It was a big night win for Randy Couture in UFC The Uprising with a monster 5 rounder ending up with a decision rightfully swinging his way to make him the new UFC heavyweight champion. Where does this leave Tim Sylvia?
Other upsets on the card include Renato Sobral’s defeat to Jason Lambert with an explosive KO punch in round 2. Matt Hughes and Rich Franklin managed to get a win but Matt Hughes had to go all the way to the wire for a decision whereas Jason MacDonald’s corner stopped the fight at the end of round 2.
Matt Hamill continues with a perfect record in the UFC, he’s a bulldog.
UFC comes to the Nationwide Arena in Columbus Ohio with UFC68 “The Uprising” and a fight card that’s full to the brim with all out non-stop ground ‘n pound action.
Randy Couture (”The Natural”) is back in the UFC for the first time since his loss to Chuck Liddell way back in February 2006 to face Tim Sylvia (”The Maine-iac”). Randy’s always said that he’d come back to the UFC if the conditions were right and right now is the best time for him to be back in the UFC, especially because of the fact that there’s not a lot of fighters of Tim Sylvia’s weight to fight!
Sylvia’s regular weight is around 255lbs which is all packed into his mammoth 6″8 frame, why would anyone want to take on a beast that size? Enter Randy Couture, 6″2 and 35lbs lighter at 220lbs. Interesting matchup with the weight difference and the height and reach, but will reach really be an issue? For Sylvia, yes. He’s going to want to keep the fight upright and defend against Couture’s takedowns. Sylvia’s explosive with a lot of wins coming from KO/TKO and has exhibited a great takedown defence as shown against a seasoned veteran Jeff Monson (”The Snowman”). A wrestler like Monson is going to rely on the taken down and grapple but Sylvia was strong and able even with his big frame and survived Monson’s attempts. Couture’s going to want to do the same. It’s a tough matchup to call, I’d love to see Couture back in the Octagon again but Sylvia’s the champ and not going to want to let it go so easily. Time will tell.
The Uprising also sees the return of Matt Hughes for the first time since his loss to Georges St. Pierre in November 2006. Hughes suffered a devastating barrage of kicks and punches to lose early in the 2nd round to St. Pierre. Now he’s back and needs to get back in gear to add to his amazing MMA career. He’s facing The Ultimate Fighter 4 (TUF4) finalist Chris “Lights Out” Lytle in what’s going to be a very interesting matchup at 170lbs. They both stand at a similar height with only 2 inches going to Lytle and are both veterans of MMA and in the UFC. The Ultimate Fighter and TUF4 has been slated for it’s poor quality and UFC’s jumping on the bandwagon of reality TV. I disagree about the slating of the pedigree and quality of the fighters, I think the shows have produced some great fighters like Kendall Grove (at UFC69) and especially Michael Bisping (at UFC70). This is not an easy fight for Matt Hughes and again is tough to call. Insiders have told me that Hughes hasn’t trained for this a lot and that he thinks he doesn’t need to, I am eager to see this fight.
As if that’s not enough to be excited about, we’ve also got the return of my favorite fighter in the UFC 185lbs class in Rich Franklin (”Ace”). Rich suffered a devastating facial injury by the hands of Anderson Silva (”Spider”) at UFC64. His nose was broken in 9 billion places and to come back from that is going to be hard to say the least, luckily he’s fighting Jason MacDonald to which you might say who? Don’t scoff, this guy has earned his nickname “The Athlete” and he’s a great technical fighter and a master of submission. He last fought Chris Leben who’s an out an out brawler and was taking a lot of strikes and pushing the aside with decent defence and non-stop activity, constantly working until bam, 4 minutes into round 2 he slaps on a modification of a guillotine choke and taps out Leben. Interesting fight and yet again, not an easy one to call. It’s a tough fight but it’s one that Franklin must win to get back on track.
Other notable fights on the card include Renato Sobral’s (”Babalu”) return fight in the UFC since his TKO loss to Chuck Liddell in August 2006. Sobral’s needing to get back into gear and to get a third shot at Liddell in the future he really has to prove himself. He’s taking on Jason Lambert (”The Punisher”), who last got punched out (KO’d) by Rashad Evans at UFC63. Sobral needs to win but Lambert’s not going to want to give in too easily although if you’re betting on this one, the favorite must be Sobral.
Last but not least on the undercard that might not be shown is the phenomenally strong TUF fighter Matt Hamill (”The Hammer”). The obvious thing to note about this guy is that he’s deaf but that doesn’t stop him, he’s as strong as an ox and is an amazingly gifted wrestler. He’s one to watch in the UFC (so far perfect record) and this is noted that it may not be shown on PPV.
The short card aspect for UFC1 was very quickly rectified by the time it got to UFC2, No Way Out. This was held on March 11th, 1994 in Mammoth Gardens, Denver, Colorado.
There were two major monster rounds with Johnny Rhodes submitting David Levicki after a gruelling 12 minutes. It was an interesting display, Karate versus Kung Fu and neither looking very effective, who would have thought that Rhodes would later win by rear naked choking the hell out of Fred Ettish after 3 minutes!Although Ken Shamrock wasn’t in this contest, Royce Gracie was and had the chance to walk away with UFC2.
Nothing is ever that easy, if Gracie wanted to win UFC2 then he had 4 fights to win. First off was a relatively short (5 minute) match against Tokyo, Japan’s Minoki Ichihara and his Karate fighting style. Ichihara was very orthodox and straight forward in his attacks and Gracie soon got to grips and choked him out with a lapel choke. Wearing a Karate Gi (pyjama-like outfit) is not a good idea when you are fighting against a Jiu Jitsu power force like Royce Gracie.
Next up, Gracie had to fend off a fighter who became quite a big fighter in Jason Delucia and his Kung Fu fighting sytle. Gracie took the win early after 1 minute with an armbar submission with Delucia tapping out otherwise his arm would have snapped.
After dispatching the Dutchman Remco Pardoel (also Brazillian Jiu Jitsu) Gracie then had Pat Smith to contend with. Smith was also featured in UFC1 but lost to Ken Shamrock and his trademark Heel Hook. Unlikely as it is to Gracie’s style of fighting, he won the fight with strikes and Pat Smith had nothing in his Tae Kwon Do armory to help him, he might as well have learned Tae Bo. With Smith’s submission it gave Royce Gracie a second UFC title.
(3 votes, average: 3.67 out of 5)
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