UFC 103 Recap

After the KO poor Fight Night on Wednesday, it was refreshing to see UFC 103 delivering the goods.

While the preliminary card was apparently filled with decisions, the main card of UFC 103 saw almost every fight ending in a KO or TKO. The only fight that didn’t was due to verbal submission as the result of strikes – which you may as well count as a TKO victory.

The results for the event were:

• Tyson Griffin knocked out Hermes Franca at 3:26 of the second round
• Josh Koscheck demolished Frank Trigg with punches at 1:26 of the first round
• Paul Daley beat Martin Kampmann via TKO at 2:31 of the first round
• Junior dos Santos caused Mirko ‘Cro Cop’ Filipovic to verbally submit at 2:00 of the third round
• Vitor Belfort put himself on the path to an early title shot by knocking out Rich Franklin at 3:02 of the first round

I am incredibly surprised by the results of three of these fights. The first is that Josh Koscheck had so little trouble beating Frank Trigg. I thought Trigg was better than that, but he is clearly so far past his prime that his talk of a title run was more than ridiculous.

Second is that Cro Cop had to verbally submit, though he had certainly taken more than enough punishment by that point that it’s understandable. Some think it may have been a career ending loss, but it’s always a bad idea to jump to such conclusions after a single bad beating.

Finally, I never thought Vitor Belfort could possibly defeat Rich Franklin so soundly. There’s talk that he’ll be next to fight for the title, and I doubt anyone could say that he doesn’t deserve it. Franklin’s reputation is back to where it was after his loss to Dan Henderson, which seems somewhat unfair given his recent win over Wanderlei Silva. The guy can fight – he’s just unlikely to get another shot at the title unless he becomes an entirely different fighter.

Sadly, there’s a long wait until the next UFC event, but it’s going to be Shogun vs. Machida, so I’m already excited. This will be the first test of Machida as a light heavyweight champion. Will he retain his undefeated record, or will a revitalized Shogun work out the karate master’s bizarre defensive style? I can’t wait for this one, but before that there is the next ShoMMA event on 25 September and WEC 43 on 10 October, which I will obviously make comment on.