UFC 147 Main Card Recap

                                  (Wanderlei Silva vs. Rich Franklin)             Photo by Sherdog.com

Yuri Alcantara vs. Hacran Dias: This fight was the most disappointing in my opinion. I thought that it would be an awesome fight but it was a very lackluster with Dias winning every round. His standup was clearly inferior to Alcantara but his ground game was much better, although Yuri’s armbar attempt was beautiful. Eventaully Dias won by unanimous decision.

Possible matchups for Dias: Dias is for real. Alcantara was starting to be considered a title contender but then Dias took his place. Dias should fight the always-entertaining Diego Nunes to let us know exactly where he ranks among the UFC featherweights.

Possible matchups for Alcantara: Alcantara is still a very good fighter. He just needs to work on his takedown defense. He could face off against fellow Brazilian, Rani Yahya who is a very underrated featherweight in the UFC but hasn’t fought since 133.

Fabricio Werdum vs. Mike Russow: This fight was just completely pointless. The only real point that it served was to show where Mike Russow could take his career. I can say this, he won’t be challenging for the title. Werdum showed off his ever improving striking with his dominant first round TKO of he extremely durable Russow.

Possile matchups for Werdum: This was a hard one to find but someone talked about him having a rubber match with Overreem. This actually makes 100% sense. Because Overreem’s drug test put him down a couple notches on the ladder, Werdum had shown, in my opinion, the best striking improvement in a very short amount of time. If Overreem truly feels that he deserves that title shot, he should finish the series with Werdum.

Possible matchups for Russow: Russow will always win a few and take a step up in comptetion, but lose. Another fighter that came off a recent 1st round loss is Dave Herman. Herman is very unpredictable and this could be a rebound fight for both of these guys.

Rony “Jason” Mariano Bezerra vs. Godofredo “Pepey” Castro: Jason came out with the best walkout that I have seen in years. He came out extremely emotional and was crying on his way out to the Octagon. It gave me goose bumps. You don’t often see a fighter so openly emotional right before the biggest fight of their career. But sadly this fight was not very good. Pepey, like I said before, has some of the sloppiest standup that I have ever seen and Jason took advantage of that, eventually winning a unanimous decision.

Possible matchups for Jason: Jason is very good. Although he was underwhelming in this fight (which was most likely the UFC jitters), he trains at Black house and earlier in his career, fought to a very close split decision loss to Renan Barao. Jason will be challenging for the title in the coming years but his next fight is his first step. A fight against fellow rising star in Jimy Hettes would undoubtedly be a very closely contested and entertaining fight that would be action packed in every area of the fight.

Possible matchups for Pepey: What I got out of his fight with Jason was that he simply isn’t UFC material. He pulls guard only to do nothing. He throws with bad intentions, only to miss by 10 feet. The kid has very good BJJ but he needs to work on his standup desperately. Although Matt Grice looked good in his last fight, he still hasn’t beaten anyone that good. If he could beat Pepey, that would be impressive.

Cezar “Mutante” Ferreira vs. Sergio Moraes: This fight was amazing. Mutante easily won the first but Moraes knew how to put on a good fight and nearly finished Mutante with strikes, which was very surprising. Moraes came out aggressive again in the 3rd but was dropped in the last seconds of the fight, sealing the unanimous decision for Mutante.

Possible matchups for Mutante: Daniel Sarafian was injured and pulled out of his fight with Mutante, and I was going to go with Sarafian. Sarafian deserves a shot at Mutante to let us know who the true Ultimate Fighter is.

Possible matchups for Moraes: Moraes is an entertaining fighter with some of the best BJJ at 185 but he was unable to show that. Instead, he showed powerful standup and incredible heart. Chris Camozzi was losing most of his fight with Catone before landing the one knee. Fight with Camozzi could show us if Moraes is UFC material.

Wanderlei Silva vs. Rich Franklin: This fight saved this PPV. It lived up to the hype of being another barnburner. Franklin won every round in my book while Wanderlei won the 2nd with a 10-8 due to the knockdown and flurry. Franklin looked great though: awesome footwork and accurate striking. He landed jab after jab in the later rounds.

Possible matchups for Franklin: He was originally scheduled to face Cung Le at 148 but saved the day once again. He should face off against the winner of Le and Cote at 148.

Possible matchups for Silva: If he doesn’t retire after this fight, then why not try and get him and Vitor to face each other?

