They recap the fight between Junie Browning and Roli Delgado. I still can’t believe how terrible Roli was on his feet. It’s like he never threw a punch in his life.

Frank Mir told Junie that it wasn’t good enough. Mir says it was a victory that was almost a loss. Mir says that Junie scares the shit out of him outside the ring.

Krzysztof thinks he fractured his thumb. Mir says that Vinnie has a good ground game, but MMA is a different animal.

Big Nog loves Jules for his heart. He’s worried because he can’t pick the fights since he doesn’t have the control.

Frank Mir’s team has to run with snorkels in their mouth which restricts oxygen. Then he has the guys jump into a trash can of ice water so that it immediately treats the inflammation.

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Cactus Jim and I should be attending the next Strikeforce card scheduled for November 21 at the HP Pavilion in San Jose, California.

Josh “The Punk” Thomson defends his newly won lightweight championship against Yves Edwards. Edwards beat him in the UFC several years ago and this is a chance for Thomson to avenge one of his two losses. His other loss was to Clay Guida.

While I would’ve rather seen a rematch between Thomson and Gilbert Melendez, though this should be a good fight.

Renato “Babalu” Sobral is also challenging for Bobby Southworth’s light heavyweight championship. That’s definitely a step up in competition for Southworth.

Here’s the full card thanks to MMA Mania.

Main event:

155 lbs.: Strikeforce Lightweight Champion Josh “The Punk” Thomson (16-2) vs. Yves Edwards (34-14-1)

Rest of the card:

205 lbs.: Strikeforce Light Heavyweight Champion Bobby Southworth (9-5) vs. Renato “Babalu” Sobral (30-7)
170 lbs.: Joe “Diesel” Riggs (28-11) vs. Luke Stewart (6-1)
175 lbs.: Lemont Davis (2-1) vs. Brian Schwartz (0-1)
135 lbs.: Brad Royster (1-1) vs. Darren Uyenoyama (4-2)
185 lbs.: Tony Johnson (3-0) vs. Eric Lawson (7-2)
145 lbs.: Alvin Cacdac (4-4) vs. Jose Palacios (3-1)
155 lbs.: Bobby Stack (5-1) vs. Cyrillo Padilha (2-2)
155 lbs.: Zakary Bucia (0-1) vs. Jaime Rodriguez (0-0)
185 lbs.: Kurt Osiander (3-1) vs. Raul Castillo (5-0)
185 lbs.: Nik Theotikos (5-1) vs. Luke Rockhold (2-1)

Though I’d been following the UFC for about a year through newsletters and the Internet, I hadn’t bought a PPV until UFC 43. I was a big Chuck Liddell fan, mostly because my co-worker Jeremiah Miller was a college buddy of Chuck’s. He gave me a signed poster that I still have today and I’ve been a big Liddell fan since. Jeremiah was even named in Chuck’s biography.

I remember buying this show mostly because my then wife was out of town on business and I had two toddlers to watch all weekend. When they went to sleep, I didn’t really have anything to do and figured that because I was a young dad home alone with his two young boys, I deserved to spend some money on an event. But also, I expected Chuck Liddell to win the interim light heavyweight championship in his match with Randy Couture and I wanted to see it happen. Let’s just say that I wasn’t a happy Chuck fan that night.

Couture wasn’t necessarily a set up for Liddell that night, but the fight was there for Chuck to win. Couture was a former heavyweight champion, but he was 38 years old and people were saying that he was now over the hill. He dieted down to make the 205 lb weight limit and looked to have nearly zero body fat. The reason Randy and Chuck were fighting rather than Chuck and Tito Ortiz (who was the champion at the time) was because Ortiz bailed on the fight. After beating Ken Shamrock (which was actually the first UFC PPV I ever saw), Tito seemed noncommittal about fighting Chuck after pretty much saying that he had to take care of Shamrock first and then he’d be ready. When push came to shove, Tito wasn’t there so Dana White and company decided to put Liddell in there with Couture to determine the interim champ. And then, Ortiz would have to face the winner.

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I think she’s alone now.

Photo by aliasadsum

Tiffany is no longer with us, and after tonight, another wannabe wrestler will be gone as well.

Frank Stallone said that Dennis Rodman hits hard. That’s quite obvious. Erin says that her team followed the rules and that’s why her team didn’t have anyone eliminated from their team.

Danny decided to pick on Erin and then she asked him about his ex-wife which was a low blow. Danny then digs at her a bit and she starts crying. He said that he’s been making her cry since she was six years old.

Hogan, Bischoff, and Hart come in with a big surprise. That surprise is jumping from the top of a crane to the world’s largest air mattress below. They say it’s 30 feet. Todd and Danny go without hesitation. For some reason, after some trepidation, Trishelle jumps feet first. But at least she jumped. Then Butterbean deflated the air mattress. All of Team Nasty jumped except Frank Stallone. Knobbs said he’s always reminded that Frank is the other Stallone.

Bischoff asks the crew what they learned and Nikki couldn’t come up with an answer.

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The big news is that Batista is the new World Champion after defeating Chris Jericho as Stone Cold Steve Austin was voted in as special guest referee. That’s an unnecessary title change, but oh well.

HHH wrestled Jeff Hardy, even though they tried hard to influence the fans to make it a three way with Koslov. HHH pinned Hardy again in the middle of the ring.

Dave Meltzer has the results up at F4W/Wrestling Observer.

Photo by Department of Defense

Thanks to Cactus Jim for logging the play by play of last night’s UFC 90.

About a week ago, I wasn’t so sure that I was going to order UFC 90. There was really two matches that looked outstanding on paper. I was sure that Tyson Griffin and Sean Sherk would be excellent, and I was sure that Josh Koscheck and Thiago Alves would be good as well. But do you spend $45 a show ($50-55 in HD) on two good undercard matches? No, you don’t. You pay for the main event. And on paper, Anderson Silva vs. Patrick Cote was severely lacking.

