UFC 105: Couture Victorious in Another Robbery
The hits just keep on coming for the UFC. At UFC 105, which played out in Manchester, England, and was broadcast on SpikeTV, elder statesman Randy Couture pressed light-heavyweight opponent Brandon Vera against the cage for three rounds in a fruitless attempt at getting the younger man down. Vera, meanwhile, dropped Couture with kicks and even scored a takedown himself, winding up on top. So who did the unanimous decision go to when time ran out? If you guessed Couture, then you must be in on the grand conspiracy as well – a conspiracy that saw Mauricio “Shogun” Rua robbed blind at UFC 104, Vera’s marginal win stolen out from under him at UFC 105 and repeated felonies perpetrated against UFC fans everywhere.
Of course, it’s not like Couture/Vera wasn’t close. It was. The former heavyweight and light-heavyweight champ wanted little to do with Vera’s superior kickboxing, and he worked diligently to put the Lloyd Irvin-trained grappler on his back where his tried and true ground and pound would be effective. And though Vera got his licks in whenever there was space, it’s not like he blew Couture out of the water. But points are points, and Vera racked them up, especially with a sequence in Round 2 that saw Couture eat a kick to the body and then tumble to the mat. Couture did nothing of note, and certainly nothing meriting the win. What fight did the judges see? Has MMA judging really come to this?
Though it was announced beforehand that the winner of the match-up between Mike Swick and Dan Hardy would be facing Georges St. Pierre for the welterweight title, the news only served to color their UFC 105 bout with a shade of “Jesus, Whoever Wins This Is Going To Get Killed”. For three rounds Swick and Hardy inexplicably hugged, despite the Brit getting the better of the exchanges and rocking the American more than once, and when Hardy took the decision, it was painfully evident that neither has anything the incumbent champ need worry about. Hardy may have stopped Swick’s takedown attempts, but St. Pierre is going to get him down and smoosh him.
TUF 3 winner Michael Bisping may have been destroyed by Dan Henderson at UFC 100, but he made strides in reclaiming lost “star” status with a gutsy TKO win over talented underperformer Denis Kang. Tasting canvas early in Round 1 thanks to a Kang right hand, the Brit survived on autopilot amazingly well, neutralizing Kang’s jiu-jitsu top game with an effective guard. Then came Round 2, when Bisping returned the favor by nailing takedowns and unleashing a devastating ground and pound. Kang completely withered, and the referee had to step in with just over 30 seconds left in the frame.
TUF 9 winners Ross Pearson and James Wilks had mixed results in their regular UFC debuts, with Pearson taking out human punching bag Aaron Riley with a TKO from a cut and Wilks falling to TUF alum Matt Brown. Throughout his nearly two-round affair, Pearson hit faster, hit harder and hit more often, tagging the veteran Riley so much that it was no longer a question of if Pearson would win but if Riley would survive all three rounds. He didn’t. When a cut opened close to his eye, sending blood everywhere, the doctor waived off the bout. Wilks, on the other hand, wanted nothing to do with Brown’s stand-up game, and spent nearly every second of their two-and-a-half round match clinching and working to get Brown down. Yet aside from a close kimura in the third round, Wilks got the worst of it, and after eating strikes both on the feet and on the ground, the Brit needed some referee intervention to prevent Brown from putting him into a coma.
In preliminary action, TUF 9 almost-was Andre Winner tucked Roli Delgado into bed, read him a bedtime story and put him into deep slumber with an overhand right. Alexander Gustafsson treated UFC rookie Jared Hamman with similar love and care, needing only 41 seconds to poke Hamman in the eye and then knock him out.
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