UFC 68: Best Ever

This last Saturday, the

The UFC started in the 90's as a "Let's see whose martial art is really the best" tournament. In fact it wasn't long before it was obvious that this was the loser Gracie family stacking the brackets to promote themselves as unbeatable... Anyway, I watched the first several until I lost my lunch and then stopped. In recent years, it was actually bought by people who let it take its own shape, and the World discovered "Mixed Martial Arts" (MMA). Now people train to be absolute badasses (just like Sergeant Apone would have wanted).

Now, to modern times: the absolute toughest of the UFC (limited to the last few years) have been (in no particular order): Matt Hughes, Randy "the Natural" Couture, Chuck "Ice douche" Liddell, Tito Ortiz, Rich "Ace" Franklin, George "Frenchie" St. Pierre. There are other dudes that are really tough, but these are the top, and you can see, I'm not a fan of all of them. ;) So, Matt Hughes recently lost to Frenchie, because he tried to pretend he was a striker (when he's really just the 2nd most badass grappler in the UFC), Rich Franklin lost to a new dude who is more than just a striker, but also a boxer (tough draw Rich), and Randy Couture lost 2 of the last 3 encounters w/ Liddell (who's the current champ) and then promptly retired... All of this left the UFC looking pretty bleak. :(

Enter UFC 68 (this last weekend). In one night, Couture came out of retirement, bumped up a weight class and challenged for the title, Matt Hughes reemerged from his loss w/ a renewed respect for his own badassness in grappling, and Rich Franklin decided to beat someone senseless on his way back to the title too! This was awesome!

So, Hughes smacked up this tool from the Ultimate Fighter. He looked like he had a little bit of ring-rust as he missed an arm bar at one point, but that was nuthin'. This guy's awesome!

Franklin' pounded this weird little canuck who nicknamed himself, "the Athlete." LOL, he deserved a beating for choosing that lame-ass name, and Franklin' dished him one. :)

Then, for the main event... Couture (one of my absolute favorites of all time), a 44 year old chunk of granite, put an absolute BEATING on this big, fat, slow, lame, unathletic, loser, Tim "the Lame-iac" Sylvia. Sylvia got the belt by using his 6'8" lumbering, fat, oafishness to confound real fighters. There's an old adage from basketball, "You can't coach 7 feet." Well, that worked for Timmy until last night when he met a real fighter. Couture set the tempo immediately, but doing a low kick-left-right combination that was so beautiful, I could barely believe it... And Couture is a friggin' wrestler no less. He knocked Sylvia's block off and then Couture just punished him. It was beautiful. At the end, it was just amazing, and Couture said the kewlest damn thing I've ever heard after someone takes the belt, "Not bad for an old man." Amen brother!

This is the longest blahdot entry so far, but the UFC was that awesome!

Mon, 05 Mar 2007 11:10:37 PST

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