UFC 104 Results

UFC 104 ended with controversy, after the headline bout didn’t go quite as expected.

Reigning light heavyweight champion Lyoto Machida was the first LHW champ to successfully defend his belt in a long time. The 5 round contest eventually went to decision, and the judges gave it to Machida. Ever since then, the MMA blogosphere has been abuzz with talk of how Shogun was robbed, with the last two rounds considered by many to go to the challenger, along with at least one of the first three rounds (though some would say all). The judges disagreed, however, and a rematch is now in the works.

Plenty is being said about the Machida/Shogun fight, but I think it’s best to just let that argument get sorted out in the rematch. I think it was a really close fight, and Shogun laid the foundation for beating Machida, but didn’t quite have the whole gameplan. Instead, I want to take a look at some of the other fights, starting with Joe Stevenson vs. Spencer Fisher. The fight went to Stevenson at 4:03 of the second round, thanks to elbows from Stevenson that forced Fisher to tap. Fisher had already taken a cut in the first round, and the elbows just made things worse. Stevenson’s trademark control meant there was no escape from the punishment, so even it was only a matter of time for Fisher to lose after the elbows began raining down. It’s a great sign for the return of Joe Daddy, who I am sure will be contesting the lightweight title again in a few fights.

Cain Velasquez utterly justified his reputation as one of the most dangerous rising stars of the UFC heavyweight division when he GnP’d his way to victory against MMA veteran, Ben Rothwell. While Velasquez was the favorite going into the fight, his relative lack of experience compared to Rothwell didn’t make it look like this would be an easy win, but it was. Ending at 0:58 of the second round in a referee stoppage, Rothwell was utterly dominated technically, and certainly stopped posing a threat long before the stoppage. Strangely, though, it never seemed like he was in danger of being knocked out. This has led many to believe that Velasquez has no finishing power in his strikes, which could bode poorly for him when he comes up against strikers in the future.

This show will always be overshadowed by the controversy of the main event, but there could be some interesting consequences of UFC 104. For one, the LHW division could be in store for another epic trilogy that would play out spectacularly in Brazil, between Machida and Shogun. Secondly, Joe Stevenson should be set back on a rising career path again, having proven that his losses were anomalies in the career of an otherwise excellent fighter. Finally, Cain Velasquez will have to be put up against one of the bigger names soon, as was meant to be the case in the originally scheduled bout of Velasquez vs. Carwin. A title shot is due, but it’ll have to wait until at least a month or two into the new year, as the Lesnar/Carwin fight has been postponed until 2 January, so it seems likely that he’ll face someone else first.

Next week I’ll be posting about the two Strikeforce events, with posts about UFC 105 soon after.