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After Thiago Alves embarrassed himself yet again at UFC 117 by not making weight, there was a ton of talk that he would finally have to make the inevitable move up to Middleweight. Turns out he's made nice with Dana White and company and they've given him a matchup with John "Doomsday" Howard at UFC 124.

Mike Pierce was campaigning for a fight with Alves going so far as to tweet this to UFC president Dana White:

@danawhite for my 30th bday wish I want a fight with Thiago Alves. Maybe in Dec so he has time to make the cut.

Talking smack is usually a quick way to get a fight booked but it didn't work out for Pierce in this case. I should think that most fans are happy about that too. Pierce likes to use his wrestling to control his opponents. We've all seen the trouble Alves has had dealing with wrestlers. He won't have any problems like that when he fights John Howard. The leather that will by flying around in this fight is enough to make one's mouth water.

Mirko Filipovic is a legend in MMA. His conquests in the world of kickboxing are well documented. What he accomplished in PRIDE is nothing short of amazing. He's one of the most popular fighters in the world. Hell, he's even got a catchphrase. "Right leg, hospital; left leg, cemetery." His arrival to the UFC was met with much anticipation and he was poised to reign over the Heavyweight division. It was not to be.

He came into the UFC with a ton of hype and anticipation. The UFC thought they could give him a feeder opponent in Eddie Sanchez that he could put away quickly and look great in the process to lead into a big main event number 1 contender fight that they would give away free on Spike. He would defeat Sanchez but looked anything but spectacular in doing so before going on to fight Gabriel Gonzaga at UFC 70. We all remember what happened there. In case you don't, here is a video document of the destruction.

Another loss in his next fight against Cheick Kongo sent him to Dream for a year. He's 3-1 since coming back but those three wins require a bit of explanation regarding context. Mostapha Al-turk had his eye poked which led to lack of vision and a quick TKO loss, Anthony Perosh took his fight with Mirko on just days notice and Pat Barry was dominating their fight in the first round before breaking both his hand and his foot. The one loss was to Junior Dos Santos in what was an embarrassment all around for the Croatian. Needless to say, his UFC run has been less than inspiring. But with one win over Frank Mir he can turn it all around.

The world of MMA is very much a "what have you done for me lately" kind of world. It's more important what you did in your last fight than what you did a year ago. In fact, beating a fighter the caliber of Frank Mir will lead many a fickle MMA fan to start to figure out ways to explain away the losses. The cracked rib and vicious low blows against Kongo. The disorientation against Gonzaga after the elbows on the ground. All of it will be fair game if he can beat Mir. That's the big question though. Can he beat Mir?

Mir has been quoted as saying that Cro Cop is the same fighter he's always been, just that fighters in the UFC now are more aggressive than fighters in PRIDE. That if you let him walk you down he will explode on you more than if you're aggressive the way JDS was. It's been easy to notice the same thing. His stand up defense leaves much to be desired. Mir wants to stand with him to open up the clinch game before taking him down. If Mirko can avoid going to the floor with Mir, where he is obviously badly out-matched, does he have a real chance at defeating Frank?

As I talked about before, Cro Cop is saying all the wrong things going into this fight.

"It is certain that I will not be able to go full force. I was left with only five weeks to prepare."

I mentioned in the article that it sounds like he is laying the groundwork for his loss before the fight even occurs. Or maybe he's just trying to protect his career. A loss might mean the end of it inside the Octagon. A win though would completely revive it. Imagine the kind of talk a knockout victory of Mir would induce. Dana would be quick to say that "he's in the mix" in the Heavyweight division and armchair quarterbacks everywhere would be dying to match him up with another top level opponent. Nostalgia is a powerful feeling. If he can win this fight he'll be right at the forefront of the "Pride never die" chants. That wouldn't be such a bad thing.

From Yahoo! Sportscagewriter:

UFC Hall of Famer Chuck Liddell has had his mohawk for 18 years, but he shaved it all off Monday morning on "Fox and Friends." Liddell shaved his head for a good cause. BIC, the makers of razors, is sponsoring BIC 4 GOOD and encouraging people to shave their head for charity. You can virtually shave your head or send in a video of you actually getting your head shaved here. Either way, BIC will make a donation to Do Something, a charity that encourages volunteerism among youth.

Photo by Dave Mandel via Sherdog

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"I take what Dana said as a compliment because I think he really believes in my skills as a fighter. I was capable of winning the fight but I would have to have fought a very boring fight. I felt great mentally & physically. I have more work to do on my wrestling & have already made the arrangements to become much better in that area of my game."

"Gray outwrestled me. I didn't crumble. I have won many main events and important fights. I blame my weakness in wrestling on the loss, not my mental game."

