Been a busy week at work and life in general sorry for not posting as much.

With the final major mma event of the month of August was UFC 118 and regardless of the detractors it was one of the better events of the year in my opinion. Granted there wasn’t a knockout on the prelims or main card, the event still had high level fighters and a title match. There was also a freakshow with an over the hill boxer making his mma debut only to get submitted in the first round, more on that NEVER.

The card did have its low points with Kenny Florian, despite his lauded improved wrestling getting completely tooled by the undefeated Gray Maynard. Nate Diaz kept things interesting by volume punching Marcus Davis’s face into a living impressionist sculpture. Demian Maia put on a bjj clinic on Mario Miranda and in the main event the man from Tom’s River, New Jersey erased any doubt that he was the better fighter than previous champ BJ Penn by completely dominating him for 5 rounds.

From pillar to post, Frankie Edgar dissected Penn, putting in a way more convincing mixed martial arts performance. Be it out striking Penn on the feet to taking him down, landing shots and defending against one of the most dangerous and prodigious bjj practitioners in the sport, Edgar left as little doubt as you can without finishing.

And that is where things get tricky in regards to the public perception of Edgars first title defense. It wasn’t enough to beat a future hall of famer like Penn twice, Frankie had to finish him. A feat that requires way more effort, skill and athleticism than it does to merely mention it. We are still talking about BJ Penn here a guy who was so talented he could fight at higher weight classes and lost a decision to a 220 pound Lyoto Machida and has ONLY been finished by welterweight champions Matt Hughes and George St. Pierre. While Penn is obviously far from invincible them man isn’t the type of fighter who gets finished even by high level opponents from higher weight classes. And we are still talking about the same Frankie Edgar that some people still believe is a insanely talented featherweight who just refuses to cut weight.

Hopefully fans of the sport will grow accustomed to the notion that these high level fighters that we like seeing fight, got to where they are by not only winning but defending themselves and being easy fighters to finish.

As a fan of both fighters, Bellators first tournament winner title fight was a bittersweet affair. Even still I was going to give the fight to Soto due to his take down defense and formidable striking prowess, the only chance I was giving Warren was a 5 round unanimous decision based off of his wrestling pedigree, sub defense and inhuman pain tolerance/sheer will to persevere towards victory.

For the first round it seemed like I picked correctly, Soto started off clubbing Warren with a series of left hooks and right uppercuts that made Warren turn his back. Soto continued this assault and even added taunts reminiscent of the Diaz brothers while Warren just hung in there until the bell.

Then the second round started and everything changed. Warren had seemed to completely regained his composure and decided to start throwing punches instead of just taking them and stunned Soto with a overhand right to the temple. Warren immediately pounced and tried to pound out a tko finish but Soto tried to recover by keeping Warren in his guard and scrambling, only to give up his back while still receiving a hail storm of punches. Soto somehow got back to his feet and was pressured to the cage where he was finished with knee-left hook combo that dropped him to the canvas to be saved by the ref. Thus relinquishing his title as Bellators featherweight kingpin to Joe Warren who made his mixed martial arts debut last year in Dreams featherweight tournament, a remarkable feat for the self proclaimed baddest man on the planet.

With that all said and done I hope to see Soto again, this is his first loss and I am pretty sure he has learned a valuable lesson in dealing with an fading opponent: When you are clearly outclassing an opponent, try your best to finish them within the round.

A moment in MMA history.

After a month of lackluster events (Bellator not included, those cards were dope) WEC 48 was easily the event of the month and year. Never have I been so happy as an mma fan to see my picks go the wrong way. They nearly showed the whole damn card ffs, last years WEC 41 was my fave event from the WEC and last weekends show surpassed it. I am so geeked out over the card i will post my feelings and thoughts in list format

- We need Banuelos and Jorgensen 3

- Manvil earned his title shot by upsetting the unfocused former champ in Mike Brown

Njokuani will not go far as a 1 dimensional striker, even though he is a good 1 dimensional striker.

Roller vs Showtime Pettis needs to happen.

One Punch Pickett is a Brit with wrestling and submissions?! That’s unpossible.

Mighty Mouse Johnson is a good fighter and with a couple adjustments (tightening his striking to grappling transitions) will be a contender in the future.

Bendo is a top 10 (albeit 9 or 10) lightweight and is only getting better. His strategy of putting it to the notorious slow starter in Cowboy Cerrone quick fast and in a hurry shows he can execute a gameplan too. Smooth = Christ loving Beast.

I thought Visher was a beast by the beat down he put on Courtney Buck. But Toner picked his shots and put him out. Raw aggression can backfire sometimes I guess.

Now are you going to finally give Aldo his props & before I hear any “How do you not put away a wounded Faber” arguements nobody asked MTB about it when he couldn’t do it and Fabers hands were busted in that rematch. Faber is the new Big Nog ridiculously tough and still dangerous even when visibly hurt. Aldo knew going in he was facing probably the only guy who could keep up with his speed and immediately took that away from Faber. After he wrecked his leg you saw him try to find the one shot finish that never materialized. In the 3rd round he kicked him straight in the jaw, staggering Urijah, began to swarm and Faber rebooted and clubbed Aldo with a right hook that made the champ back off.