UFC 147 Prelim Recap Click Here

UFC 147 Prelim Recap

                               (Damm vs Anistavio “Gasparzinho” Medeiros)    Photo by Getty Images

Felipe Arantes vs. Milton Vieira: Vieira came into this fight with some hype behind him. He is virtually unknown but has been in the cage with Hayato Sakurai, Jake Shields, and Johnny Eduardo. He is most famous for having credit for inventing the anaconda choke. Vieira did impress… for five minutes. The first round was arguably a 10-8 in favor of Vieira but after that, Arantes had a decently easy fight. Once the fight made it to the judges, it ended in a split draw.

Possible matchups for Arantes and Vieira: Although not completely necessary, this fight was entertaining enough that I wouldn’t mind seeing a rematch between the two.

Marcos “Vina” Vinicius vs. Wagner “Galeto” Campos: For the better part of two rounds, Galeto was dominating Vina with ease. He would land the better shots and then take the fight down. He even tried to knock him out Fedor/Arlovski style after Vina went for a flying knee. After the 2nd round, Vina’s corner told him that he needs to blitz Galeto to win this. And blitz him he did. Vina came out and barraged Galeto with beautiful clinch work, eventually knocking him out on his feet for the finish early in the 3rd round. It was a great comeback that scored him an extra $65,000.

Possible matchups for Vina: Vina showed a lot of heart and knockout power in his fight. Finding a matchup for him is a little hard but I think that if they don’t cut Macapa Teixeira then that fight would a be fun scrap between two crazy featherweights.

Thiago “Bodao” Perpetuo vs. Leonarda “Macarrao” Mafra: This fight was really fun. Mafra came out as a very aggressive fighter, winning the first round with better striking and takedowns. The second was much closer but I leaned more towards Bodao based on the fact that Mafra never really did much but Bodao landed some solid shots. Bodao came out like Vina did earlier in the 3rd; he wanted a finish. Bodao instantly caught Mafra and dropped him. Mafra was saved at 41 seconds into the 3rd after a violent attack of hammerfists.

Possible matchups for Bodao: Thiago is a very good striker; technical and powerful. A fight with fellow middleweight winner, Massaranduba would show us who is ready to step out of the shadow of TUF.

Hugo “Wolverine” Viana vs. John “Macapa” Teixeira: This fight was really fun. Both of these guys are fast paced fighters with wild standup and a slick ground game. I scored the first round for Wolverine but the second was very close. I eventually scored it for Macapa but it could have gone either way. The third had Macapa stalking Wolverine for most of the five minutes as Wolverine had visibly slowed down. The 3rd round was clearly Macapa’s and I thought that he had won, but like I said earlier, it could have gone either way. Wolverine ended up winning a razor thin split decision.

Possible matchups for Wolverine: Wolverine was at a clear disadvantage in size in this fight but still won. Wolverine was one of the bets fighters on this season but he is a natural bantamweight. He has a ton of potential and he should instantly fight someone with a name. He should fight the winner of Roland Delorme and Francisco Rivera to let us see where he is in the rankings.

Francisco “Massaranduba” Drinaldo vs. Delson “Pe de Chumbo” Heleno: Drinaldo is a prospect that we all really need to keep our eyes on. Not only is he a huge a thick middleweight, he fights at 155. That’s pretty crazy that he is such a ripped middleweight but is actually a lightweight, which scares me. The guy threw around 185ers but is a typical 155er. Anyway, Massaranduba completely dominated this fight from the opening bell. He eventually finished Pe de Chumbo with hammerfists after Heleno was clearly already gassed out.

Possible matchups for Massaranduba: I am going to assume that he is going to make the cut down to 155 but that might be tough. The guy has almost no body fat. His next fight might be at welterweight but lets go with 155. Him and Tibau have very similar body types but Tibau’s next fight is with rising star Khabib Nurmagomedov. I think Drinaldo should fight the winner of that fight.

Rodrigo Damm vs. Anistavio “Gasparzinho” Medeiros: This fight was the only grudge match from the season. Typically TUF grudge matches are close but this one was absolutely dominant. Damm controlled the standup and eventually dropped him. Damm showed that he is a true veteran of the sport as he went for the rear naked choke rather than trying to finish him with strikes.

Possible matchups for Damm: Although Damm entered TUF with a lackluster record of 9-5, you have to look at who those losses are to: Eiji Mitsuoka, Gilbert Melendez, Justin Wilcox, Maximo Blanco, and Luciano Azevedo (by split). All of those guys have names in the sport, except for Azevedo but he is a veteran (he s the only one to defeat Jose Aldo, and it was by 2nd round submission. WOW!). Anyway, Damm was unable to continue on TUF due to medical reasons, and he was well on his way to the Finale. He said that he believes that he would have won the season, and I believe him. I think that he deserves a fight against a talented fighter. Fellow Brazilian and TUF winner Brandao is coming off a loss and Damm has the skills to be a top guy in the UFC at 145.

Main Card Recap Click Here