Sven’s Glass House

name: UFC 87: Seek & Destroy
price: $5
seen at the Fox & Hound at 103rd & Metcalf.
rating: 9 of 10 or alternatively #5 best mma event of 2008 so far

I was hyped about this event. Three different top card fights that were very interesting to me.

Brock Lesnar vs Heath Herring.

Hype: Former WWE superstar Brock Lesnar had switched to mma a while back. He took the transition very seriously. He trained for a year before making his mma debut. He beat the dwarfed outclassed fighter with ease (it should be noted that the opponent was not ranked anywhere). The UFC became interested. They had no intention of coddling him, the UFC booked him against ground wizard Frank Mir. A man I said was the biggest threat to an inexperienced fighter like Lesnar (with a strong amateur wrestling background). I was right. Brock bashed Mir’s face open, made a mistake and Mir caught him in about 90 seconds. This fight against Heath Herring was intriguing. If Brock’s first opponent was a 1 on the difficulty scale and Mir was 9, Herring represented a 7.

Reality: Lesnar abused, dominated, bullied Herring. Herring’s wealth of experience, his wins over other physical wrestlers, all amounted to ‘not nearly enough.’ Lesnar beat on Herring for 15 minutes, laying on top of him and looking like Herring’s violent big brother. Lesnar taunted, shoved, laughed, grinned. Lesnar made many, many mistakes. He showed many holes. His transitions were poor and he achieved positions (full mount and back control) that usually finish, he gave up these positions without much of a fight. Herring’s face was pretty messed up. Lesnar needs to watch out for Werdum and Gonzaga (which should beat him), Lesnar should beat Kongo, Hardonk or Eddie Sanchez with ease. Fights with Cain Velasquez or Shane Carwin would help figure out the pecking order among the HW wrestling phenoms.

Kenny Florian vs Roger Huerta. (11th best fight of 2008 so far)
Hype: Kenny and Huerta have been on rolls. Both have been exciting fighters for the past while. Florian has been finishing every fighter put in front of him since his loss to Sherk (a powerful wrestler and that was for the LW Title). Huerta hasn’t lost since entering the UFC. Florian introduces new moves every right. Huerta innovates, too. Kenny gets hated for his ‘do whatever within the rules to win,’ and has had difficulty gaining a fanbase. Huerta is moviestarpretty and has looked flashy in his victories. Huerta proved he wasn’t just pretty by defeating Clay Guida (no small task, and Huerta didn’t have an easy time doing it). Florian has more technique, skill, variety, better striking, bjj. Huerta has more heart, aggression, strength, better wrestling.

Reality: Kenny played smart. He backed up and picked Huerta apart. Kenny outwrestled Huerta in the first round, taking him down with ease and earning full mount. Every round Kenny would score at least two very mean hits and put Huerta in some real trouble. Huerta never really got the chance of getting Kenny in jeopardy. Kenny had nearly finished the fight and took nearly no damage. Kenny soundly won.

Georges St. Pierre vs Jon Fitch: for the WW Title (7th best fight of 2008 so far)

Hype: GSP is the greatest athlete mma has known. GSP is ‘the complete fighter.’ GSP has dominated other top ranked welterweights (170). GSP has destroyed other gifted WW wrestlers. GSP is the #1 ranked WW. Fitch is the #2 ranked WW. Fitch tied the record for ‘most consecutive wins in the UFC’ at 8. Fitch hasn’t lost any fight anywhere since 2002. Fitch is the biggest WW (cutting more weight than anyone, so he typically gets to outweigh his opponents). Fitch has a great wrestling background. Fitch just earned his blackbelt in bjj. Fitch trains with a kickboxing champion and Mike Swick and Josh Koscheck. People were turning down fighting Fitch for quite some time.

Reality: GSP dominated Fitch, which isn’t to say that Fitch looked bad. Fitch looked fine for the first 3 minutes. The final 2 minutes of round one were so brutal that it was clear that GSP won that round by blowout (a fairly rare 10-8 round). GSP dominated that first round on the ground, nearly finishing Fitch on a few occasions. In round two the fighters had a kickboxing fight that was pretty even. In general GSP got the better of it, GSP had tried to take the fight to the ground but Fitch shut it down. In rounds three through the end of five there were many points where GSP seemed moments away from stopping Fitch. Fitch managed to look fresh as the start of each round. Fitch managed to survive. Fitch showed tremendous heart, he never seemed too discouraged. He still seemed hungry and hopeful in round five despite having been abused by a fairly flawless GSP. GSP was able to show he could take hits as well (or better) than most others. GSP showed great wrestling, standup and class. Just a great fight. As great as a blowout can be. GSP had scored several 10-8 rounds in the judges’ eyes.

Event Pros:

• GSP vs Fitch.
• Florian vs Huerta.
• Emerson vs Manny. Emerson was supposed to lose. Instead he had a mindblowing KO while on his hip. Never had seen that before.
• Maia vs MacDonald. Maia was supposed to submit MacDonald with relative ease if the fight got to the ground. MacDonald escaped a great many submission attempts and nearly snuck one on Maia. Maia abused MacDonald to facilitate the submission attempts. Great showing by both fighters. Maia took longer to earn the submission, but he got it.
• Lesnar vs Herring. Very exciting. Big mystery in how it would go. The mystery/enigma was much of the entertainment. This was only barely a positive fight in that Brock lacks tools in offense. He should’ve been able to finish the fight, but didn’t seem to know how.

Breakevens:

• Kongo vs Evensen. Kongo was driving me crazy. Kongo has been working on his wrestling. He used to have none. In his fight against Herring, he showed that he learned to take fighters down then didn’t know what to do next. He dedicated this fight to showing that he knew what to do next. But Kongo is a great standup striker and Evensen is a bjj guy that is cozy on the ground. Kongo taking Evensen down was risky, stupid even. A little boring, too. Kongo eventually got Evensen down and showed some scary ground and pound. His point was delivered. The fight eventually got back to the feet, where Kongo dispatched Evensen almost immediately.

Cons:

• Long fights meant I didn’t get to see much in the way of prelims, but that isn’t much of a gripe, I’ve just been spoiled as of late.

-other things to review-

Christina: 10 of 10 (normally plenty cute, she was a full on bombshell tonight)
Fish & Chips: 6 of 10
Soup: 5 of 10
Service: 3 of 10 (Rene? Erin? I don’t know her name for sure. She didn’t refill my Coke, despite being reminded. Didn’t bring Sully a menu. Slow with Sully’s beer. Pretty face. Average non-face.)
Company: 4 of 10 (Regulars that couldn’t make it. People that greenlit me getting the reservation that couldn’t come for one reason or another. Odd seating.)
Environment: 7 of 10 (Good crowd, good temp, seating at pool tables still weird).

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 10th, 2008 at 12:36 am and is filed under mma, judgment. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.