UFC 127 Parting Shots

Two UFC events, a Strikeforce show, and the start of Bellator’s fourth season all in eight days. Yes, my friends, that’s a crapload of MMA in a short amount of time, so I want to take a last look at what happened last weekend at UFC 127 before we move on to a packed Saturday night of MMA. Between the Penn-Fitch fight, the controversial end (maybe) to the Bisping-Rivera feud, and two major upsets on the main card alone, there’s plenty worth talking about.

Why Penn-Fitch 2 should be for the title

Hear me out, here. So, I’m watching UFC 127 and my friends and I start trying to figure out what the title picture will look like should Georges St. Pierre successfully defend against Jake Shields and then move on to the middleweight division permanently. Obviously, a fight for the then-vacant title would have to take place, and who would be in position to fight for it? Not Shields, who would have just lost to St. Pierre in a title match. Not Thiago Alves, who still needs to build up a bit more momentum with a win or two, although he isn’t the worst option. Not Josh Koscheck. Not Martin Kampmann, who just lost a close decision to Diego Sanchez, who isn’t ready, either.

We realized that the UFC may have messed up, because Penn-Fitch would have been a great fight for the vacant title if GSP wins and moves up to 185 pounds. In the meantime, Penn could have fought any number of decent welterweights to further prove he belongs at the weight.

Well, it all worked out in the end, anyway, as a majority draw suddenly made a Penn-Fitch fight for the title even more obvious. If St. Pierre does what most of us expect him to do, I don’t see any other fight that makes sense.

In the meantime, the performance boosts Penn’s legacy as a fighter who is so talented that he can fight someone like Fitch with a serious weight disadvantage and not only compete, but take him down multiple times and take his back twice. Fitch, however, can point to that dominant third round as proof that he ultimately would have won a five-round fight. In a lot of ways, that fight showed you everything you need to know about Penn. Superb talent, ridiculously good when he’s at his best, tends to fade late in fights for no obvious reason.

Bisping not so classy in tainted victory

Bisping super-fans (and there are many of you), you may want to skip to the next bolded headline.

On paper, Saturday’s fight was great for Michael Bisping. He finished a tough opponent that had been talking a lot of trash and kept his momentum going in the process as he tries to work his way to that ever-elusive middleweight title shot.

If you watched the fight, maybe you weren’t so impressed, though. First of all, how a fight can even be considered legitimate after someone lands a blatant illegal knee like Bisping did is beyond me. Former NSAC official Marc Ratner actually said that two points should have been taken from Bisping (which wouldn’t have ended up mattering) and Rivera shouldn’t have been given so much time to continue.

Why? Because if you think back even to legitimate TKO stoppages, a few minutes after the TKO is over, the losing fighter is able to walk, talk, and act normally. There’s no way Rivera was going to quit in a fight resulting from so much trash talk; Bisping and everyone else knew that. After being given a few minutes, of course he looked fine. That doesn’t change the fact that it was an illegal knee that was obviously thrown on purpose despite the rules. Would Bisping get on all fours before the fight and allow Rivera to take a “free shot” with a knee strike? Of course not. Yet, Bisping effectively gets one and his fans want to pretend it had no effect on the fight.

I’m not saying Rivera would have won, anyway. I will say that he was landing his right hand fairly effectively early on, and as I was watching I did like Rivera’s chances because of that. It’s all beside the point, though. Oh, and what can be said about Bisping’s post-fight spitting routine? I don’t know if he got chewed out by Dana White, but I guess he wasn’t insulting any sponsors so it was all good, right?

I won’t discount Bisping’s talent, but when he acts like that, how can he or his fans ask with a straight face why so many people have a bad impression of him as a person? What other conclusion would we reach with the evidence that he so readily has provided us with?

This is why I shouldn’t predict fights

Fight predictions are like rankings. They’re kind of silly and really hard to do with any meaningful level of accuracy (and sometimes impossible- who would have called some of the upsets we’ve seen in MMA history?). However, people like them and they kind of go with the territory, but there are times when you really go, “Why do I even try to predict what will happen in a fight, for God’s sake?”

Two such moments were the Siver-Sotiropoulos and Ebersole-Lytle fights. I may be guilty of assuming too much when it comes to fighters being able to take their opponents to the mat, but I am still surprised at the fact that Sotiropoulos was unable to find any way to get Siver to the mat. At the same time, Siver deserves all kinds of props for his takedown defense and overall performance against a legitimate top ten opponent.

As far as the Brian Ebersole upset goes, what can you say? Lytle’s been on a nice streak of late, beating guys who have (no offense intended) twice as much talent as Ebersole, but sometimes fighters just have trouble with certain opponents for whatever reason. To top it all off, Ebersole was on short notice! What can you say? Lytle’s penchant for putting on exciting fights no matter the cost may be catching up with him, as it did against Marcus Davis years back.

Quick Shots

–It was a competitive fight, but I was bummed to see Spencer Fisher lose because I know fighters don’t last long in the lightweight division when they hit a rough patch. Still, I think there should be some leeway for fighters in all divisions when they have had long UFC careers where they’ve put on exciting fights, taken opponents on short notice, and connected with the fans the way Fisher has.

–One thing that did make me happy on the undercard was seeing Mark Hunt finally get the sloppy slugfest he deserves in the UFC. No matter what happens with his career now (he’s getting up there in years and has already seen his best days for sure), he got to knock out a UFC opponent in Australia, a stone’s throw away from his native New Zealand. Good for him, being a guy who was “discovered” after a fight outside of a bar and ended up being a K-1 World Grand Prix Champion.

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Tags: BJ Penn, Brian Ebersole, Chris Lytle, Dennis Siver, George Sotiropoulos, Jon Fitch, Jorge Rivera, Mark Hunt, Michael Bisping, Spencer Fisher, UFC, UFC 127