Hit the Mat 10.27.08: When Expectations Go Wrong

Posted by Matt McEwen on 10.27.2008

UFC 90 is in the books and it was a night that did anything but go by the book.

MMA is certainly consistent in it's inconsistencies.

Just when you think you know how things are going to go is exactly when you have no idea. Saturday night offered up just the latest examples.

If you are a fan who does not spend most of your free time trying to analyze fighting styles, first off, I envy you. Secondly, you would probably think that a fight featuring two of the strongest wrestlers in the light weight division might spend at least some time on the ground.

And you'd be wrong. Tyson Griffin and Sean Sherk managed to nullify each other's ground game and ended up in (technically sloppy) kickboxing fight that was actually pretty entertaining. Neither guy is about to switch to K1, but it made for a fun dynamic and probably left more than a few fans out there surprised that Sherk knew how to box, let alone could win a fight on his feet.

The second fight of the night was supposed to be a showcase for not only the ever growing waist line of Fabrico Werdum (I mean seriously, he should not come into a fight at 250lbs at this point) but also for his growing status as the first man likely to challenge for the undisputed title in 2009. So much for that. Werdum - who has supposedly spent the better part of the last few years becoming a high level striker with Chute Boxe - made a rookie mistake of dropping his left hand to his side while throwing a big overhand right. Fighters often get away with that, but Junior Dos Santos showed some good skill in not only slipping the right, but land a right uppercut of his own that dropped Werdum and turned his lights out.

So much for a title shot.

Rich Clementi and Gray Maynard.....well, they pretty much gave us what one might have expected from a physically dominant wrestler and a crafty jiu jitsu veteran. Maynard is going to be a factor in the division, and it'll be interesting to see if matching him up with another strong wrestler would have the same effect on him that it did on Griffin and Sherk in the opener. As a matter of fact, a fight with Griffin would be pretty interesting.

And then the subject of last week's article - Josh Koscheck - stepped in with Thiago Alves. Conventional wisdom says if you take a fight on two weeks notice against someone as skilled as Alves, you are likely to get beaten badly. Well, Koscheck looked on the verge of being put out a few times, but he showed more heart than he has ever needed to before and really proved that he is a top level mixed martial artist. I can not think of too many guys who would keep coming forward with the power Alves was showing. Hopefully those leg kicks won't keep Koscheck out of training for his next fight on Dec 10th for too long.

As for Alves, he proved something wrong himself. Normally when a fighter misses weight in a big fight, the fans never forgive him. If he keeps fighting like he did Saturday night, the fans won't just be cheering him...they might be cheering him against GSP the next time he steps in the cage. Does it make me a bad MMA fan that I'm a bit more excited about that fight than I am about the GSP-Penn fight?

And then, of course, the main event took the stage and managed to...confuse us?

I've read a few articles about how Silva was clowning around and disrespecting the fight, but that was not what I was thinking as I watched the fight. What I thought I was watching was a champion who had a lot of respect for the power of the challenger, had even more respect for his chin after tagging him a few times and did not want to get into a slug fest that might leave him open for a big punch. It might not have been quite as exciting as the usual Silva fight, but contrary to popular belief, he is not superman and can actually be hurt by things that do not glow green. In most of his other fights, his opponents have come forward and allowed him to pick them apart with his counter striking, but Cote was trying to avoid that himself.

All that being said, I hope we do not see a rematch. Yes, Cote made a better showing than a lot of people expected, but it still was not a close fight.

So, if you learned anything Saturday night, it is that me, you, the "experts" and everyone else's thoughts and opinions do not matter one iota when the cage door closes.

The unexpected happens just as often as the expected when you take all the analysis away and two men answer the questions themselves.