Let’s take a look at some of the minor fights, first. My condolences to Dan Miller for his painful loss against Chael Sonnen. That early attempt at a guillotine choke must have just wrecked Miller’s arms. Seriously, despite his attempts at a few more submissions, Miller just got pounded into the mat by Sonnen once that guillotine choke came off. I’m not sure that the choke alone was what did it for him, but I do think that the punishment Miller took in the first round essentially set him up to lose the other two. To be honest, it was a bit unbelievable that Sonnen couldn’t finish him off, despite absolutely dominating for almost all 15 minutes of the fight.

I wasn’t sure about the decision to stop the Drew McFedries vs. Xavier Foupa-Pokam fight. Sure, McFedries was dominating and Foupa-Pokam had taken a lot of hits, but looking at him just after the fight had stopped, it seemed as if he still had the capacity to fight. It was a tough decision, though, and I believe the ref is always right to err on the side of fighter safety. It was too bad for Foupa-Pokam, but an incredible display of dominance for McFedries.

The Frank Edgar vs. Sean Sherk fight was a pleasant surprise for a fight that seemed bound to go to Sherk. I’ve heard that Dana White said he couldn’t see how Edgar could have won that fight. Probably everyone was thinking the same thing. It was a good technical fight, though, with Edgar avoiding the bigger strikes of Sherk while scoring more points with faster flurries. He took all three rounds 30 – 27 ending in good condition, so his game plan can hardly be faulted.

Matt Hughes vs. Matt Serra was a fun fight, except for the entire second round. That round was terrible to watch, but an excellent strategic decision on the part of Matt Hughes. He really did just lie on top of Serra for the round, though it should be said that Serra didn’t try to do much other than eliminate his striking power and stop transitions. I think Serra was relying too much on a referee stand up and thus got lazy about attempting submissions. Hughes made attempts to pass and continued to do damage, and this seemed enough for the ref not to take away his advantage.

The first and third rounds were pretty close, so it’s hard to know for sure which round won it for Hughes. I was a bit surprised it wasn’t a split decision and I feel that the judges probably didn’t all judge Hughes as having won the same rounds. Nevertheless, it was entirely expected that Hughes would get the decision once he wasn’t submitted in the third round, so I doubt anyone could reasonably say that Hughes didn’t earn his victory. Hopefully it will teach a lesson to everyone going up against wrestlers – you have to spot when they are looking to simply steal a round with ground control, because that one free round will keep them fresh and ahead on the judges’ score cards.

Finally, the championship fight between Lyoto Machida and Rashad Evans was spectacular. Considering their unique styles, I expected a lot of circling to begin with, so that didn’t bother me. Evans did not commit at the right time, and this is probably what lost it for him so quickly. Let’s not be unrealistic here – Machida would have won regardless, he was clearly superior. I just think that Evans would have lasted longer had he dropped his strategy of countering and decided to commit to an exchange of his choosing. As it happened, though, Machida found the right opportunities and had the killer instinct to just keep hitting once Evans was clearly fading. Still, you have to give Rashad Evans props for his ability to keep standing and punching even after so many big hits.

Now it’s time to look forward to UFC 98 and hopefully a few wars between fighters that are looking for a second chance. It’s billed as The Comeback, and it would be great if Rich Franklin could get back on the path to title shots, as I think he’s a fighter who has not quite lived up to his full potential. I’m hoping he still can.

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UFC 2009: Undisputed thankfully does not disappoint where it matters, but first, welcome to the first post for MixedMartialBets.com! While most posts will be about betting on MMA events, the release of UFC 2009: Undisputed and my current obsession with the game makes it impossible for me to avoid a review for the XBox 360 version. A round up of UFC 98 can be expected soon, as well.

The first thing you’ll notice about UFC Undisputed is that you’re going to need to go through about 45 minute of tutorials to have any chance at understanding the ground game. This doesn’t mean the controls are hard. In fact, while any people have been saying that, a think they may be confusing complexity with difficulty of use. The control layout is incredibly logical, it just takes some time to learn to use it effectively.

Now, that isn’t to say that the complexity of the controls isn’t annoying. I played it against a friend on the release day after having played the demo obsessively for the past couple of weeks. He beat be mercilessly with button mashing. It was a case of a little knowledge being a dangerous thing. While he hammered away with elbows, I tried to remember and execute technical methods of getting myself out of the situation rather than just getting away from repeated elbow strikes to the head.

