UFC 100: A Breath of Fresh Air

For 17 months, Frank Mir’s pseudo-Hail Mary kneebar sat in the back of the mind of Brock Lesnar.

Lesnar’s ensuing contests against Heath Herring and Randy Couture seemed to be almost akin to a set of building blocks for a hopeful rematch with Mir, and things couldn’t have turned out any better.

Mir’s shocking TKO finish over a staph-riddled Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira laid the foundation for one of the biggest rematches in the history of the sport, and heading into last night, it was treated as such.

Sure, the MMA purist will tell you that Georges St. Pierre’s title defense against Thiago Alves deserved top billing, but it’s hard to fault a bout with such a harmonic buildup to get the nod as the main event.

With Chuck Liddell’s days in the octagon seemingly numbered, I don’t think it’s out of line to suggest that Lesnar has supplanted the UFC Hall-of-Famer as the sport’s top draw.

The name “Brock Lesnar” amounted to a near-600,000 buyrate for his octagon debut at UFC 81 and that number has grown with each fight. It’s hard not to be captivated by Lesnar, not just for how quickly he has picked up the sport, but just for the champion’s polarizing nature that has the MMA community up in a tizzy—and it’s a breath of fresh air.

Everything about Lesnar screams “antagonist.” He made his name as a fake fighter and then had the gall to test his hand at MMA. What’s worse, he showed that he’s actually pretty good at it and if nothing else, is still very far off from seizing his true potential.

It’s a scary notion at this point, because Lesnar dispatched of a fighter who was viewed in the eyes of some as being the world No. 2 heavyweight, and did so without much resistance.

Lesnar has also shown that if two years in the WWE taught him nothing else, it’s how to work a crowd—a science that Lesnar has carried into his run with the UFC and mastered to a T. It’s an odd contrast, in that Lesnar was never really revered for his mic skills or his ability to infuriate a crowd while in the WWE.

Every sport needs its good guys and bad guys, and in pro wrestling, that bad guy is lovingly coined as a “heel.” If the lasso taunt and the pointing and laughing at Heath Herring didn’t curdle the blood of a few fans, Lesnar’s post-fight interview has made him MMA’s top heel.

Just the notion of an ex-pro wrestler standing tall as the top heavyweight in the world’s top MMA promotion is a vision one-in-a-kind in itself, and is the perfect foil to the sportsmanship-intensive fight fan.

For reasons unbeknownst to myself, fans like to pretend that there is some unwritten scroll of ethics established long ago somewhere in the timeframe of Royce Gracie blatantly punching Kimo Leopoldo in the gonads and Randy Couture spanking Tito Ortiz that makes MMA out to be a sport of pure, noble nature.

It’s something to the tune of every fighter shaking hands and saying nothing but nice things about their opponents, and while I’m all for sportsmanship, it doesn’t take much for me to pop that little pipe dream and realize that we’re watching freakin’ cage fighting.

Lesnar, if nothing else, boasts and brags when the victory is already in hand. In a press conference, he’s a man of few words but when that final bell sounds, he’ll gladly tell Mir—who, lest we forget, is hardly a poster child for humility—to talk all the trash he wants now, and all Mir’s swollen tomato mug can do is stare back in disgust and defeat.

Quinton Jackson was a nice change of pace from the usual paint-by-numbers personalities of Chuck Liddell and Matt Hughes, and Lesnar follows suit. But Jackson’s a kind of guy whose knockout-placed style and hilarious attitude makes him hard not to like, and it seems Lesnar is the polar opposite. But unlike Tim Sylvia, Sean Sherk, and Josh Koscheck, Lesnar relishes in the role of the bad guy.

Lesnar’s antics aren’t the kind of charades that will turn fans off on the UFC or set the sport back to its dark ages. For as many people who are praying to the heavens that Fedor Emelianenko will be sign with the UFC and shut up that big meanie Brock Lesnar, there are quite a few people who are aboard the champ’s bandwagon.

In fact, the vibe at my local sports bar would suggest that people thought Lesnar’s post-fight tirade was pretty darn cool. Far be it for me to say the casual fan doesn’t give a hoot that Lesnar trashed the promotion’s primary sponsor.

I mean come on: The man’s plans were to go home, drink a beer, and bed down with his wife.

The gap widens

This is starting to become pretty scary.

At this point, I’m convinced that Georges St. Pierre has the potential to hold the UFC welterweight title until he damn well pleases. Thiago Alves was supposed to be that last glimmer of hope in finding that chink in St. Pierre’s seemingly invincible armor, and he fared no different than Jon Fitch, B.J. Penn, Josh Koscheck, or Matt Hughes.

