Anticlimactic UFC 118 Ends With Great Edgar Performance

You can definitely be excused if you found much of UFC 118 to be rather underwhelming. That’s not a knock on the UFC itself or the matchmaker, Joe Silva, as the card looked great on paper, with the exception of the Randy Couture-James Toney debacle that was aimed more at casual fans and to satisfy morbid curiosity than anything else. However, sometimes the fights just fall a little flat, and that’s a lot of what we saw in many of UFC 118′s fights.

In the aforementioned Couture-Toney “fight”, we didn’t learn anything whatsoever that we didn’t already know, unless you count yourself among those who thought Toney had anything to offer athletics in general at this point in his life. Toney may have been an outstanding pro boxer, but he is well past his prime, has a lot of wear and tear on his body, and hasn’t taken particularly good care of himself.

He also didn’t have the slightest idea how to defend a takedown, as Couture was able to shoot from roughly 24 feet away, barely grasp Toney’s left heel with his right hand, and somehow still pull him down as Toney awkwardly slumped to the canvas. Toney looked more like he had suffered a heart attack than like a person who had failed to defend a takedown.

From then on, it was a foregone conclusion (well, it was that from the minute the fight was signed), as Couture immediately landed in the mount and took his sweet time dismantling him with his trademark rabbit punches while obviously looking for an arm triangle to finish the fight via submission. That he did, when locking it up with help from Toney himself, who kept tightening the hold while trying to loosen it, and when Couture moved to side mount, the fight was over, as Toney waved at the air to signal his reluctance to continue fighting.

That’s right, Toney didn’t even know how to tap out correctly.

In actual MMA news, Gray Maynard shrugged his way to a future title shot with an effective, if unexciting win over Kenny Florian. Maynard won by unanimous decision, dropping just one round on the three combined judges’ scorecards, while staying out of trouble during the standup and taking Maynard down before working a stifling top control game on the mat.

In the first round, Maynard didn’t bother with a takedown until inside of the last minute (apparently to “steal” the round, which is one of my least things about MMA), and with each passing round, he went for his takedown attempts sooner. Florian was unsuccessful in stopping them, and couldn’t get any meaningful offense in from his back, either, making the decision a no-brainer.

Demian Maia got back in the winning column, but didn’t gain any fans with his unanimous decision victory over Mario Miranda. In the fight, Maia was able to fully mount Miranda more than once, often for great lengths of time, but could not seem to find a way to finish a fighter whom everyone (including myself) expected would have no answer for him on the mat.

A couple of times, Maia set up obvious arm bar attempts from the mount painfully slowly, and both times Miranda was able to escape and take top position. For his part, Miranda didn’t take advantage of the limited time he had to stand and trade with Maia any more than Maia took advantage of his opportunities on the mat.

On the first bout of the main card, Nate Diaz and Marcus Davis got the night off to a deceptively good start with a quality brawl that ended memorably with Davis choosing to go unconscious rather than tap to a deep guillotine choke that came with just 58 seconds left in the third round. While Diaz pretty much outclassed Davis from the start wherever the fight went, Davis fought gamely as he always does and gave the fans a good show.

It was the main event, though, that this card will fortunately be remembered for, as we saw a true coming out party for Frankie Edgar, who solidified his lightweight title reign with a dominating performance over a tired and perplexed BJ Penn.

The phrase “passing of the torch” is used seemingly all the time, but last night’s fight was one of the few times when it actually fits, as a fighter who had only lost at lightweight twice in his entire career (once being to Edgar earlier this year) was beaten soundly at 155 pounds for the first time ever. Meanwhile, Edgar showed qualities that could lead to a nice title reign, despite his rather small size for the weight-class: ridiculous quickness for a lightweight, a determination to stick with his game plan, superb wrestling, near-endless cardio and great all-around skills.

Sure, the fight’s only truly tense moments came at the times when Penn was finally able to haul Edgar to the mat, or otherwise get him there. In the first round, Edgar was once all too happy to stand up out of Penn’s dangerous guard while Penn grabbed at him to prevent him from standing with the kind of desperation you would expect during an NFL game-saving tackle.

There was plenty of drama early in round four, however, when Penn got a quick takedown to start the round and quickly moved to mount. However, Edgar was able to get his guard back, then scramble to his feet shortly after, as Penn wasn’t able to do anything but try to keep him on his back, to no avail.

In the end, it was a clear decision victory that finished with all three judges giving Edgar a 50-45 nod- the same score that judge Doug Crosby famously gave the first fight to Edgar with earlier this year. This time, it was well deserved.

In preliminary action, Joe Lauzon brought some shine to the family name with a thoroughly dominating, aggressive performance that sent Gabe Ruediger likely packing for good, as he arm barred the weight-cutting specialist just two minutes into the first round of their fight. Lauzon looked very good, and the pay-per-view audience was lucky enough to get to see it both on the Spike TV preliminary fights special and as part of the pay-per-view itself.

See? That’s another thing that MMA has over boxing. Even a lackluster UFC event has at least a few good fights.

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Tags: BJ Penn, Demian Maia, Frankie Edgar, Gray Maynard, James Toney, Joe Lauzon, Kenny Florian, Marcus Davis, Mario Miranda, Nate Diaz, Randy Couture, UFC, UFC 118