UFC 73 was billed by many to be the greatest MMA card in history (if you don’t count the Pride 2000 Grand Prix finals or Pride Final Conflict 2003). Did it live up to the hype? No. Was it a total ball of suck? No. UFC 73 turned out to be an enjoyable night of MMA, but not the end all be all.
Stephan Bonnar vs. Mike Nickels
FB predicts: Bonnar by decision
Result: Bonnar by 1st round submission
Bonnar comes out looking to strike, Nickels answers this challenge by knocking Bonnar on his ass. Uh oh, Nickels might have some power after all. He then jumps on him and gets full mount, things are not looking rosy for the FB predictions. Then BAM! Bonnar sweeps out of the mount and takes Nickels back. At this point I start to wonder why Bonnar and Nickels decided to exchange powers for this fight. Next thing I know Bonnar is distracting Nickels with a Kimura attempt and then sinking in a rear naked choke. Hey whatever, he get’s the W, just like I said he would.
Antonio Rodrigo "Minotauro" Nogueira vs. Heath Herring
FB predicts: Nog by 2nd round submission
Result: Nog by unanimous decision
This fight was the type of fight that some of my friends point to when they insist that MMA is worked, just like professional wrestling.
Heath and Nog circle trade some strikes with Nog getting the better of them. Then Heath catches Nog with a left high kick and puts Nog down. Nog has no idea where he is and looks like he’s having a flashback of when that truck ran him over. So what does Heath do? Jump on him and pound out the easy TKO victory? Nope. Swoop down and submit the guy who does not know where he is? Uh uh. Back up and tell the ref to let him back up and then do nothing of note for the rest of the round and the first two minutes of the following round just to make sure he has recovered enough to eek out a decision win? DING DING DING! Why would he do that? To fulfill his destiny as predicted here at Flamingbaby.
Rashad Evans vs Tito “The Huntington Beach Badboy” Ortiz
FB predicts: Ortiz by 2nd round TKO
Result: Draw
First round is pretty even, lots of feeling each other out and some wrestling. I scored it for Tito because he got a takedown early on.
Second round looks to be more of the same. Tito gets a takedown and tries to strike with him. All in all Tito’s punches are crisper than Rashads, but the fact that Tito can’t take a punch without putting both arms up and doing his impersonation of a mime trapped in a box hurt his striking a bit to say the least. Rashad’s striking style makes him look like an epileptic orangutan, but it’s effective. Once Tito started to try to fold his arms into his head Rashad backed him up against the cage and went for the takedown. At this point Tito grabbed the side of the cage a couple of times and Big John took a point from him. After some position work on the ground Tito managed to sink in a guillotine choke pretty deep, but the round ended saving Rashad.
Round 3 saw the dance continue but this time Rashad was taking a slight edge in control. Ortiz was backing up most of the round and Rashad was doing some weird angle punches while dodging Tito’s geriatric looking take down attempts. With about 2 minutes left in the round Ortiz was so tired he could barely stand up. At this point Shang Tsung leapt from the crowd and yelled “FINISH HIM!” Instead Rashad chose to take a page out of Heath “Holy crap are you OK man?” Herring’s book as he took Ortiz down with the intent of laying on him and chatting about the magic of fairies and lollypops until the round ended.
With round 3 going to Rashad and round 2 being a draw due to fence manipulation, all three judged scored it 28-28. Ahh a tie, if there is anything that tee ball taught me is that when you tie you all win!!! So I’ll count this as a morale victory for the Flamingbaby predictions.
Sean “The Muscle Shark” Sherk vs Hermes “Herpes” Franca
FB predicts: Sherk by 4th round TKO
Result: Sherk by unanimous decision
Dun Dun…. Dun Dun… Dun Dun Dun Dun Dun Dun .. MUSCLE SHARK!!! All four rounds were basically exactly the same in this fight. First they would circle a while. Then Hermes would throw a knee and Sherk would do his best to throw his face into it as hard as he could. Then Sherk would take him down and they would battle for position with Sherk throwing rabbit punches at Hermes face for the entire round.
It was an impressive display of wrestling on Sherks part, and I personally enjoyed watching him deal with a very game Franca, but I could definitely see how someone who is into MMA for the knockouts could think the fight was dull as cabbage baby food.
The important thing here was that Sherk won in dominating fashion and Flamingbaby notched up another win in the predictions column.
Anderson “Spider” Silva vs Nate “The Great” Marquardt
FB predicts: Marquardt by boring ass decision
Result: Silva by TKO (in the first none the less)
This is the fight were it all went wrong for us. I think we were fooled by Nate’s nickname.
They come out, Nates goes for a takedown while Silva strikes with him. Nate secures a takedown but is quickly stood up by the ref for inactivity. Nate is not happy with this. Anderson then proceeds to knock him down and then punch him in the face while he lies on the ground. Match Anderson. Well played Spider, well played.
All in All
UFC 73 was not the “greatest ever” but it was a lot better than UFC 72. With UFC 74 looming around the corner, Flamingbaby will be there. (Madam Cleo calls us when she’s betting UFC, you should too).
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