Five Quick Rounds 01.31.12: UFC on FOX 2 Results, Bellator Prepares for Season Six, Fedor Looks for Another Fight, and More!

Posted by Wyatt Beougher on 01.31.2012

From Fedor looking for his next fight and the lackluster event that was UFC on FOX 2 to Bellator about to begin season six and more, 411 Wyatt Beougher breaks down the week that was in MMA with the latest edition of Five Quick Rounds!



Welcome to another edition of Five Quick Rounds, 411's fastest-finishing weekly opinion column. As always, I'm your host, Wyatt Beougher, and I'm back at home, having spent almost a month in Vegas, and I have to say that I'm not much worse for the wear. I slept for almost 13 hours on Friday night/Saturday morning because of the jet lag, but I'm feeling refreshed and ready to go this week after covering UFC on FOX 2 on Saturday. While I enjoyed the show and was really only disappointed by both Weidman and Maia gassing out, I can see how viewers tuning into the UFC for the first time (or for the first time in a long time) would be less-than-thrilled with the show. All three main card fights went to decisions, Weidman/Maia's third round looked like a TUF heavyweight fight, Bisping seemed content to hold Chael against the cage for most of their fight, and neither Evans nor Davis really ever had the other in trouble. It's really a shame that they couldn't show the Charles Oliveira/Eric Wisely fight, the Cub Swanson/George Roop fight, or the Evan Dunham/Nik Lentz fights from the prelims, because all of those fights featured great action, and all of them finished early for the shorter attention span MMA fans (who, I realize, are likely also my audience). Also, for current MMA fans who are complaining about having friends watch this show with them and it turning out boring, why would you try to introduce/re-introduce to your friends with a show like Diaz/Condit a mere seven days away? It just doesn't make sense to me, but then again, I know what my friends like, and while I like wrestling/grappling, I'd never start them off with a card that featured four wrestlers and a BJJ ace on it. Anyway, Round 1 is dedicated to UFC on FOX 2, so let's get this show started, shall we?



Round 1: UFC on FOX 2 – Not All That Exciting

**TOUCH OF THE GLOVES**

Let me start by saying that in terms of actual fight action to promotional/analytical content, this show was certainly much more balanced in that aspect; however, due to the quality of the action in the fights, it's really questionable as to whether that was to the UFC's benefit. Personally, I had a great time doing coverage for the fights, and there was certainly enough action that it kept me typing throughout every fight. The preliminaries certainly had a lot more finishes than the main card, and the fight of the night was definitely Dunham/Lentz, although it was a shame to see it stopped early due to an extremely nasty cut that Dunham's elbow opened up on Lentz.

As for the main card, it actually opened really well, with the first round of Maia/Weidman featuring a good deal of action, with the fight only slowing down momentarily when Weidman got a takedown. Unfortunately, it was all downhill from there, as the two men tired quickly, and by the third round, it looked like the Wes Shivers/James McSweeney fight from TUF, where both guys were basically holding one another up and pawing away weakly without doing any damage. In the roundtable, I said Weidman should use his wrestling to keep the fight standing if he wanted to win, but he took Maia down multiple times and never seemed in danger, and if he's not as drained by his next weight cut, I'd look for him to be a lot more impressive.

Next up was Michael Bisping/Chael Sonnen, and to say that it wasn't what anyone was expecting would be an understatement, as Bisping rocked Sonnen early in the first round and was able to neutralize Chael's wrestling until the third round. When I recapped the fight, I had Bisping winning, so I was surprised that the judges gave Sonnen the decision. Looking at statistics after the fight, I can see why, but during the show, I honestly thought Bisping won the fight, as he was controlling Sonnen against the cage for the majority of the first two rounds. After the fight, Sonnen cribbed the "Superstar" Billy Graham interview I embedded above, and finished with half of Taz' ECW catchphrase. There's been a lot of backlash in the 411 comments about the interview, and Sonnen in general, but the guy just flat-out knows how to sell a fight, and I look for his rematch against Anderson Silva in Brazil this summer to be the most-bought UFC PPV of the year. In the main event, there was nothing so controversial, as Rashad Evans avoided the worst of Phil Davis' strikes and takedowns and landed enough effective strikes to win the fight. And while it wasn't a close fight, Evans didn't show me anything to make me think that he'll be anything more than another victim for Jon Jones in April. Overnight ratings for the show were in, and the highest hour (2.7) is 42% better than Fox's Saturday primetime average for the previous four weeks. I'll hold off on in-depth rating analysis until full ratings are in, but more interesting than this show's ratings will be how UFC on FOX 3 does.

**HORN SOUNDS**



Round 2: Bellator Ready to Start Season Six

***TOUCH OF THE GLOVES***

Bellator has two showed booked and ready to go for March, which will mark the start of their sixth season. On March 9th, Bellator will be running a featherweight show from the Venue at Horseshoe Casino in Hammond, Iowa. The main event will feature featherweight champion Joe Warren defending his title against Pat Curran, who won the 2011 Bellator Summer Series and was previously unsuccessful in dethroning former lightweight champion Eddie Alvarez. Also on the show are the quarterfinal match-ups of the season six featherweight tournament, which features Summer Series runner-up Marlon Sandro taking on Roberto Vargas, Ronnie Mann squaring off with Wagnney Fabiano, Alexandre Bezerra and Genair de Silva locking up, and Daniel Straus fighting Jeremy Spoon.

