The Ultimate Fighter 14 Finale Parting Shots

Another season of The Ultimate Fighter is in the books, and two new winners have been crowned. Although, let’s be honest, since about eight fighters off the show will be brought into the UFC, does it make sense to call the winner “The Ultimate Fighter”?

Whatever.

We also had a rousing coach fight between Michael Bisping and Jason “Mayhem” Miller; for one round, at least. Mayhem’s gas tank wasn’t up to the task and neither was his standup, as Bisping easily earned a third round TKO stoppage. Here are my thoughts on all the fights from the last Spike TV-aired TUF Finale.

Bisping and Mayhem are on two different levels

It’s easy to say that Mayhem gave the fight away against Bisping and that he simply gassed on Saturday night, but that’s far from the unvarnished truth. While Mayhem clearly did gas, the fight was never really his to go away. Even if you scored the first round for Mayhem based upon his ability to mount Bisping and land some strikes, the standup portion of the bout near the end of the stanza did not look good at all for him.

It’s unlikely that Mayhem was going to have an easy time taking Bisping down repeatedly, and even with the mount he was unable to do any real damage. In fact, he had to triangle Bisping’s legs to keep him in the position, which had the side effect of limiting Mayhem’s ability to posture up and work any real offense. As soon as Mayhem let go of Bisping’s legs, the British fighter stood up with ease.

I’m not sure that the fight tells us what Bisping can do against the likes of say, Chael Sonnen. Besides the obvious style differences between Sonnen and Mayhem, Sonnen is an elite middleweight, while Mayhem clearly is not. In fact, Demian Maia (Bisping’s next opponent) represents a similar, but much better version of Mayhem.

Mayhem himself is a great personality and a fighter who is qualified to give some of the better talents in the division (such as Ronaldo “Jacare” Souza or Jake Shields, who of course now makes his money at welterweight) a good scrap, but shouldn’t be confused with a top ten or maybe even top twenty fighter at 185. While Mayhem’s grappling is superb (see: his performance against Shields in Strikeforce), everything else is fairly lacking. Should he be in the UFC? Yes. However, booking him as a main event-level fighter was a mistake, as he should be on the Stephan Bonnar career path instead: a fan favorite who is given winnable fights and allowed to carve out a living as such.

Better future: Brandao or Dodson?

Whenever you have two different winners in one season of TUF, you feel a bit tempted to compare the two, even if they are in different weight classes. In this case, you have what are two very talented young fighters- Diego Brandao and John Dodson. Both won in dominating fashion and looked great throughout the show, to boot. So, who will end up with the better UFC career?

Right now, I’d go with Brandao. Brandao fits my Two Out of Three Rule, as he’s got both very good striking and excellent jiu-jitsu. While Dodson’s defensive wrestling is pretty good and he’s got great power in his hands, he isn’t as strong in any two out of the three main areas of MMA (striking, wrestling, jiu-jitsu) as Brandao is.

Also, Brandao is in a slightly less challenging weight class. Don’t let the recent defection of former lightweights Kenny Florian and Tyson Griffin fool you; featherweight is not as deep as bantamweight. At bantamweight you can rattle off several fighters right off the bat who are championship worthy: Urijah Faber, Miguel Torres, Joseph Benavidez, Scott Jorgensen, Brian Bowles, Demetrious Johnson, Renan Barao and the man himself, Dominick Cruz. At featherweight the drop-off is pretty severe after you get through the top four or five guys.

Brandao will have to hone in his striking a little bit if he doesn’t want to get picked apart by some of the more precise technicians in the division. Improvements in his wrestling will also be necessary, as he won’t be able to sub everybody that decides to take him down. Also, there’s another x-factor in that Dodson may be better at flyweight- a division that the UFC has yet to add, but surely will in the future.

Quick Shots

–Dana White is at it again, verbally abusing those in his employ. Saying that Bisping-Mayhem was one of the most lopsided fights he’d ever seen wasn’t dramatic enough, so he had to top that with his opinion that Mayhem showed the worst standup he had ever seen. Come on, Dana. I know it was awful, but was it really much worse than Brock Lesnar’s? After all, Mayhem got cracked and didn’t turtle up or scamper around the cage. Was it markedly worse than that of Jake Shields? He doesn’t even qualify the comment by saying “in the last x years”. So we’re to believe that Mayhem’s standup is worse than that of any random hack from the UFC’s early years, too? Are we counting local shows that White has seen? Bar fights that he’s been around for? I would assume so, since Dana is kind enough to say that “you could go to a girls’ Tae Bo class and see better form”.

Point being: if someone constantly has to resort to hyperbole- everything is the best or worst of its category that they have ever seen or experienced- you don’t have to pay a whole lot of attention to that person. That is doubly true if said person is Dana White, exaggerator extraordinaire.

–I was surprised at the level of outrage at the judges’ decision from the Tony Ferguson-Yves Edwards fight, but in retrospect, I shouldn’t have been. These days, all of the legitimately poor decisions in recent years have made fans so irritable that they seem to jump all over the judges even when the fight in question was very close.

Having said that, with all three rounds being closely contested, how can anyone have a serious problem with either man having his hand raised. If we can mostly agree that the either fighter could have won round two, how can we argue definitively that one fighter or the other was robbed? Looking back at the fight, I think it was probably 29-28 Ferguson, but the outrage over a 30-27 scorecard is also misguided. If all three rounds were close, why can’t one fighter have been given all three of them? People always think of a 29-28 fight as a “closer” fight than a 30-27, but why? If all three rounds of the 30-27 were narrowly won, while each round of the 29-28 were obviously won, isn’t the 30-27 still a closer fight, despite the scorecard giving one man all three rounds?

Say What?!?

Dana, Lorenzo, put me in there. I’m ready to put on a show- Jason “Mayhem” Miller, in his post-fight interview after a horrendous performance against Michael Bisping.

I about fell out of my seat when Mayhem said that. You just gassed inside of two rounds and became a punching bag, and you’re “ready to put on a show”? His exhaustion must have led to hallucinations. I like Mayhem as a fighter and a person, but holy crap. What an ill-advised thing to say after that performance.

Beautiful Loser Award

Yves Edwards put on a strong performance despite receiving the loss, and showed that he’s got quite a bit left to offer in the lightweight division. His combinations were sharp and his movement looked great. I’m still amazed that none of his head kicks staggered Ferguson, but we’ve seen some of his opponents shake them off in the past, too (Eddie Ruiz from way back at UFC 43 comes to mind). I’m still a little shocked that Edwards and Ferguson didn’t win the Fight of the Night bonus, honestly.

Movin’ On Up Award

I’ll hand this one to Tony Ferguson instead of one of the cast members from this season. Ferguson beat a bonafide quality lightweight in Yves Edwards. Edwards still has quite a bit left in the tank and Ferguson was able to answer back whenever Edwards landed a head kick or a stiff combination. At the point that Ferguson’s at in his career, you want to see that the guy can get in there with a talented veteran and show what he’s made of when he meets some serious resistance. Ferguson passed the test, even though it was a close fight.

Holy $#!% Award

This goes to John Dodson, who erased any doubts as to whether his punching power was legit by flooring TJ Dillashaw in round one of their fight. It could easily have gone to Diego Brandao, who turned the tables against Dennis Bermudez with an extremely slick armbar from the guard just when Bermudez thought he had a chance to finish the fight via punches.

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Tags: Dennis Bermudez, Diego Brandao, Jason "Mayhem" Miller, John Dodson, Michael Bisping, The Ultimate Fighter, The Ultimate Fighter 14, TJ Dillashaw, Tony Ferguson, TUF 14, UFC, Yves Edwards