Surprises Abound at UFC 120

I had exactly two fighters that were participating in UFC 120 ranked in their divisions: welterweights Dan Hardy and John Hathaway, whom I had at 8th and 10th, respectively. Of course, both lost.

In what I would definitely call the world’s most unpredictable sport, both fighters ended up seeing their opponents’ hands raised: Hardy having been knocked out cold by Carlos Condit, and Hathaway having been outperformed for three rounds by Mike Pyle.

Condit and Pyle are capable fighters, to be sure. Still, conventional wisdom and popular opinion favored their opponents. In my own defense, I did say that Condit-Hardy was the toughest fight on the card to call, even though I also said that I didn’t see any fighter finishing it. Well, we can’t be right all the time, and in my case, it’s pretty hard to be right half of it, too.

Condit and Hardy looked pretty evenly matched in the 4 1/2 minutes that we actually saw them square off. Condit said after the fight that he prepared to counter Hardy’s left hook, which had been still been landing fairly regularly throughout the bout. Apparently, the preparation paid off, as Condit’s own left hook landed just a split-second earlier than Hardy’s did, putting the former welterweight title challenger on his back.

The finish was academic, though Condit’s follow-up right hand was right on the button and put Hardy completely out. After the fight, Hardy was a good enough sport to put together his own blunt assessment of the bout, even though he was probably struggling to even comprehend what happened at that point. (This raises the question: why interview knockout victims who were out cold just a few minutes beforehand? What do you expect them to say, exactly?)

In Pyle’s case, I would say that his win was even more surprising. This is for two reasons: one being that the disparity between the level of Pyle and Hathaway was thought (by me, anyway) to be greater than the gap between Condit and Hardy. The other reason is that Pyle showed himself to be better over fifteen full minutes of fighting. Even the most confident fighter will concede that anyone can be knocked out in an MMA fight with a capable opponent, but to be defeated soundly over a fifteen-minute fight? That really shows us something.

I figured that Hathaway’s wrestling would be enough to fend off takedowns or even put Pyle on his back, while I saw Hathaway’s stand-up being a cut above that of his American opponent. Yep, wrong on both counts. Pyle took Hathaway down continuously and landed right hands consistently throughout the fight, while very nearly finishing the fight with a vicious combination of a mounted triangle and punches/elbows in the second round.

Hathaway showed a lot of perseverance and had his own moments, however fleeting, in each round. However, Pyle left no doubts on who was the better fighter and addressed all of the areas where know-it-alls like myself thought he was going to be outclassed by his younger opponent. Kudos to him for doing so.

Hey, it would be easy to get annoyed at how the more MMA you watch, the less you seemingly know, but isn’t that a big part of the appeal of the sport? There have been many times that I wrote previews of MMA shows and thought to myself, “If the fights actually go the way I expect them to, wouldn’t that be boring?” Fortunately enough, three things are always going to be true about MMA:

1) “Anything can happen” isn’t just a marketing phrase in MMA.
2) MMA predictions may as well be called guesses.
3) Anyone who would bet money on this sport is a lot braver/richer/crazier than I am.

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Tags: Carlos Condit, Dan Hardy, John Hathaway, Mike Pyle, UFC, UFC 120