Affliction: Banned, Ultimate Fight Night: Silva – Irvin, DREAM.5

Wow. What a weekend that was. Unfortunately, due to what looks like Zuffa screwing things up for everyone (re: a post from Bravo saying the postponing of Affliction’s airing until next week isn’t their or Affliction’s fault), I wasn’t able, like most of the UK, to watch Affliction via normal methods, and I chose not to watch a stream of the Silva card live, picking up what I can afterwards. I’ll go through what I have seen on what’s easily the biggest few days of MMA this year.

Firstly, wow at Fedor. The 36-second demolition of Tim Sylvia was simply incredible. This is a Sylvia that, if you remember, beat the crap out of Nog for most of his fight with him until he lucked out in the third round, and Fedor has the fight won within a minute. Incredible. Any doubters of Fedor, myself included, saying that he hasn’t faced top level competition since forever and similar things, have been silenced. Any questions there may have been about whether he still is the #1 HW in the world have been answered, the question is where this puts him on a pound for pound scale. In my opinion, I don’t think you can rank him number 1, that has to go to Anderson Silva, and I think I still have GSP above him. So that’d put him at 3, which funnily enough is exactly how Sherdog has their p4p list before this weekend’s action.

Elsewhere on the Affliction card, Andrei Arlovski got back on track with an entertaining third round stoppage over fellow top-10 heavyweight Ben Rothwell. In a fight that was at times pretty brutal, Arlovski was constantly on top over the first couple of rounds, barring a short spell in the second where Rothwell managed to get top position, but was unable to do a great deal and then nearly got TKO’ed himself when the fight was stood up. Andrei finished the fight off in the third by finally dropping Big Ben.

Josh Barnett took the win over Pedro Rizzo in what, the knockout aside, wasn’t that interesting of a fight. Mark Hominick scored the victory over Savant Young with a nice submission. Vitor Belfort’s fight was similar to Barnett’s, i.e. dull but with a decent knockout. Little Nog crushed some guy who clearly shouldn’t have been in the same ring with him. Matt Lindland was comfortable enough against Negao but never looked like finishing the fight, particularly late after Negao briefly threatened in the second. Pyle’s submission was easy enough. Not yet seen the Buentello and Sobral fights which both went the distance.

I think we need to give Affliction credit for putting on relevant fights, particularly in the heavyweight division which hasn’t seen much of interest anywhere in a long time. They do, however, have a lot to work on if they’re not just going to be spewing money left, right and centre. Firstly, awesome as Megadeth are, metal bands don’t have a place in anything apart from pro wrestling. Secondly, the production could be tightened up somewhat. Finally, they need to make fights a lot less one-sided, most bouts had a clear favourite and were somewhat predictable. One thing they can do is work from this card and create more relevant matchups. Something like Barnett-Arlovski is of obvious interest. Rothwell’s shown he can at least stand with higher-quality opposition, if he never really threatened. Couture, if he finally sorts out his legal wranglings with Zuffa, can be thrown into the mix with interesting consequences.

Looking at the UFC card (one which I’ve seen a lot less of), Silva’s finish over Irvin was, well, inevitable. To be honest, although the punch that floored Irvin was accurate, it didn’t seem to have a great deal of power behind it, but who are we to know? What the Spider does now is uncertain. With Okami apparently injuring himself recently, that next defence looks to be off for now, so one can only assume that they feed Cote to him sooner than expected. Then what? Either he makes a serious go at 205 or he doesn’t. Silva has basically cleared out the 185 division, and feeding him people at 205 who aren’t even top-10 is going to get dull quickly. Who else can he be fed at 185? Michael Bisping (assuming he beats Leben) is the only new name that I can think of. I can’t think of anyone outside the UFC that would cause Silva any trouble at that weight either. So I think that after a couple of defences, Silva will move up to 205. There’s no shortage of quality there.

On the undercard, Brandon Vera won his first fight at 205, I have the video but have yet to watch it but winning by decision against Reese Andy is, once again, unconvincing. Maybe he’ll perform better once he’s used to cutting to that weight, who knows. Rory Markham’s knockout was beautiful, after Farber gave him the runaround for a while with decent strikes, Markham counters with possibly the best high kick KO I’ve seen since Evans-Salmon. Frankie Edgar swept the judges’ scorecards against a returning Hermes Franca (again, video is queued, busy weekend). Cain Velasquez was dominant with a quick win over Jake O’Brien, which should hopefully see him seeing better opposition in a real hurry, UFC is in need of heavyweights and fast. Sounds like Kevin Burns lucked out again, and CB Dollaway managed not to get hilariously armbarred for once.

And on to Dream 5. Waiting for the main event to come through on usual channels, but Joachim Hansen capitalised on an injury suffered by Eddie Alvarez in his great semi-final matchup against Kawajiri to come into the final against Shinja Aoki, who had previously beaten Caol Uno over the full 15 minutes. It’s somewhat disappointing that what has been an all-round great series of lightweight action has to be settled by someone coming in from a reserve fight to defeat someone who’d gone over 12 minutes more than him on the same night, arguably against a lot better opposition as well, but it’s the nature of the beast that this sometimes happens. With a bit of luck, Aoki and/or Alvarez will face Hansen again in the near future. Elsewhere, there were some real nice submissions all across the card, Mark Hunt being on the receiving end of a keylock from Alistair Overeem who apparently took the fight on ultra-short notice, Daisuke Nakamura and Joseph Benavidez also got wins in the fights that I’ve seen so far.

I’ll try to get back with more thoughts on the fights that I’ve not yet watched if I see something worth commenting on, right now I just want to put down some thoughts and catch up later.