLOVE of the year is. How about UFC Ring Girl of the year? I mean WTF? THERE’S ONLY ONE LEFT! How can any other girl BESIDES Arianny win? Plus they may as well just have called this the UFC awards show because that’s the only program that won any award (unless you count Hendo winning KO of the year in which NOW he’s SF but I digress). It is no surprise that with all of this I turned it off about 60% of the way through.

There are some good points that are worth mentioning though. We got to see that Heath Herring was still alive although he had no clue how to talk into a microphone, Greg Jackson and his gym won some much deserved awards for coach and gym of the year, and Chris Cyborg got female fighter of the year. However, the best part was when we got to see a drunk Diego Sanchez accept his award for fight of the year against Clay Guida. For a good minute, you couldn’t understand a word that Diego was saying. It was hilarious. He sounded like a stuck tape deck repeating the same thing over and over. It gets even better when in the background you can see Hendo trying so hard not to crack up. I would say that little moment saved the award show. Don’t get me wrong though, it was still pretty bad.