UFN 13 After thoughts

Ben Stiller? No, that's arguably one of the best lightweights in the world...and he just called out Roger Huerta.

UFN 13 was awesome! I have seen a lot of "free" MMA on TV and this was, by far, the best card that's ever been put out for free both on paper and as it played out.

SPOILER ALERT***

UFN 13 results:
Anthony Johnson def. Tommy Speer, TKO, 0:51 R1 <--this was really more of a KO IMHO George Sotiropolous def. Roman Mitchyan, TKO, 2:24 R2 <--televised Clay Guida def. Sammy Schiavo, TKO, 4:15 R1 <--also televised Manny Gamburyan def. Geoffrey Cox, submission (guillotine), 1:41 R1 <--televised Marcus Aurelio def. Ryan Roberts, submission (armbar), 0:16 R1 <-untelevised Josh Neer def. Din Thomas, unanimous decision <-untelevised
James Irvin def. Houston Alexander, TKO, 0:08 R1
Nate Diaz def. Kurt Pellegrino, submission (tiangle choke), 3:06 R2
Matt Hamill def. Tim Boetsch, TKO, 1:25 R2
Thiago Alves def. Karo Parisyan, TKO, 0:34 R2;
Gray Maynard def. Frank Edgar, unanimous decision <--great fight despite the fact that it went all three rounds. Maynard looked awesome! He slammed Edgar at least two times and he looked clean in the stand-up. Edgar definitely looked too small for the "Bully" Kenny Florian def. Joe Lauzon, TKO, 3:28 R2

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What I learned from the fights:

Although I like Lauzon, I was rooting for Florian and I figured he'd pull this one out, although it wouldn't be easy. Well, it was easier than I thought and even though Florian didn't make it look easy, he did win decisively and punished Lauzon with dozens and dozens of strikes. To be fair, it almost looked like J-Lau could have lasted the whole round; that said, they had to stop it because you could tell he wasn't going to get out of the bad spot and no one wants to see someone get hurt. Now, I am not going to put money on Kenny against Penn if he can get that far, but I'll say he's got a great chance at to beat Huerta if that fight goes down.

One thing Florian does well is drop 'bows:


Poor, poor Karo. This is the third time he's been knocking at the door of a title shot and had it slip away. I felt bad, and still do, for the guy...but if he can't get past a fighter who is, arguably, fairly one dimensional in Alves, then does he really deserve to be in the cage with the likes of GSP and Fitch?

I love Matt Hamill. He's not the most technical fighter, but he's undefeated (don't count the controversial loss to Bisping) and he's freaking deaf! Although his stand up needs to improve drastically still, he avoided getting knocked senseless with the brutal strikes from Boestch (although his lip did nearly get torn from his face from what I assume was that knee that landed) and his wrestling looked solid, as always.
Watch the fight, or at least part of it, here but hurry, Dana will pull this soon:
http://ufcpreview.com/id97.html
Since when is Gray Maynard such a great fighter? I was stunned by his excellent performance. I watched him on the Ultimate Fighter and he was a great wrestler but I didn't think he'd improve as much as he did. Wow. I did miss his last fight, maybe if I had seen it I would have seen this coming. I guess training at Xtreme Couture is the way to go! I thought for sure little Frankie Edgar would pull this one off. Edgar, who is a phenomenal wrestler, got tossed around like a rag doll despite his good strikes. I will say that Maynard's face looked pretty red and bumpy after the fight.

I have to say that although I am not a Diaz fan, I do like to watch him fight. He reminds me of an old school Gracie fighter and rightly so, he trains under the Gracies. He was getting worked in the first round and I thought the ref was going to have to end it at one point since Pellegrino was dropping some serious hammer fists to Diaz's face which showed it afterward. It was classic Diaz style when Nate ended up pulling guard, locked in the triangle, and flipped off the camera when he knew he was going to tap the Batman. Diaz by submission. Now let's see him break into the top 5 of the LW division. I will say, however, that Pellegrino is no push over and Diaz is looking good. This was probably the best finish of the night since Diaz was in so much trouble but came back and pulled off the win.

Houston Alexander. We still don't know about him yet...or was this answer to our questions. Does an eight second knockout mean he sucks? Has no chin? We all wanted to see this fight go a few minutes but a superman punch to the face tends to end things REAL QUICK. I can't stand Irvin and I want to see him fight a top 10 LHW next.

I still remember watching Anthony Johnson KO some guy last year on a UFN undercard with Ned and Dave and we were shocked because he was a late replacement. Well, he did it again by knocking Tommy Speer into another time zone with not one, but a series of vicious strikes. His striking is really clean and crisp. Some people are clamoring to see him fight GSP...what are they smoking? Yes he's extremely athletic, but he wouldn't even get into the pocket with GSP before he would eat some jabs and straights. Sure he made a wreslter look bad, but he needs to try some of the actual top dues of the WW division first like Sanchez, Karo, Alves, etc. before he asks for a Kos or Fitch or St. Pierre.

All right, that's it for now. Looking forward to April 19th!

Watch of bunch of fights, past and present, (albeit illegally) here:
http://ufcpreview.com/