It doesn’t take long until the controls become second-nature, however, at which point the tables turn entirely. Once my ground-and-pound game was down pat, I absolutely dominated and button bashing was completely ineffective against me. (By the way, prepare to be horrified when you mount with the heavyweights. It is ridiculous how quickly you can get a TKO or KO.) Anyway, controls in UFC Undisputed allow for the complexities of MMA to be enjoyed without getting in the way too much. There are initial stumbling blocks, but it should all be natural after some time in the tutorial and a decent run in career mode.

There is one aspect of UFC Undisputed that is just plain awful – the menu system. When I’m going between menus, I don’t want to have to wait for everything to load. IT’S A MENU, HOW MUCH CAN THERE BE TO LOAD?! It seriously annoys me that nearly every single time I select something in a menu, I have to wait 2 or 3 seconds until the next section loads. Why would they do this? Are they insane? Do they think people really enjoy menus? Perhaps I’m being somewhat dramatic, but it really does seem ridiculous that you have to wait through a billion loading screens while navigating menus. Don’t even get me started on the loading times for the create a fighter tool. Anytime I wanted to preview something, it would take a few seconds to load, so I eventually just stopped caring and picked based on what I could make out from the sample pictures.

Right, now that I’ve gotten that off my chest, back to the good stuff. As has been mentioned, the controls of UFC Undisputed allow for a great deal of complexity. They allow for it, and it’s all in the game. Think of one of the standard styles of MMA fighting. You can pull it off. Ground-and-pound simply requires skill with shoot takedowns, wrestling clinches, transitions and ground striking. Sprawl-and-brawl requires good takedown defence and solid stand up skills. Submission artists need takedowns, throws, transitions and submissions. While I chose to focus on ground-and-pound because it’s defensive and knockouts are awesome, it seems likely that any combination of skills can be made to work. Well rounded fighters seem to do quite well in UFC Undisputed, though, rather than fighters that are optimised for a particular kind of fighting.

I really only care about the fighting aspects of the game, but the rest of the bells and whistles deserve mentioning, I suppose. Graphically, the game is mixed in quality. The fighters look great, but all the other models have clearly not been worked on for very long. Dana White’s character model in particular is terrifying to look at and the model for Arianny and Edith are… Well, not identical, but pretty bloody close to it! It’s a bit disappointing, but this is the kind of thing that will likely be improved come next year when we are almost certain to see another release.

Soundwise, the game is again mixed. The commentary by Joe Rogan and Mike Goldberg is entertaining at first, but repetition will annoy most people within a few plays with the same fighters. The music is either terrible menu music or terrible rock. Limp Bizkit, people. Limp. Bizkit. When was the last time they were relevant? I’m not even asking when they were good, because that’s a whole different matter, just how could anyone still think them relevant? It doesn’t matter, most people will probably turn the music off and pump up something else.

Aside from the main exhibition mode that lets you choose two fighters from the same weight class to go up against one another, there are a couple of other modes. The career mode is pretty interesting. It’s split between training and fighting, essentially. Joe Silva and Dana White set you up with fights, and you have to plan in between events for training your essential abilities like strength, speed andcardio as well as your fighting techniques with sparring. There are also other events like training camps and promotional opportunities. While interesting, it’s probably a bit basic for people who would be interested in a UFC RPG and too fiddly for people who just want a progressive set of fights for the guy they make.

The classic fights mode will probably see many controllers hurled across the room in frustration. The goal is to finish the classic fights in the way that they were actually won. They have video introductions by some standard female host type, and they use the pre-fight talks from the actual events. Yes, you can again experience the thrill of both fighters claiming that this is going to be a challenge for them, but they’ve been watching the other guy fight and think they can take advantage of some holes in his game. It would be missed if it wasn’t there, but anyone who’s watched the events just will not care. Anyway, trying to achieve the exact results of the fights is maddening.

Knockouts are really, really likely in this game, so trying to reach a decision victory in the classic fights is painful. Think about the strike fest of the TUF 1 Finale and how hard it is to keep striking without someone copping a hit that rocks them or knocks them out. (Actually, when I played the demo, I ws trying to take it to decison because the knockuts happened so often, and at one point I was able to continuously rock Chuck Liddell with head kicks. I just waited for him to recover, then did it again and again. It was exactly as entertaining as it sounds.) With submissions taking a lot of setup work to perform, trying to meet conditions such as rear naked choke in the second round could send thousands into tears when they just miss out on the choke as the second round ends.

Overall, if you like MMA, then you will like UFC Undisputed after playing with it for a while. People who aren’t into MMA may be convinced to develop an interest after playing this, however. Just be warned – if you introduce someone to MMA with this game, you will have to put up with jokes about sweaty men hugging all over again. When this happens, do try to restrain yourself from taking the game to reality.

News on the aftermath of UFC98 very soon…