[EXPAND="Spoilers"] 1. Rich Clementi over Ross Pointon Submission Choke 2. Din Thomas over Clay Guida Decision 3. Ed Herman over Chris Price Submission Armbar 4. Josh Burkman over Chad Reiner Decision Unanimous 5. Nathan Marquardt over Dean Lister Decision Unanimous 6. Hermes Franca over Spencer Fisher TKO Strikes 7. Jake O'Brien over Heath Herring Decision Unanimous 8. Rashad Evans over Sean Salmon KO via Kick Chris Price came in 9 lbs over the limit, but Herman agreed to fight him anyways and ended it pretty quickly with a nice transition from back to an armbar. Franca showed that while his striking technique sucks, he has a ton of power and landed a huge haymaker. Herring was terrible, had no sprawl, poor striking, no guard, and bad sweeps as well as poor cardio. Wasn't a very exciting match, and Herring was shockingly awful. If I was Dana I would have flipped out on him after that performance, he looked like he had never fought in MMA before. Salmon came in and had a good first round, winning on point. Second round Rashad came out and landed a brutal high kick that knocked Salmon out. He was down for at least 5 minutes and even after it came back from commerical and they announced the winner he was still on the ground covered with doctors. Final thoughts- Salmon wasn't bad, but he made a mistake and paid for it by getting brutalized Cro-Cop style...except we never saw him get back up. Herring was very disappointing , in fact he looked horrible. He looked worse than Sylvia has, much worse. [/EXPAND]
Awfull is the correct word for Herring, he looked like it was his first time in the ring. He better improve or he will be out pretty quick.
I think O'Brian deserves a little more credit. He obviously wasn't as comfortable with submissions and his striking wasn't as strong, but he neutralized Herring with his take downs. Herring was frustrated. If O'Brian keeps working on his submissions and his ground game, he's going to be fun to watch.
i'm trying to figure out where this wave of pretty much 100% wrestlers is coming from, both in ufc AND pride.
College.... Good college wrestlers who are not good enough to be in the Olympics usually are good enough to do well in MMA. O'Brien does deserve credit, however it's not like he went up against a great sprawl or great guard. Herring didn't even try, it honestly looked like Joe Rogan could have taken Herring down and passed guard.
It was certainly one of those fights I was glad I didn't put any money on. As soon as he walked in, I knew something wasn't right with Herring; he certainly didn't look like the guy that had all those great fights in Japan. I don't know if it's the layoff, the fallout from the Greco injury or whether he just felt he'd walk the fight and didn't train, but even if he didn't train, he'd still know how to close his guard. Someone is yelling at him a LOT right now Evans surprised me as did Franca TKO'ing Fisher. I had Franca winning it but not on the feet. All told, not a bad event for a UFN (these are getting to be better than the PPV's!)
Agreed. It was a very good show. Evans got one for the highlight reel with that one. The Herring-O'Brian match was really the only let down. Bet Ed Herman is breathing a huge sigh of relief today after his last couple of UFC performances.
LOL. I wouldn't totally count Rogan out. He's been training with Eddie Bravo for at least a few years, and looks like he's put on a substantial amount of muscle! Ed Herman didn't look like as much of a jerk. I'll give him that, and is transition to that armbar was wicked.
Normally I would think I was going nuts if I thought Rogan could beat a guy with a reputation like Herring, but on that night I think Rogan would have subbed him. Apparently Herring had a torn MCL, however other fighters have had torn ACL's(like Chuck) and still won. It could explain a poor performance, but that was a horrible performance that cannot be excused unless he had completely blown out his knee... Apparently Lister got dominated, still waiting to see the fight but Marquardt is looking good. I think he can be the champ but I doubt the UFC wants that to happen.
Was anyone else impressed with Sean Salmon. When I first heard about this fight I knew nothing about this guy and was expecting Rashad to walk through him and that the UFC picked him up to make Rashad look good. He did get knocked out, but besides that he was winning the fight. I had the first round 10-9 for him, because of his takedowns ground control and getting the better of the stand up. All in all I think he had a good performance and hope to see him agian.
He actually did pretty well the first round, he needs to improve his conditioning(he looked gassed after he did that goofy kick) and he needs to improve him stand up but overall he wasn't that bad. The thing is, it looked like Rashad wasn't trying to take him down so we don't really know how well he would have done had Rashad gone to his bread and butter.
If it had really been torn THAT badly, he wouldn't have won. Liddell is a great fighter, no doubt, but if his ACL had been torn badly, he wouldn't have been able to walk, let alone fight.
Liddell confirmed that his MCL, not his ACL, was torn prior to the fight in training, but that it was toward the end of his training when he was going light anyway. According to Chuck, he could feel it, but it wasn't that bad and didn't dramatically affect his gameplan against Ortiz. http://www.mmaweekly.com/absolutenm/templates/dailynews.asp?articleid=3244&zoneid=13
My bad, it was the MCL. Which is exactly what Herring said was his problem, and yet Liddell was still able to do very well against a tough opponent in Ortiz.
This doesn't really mean much since injuries vary so much from person to person. Liddell's injury may have been much less severe than Herring's, Herring's may have occurred at a different point in his training, Liddell may have had better recovery time etc. Everyone's body is different and there are so many factors at play that comparing one person's injury and performance to another isn't really very useful. It's a step up from MMAth Herring's knee was already a mess after the Sam Greco fight which led to him taking a year or so out of the game, hopefully this isn't a recurrence of that injury
Evans was getting beat on the ground in the first round. He had a great second round, what a kick. I think Salmon really got hurt and should not fight anymore. He was out on his feet and was hit twice when down and OUT. I thought Evans was terrific with his striking and kicking, but his grappling or wrestling was not up to par. Evans, might be a contender for Chuck Liddell in the future??? Gary
Evans appears to have improved exponentially from the boring lamer we saw on TUF2 and his first couple of UFC fights but you have to look at the quality of competition he's facing right now - these guys are leagues below Liddell Evans has excellent base athleticism and he's showing that he's managing to add good tools to that base, but the UFC are being smart and bringing him out slow. Liddell will probably have retired by the time Evans is truly ready for a title shot. That said, the UFC could well end up feeding him to Chuck if he runs out of people to fight this year