Affliction: Day of Reckoning Recap

• For 3:13 of the first round, Andrei Arlovski was easily getting the better of Fedor Emelianenko. If you rewatch the tape, I believe Fedor was a bit staggered with one of Arlovski’s earliest strikes that landed cleaning with his left eye. Fedor appeared to be almost stumbling back quite a bit after that and didn’t have any crispness or accuracy to his strikes. But in the end, Arlovski once again showed how fragile his “glass jaw” really is, as Fedor landed a short right that put Arlovski down and out. Fedor’s composure and tactical fighting, even when he appears to be losing is what gives him that edge over his opponents.
• Josh Barnett and Gilbert Yvel put on what was probably the fight of the night in my opinion. Barnett looked strong throughout the whole fight in the face of an unexpectedly strong opposition from Yvel. I’m excited to see a Barnett vs. Fedor matchup later this year.
• Man, how sad was the scene after the Vitor Belfort vs. Matt Lindland fight? A quick KO for Belfort turned into an extremely frightening situation for Lindland. Hopefully he recovers fully. As far as Tito Ortiz saying Vitor could challenge for Anderson Silva’s middleweight title after this one fight… I don’t think so.
• Hopefully, promoters will now stop booking Remeau Sokoudjou in this “high profile” matchups. While Sokou probably won the first round Renato Sobral settled down and fell back on his BJJ game where he is best. “The African Assassin” easily folded from there and until Sokou can learn some ground defense, he won’t win a fight against any mid-level grappler.
• A very nice victory for Paul Buentello who looked very sharp against Kiril Sidelnikov. Give a lot of credit to Sidelnikov who continued to stay in the pocket and trade with Buentello even after taking continuous damage.
• I don’t really want to make judgment calls on a fighter’s character when it’s nearly impossible to make an accurate assessment, but I personally think Dan Lauzon should be pretty embarrassed by his performance against Bobby Green. Green was getting the better of Lauzon on the feet until Lauzon was able to secure his choke. All I’m saying is that if I took three hard shots to the groin, I probably wouldn’t be climbing to the top ropes and doing a backflip after the fight ended. I probably wouldn’t want the “vibrations” from the landing.
• Bao Quach, LC Davis, Albert Rios, Antonio Duarte and Brett Cooper all put on excellent performances that made the free, HDNet portion of the undercard fun to watch.
• Arlovski’s trainer Freddie Roach had better seriously reconsider and backtrack on all his pre-fight statements regarding how good Andrei’s boxing skills are. Roach even went so far to say that after fighting Fedor, Andrei would enter professional boxing and quickly challenge for the heavyweight title. It really doesn’t matter how strong Arlovski’s striking is if he can’t take a punch in return. Defense is just as big a factor in the boxing ring as offense is.
• I know they have only had two fight cards, but Affliction has not put on a poor fight matchup yet. They do need to learn how to run their shows a bit better, however. Had the main event gone a full five rounds, it would have run 13 minutes over their Pay-Per-View time window and all of us fans would not have gotten to see the end of the fight.
• While he did a decent job during the fights, Tito Ortiz’s in-ring interviews with the fight winners were atrocious. He definitely was extremely nervous and stumbling over his words, but having a guy interview fighters who want a piece of him in the future is a bit awkward.
• I thought Jimmy Smith, of Fight Quest fame, did an excellent job on the broadcast team.
• I can’t wait for the final, official live-gate figures to be released from this event. There was a lot of bad-mouthing going on regarding the attendance both leading up to and during the event. I’m going to say that the attendance was pretty close the the 14,000 that were present for the first Affliction fight card last year.