bolleje

If she armbars Miesha Tate... she will be the new face of Women's MMA (if she's not allready it).

Sucks for Maia. Weidman is probably an even hard (if not harder) challenge then Bisping and a bit of a no-name. I guess the winner of this bout won't be the immediate 'n°2 contender' either. No way UFC would book a Silva-Maia II anyway, so there's that offcourse... I'm fearing Weidman d. Maia by boring decision :-(

Agreed on that one :-). I think even Gus Johnson thinks Gus Johnson is boring. But I disagree on your other comment though... Rogan did make Yamasaki's job a lot harder. The official was visibly struggling... no need for Joe Rogan to make it even worse. I think he may have influenced a lot of fans too with his actions. And if you watch the replay... Yamasaki's decision is at least defensable, if not the correct call... EDIT: And I seriously hope for Rogan & White (and the fighters offcourse) that nobody gets serious brain damage because of a punch to the back of the head in the near future...

I liked the show as well... amazing headkick from Barboza, definitely knockout of the year-candidate. I'd even agree with Goldberg that it's the greatest KO in UFC history (seeing as the Matrix kick of Pettis was still in WEC). I also liked Koscheck's knockout of Yoshida and offcourse the frontkicks of Machida and A.Silva. Great performances by Belfort, Palhares & Aldo too... must have been a great Brazilian night. What I didn't like was Joe Rogan showing his opinion in the Yamasaki-decision. He's the announcer, he should be somewhat objective. It's not the first time he does this either. I remember him telling Matt Brown he believed Matt had won the fight against Dong-Hyun Kim allthough Kim probably deserved to win the fight. Rogan made Yamasaki's night even more difficult than it allready was. Maybe Dana should let Rogan officiate a couple of matches and see if he'll take all the right decisions...

Well... I dunno. I don't share the frustration. It's pretty safe to say that no matter what happens both guys are at least top 10 heavyweights, so I don't think a loss should change someone's 'beliefs'. One of the two will be a title contender, the other goes back to the drawing board and will need to win some fights first. But as proven with Lesnar now, in the not-so-deep HW division... a title shot can come pretty quickly after a loss. Allthough with the addition of the Strikeforce heavyweights, it's allready a little harder. My top 5 before the fight is Dos Santos - Cain - Lesnar - Barnett - Overeem. The order of the last three needs to be cleared up (also add Mir & possibly Cormier to the mix)... starting with this fight.

Cerrone TKO's Diaz. Fitch decision Hendricks. Gustafsson chokes out Matyushenko. And Hettes submits Nam Phan... (allthough nobody actually cares... how is this main card anyway?)

I think he is. Only Cain & Dos Santos are currently better in my opinion. He beat Couture, Mir & Carwin... that's some of the top guys. He's also one of the few heavyweights to defend the UFC title succesfully twice. Will be interesting to see where Overeem and Barnett will rank eventually but I still see Lesnar beating Overeem. I also think he's still a huge draw, despite his recent inactivity. The guy has what wrestling fans would call 'Superstar looks'. I'm pretty sure that if I'd show some friends of me that don't know a thing about MMA or wrestling pictures of Lesnar, Carwin, Overeem, Mir, Barnett, Dos Santos and Velasquez and ask them to pick the guy that would win a fighting tournament, most of them would pick Lesnar. He's still a monster... that should sell tickets. In other UFC news, another Strikeforce HW has joined: Shane Del Rosario. A bit surprised as I thought they were going to keep him in Strikeforce for the last heavyweight fight (against the Grand Prix winner). Not sure who will face Barnett/Cormier now in that one...

Aeergh... the international league pass site seems down. Anybody else having troubles??

Well... either they decide to make it a feeder league... or it's not sending down. If they really don't want to send Melendez to UFC they'll have to bring in some good guys to fight him instead. Melendez vs Noons or Melendez vs Fodor won't do! It's either top contenders (Pettis, Miller) or the guys that had a recent loss (Guida, Maynard, Sotiropoulos)...

Apparently part of the Showtime/Strikeforce deal was that Melendez & Rockhold needed to stay in Strikeforce and couldn't go to the UFC. If that is the case, they really should add some UFC lightweights to the Strikeforce roster to challenge Melendez. In fact... I think they should 'trade' Masvidal and Maynard. Jorge Masvidal allready beat KJ Noons & Billy Evangelista and lost his title against Melendez. Even if he'd beat JZ Cavalcante, Caros Fodor or Josh Thomson... would anybody really be interested in another Melendez-Masvidal? So put Masvidal in the UFC and send some of their fighters to Strikeforce. First of all... Gray Maynard. An excellent fighter that fought the champion Edgar twice and isn't going to challenge him again soon in the deep lightweight division. But he could immediately challenge Melendez. It wouldn't hurt the UFC roster to lose him and it would really strengthen the Strikeforce one. Book Melendez Vs Maynard (a tough challenge for Gilbert Melendez and if he dominates, he would even be considered as the n°1 lightweight fighter). I also think they could send Clay Guida or George Sotiropoulos to Strikeforce... and some lesser known 'prospects'.

