Koscheck "Upset" and Marquardt Shines

UFC 95 was a night of KO's and a night of upsets as top contender Josh Koscheck was KO'ed in the first round. Koscheck was confident on his feet throwing big overhand rights before he ate a right uppercut and left hook from UFC newcomer Paulo Thiago. In my opinion Koscheck is like a lot of wrestlers who learn striking and seem to forget that their strength is the ground game. These fighters feel the pressure of wanting to be exciting and go for the KO, but this is not always the smart strategy. Thiago is a black belt in Jiu-Jitsu, but wrestlers like Koscheck have used their outstanding wrestling ability to ground and pound black belts before. Koscheck should use his superior wrestling to soften up his opponents before he starts throwing haymakers looking for the knockout.

Nathan Marquardt looked impressive as he knocked out Wilson Gouveia in the third round. Marquardt looked light on his feet and used a variety of angles and strikes to KO Gouveia. I don't believe he will be able to defeat Anderson Silva using this strategy. He will have to try and get the fight to the ground if he plans on beating Anderson Silva. Something he could'nt do in their first fight.

UFC 95 Predictions

UFC 95 is tonight on a tape-delay from England. Here are my predictions:

Sanchez over Stevenson
Koscheck over Thiago
Marquardt over Gouviea
Sonnen over Maia

I think that the majority of these fight will not go to a decision.

Penn Is A Sore Loser

B.J. Penn will undoubtedly go down as one of the greatest fighters ever, but he is a sore loser. Recently Penn went up in weight class to fight Georges St. Pierre at 170 pounds and was thoroughly whooped(see posting below). Instead of being gracious in defeat he blamed St. Pierre's cornerman, who has been accused of applying vaseline to St. Pierre's back and shoulders, for his loss. St. Pierre's cornerman applied vaseline to GSP's face, which is legal, and then proceeded to rub GSP's shoulders and back as a kind of relaxation exercise in between rounds. The miniscule amount of vaseline was then rubbed off of GSP with a towel after Nevada officials noticed the error. Penn has been quoted as saying that the vaseline prevented him from applying submissions on St. Pierre. Fans of B.J. Penn, some of which are widely recognized writers and bloggers on MMA, have been all too eager to run with the story. Steve Cofield and Kevin Iole of Yahoo Sports! have turned a non-story into a huge internet debate.

GSP has challenged Penn to a 3rd fight this summer and Penn has accepted. We will have to wait to see if UFC officials are eager for a third meeting between these two fighters. Considering how good the pay-per-view numbers were for their second fight(UFC 94) Dana White might be licking his chops for a re-re-match.

"Blue-Eyed Devils" Reign Supreme In MMA

Last night in front of a packed audience at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada George St. Pierre, as I predicted, stopped B.J. Penn in a "super-fight" that will go down as the biggest fight in the short history of the UFC. With GSP's victory over Penn and Fedor Emelianenko's victory over Andrei Arlovski two "blue-eyed devils" are numbers 1 and 2 in the pound for pound rankings as the 2 best fighters in MMA. Pretty good for guys that supposedly can't fight. Now which fighter is 1 and which is 2 is open to debate, but what isn't open to debate is their greatness as fighters. Both men train incredibly hard, take care of their families and neither one talks trash, unlike the man, Muhammad Ali and the organization (Nation of Islam) that coined the phrase "blue-eyed devils". I guess this is a science experiment gone wrong.