A week later, on the 16th, from the Riverdome, in Boisser City, Louisiana, Bellator will feature the rematch of the heavyweight tournament finals, featuring Eric Prindle and Thiago Santos picking up where they left off after an errant kick to the groin from Santos left Prindle unable to continue in their last encounter. Also on tap are the quarterfinal match-ups of the middleweight tournament, featuring Maiquel Falcao versus Norman Paraisy, Brian Rogers against Vitor Vianna, Vyacheslav Vasilevsky taking on Victor O'Donnell, and Giva Santana fighting Bruno Santos. I did some live coverage for Bellator during season five (and may do so again during season six), and their shows are generally exciting and season six looks to start off with more of the same. Also, Bellator has applied for a promoter's license in Nevada, so they're looking to expand into what has been the UFC's stronghold at some point in the future.

***HORN SOUNDS***



Round 3: The Last Emperor Looks to Return

**TOUCH OF THE GLOVES**

Fedor Emelianenko hasn't hung up the gloves yet, and after picking up back-to-back wins against Jeff Monson in November and Satoshi Ishii in December, Emelianenko looks to continue to remain active (for him, anyway) following up a 2011 in which he fought four times (more than any two years combined since 2005-2006) with a proposed fight over the summer in Monaco. The news came out after my deadline last week, but Bobby Lashley was a rumored opponent for Emelianenko; however, M1 Global's Evgeni Kogan put a damper on those rumors, stating that while Lashley is in the discussions, M1 would prefer Fedor fight a European fighter.

Kogan came out later in the week and said that there were "no concrete conversations" about Lashley as the Last Emperor's opponent and they were continuing to search for a European opponent. From a logistics standpoint, this makes sense, as the fight will be taking place in France, and Lashley isn't even a draw in the United States, so there's no reason to believe he would be in Europe. At this point, M1 would be crazy NOT to throw money at Cro Cop, who is supposed to be having a kickboxing fight against Ray Sefo as his retirement fight. Assuming they can't convince Cro Cop to rematch Fedor in a fight that would likely make both guys a substantial amount of money, my prediction is that Fedor's next opponent will be Mariusz Pudzianowski – he's a terrible fighter, but he's European, he's well-known, and his status as a former World's Strongest Man competitor makes this exactly the type of freakshow fight Fedor thrived on after PRIDE closed.

***HORN SOUNDS***



Round 4: UFC Continues Independence Day Tradition

***TOUCH OF THE GLOVES***

For the past six years, the UFC has run an event around Independence Day, and 2012 will prove to be no different, as the MGM Grand Arena has confirmed that the UFC will be running a show on July 7th and that the Mandalay Bay Events Center (MGM's expo center) will hold a fan expo the day before and the day of the event. Traditionally, the UFC's fan expos have included meet and greets, photo opportunities, grappling competitions (which are open to fighters outside of the UFC), the official weigh-ins for the associated event, and speeches from UFC activities, among other activities.

The UFC generally puts pretty high profile fights on these shows, usually one (or more) title fights, so let's look at who may or may not be defending their titles on July 7th. The next middleweight championship fight has been announced for Brazil, so Silva versus Sonnen II is out. Jon Jones will face Rashad Evans in April, so it's not out of the question that he'd be ready for a fight with Dan Henderson in July, and while Henderson was on UFC 100 in July of 2009, I think they'll likely hold this fight off for later in the year. Also, bantamweight champion Dominick Cruz will defend his title against Urijah Faber in June, so a bantamweight title defense is probably out of the question. With the interim UFC welterweight title being decided this coming weekend and the lightweight title in action in Japan in less than four weeks, I'd guess one of those two titles (if not both of them) will be on the line in July. Also worth considering - the headliner for two of the past three years has been a heavyweight title fight (both featuring Brock Lesnar, first against Frank Mir and then against Shane Carwin), so it's possible that Dos Santos versus Overeem could headline the card, also. At any rate, I'll be looking forward to how this card shapes up over the next few months.

***HORN SOUNDS***



Round 5: Dana White vs the World

***TOUCH OF THE GLOVES***

UFC.com was hacked last week, with the site temporarily redirecting to a hacker's group's website. The group claimed that they took the site down because of Zuffa's support of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). In response to this, Dana White came out and told the hackers that he wasn't scared of them, that people who had bought pay-per-views through the UFC's website would not have to worry about their credit card information being accessed, and that if the hackers continued, they would only be hurting themselves. In retaliation, a file with a great deal of personal information about Dana White (some of which, primarily phone numbers, turned out to belong to someone other than White) was widely posted on Twitter. White again referred to the hackers as terrorists and continued with his support of SOPA, all while further egging the hacker's on.

As someone who has purchased UFC events through their website before, I wish Dana would just shut up, because I have no doubt that the group is more than capable of accessing whatever they want on the UFC's servers. And, as someone who has streamed PPVs on occasion before I started writing for 411, I can certainly understand why White would want to crack down on illegal streams, but SOPA is not the way to do it, at least not in its current form. The bill itself is a good idea in principle, but there is so much vague language that if it passed in its current incarnation, we would be led into a new age of McCarthyism, but this time with internet sites being censored and/or blacklisted instead of people. Please take a minute to re-read that before you flame me in the comments – I'm against piracy, but also against censorship, and I DO NOT support SOPA without it undergoing a major, MAJOR overhaul.

***HORN SOUNDS***

And that's it for another week! Let me know what you thought about this column in the comments or on Twitter: @webeougher. Have a great week, and remember 411Mania for all your MMA needs!