This performance was very telling about the gap between St. Pierre and the rest of the field. Having watched Alves’ scrap with Koscheck at UFC 90, what stunned me was Josh’s inability to even come close to putting Alves on his back.

While Alves blanked the collegiate wrestling standout on takedown attempts, St. Pierre made Thiago’s takedown defense look rudimentary. Converting on what felt like 98 of 100 attempts, St. Pierre worked his trademark top game en route to a clean sweep of his alleged toughest challenger.

It’s almost not even fair to mention that he had to overcome a pulled groin for nearly half the fight. Seriously, that’s just like rubbing salt in the wound. Alves gave his backers a moment of hope, because he was able to maintain his freakish strength for the duration of the bout and never let the weight cut to 170 get the better of him.

His ability to simply power his way out of St. Pierre’s top game was a bit eye-opening at times, but even with things got back to the feet, Thaigo struggled to string together any sufficient measure of offense.

A six-inch reach advantage is a tough hurdle to clear in it’s own, but it always seemed like GSP was always one step ahead of the deadly Muay Thai artist in the striking department.

But as Alves rides off into the sunset, we’re left wondering where this run of dominance is headed. Sure, Mike Swick and Martin Kampmann are clashing at UFC 103 in what is essentially a title eliminator bout, but do either of those two pose a realistic threat to St. Pierre?

The winner will likely be ranked in the top-five in the division, but it’s to the point where it’ll take a Matt Serra-esque act of greatness to put St. Pierre on the defensive.

The Anderson Silva superfight will continue to loom as the most enviable option, and we’re reaching the point where this fight needs to happen, for the betterment of both fighters.

Both are running out of legitimate options for opposition in their respective divisions and while St. Pierre was very professional in divulging his pitfalls weight-wise in the potential dream matchup, that’s more or less a hint that the UFC needs to slow build this fight.

Is there a bigger fight available right now than the top two pound-for-pound fighters in the world fighting each other? For this fight to be everything we want it to be, we need to make sure that St. Pierre adjusts properly to the weight increase, because as St. Pierre said himself, he was likely fighting around 184 pounds or so on Saturday night. A bout with Silva would mean GSP would have to fight around 195-200 pounds to make his size and brute strength appropriately translate.

Give St. Pierre time to adjust to the weight increase, and then let’s see this things become a reality, because pending a St. Pierre victory over either Kampmann or Swick, who would you reckon is the next challenger to his throne?

You’d have to search well outside the division’s top-10 and barring a move that could land Jake Shields down the road, the options are certainly dire for the champion.

U.K. won the battle, Henderson took the war

Dan Henderson may have the worst striking percentage of any fighter in the game today, but as the age-old adage goes, “all it takes is one.”

Team U.S. may have done Henderson a disservice with everything from their generally unlikeable demeanor to being bested at every turn in Team U.K. in the TUF Nine finale, but the 38-year-old Team Quest standout got to flash that trademark smirk when all was said and done.

With Michael Bisping, this fight was his litmus test. When you’re in talks for a title shot at arguably the best fighter in the world, you need a few more bullet points on your resume than a win over Chris Leben, and a decision over Matt Hamill that most people feel you should have lost.

On paper, this was a tough fight if you hedged money on the underdog. Barring simply outpointing Henderson to a decision victory, it was tough to imagine any other avenue that would see Bisping getting his hand raised and even with how the action transpired, Bisping negated much of his striking edge by utilizing horrendous footwork and circling towards Henderson’s vaunted right hand.

An early Henderson flurry laid the groundwork for what, by Henderson’s doing, was destined to be a standup war. We’ve all seen Henderson try and play the role of “striker” far longer than he needs and while it has done him more bad than good in the past (a la Silva at UFC 82), it’s hard to argue with the dividends it paid this time around.

It’s such a risky attack because when on the defensive, you don’t have much to worry about when Henderson is in KO mode outside of the right hand. As Mike Goldberg pointed out, Henderson cocks his shoulder forward first and then unloads the right hand, so you can nearly see it coming if you’re reflexive enough.

But when you’re ill-fated as to back up and circle in the wrong direction, you’re playing right into Hendo’s hands. Could Henderson play mixed up his attack and maybe tried to work in a takedown attempt or two?

Sure, and I think a lot of us envisioned Decision Dan ruling the night on Saturday, but perhaps the mere notion of the opponent being the trash-talking Brit made Henderson realize that a decision victory just wouldn’t be gratifying enough.

And if the crowd’s reception for Bisping was any indication, they thought the same thing.