UFC 117 REVIEW PART 7: FINAL THOUGHTS

STRUVE VS. MORECRAFT

Stefan Struve has been known to be a very well rounded fighter in the heavyweight division, with excellent striking and grappling skills. But when he came up against Christian Morecraft, his skills seemed to be just a bit lacking. He clearly lost the first round to the UFC newcomer. “Dominated” would be an understatement. Morecraft quickly gets Struve on the ground and ground and pounds him for nearly 4 straight minutes. Struve has tremendous heart, though. He kept active the entire time by defending every chance he could and throwing submission attempts every once in a while. There were several times when referee Herb Dean seemed very close to stopping it, though, but Struve kept at it and survived until the end of the round.

UFC 117 REVIEW PART 6: FITCH VS. ALVES

Activity level. That’s pretty much what made this fight. During the weigh-in, Thiago Alves supposedly could not make the weight by half a pound and refused to cut it, choosing instead to lose 20% of his purse. With the money he’s currently making with the UFC, that’s a pretty huge sum, and something not a lot of people would agree worth losing over cutting only half a pound. But when you’re willing to lose a tremendous amount of cash just to avoid losing that little weight, you know something’s wrong.

UFC 117 REVIEW PART 5: GUIDA VS. DOS ANJOS

Clay Guida. Wrestler. Striker. Engine with unlimited fuel. Wild man. Carpenter. Dude with extremely crazy hair. He actually reminds me a lot of Blanka from the Street Fighter series by the way he looks and acts, but I digress. Guida is primarily known as a dominant wrestler who likes to grind his opponents out until they have nothing left to give. He literally never runs out of gas. Never. And he goes full steam from the very first bell to the very last. Rafael Dos Anjos, on the other hand, is a Brazilian Jiu Jitsu expert who is also known to possess some incredible Muay Thai. So, he could knock Guida out or possibly submit him.

UFC 117 REVIEW PART 4: HUGHES VS. ALMEIDA

Alright, revenge match time! “You killed my master!” Or rather, “you defeated my master”. After Matt Hughes defeated legendary MMA fighter Renzo Gracie at UFC 112, Ricardo Almeida, one of Gracie’s top students, apparently targeted Hughes and asked specifically for this fight. He seriously wants to avenge the loss of his instructor. Hughes, on the other hand, doesn’t think the same way. He’s not Gracie hunting or bearing a grudge or anything. He just wants to fight and win impressively against whoever the UFC puts in front of him. Just another day in the office.

UFC 117 REVIEW PART 3: NELSON VS. DOS SANTOS

Roy “Big Country” Nelson” is not your average MMA fighter. He is an extraordinarily fat heavyweight that does not look the least bit athletic, yet he comes always fully prepared to fight, has a chin that can take a ton of punishment, has knock out power in both hands, can go three full rounds without seeming to get tired, has a black belt in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, and has years and years of experience in the sport. He was a former champion in a different organization and, after winning the tenth seasonof The Ultimate Fighter, is now steadily climbing the ranks of the UFC heavyweight division.

UFC 117 REVIEW PART 2: SILVA VS. SONNEN

I've already written at length about the hype that culminated into this main event but what actually happened?

Anderson catches Chael very early on in with a straight right, but Chael remains composed, striking back at the champion. The two exchange punches and kicks for a while, and Sonnen does a very impressive roll escape after Silva catches one of his kicks. The crowd cheers for Silva.

Then, the near-unthinkable happens: Sonnen manages to sneak past Silva’s usually impenetrable stand-up defenses and dazes him with a clean left straight punch. Silva backs up, but strikes back at his charging opponent. Silva takes Sonnen to the ground, but the challenger quickly stands up and delivers several more clean punches to the champion’s chin. Oddly enough, Silva wasn’t defending any of them. In fact, he had his hands down.

Then, the story of pretty much the entire fight ensues. Champion wrestler Chael Sonnen manages to take down Anderson Silva and control him there for the rest of the fight, raining down punches and elbows from various positions, similar to what Jon Jones did to Vladimir Matyushenko at the very recent UFC Live 2. In fact, Sonnen seemed so impressive and so brutal with his strikes that I thought he would be able to finish Silva right there. But, man, Silva has a good chin and an incredible heart. He obviously got hurt plenty of time while Sonnen kept bashing his head in, but he never showed any signs of quitting. He kept active as much as possible, by adjusting his guard, throwing elbows, and attempting submissions, but he was never able to truly counter or reverse the challenger. The crowd cheers for Sonnen.

This would, in fact, occur throughout the entire length of the fight, even into the championship rounds. At the beginning of every round, Silva would come out very aggressive, attempting to perhaps finish Sonnen before he could take him down and control him again. Though still impressive with his striking, he was never able to evade Sonnen’s takedowns for long. Even after knocking Sonnen down with a solid right elbow to the face, Silva was still unable to finish him on his feet, and Sonnen still manages to wind up on top on the ground. It shows how extraordinarily impressive and resilient both of these top fighters are.