The undercard match-ups delivered. Griffin vs. Sherk was a stand-up war and those guys were hitting each other hard. They were throwing great combinations, highlighted by Griffin throwing a high kick and then following up with an off balanced right hand, which landed. But Sherk was too strong. Griffin made the fight, but in making the fight, he was in Sherk’s wheel house. Griffin pressed the action and was the more active fighter, but Sherk’s striking was a tad bit more pinpoint.

Koscheck was his cocky self until he got hit with a left hook that dropped him to a knee. (Photo by East817) After that, he was pretty much done. I give him all the respect in the world for coming back and continuing to fight. But at that moment, he went from someone who probably thought he was going to win, to someone who didn’t think he was going to be able to win. Thiago Alves has the perfect nickname. He was a pit bull in the ring. He almost looked like a machine rather than a human being. I started to wonder who would be the next big match-up for Alves. If George St. Pierre and BJ Penn are fighting in January, the next fight for either guy would probably be April/May. Alves will need to fight again between then. I was thinking that a rematch against Jon Fitch could be interesting. Fitch is so big, Alves wouldn’t simply be able to punch right through him. Or, if Jake Shields joins UFC, that could be a great fight for both guys.

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Mike Goldberg welcomes us and starts hyping the main event and introduces us to Joe Rogan who says Patrick Cote has heart, balls, and gas(?). Standard pre-recorded introductions and rules follow.

Up first is Sean Sherk versus Tyson Griffin. This is a non-title fight scheduled for 3 rounds. As usual, Griffin enters to “Eye of the Tiger”. Randy Couture is in his corner for this fight. The announcers take a minute to pimp the upcoming Lesnar/Couture fight. Sherk comes in looking incredibly focused. I love Michael Buffer’s herky jerky pointing as he introduces the fighters. It’s always good for a quick laugh. David Smith is the referee.

Round 1 – Sherk take down of Griffin right away. Has back. Griffin is on his feet w/ Sherk on his back and shakes Sherk off. Sherk is the aggressor and seems to have the better striking. Another Sherk take down. Sherk is bleeding from the nose. Griffin up. Griffin lands a few shots. Punches in bunches followed by leg kicks from Sherk. Griffin landing a few of his own. Sherk stuffs a take down attempt and takes Griffin’s back. Back to striking to end the round. Good round with lots of action. I give the round to Sherk.

Round 2 – Sherk get s take down, but Griffin is back up quickly. Slower pace to start the round. Back and forth striking. No clear advantage to either fighter. Griffin looks a little sluggish. Griffin is getting pissed and “hulking up”. Sherk is landing more and better shots. Nice hard body shots and stiff jabs. Nice high kick attempts by Tyson. But nothing lands. Griffin seems to be gassing. Sherk is fresh and takes the 2nd round.

Miquel Torres is shown between rounds.

Round 3 – Lots of striking to start the round. Tyson rocked Sherk, rushed in, but Sherk recovered quickly amd started landing his own shots. Tyson looks a little desperate. Sherk throwing lots of kicks and landing most of them. Griffin is landing more shots at this point. Both guys finish swinging. Close round, but I’d give a slight edge to Griffin. I’d call it 29-28 for Sherk.

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Strikeforce’s Mike Afromowitz sent out a press release with the information that their “Strikeforce on NBC” late night television show did its best rating ever last Saturday, doing 1.1 million viewers. The show featured the Trevor Prangley vs. Anthony Ruiz bout from the Playboy Mansion.

I’ve seen the show several times and what impresses me most about the show is that it’s put together tightly, and you don’t feel like you’re wasting a moment of your time when you watch it. It’s only 30 minutes long and for the most part, other than some introduction to the fighters, you get nothing but fighting. Also, if you have high definition, you should be able to find it on one of your high definition channels. In the Bay Area where I live, it comes on Universal HD.

This weekend is the premiere showing of Josh Thomson’s victory over Gilbert Melendez from the summer. Thomson won Melendez’s Strikeforce lightweight championship.

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Rather than do a preview for UFC 90, where Anderson Silva defends his middleweight championship against Patrick Cote, I decided to put together something that my brothers at FGB helped me put together.

I posed a question to them that simply asked, who was better pound for pound between Anderson Silva and Fedor Emelianenko?

To me, it boils down to how well you dominate your weight class, the competition level, and how easy you make your wins look. There’s no question that both guys are dominating fighters. They haven’t been tested in years. From a competition level, Silva definitely has the edge (at least over the last few years), and while both guys make it look easy, Fedor wins in ways that make him look disgustingly better than anyone else across from him.

Big D thinks that while Anderson Silva is near unbeatable, he thinks that Fedor’s aura is that of someone who is even more unbeatable.

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We are promised a Junie Browning fight, which should be pretty good.

Frank Mir asks Rolando Delgado about his black belt in jiu-jitsu. Most of Team Mir thinks he’s bullshitting.

Junie says he bought his black belt from McDonalds.

Mir says that he had to get his black belt by submitting Tim Sylvia.

Junie tells Rolando that if he gets out of the first round, he’ll tell Dana to give the fight to Rolando. Somewhere, I missed that this fight was definitely taking place.

Frank Mir makes it official. Junie throws a black belt at Delgado and Delgado playfully wraps it around him. Then Junie pushes him, puts the belt down and spits on it. Big Nog is never going to do this show ever again. Big Nog says he does it for attention. Anderson Silva says Junie did it because he was scared of Delgado and then tells him to kick his ass. Can you imagine being on a team with Big Nog and Anderson Silva?

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