UFC 121 Bonuses

KO of the night goes to Velasquez - $70,000
Fight of the Night goes to Diego Sanchez - $70,000
Submission of the Night - Daniel Roberts - $70,000

UFC 121: Lesnar vs. Velasquez results and recap

All right this was crazy event. Here we go:

Lesnar vs. Velasquez
Did you SEE that?!? Man, this was so unexpected. The match starts and Brock rushes towards Cain swarming on him with punches and kicks even managed to take him down. The Mexican didn't lose his composure even for a second and remained calm fighting his way up from the take down and in every exchange Lesnar was the one getting hit with big shots. After the first minute Brock was gassed out , had cut under his left eye and was obviously not ok losing balance and not defending intelligently. On the other hand Velasquez took him down a few times and hit him with heavy shots and unlike the Shane Carwin fight this shots were very precise. Total dominance from Cain Velasquez and late round one stoppage sealed Cain's title. Brock didn't have any chance here and gave credit and respect after the loss. As usual I was wrong with the prediction on this one as well as the results from the poll here on max-aggression :)
Result: Cain Velasquez TKO.

Jake Shields vs. Martin Kampmann
Kampmann gave a very good welcome party. Shields as expected was the better grappler, very calm and confident in his ground game, impossible to submit. Though he won very close without dominating Martin. His win was deserved but not convincing at all. I am not sure if he deserves the title shot after this performance but he will get it anyway.

Ortiz vs. Hamill
Honestly I don't like much both fighters because they are not so well rounded. Both are wrestlers with good ground and pound but lack many other qualities. Though Ortiz showed great desire to finally win he was just not good enough. Maybe its time for him to give up. If you can't beat Mat Hamill then what title shots are you talking about, Tito? Hamill is a good fighter showed superior boxing skills but we all saw what happened in the Jones fight. I don't think both guys are any threat in the light heavyweight division. They are just not good enough.The UFC also knows that and this fight wasn't that important for the overall situation in the division.Good for Mat and huge loss for Tito.
Result:Hamill via decision

Diego Sanchez vs Paulo Thiago
As I expected a good performance by Diego dominating Paulo during all round and getting deserved decision win.Still has to prove himself after the loss from BJ though.

Brendan Schaub vs. Gabriel Gonzaga
As I expected the overrated Gonzaga was a punching bag for three rounds. Brendan was so much better in his boxing and dominated the whole fight giving no serious chances to Gabe though at the end Gonzaga almost pulled the submission.
Result: Scaub decision

UFC 120 Results and Recap

Here is what I saw in UFC 120 London. First lets start with the main card.

Bisping vs. Akiyama
No matter how hard the UFC tried to hype up the main event everybody knew that both fighters were not that exciting though the fight was decent. Both Bisping and Akiyama tried hard and I give them respect for that.
Akiyama started better landing some hard shots and rocked Michael few times but never managed to really go for the knockout. On the other hand Bisping who seemed better conditioned kept his composure and relaxed more during the second and third round and outworked the japanese superstar.
Akiyama was too static not moving his head and taking a lot of punches which slowed him down. Seeing that he will probably lose he tried to lure Bisping into a slug match looking for a knockout but it didn't happen. Bisping got the decision and hopes for a title shot.
Personally I don't see him being a champion. He is competitive and hard worker but he just isn't that good to be champion and a win over Akiyama isn't such a big deal if you ask me - great respect to Yoshihiro but he seems to slow, gassed out and not durable enough from his first two fights in the UFC.

Hardy vs. Condit
I thought that Condit will make a huge mistake standing with Hardy to just prove a point but I was wrong. First off let me just say that the atmosphere and the crowd for this one were just outstanding. Brus Buffer was epic with the announcement. The game started in slow pace both fighters being cautious. Pretty even with slight advantage for Hardy landing a couple of punches and leg kicks. Then during one exchange both fighters went nuts and started swinging and Carlos got lucky landing first a heavy punch on Hardy's chin sending him in knock down and then finishing him on the ground.
Perhaps Hardy got too emotional and wasn't paying enough attention.I don't know why experienced fighters still do this mistake to get into slug fests risking it all.
Both men showed respect to each other after the fight and Condit gained a huge win.

Mike Pyle vs. John Hathaway
Nothing special here. The older and more experienced and mature Pyle managed to silence the home crowd outworking the Hathaway and won by decision.

Travis Browne vs. Cheick Kongo
Man, when Kongo looks like a real bad ass during his entrance and I felt like he was going to tear to pieces the other guy. But as usual Kongo disappointed. He was the more technical striker had a stand up game as he wanted and still was very insecure and not aggressive enough.This guy is officially mediocre for me. Don't get me wrong I don't want to disrespect Browne's effort but the guy had serious holes in his game throwing this big slow punches and Kongo didn't take advantage of that. You can't be a respected kick boxer and allow this.

Other than that nice event and a good warm up for next week's big match in UFC 121.

Here is the post event press conference:

Klitchko dominated Briggs

Now even for a non-hardcore boxing fan like me it was obvious what happened. Vitali punched Briggs for 12 rounds and won by decission. At some point after the sixth round I felt sorry for Briggs he was just standing there and taking bomb after bomb with nothing to offer in response. The only thing he could be happy about is not getting knocked out - great chin...really though guy. Besides that Shanon didn't manage to land any significant shots, had hard time to even get near hitting Vitali.
Expected result with no surprises.Congratulations to Klitchko fans, though I really want someone to finally drop the bomb and shock the boxing world.

UFC 120 Weigh Ins - results

Just for the guys who enjoy stats - the weigh ins results.

Main card
Michael Bisping [185] - Yoshihiro Akiyama [185]
Dan Hardy [171] - Carlos Condit [170]
John Hathaway [171] - Mike Pyle [170]
Cheick Kongo [228] - Travis Browne [251]
James Wilks [170] - Claude Patrick [171]

Preliminary card
Cyrille Diabate [204] - Alexander Gustafsson [204]
Rob Broughton [257] - Vinicius "Spartan" Queiroz [239]
Paul Sass [155] - Mark Holst [155]
Spencer Fisher [155] - Curt Warburton [154]
James McSweeney [205] - Fabio Maldonado [204]

Nedkov - Cantwell won't take place due to injury