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UFC 60 – Aftermath

By Rob Sayers | May 27, 2006

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By Rob Sayers

Perhaps it was the fact that I wasn’t expecting a great show, but I left the UFC PPV very satisfied and slightly surprised at the high level of entertainment we saw tonight. Coming into the event, only a few of the undercard bouts interested me, and the main event I feared would be uncompetitive and boring, which is bad for a fight with no effect on rankings in any weight class.

Fortunately we didn’t see one boring fight, and the Hughes/Gracie showdown will be remembered as an important one in MMA history.

First, the undercard:

Melvin Guillard vs Rick Davis

Not a lot to be said here. I don’t think Melvin’s stock really went up as his one-sided beatdown of Davis didn’t prove much. However, I’m sure it’s going to be good positive momentum for him in his career. While this wasn’t a competitive fight at all, it was short and ended with a brutal KO, so you can’t ask for much more.

Gabriel Gonzaga vs Fabiano Scherner

This was probably the most boring fight of the night, and still wasn’t too bad. Gonzaga won, but don’t expect to see him makes waves in HW anytime soon.

Spencer Fisher vs Matt Wiman

On top of training and conditioning, experience and heart are two large factors in a fight. Spencer Fisher proved that tonight after he managed to rebound from some bad ground positions to end up winning the fight with a beautiful flying knee in the 2nd round.

Mike Swick vs Joe Riggs

I keep waiting for Mike Swick’s winning streak in the UFC to come to a hault. Something keeps telling me he’s had an easy road and will crash the moment he is fed some stiffer competition. It looks like I’ll have to keep watiing for this as Swick managed to guillotine choke Riggs in the 1st. Swick continues to impress while Riggs again faces a hard loss. What’s next for this guy? He looked great against Diaz, but I hope he’s not off the UFC roster just yet. I still think we’ll see big things from this guy as he progresses.

Brandon Vera vs Assuerio Silva

Vera is another fighter who, for some reason, I just expect to lose whenever he faces some solid guys. Perhaps I’m just not very good at judging these things, as tonight he guillotined his way to victory over Assuerio Silva.

Diego Sanchez vs John Alessio

A suprising and satisfying fight for me. I’m ok with the judges scores, as I don’t think Alessio did enough to win this fight despite some people claiming otherwise. However, it was good to finally see Diego look human. This is the first fight since the general public has seen him where he didn’t totally dominate his opponent. I understand the fear of the takedown was in Alessio’s mind, but I think had he let his hands go more, tonight would have put the first “L” on the Nightmare’s record.

Dean Lister vs Alessio Sakara

Dean showed his awesome BJJ skills once more with a beautiful triangle choke on Sakara (who I now think may have the coolest tattoos in MMA). I can’t tell you how bad I wanted to see him pull off that oma plata, but the triangle was setup extremely well.

As a side note, I actually learned that same setup just this week from recent Fight Opinion Radio guest: Tim Moore when he visited the gym where I train. Cool.

And finally…

Matt Hughes vs Royce Gracie

As awkward as it sounds, tonight it was said (and I think by Randy) that Royce had a “punchers chance” of landing a submission on Matt Hughes. This is exactly how I felt going into this fight. It’s no secret that I felt Hughes would dominate, and he did with little effort it seems. I’m pleased that instead of the boring to-the-judges fight that I predicted, we saw a TKO victory in the 1st.

I initially didn’t care for this matchup. I prefer to see fights that effect the rankings. I would much rather see Hughes rematch GSP rather than see a gimmick match like we saw tonight. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized how important this fight really was.

Tonight, as it happened on November 12, 1993, martial arts in the eyes of the casual fan had changed. Initially, BJJ changed how we viewed martial arts. Before that, some people really thought that traditional martial arts masters were really bad dudes and could pretty much kick ass at will. Well, Royce came along and proved otherwise. Years later, in the minds of many people, BJJ is still the end-all be-all of martial arts.

Tonight, Matt Hughes has showed those folks that it just isn’t so. That the modern mixed martial artist is superior in combat and he did this with quite a bit of authority, pounding out the TKO win late in the 1st round.

The fight was anything but boring, and I commend Royce for stepping up against such a tough opponent when it would have been just as easy to sit back and rest on his legacy.

Final Thought

I’ve been crtical of UFC cards recently, but this one was a winner. But can we try and educate the LA crowd a bit? The booing was ridiculous.

Topics: All Topics, MMA, Rob Sayers, UFC | 5 Comments » | Permalink | Trackback |

5 Responses to “UFC 60 – Aftermath”

  1. Torn Victor says:

    Agreed. Good show all around, very entertaining fights. And they showed eight out of nine fights, making it well worth my $40.

    Good move by the UFC to show three prelims.

  2. Dom says:

    “Years later, in the minds of many people, BJJ is still the end-all be-all of martial arts.

    Tonight, Matt Hughes has showed those folks that it just isn’t so. ”

    This isn’t really an accurate statement based on this fight as there is a huge age difference between the 2 men and that no doubt was a big factor.

    And look at Lister displaying basically pure BJJ in his victory…

  3. Rob Sayers says:

    There was only a 7 year gap. Hughes is 32 where Royce is 39. While I agree in this sport, 39 is getting up there, it’s far from too old. I think other factors, mainly the Matt’s experience against top competition played a bigger role.

    And Lister did use pure bjj…. against a boxer.

  4. Tomer says:

    I had a good time at the sports bar watching the card. The surprising thing, however, is that UFC actually did set up the pay per fight system. The only thing I’d say, however, is $1.99 per fight might be a bit too excessive ($.99 seems a more stable amount). There should also be a full card download option on the on demand site as well, IMO.

  5. […] Man that was one heck of a good PPV. Considering this show was built around one single fight my expectations were fairly low but they delivered and then some. Only one fight went to a decision and that got really entertaining at the end as it was a two minute piggy back ride. […]

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