Then the fifth and final round begins, and Silva doesn’t seem tired at all. Many people doubted his endurance coming into this fight. It was widely speculated that the primary reason he chose to run away from Demian Maia for the last two rounds of his fight against him at the main event of UFC 112 was because his antics and clowning around for three rounds gassed him out. How then would he fare after having been controlled on the ground by Chael Sonnen for almost four entire rounds? Silva slips (he was initially thought to have once again be dazed by one of Sonnen’s punches) early in the round and Sonnen capitalizes by controlling him on the ground once more.

I had actually conceded Chael Sonnen’s victory in my head during the fourth round. Sonnen was on a roll and Silva looked as if he could not do anything about it. So, when the bell rang for the end of the fourth round, I assumed that it was simply going to be the same in the next one, and that Sonnen would win via unanimous decision. Miracle of miracles, Silva manages to submit Sonnen late into the fifth round with a triangle choke. After all those (what seemed like) dozens of submission attempts throughout the entire fight, he managed to land one cleanly.

Sonnen, however, is seen to be complaining to referee Josh Rosenthal for stopping the fight, but the replay clearly shows he tapped Silva’s leg once. Anderson “The Spider” Silva keeps his belt and finally, after perhaps three terribly lackluster defenses, earns it in the hearts and minds of fans all over the globe. Chael Sonnen, though defeated, should have nothing to be ashamed of, as he was clearly the more dominant fighter of the night until the final round. He performed his game plan perfectly, but was just a bit careless in the end. He performed wonderfully as a fighter tonight, and I will relish watching him again in the future. This was a spectacular main event!

Check out the rest of my UFC 117 reviews and drop on over the official UFC website for more amazing photos of the event!

UFC 117 REVIEW PART 1: INTRO TO THE MAIN EVENT

Should Chael Sonnen win? Does Anderson Silva deserve to stay UFC middleweight champion? These thoughts flooded mixed martial arts fans from across the globe for months on end as Chael Sonnen, an extraordinary wrestler who has beaten a who’s who of champions and top contenders in various organizations throughout his professional MMA career began his epic series of verbal tirades against the current middleweight champion of the UFC.

Sonnen, part wrestler, part politician, and all mixed martial artist, had been talking some of the most extreme forms of trash against champion Anderson Silva for months and months on end, partly to hype up the main event, partly to deliver more confidence to himself, and partly because he actually believed the stuff he was spewing. In a recent interview with Ron Kruck on Inside MMA, Sonnen explains that he never once talked trash against Anderson Silva, simply because he defines “talking trash” as making stuff up just to make your opponent look bad. He says that he never once made any of the negative talk he shared with the various media sources up. He says he believes it all to be true, even when he says that Silva could never be taken down before because he was always soaked in baby oil. He even outright calls him a “cheater” for doing so.

Sonnen’s “trash talking” also included calling Anderson Silva a liar, since Silva had signed a contract months before committing to fight then-top contender Demian Maia, at the infamous main event of the very memorable UFC 112. Sonnen says Anderson did not go in there to fight, but to just clown around and waste the fans’ time and money. Though I did not take a lot of what Sonnen said over the past few months very seriously, including the aforementioned baby oil comment, and simply looked at them as comprising a massive hype machine for the much anticipated August event, this one rang a bell with me and many other fans throughout the world.

Dana has gone on record saying that UFC 112was the first time he ever walked out on a UFC main event. He was so disgusted at Silva’s performance that he seriously thought about immediately firing him, or at the very least, make his next fight an untelevised preliminary bout, and simply gave the belt to his manager and walked away. At the post-fight press conference, he promised to the fans that he would definitely make up for it somehow. Fans all over clamored to have Silva’s next bout be offered for free, but Dana and the rest of the UFC higher ups, instead went with the more business-friendly route: picking a top contender who would fight, and fight brutally.

Chael Sonnen is that contender, and he sold his position very well, dividing UFC fans from all over. Pretty much all of the fans agreed that Silva’s last bout was a major disappointment, but they still recognized his amazing fighting capabilities. A lot of Sonnen’s negative arguments were rather convincing, though, and some fans wanted Silva to suffer for his last performance, and maybe even loss his title. Should the title go to the trash-spewing villain or to the major disappointment? Who did you root for?

I was on the Silva camp, simply because, despite the fact that I was overwhelmingly impressed by Sonnen in his fight against Nate “The Great” Marquardt at UFC 109,and was familiar with his credentials, I was still highly confident that Silva’s highly touted skills, which gave him an 11-fight win streak and 7 title defenses in the UFC, and had many calling him the pound-for-pound best fighter in the world, would somehow see him through yet again. Personally, I wished for an early knockout a la Forrest Griffin at UFC 101.

You can check out more great photos of UFC 117 over at the official UFC website.

The hype is all well and good, but what actually happened?