I don't think Dana is saying that Strikeforce doesn't have a deep heavy division... just that the MMA heavyweight division isn't that deep. So only one promotion (in this case UFC) should feature it. It's the right thing in my opinion btw. UFC can use some extra heavyweights and this will also help focus Strikeforce cards on the better fighters from the other divisions (and the women). I wouldn't mind seeing other Grand Prix's too... I'm curious btw to see if any other 'failed UFC fighters' will be included in Strikeforce (Jardine, Soukoudjou,...).

As a European it's really 'strange' to read that people are getting mad that the bigger markets get all the best players. In European soccer this situation is just accepted. In England only Man United, Arsenal, Chelsea or Liverpool ever win the competition. In Spain it's Real or Barcelona (or occassionaly a surprise as Valencia did twice). Nobody really complains. People here think it's the rule of the 'free market'. In the United States (or North-America at least)... a whole different game is played. Somehow the league has all kind of rules to make the 'bad teams' better. Salary caps, salary limits and especially the draft (something that is not existing in Europe and really strange to people that don't know American sports). I kind of prefer the American way here (it has its merits obviously as any team can win a championship) so I agree with some points made here that it would be a shame if all the good players ended up in the big markets. However... I don't think the situation is that bad. There are a lot of very good teams: Heat, Lakers, Mavs, Thunder, Bulls, Knicks, Celtics, Clippers (if they can get Paul and keep Griffin/Gordon), Grizzlies, Spurs, ... can all get very far. One player going to the Lakers or Knicks won't change that... What I do find funny however is that in the traditionally more left-wing Europe the sports is very 'free market'. In the United States (the right-wing part of the world) the sport rules are well... socialist. "Equal chances for everyone". I think that's ironic for a country that has a phobia for socialism...

Well... in other UFC news (everyone probably heard allready) UFC on Fox 2 will see the debut of the flyweight division in a 4-man tournament with UFC vets Benavidez and Demetrious Johnson and newcomers McCall and Urushitani. With the added FOX/Fuel/... cards for 2012, I guess the UFC can definetely support another division. I'm a bit scared about the depth of the bantamweight division though (or the lack of it...). Losing Benavidez, Johnson and probably Mizugaki & some others too will be significant. I guess the biggest winners here are the fighters from the last TUF. Their job security just took a jump, especially for the bantams...

Nogueira's arm was indeed difficult to watch. I don't like Goldberg & Rogan going crazy about it. I even think they made a joke about it or something (it sounded as if they were laughing). If MMA/UFC ever wants to have a chance of being really mainstream (especially here in Europe), they should never do that again. A broken arm is an injury where commentators in every other sport would get very silent of, even shocked. If MMA wants to be a main-stream sport, it has to act like one... But... amazing finish by Mir (more the way towards then the submission itself) and great KO by the Korean Zombie. This guy could become a huge draw I guess... (especially in Asia). And Jones...well, Machida did have a chance. But Jones had more of it :-). I guess that will be the case for his next couple of fights too. I don't see Rashad or Davis beating him either. He allready beat Machida, Rampage & Rua. Who else is there?

I'm also liking this matchup a lot (Bisping - Maia). Lots of people claim Maia has weak wrestling and will never be able to take Bisping down. I strongly disagree. Those people need to rewatch Maia vs Sonnen (probably Maia's best fight) where he took Sonnen (probably a better wrestler then Bisping) down pretty easily, allthough Sonnen wanted to avoid this as much as possible because Maia was coming of several submission of the night awards... If Maia can take Sonnen down... he can take Bisping down. If he does, he may/can submit him. Standupwise Bisping has the advantage but I don't think he has the tools to knock this Maia out. Since the fight with Marquardt Maia's standup has improved significantly and Bisping is not the striker Marquardt is. Also... the guy survived A.Silva for 5 rounds (not that the Spider was going for the KO but he wasn't against Okami either... and then he knocked him out). It's going to be a very important evening for the UFC middleweight division!

