Apparently Forty-three isn’t too Old to Still be able to Kick some A$$
I know some of you were probably expecting to see the sixth installment of Ironman Monday today, but due to some scheduling conflicts we’re going to have to put the ironmen on hold for a minute. To try and keep up a certain level of intensity I’m going to make this weekend the meat in a Mixed Martial Arts sandwich.
As I talked about Friday UFC 68 was going down Saturday night, I thought I had made a convincing enough arguement for you to go ahead and check it out, maybe some of you did, but for those of you who didn’t or couldn’t here comes what you missed:
In what was the biggest surprise of the night for me Jason Lambert pretty much dominated Renato Sobral, who in my opinion is one of the most dangerous light heavyweights in the business. Sobral looked himself for the better part of the first round, but was rocked by some heavy handed strikes at the close of the first. The second round belonged to Lambert, he punished Sobral with elbows and strikes ultimately knocking him out with about a minute and a half left in the second round.
Matt Hughes and Chris Lytle played out like a chess match on the mat with Hughes being the more experienced wrestler having the upper hand. Hughes showed some solid takedowns along with the old “ground and pound” dropping elbows on Lytle ultimately cutting him open, though not enough to cause a stoppage. Lytle holds on longer than I would have guessed but Matt Hughes wins the fight by decision.
Rich Franklin looked like his old self in the Octogon punishing Jason MacDonald. MacDonlad spent too much time trying to take Franklin down and ended up on the receiving end of too many heavy punches. Franklin landed some very powerful shots in the closing of the second round, causing what I thought was going to be a referee stopage, but MacDonald was momentarily saved by the bell. Between the second and third rounds Jason MacDonald’s corner thought better of sending him out for more punishment in the third - Franklin wins by TKO, and sets himself up for a shot at getting his title back from Anderson Silva.
In the main event of the evening, in what was probably the biggest surprise to most who tuned in, but not a surprise at all to me, Randy “the Natural” Couture took his title back from Tim “Maine-iac” Sylvia. Despite being 12 years his senior, and weighing in at nearly fifty pounds less than his giant of an opponent, Couture came out strong, showing no sign of cobwebs from his nearly year long retirement.
Couture fed off the energy of the crowd and absolutely owned his bigger, stronger, younger opponent for the duration of the fight - five full rounds, twenty five minutes belonged to the Natural, landing bigger, harder punches, controlling in the clinch, looking like the fresher of the two from the opening bell until he raised his arms triumphantly at the close of the fifth stanza.
All in all it was an excellent show put on by almost all fighters involved, especially the new heavy-weight champ. If you still don’t want to lay down the loot to go watch it on PPV, the UFC is pretty good about showing the fights on Spike not too long after they’ve taken place, after all they’ve gotta get you pumped up for UFC 69. Check out the guide on your digital cable - UFC, Pride, K-1, and Bodog are all getting a lot of airtime these days, keep your eyes peeled and you can get a decent amount of MMA action and still keep your green in your pocket.
And I’m not bashful, I’ll give you another MMA freebie right here, keep in mind this video is graphic and may not be for the squeemish - enjoy!
March 5th, 2007 at 6:45 pm
Dude, that was the most incredible UFC fight I’ve seen in my life. I was more excited in the last 15 seconds than I was on New Year’s Eve counting down…