UFC 90 Final Thoughts After Watching a Second Time

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Time to wrap up another big event with my final thoughts.

• I watched the Anderson Silva-Patrick Cote fight again and think it should be required that every MMA commentator watch it twice before they open their mouths. Silva was more active than you think. In fact, he landed some strikes that would have put away a lesser opponent.
  
  Cote was rocked with two knees to the head, a big left, and some solid knees to the body. I'm sure Rich Franklin had flashbacks when he saw those things land. After each of those blows, Cote rebounded and did not allow Silva to land any follow-up strikes. The story of the fight was Cote's ability to take Silva's heavy shots without going down.

• A total of 15,359 attended the event and the live gate was $2.85 million. In comparison, UFC 88 featuring Liddell vs. Evans did $2.6 million with 14,736 attending. UFC 87 with St. Pierre-Fitch and Lesnar-Herring did $2.2 million with 15,082.
  
  For the UFC, it is a good sign they were still able to draw a large paying crowd with the way the economy has tanked. However, we will not get a real idea of the economic impact until we see the PPV buys and the live gates from future events, since most of the tickets for the Chicago show were purchased before Wall Street went haywire. One thing I noticed last night was they were still hocking tickets for UFC 91. That's an awful sign.

• Cote initially messed up the knee at 2:27 of the second round. He threw a lunging right hook and landed awkwardly on his right foot. Credit to Goldberg for mentioning it repeatedly. Rogan was oblivious to it.

• Sam Caplan gets it.

• Silva looks exactly like Syrus from The Real World Boston.

• Thiago Alves became a star last night. Hopefully he doesn't do anything stupid and gets a title shot in the near future. I did not think any welterweight could defend GSP's takedowns, but Alves changed my opinion. He got through three rounds with Koscheck and never went down. If he can take out St. Pierre's legs with kicks, he has a chance to win.

• My picks went 5-2 and I called two fights exactly how they'd end (Maynard-Clementi and Alves-Koscheck). The notable loss was the Werdum mishap. Oh well, I can live with 5-2.