Passing the Guard: UFC 150 Review

Music to listen to:  Masoko Tanga by The Police

Some quick thoughts on UFC 150:

I had Frankie Edgar winning the fight three rounds to two:  Let’s get the controversy out of the way first.  I scored the fight 48-47 in favor of Edgar over Benson Henderson.  I thought the first round was a clear win for Henderson because of the repeated aggressive leg kicks to the challenger and the final submission attempt to end the round.  The second round was for Edgar who showed good ring control and landed the most consequential strike of the round, a right hand punch that sent Henderson to the ground.

The rest of the fight is up for interpretation. I thought Edgar won the fourth and fifth rounds with conviction by landing more strikes and controlling the pace of the bout.  The third round is the one that will have many mixed martial arts fans questioning the decision.  The statistics will show that Edgar landed more strikes but I felt that Henderson had more tangible attacks towards winning the round.  If you gave the third round to Henderson, I could understand the reasoning.

We were reminded of two lessons from the fight:

1)  There’s a bias towards the champion in a title fight.  There’s a vocal sect of MMA fans, judges, referees and even officials that believe that for someone to lose their championship, the challenger must show domination of the champion.  That has to be the reasoning behind two judges giving the fight to Henderson.  Since Edgar didn’t win any round convincingly besides the second, I believe the judges gave Henderson the rounds in question.

2)  Everyone hates Edgar…just kidding

2)  The bigger man looks more impressive standing his ground against a smaller fighter using his speed.  I thought Edgar actually executed his elusive game plan better in the second fight against Edgar.  In the first fight, I felt that Edgar was attempting to move around too much without landing effective strikes.  It wasn’t as bad as Clay Guida against Gray Maynard but it ultimately led to a loss for Edgar.  In the second fight, Henderson still looked like the more dominant fighter and you could hear the positive reactions from the crowd every time he landed a solid strike against Edgar.  I’m sure that the judges were influenced by that.

So now we get to see Nate Diaz get his shot against Henderson in what could be a Fight of the Year contender.

-I was wise to not trust Melvin Guillard.  The moment I heard the verbal pleasantries that were exchanged between Donald Cerrone and Guillard before their fight at UFC 150, I knew that Guillard was in trouble.  Cerrone’s overall experience showed with fighting against his good friend and the knockout showed this.

There are really only two fights from the old WEC that we never got to see when that promotion was in operation that fans would really like to see.  The first one is Miguel Torres vs. Urijah Faber, even though this matchup has lost its luster over the past year.  The second one is Anthony Pettis against Cerrone.  Make that fight happen and let that guy fight the winner of Diaz and Henderson.

-Edgar has entered Rich Franklin/Jon Fitch land.  Edgar can continue to fight at lightweight but will most likely never receive another title shot unless unique circumstances develop, mainly Henderson losing the best.  Edgar could go down one weight class and work within the featherweight division but would not be at his comfortable weight.  Franklin had the same dilemma with Anderson Silva accept in reverse.  He managed to get a few fights at light heavyweight and even fought a cache weight battle against Wanderlei Silva at 195.  Fitch had to deal with Georges St. Pierre in his own division for years and even got defeated by Johny Hendricks to further slide down the welterweight pecking order.

-Welcome to gatekeeper status Jake Shields.  This hurts to write that as an Elite XC and Strikeforce fan who was very happy to see Shields finally make his way to the UFC.  However, Shields’ workman-like victory over Ed Herman was nice but not enough to convince anyone that he’s ready to gain a title shot in his new division of middleweight.

Those are my thoughts, what are yours?