UFC on FX Recap

UFC on FX 1 Recap

With an undercard that was stacked with the new guys, it was surprisingly exciting. First the Canadian Nick Denis put the world on notice with his violent KO with Jordan Mein-esque elbows from the clinch to cut Joseph Sandoval down like a tree. Quick and violent always leads to a good KO. Afterwards, Daniel Pineda absolutely manhandled Schilling with powerful standup and an impressive ground game en route to a quick RNC finish. Fabricio Camoes did much of the same against Tommy Hayden in his return to the UFC. Charlie Brenneman easily wrestled his way past Daniel “The Ninja” Roberts for an easy unanimous decision victory. Habib Nurmagomedov put the UFC lightweight division on notice with his dominant victory over the tough Kamal Shalorus. On the last prelim of the night, Jorge Rivera played out his swan song in sweet fashion with his TKO victory over Eric Schafer, leaving behind an entertaining career.

The FX card started out with a bang. In a fight that I knew was either going to be an easy submission win for Morecraft or an easy KO win for Barry. Although it wasn’t easy, Barry still KO’d him in the first round, violently. Barry showed off an extremely improved ground game when he shook off the much larger Morecraft from his back and defended a really good armbar. Barry really impressed me with his submission defense, he just needs to work on his takedown defense. After he defended the armbar, he quickly put Morecraft away quickly in a finish that was stopped a few punches too late.

I really thought that Easton was going to make quick work of Papazian because Papazian was both a newcomer and he took the fight on short notice, but Papazian put on a show with Easton. They slugged it out with a few exchanges that looked like Don Frye-Yoshihiro Takayama.  The fight was extremely entertaining with both the guys showing the world what the bantamweight division is all about. It truly could have gone either way but Easton pulled out the victory by majority decision in this Fight of the Year candidate.

In a fight that people were already calling this one a Fight of the Year candidate before it even started, Josh Neer and Duane Ludwig both looked impressive until Ludwig made a drastic mistake. Ludwig hurt Neer early with his powerful Muay Thai, but Neer is one of the tougher fighters out there so he played it smart by going for the takedown. After Ludwig was able to push Neer off twice, he got to his knees and left his neck wide out, having me yell at the TV at the very stupid decision. Neer saw it as everybody else did, and grabbed the guillotine to choke Ludwig unconscious.

In the main event, Jim Miller and Melvin Guillard fought to put themselves back into title contention. After Guillard seemed to have rocked Miller on the feet, something we don’t often see, Miller took him to the ground, a place he knows he has an advantage over Guillard. Guillard eventually stood up, only to have Miller jump on his back like a monkey and slide in the RNC for the impressive submission finish.