DREAM and One FC have signed a partnership deal. I guess that at least will keep Asian MMA alive for some time. http://mmaweekly.com/dream-and-one-fc-enter-new-partnership

They need to make Rua/Henderson II. While I wouldn't go as far as saying Rua got 'robbed', a draw would have been fairer imho. As Jones is lined up to face Machida first, and then finally Rashad... I don't see any better options then doing an immediate rematch. Won't be hard to sell the fight and it actually rankings-wise makes sense too. And the winner could get to face the then-champ (Jones, Machida or Evans). I hear Rampage is going to fight in Japan at UFC144... (Kongo Vs Hunt and Hioki Vs Palaszewski are apparently lined up too)... I guess he will face Griffin? That just leaves Phil Davis for the top of the division but I think he's injured? Cung Le Vs Wanderlei Silva was a very good fight too. I was one of the people who believed Wanderlei should retire... but not so sure anymore. He looked in good shape and he still can take a punch... And we're getting Faber vs Cruz again. It's a good thing that a bunch of TUF-fighters will join bantam & featherweight divisions because they can use some dept... I've seen the first episode (with the qualifying fights) and some of those were really good. Don't know about the rest of it? Any guys that will, given time, pose problems to Aldo or Cruz?

With both Penn & Cro Cop retiring, am I the only one becoming a bit concerned with the UFC losing a lot of its star power? Couture, Hughes, Liddell, Cro Cop, Penn and I think it's likely to see Big Nog, Franklin, Ortiz & Wanderlei Silva retiring soon too... Recent buyrates kind of prove that guys like Aldo & Edgar don't have the power to draw big crowds yet, so it's all about Lesnar, Anderson Silva & GSP now... (who all three have a current big and interesting opponent lined up). But that's only 3 guys with Jones & Velasquez potentially becoming big stars too. Still, I think we could see more Leben vs Munoz kind of main-events if this continues...

Pff... apparently Rogan & Goldberg think I'm not a fighting fan: I don't like Leonard Garcia. I think he's an idiot who rushes in with no effort to actually win the fight... He's doing some kind of sports entertainment where he and his opponent take undefended shots at each other... it's ridiculous. He lets his hands down not to trick the opponent into attacking but just to show the fans he can take a punch. After ten fights... we got the message, Leonard. Now can you please try to win your fight? Other then that, yet another slightly disappointing fight for my favorite fighter Demian Maia. Allthough he won, he needs to win more convincing if he wants another title shot... Sonnen was brilliant. I liked his post-match challenge of A. Silva. Even before the interview I was thinking that his performance (and the very close fight against Silva) deserved another shot at the title. If offcourse he's clean. Which I still don't trust but ok... I guess innocent until proven is still valid. I root for Barnett too, so. The added stipulations make it an even bigger fight. Retiring from the UFC still leaves him some options to do big-money fights in Japan or elsewhere (he could fight Marquardt in BAMMA for example). And Silva also would have options if he left as he could go to light heavyweight. And if he'd lose... who would want to see him stay at middleweight anyway? He's defeated about everyone anyway...

1. Demian Maia 2. Andrei Arlovski 3. Brock Lesnar 4. Rampage Jackson 5. Georges St-Pierre 6. Frank Mir 7. Alistair Overeem 8. Josh Koscheck (what? I like the guy...) 9. Jon Jones 10. Anderson Silva, the fighter. (A.Silva, the person seems a bit of an ass) wildcard: Tarec Saffiedine (cause he's Belgian :-))

Maximo Blanco is heading to the UFC after his Strikeforce loss to Pat Healy. He's dropping to featherweight though. Add the recent additions of other former lightweights Kenny Florian, Tyson Griffin, TUF Jonathan Brookins, Zhang Tie Quan, Darren Elkins, ... and Japan's Hatsu Hioki and the featherweight division has had a major input of talent this year...

Cormier looked a bit euhm... fat to me, allthough I probably would say something totally different if he was standing right in front of me. Still, I think he could probably go for light heavyweight. Barnett-Cormier should be a good fight, but the hype for this GP is entirely gone. Silva-Barnett would have been better in that regard. Rockhold-Jacare was a great title fight in my opinion. If the UFC has brought in Cung Le and Mayhem, they certainly should bring in these two too. Could give the middleweight division some much needed new faces for The Spider to walk through. In that regard, speculating about who Rockhold will face next is a bit pointless. Who knows how long it'll take before he ends up at UFC.

The UFC isn't wasting any media-time this week: Little Nog vs Ortiz is announced for UFC 140 while Vitor Belfort says that he's fighting Cung Le at UFC 139. Nick Diaz, Cung Le, Alistair Overeem... if Melendez & Henderson join the UFC in the coming weeks then Strikeforce is officially dead.

I guess so... At first sight it would look as that was the worst thing that could happen. But what if Penn actually beats Diaz? Then it's either a rematch GSP-Penn or one more round of GSP-Fitch at welterweight? The only other high-profile matchup at welterweight is Koscheck-Hughes... and GSP has defeated those guys too... So if Penn beats Diaz... I'm thinking we'll finally get Anderson Silva-GSP. EDIT: and in my whole story... I didn't consider for one second that Condit was going to beat GSP.

double post, sorry...