How Faber survived that 4th round crucifix onslaught is beyond me, a lesser fighter would have turtled up and quit from the 3 rounds of leg kicks much less the torrential downpour of elbows he received. I would also like to applaud Aldo’s body shots looked nasty as hell. I blame the 5th round on Rosenthal not breaking up an restarting the fight. Other than that it was one of the better 5 rounders I’ve seen. Fabers champion level heart, grit and cornermen carried him through the toughest fight in his career. But Jose Aldo is the man at 145 and I can’t wait to see his next performance.

What can I say about Garcia/Jung that hasn’t already been said while it was most certainly very entertaining. But people should give props to the Pickett vs Johnson and Banuelos vs Jorgensen bouts too. While the latter two bouts did not have the reckless abandon and disregard for personal health that Garcia and Jung had they were just as intense and way more technical. But mma elitist whining aside it was an insanely fun fight to watch. And should be placed alongside Bonnar vs Griffin 1 and Gatti vs Ward as one of the most brutal and enjoyable fights in recent memory, judging controversy aside.

That being said I am going to finish this post and re-watch some more fights. Regardless of ppv buys this was a quality card from the one mma org that rarely disappoints.

There seems to be conflicting views on the past weekends Lightweight title bout even between the mma statistic and analysis sites Fightmetric & Compustrike. Both tabulated the same very close fight between lightweight legend BJ Penn and the newly minted champ Frankie Edgar. Having rewatched the fight myself it’s still really close with every single round being highly competitive 10-9 only rounds the whole fight through. While Penn did land what seemed to be the harder, cleaner shots, Edgar could be seen as the busier fighter with his high mobility and calculated aggression.

Edgar clearly wanted it more, with Penn being content on waiting for countering opportunities and not cutting off the cage or event hinting at taking the fight to the ground, its easy to see why a judge would give the New Jersey native the nod. Another aspect of the fight that can not be tabulated by a statistical rubric is the perception of Penn and how it might of worked against him. All things considered this was a champion who had until UFC 112 had only been defeated once at lightweight and had finished every opponent since he won the title. Factoring that with Edgar coming in as a +500 underdog who didn’t get eviscerated in the first round and was able to hang with arguably the best boxer in mma in a striking exchange. You can entertain the idea of a judge seeing Edgar as the victor based solely on him not losing or looking particularly bad.

All in all I am glad Frankie won, but the fight was so close I still have doubts he is the best lightweight in the UFC, much less the world.

Now onto the other title fight, I will keep this one short since there is a veritable plethora of opinions on the middleweight champ, whose to blame, who does he fight next, why should we care, etc… This is how it breaks down in my eyes:

The ball is in Dana White’s court. He has to put Silva in fights against opponents who will try to beat him. Whether it is at middleweight, light heavy or heavyweight he has to face fighters who will attempt to hurt him. Demian Maia is a top tier middleweight, but we have to remember his shot at the title was the result of a perfect storm of injury’s and medical suspensions taking away first the intended opponent Vitor Belfort and then the #1 contender in Chael Sonnen. The match up of superstar striker vs decorated and feared bjj practitioner would have been compelling were it not one of the most tired match ups in mma and a repeat of Andersons last title defense against Thales Leites.

Contrary to popular belief I think Silva has now elevated himself into being a huge ppv draw or is on his way to being one. Granted he took the long way around to getting there, the UFC now has another heel champ to go along with their current heavyweight titleholder Brock Lesnar. Instead of taking things personally the UFC brass should be accommodating and put Silva through a gauntlet of super fights until he can stand no more. And the next time one of his opponents is unable to fight, just scrap the fight unless someone begs to take The Spider on. When Silva doesn’t feel like he is in danger or threatened he acts out, so only put him in fights where he will never have that option.

MAIN CARD

• Jon Jones vs. Brandon Vera
• Junior Dos Santos vs. Gabriel Gonzaga
• Paul Buentello vs. Cheick Kongo
• James Irvin vs. Alessio Sakara

PRELIMINARY CARD

• Shannon Gugerty vs. Clay Guida
• Eliot Marshall vs. Vladimir Matyushenko
• Darren Elkins vs. Duane “Bang” Ludwig
• John Howard vs. Daniel Roberts
• Chase Gormley vs. Brendan Schaub
• Julio Paulino vs. Mike Pierce
• Jason Brilz vs. Eric Schafer

Date: Mar 22, 2010
Location: Yokohama, Japan
Venue: Yokohama Arena
Broadcast: HDNet (North America)

• Champ Bibiano Fernandes vs. Joachim Hansen (for DREAM featherweight title)
• Josh Barnett vs. Siala “Mighty Mo” Siligia*
• Cole Escovedo vs. Yoshiro Maeda
• Kuniyoshi Hironaka vs. Katsunori Kikuno
• Andre “Dida” Amade vs. K.J. Noons
• Ryo Chonan vs. Andrews Nakahara
• Jimmy Ambriz vs. Ikuhisa Minowa

* – Not officially announced