"I thought my defensive wrestling would have been enough but it wasn't. I will be working with high level wrestlers on a ridiculously consistent basis to improve this. I need to 10X more than I was to ensure that it is not only muscle memory but so I can prevent losing in this manner in the future."

Kenny Florian talks to MMA Fighting to respond to Dana White's claims that he chokes in big fights. This is pretty much the same thing that I said after I heard White say that. Can Florian work enough on wrestling to stop a bigger fighter like Maynard from taking him down and working his top control? According to Kenny, that's the goal.

I think it's interesting to hear him say that he thinks he could have won but he would have had to fight boring to do so. That doesn't make sense to me. I know White loves to push guys that fight exciting, and by exciting I mean stand and bang, but winning is winning. Isn't it? Isn't that enough? I've long thought that it's not a good idea for White to reward those that go out and fight stupid just to please him and the fans who don't appreciate a tactical battle. Based on his words, Florian is now another tragedy in a long list of guys who lost because they wanted to please the boss and by extension, the fans.

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Bob Ryan is a member of what can be considered the mainstream media. He makes frequent appearances on Around the Horn, which airs on ESPN at 4 p.m. central time throughout the week. Mr. Ryan attended UFC 118 which was held in Boston, where Ryan is stationed out of, to report on the event. His article is up on their website and it's about what you would expect from an old timer like Ryan.

The article starts out well intentioned enough. He begins by talking about the UFC's expansion into the upper northeast market and how big of a caveat it is for Dana White. He speaks rather well of the UFC president throughout the article. He makes sure to bring up the famous Boston sports celebrities in attendance like Tom Brady and Shaquille O'Neal. One thing I'll give Ryan credit for is that he doesn't assume the position of being a guy who actually knows much about the sport.

The big hook for UFC, if I understand things correctly, is that it is an all-encompassing form of combat. The bell rings and you assume a boxing stance. But UFC also combines wrestling and a wide assortment of martial arts. So a great deal of time in some matches is spent with the combatants groping around on the floor.

I'm sure there are more than a few people who will cringe at his use of the word "groping" and I'm sure it was intentional on his part but it's not necessarily untrue. At least he is admitting that he isn't well versed on what goes on in the cage and he's trying to paint a picture as such. That's all well and good but he ends up falling into the same schtick that we're used to seeing from older sports reporters such as himself.

Oh, yes, the Octagon. They don’t just fight in a ring; they fight in a cage known as the Octagon. A cage lends an air of danger and, yes, savagery. It’s a very clever concept, actually.

This isn't nearly as bad as it could have been. In fact, I was still confident at this point that he wouldn't dump on what he was seeing that night. Alas, it was not to be.

Now you can’t say everything goes. They did away with eye-gouging some time back. But kneeing and elbowing are prime tactics, and, c’mon, what’s so artistic about that? If you love a flat-out barroom brawl, replete with wrestling, kicking, kneeing, elbowing and, yep, punching, then this may be the sport for you. But to some, a little of that goes a long way. Frankly, after watching an evening of UFC, up close and personal, I came away with a better appreciation of boxing.

Again, he makes the same tired mistake we've seen so many others make before him. He doesn't research what he's writing on before he writes on it. Eye-gouging has never been legal. It's maddening to see a mainstream reporter write such a thing. We can overlook that though. But to say there is no artistry in what mixed martial artists do really exposes his complete lack of knowledge of the sport. He's a boxing guy that doesn't want to admit the things that make MMA more enjoyable. His mind was never open to what he was going to see. He makes sure to drive home his point that punching is what matters most in the UFC later in the article. Again, he's clearly a boxing fan that refuses to open his eyes to that which he does not understand.

The most intriguing thing to come out of this article, and what applies the most to this site, is his observation regarding the similarities between the UFC and pro wrestling.

UFC has borrowed very heavily from wrestling, and why not? Vince McMahon hit upon a winning formula with music and pageantry, and story lines, and there is no reason why it wouldn’t transfer nicely to UFC. There has to be a great carryover fandom. Why would someone settle for the phoniness and absolute idiocy of the wrestling show when you can see better athletes engaged in legitimate combat and still get all of the trappings the WWE has to offer?

You know what? He makes a good argument. I have no problem at all with what he's saying here. There is certainly a great carryover in fans. I'm one of them. Is pro wrestling always idiotic like he says here? No, it's not. There are plenty of times that the stories being told on WWE programming are enthralling and well worth the time. But they can't compare to the UFC in terms of the product being presented. The UFC, simply put, does it better. They have better athletes and the competition is something that we can all connect to.

He also makes a good point about the music and pageantry. The UFC does a great job at making everything feel really big and every fight feel like it's important. The time devoted to entrances by each fighter and each guy getting to pick the music they come out too is very much for show. That's not necessarily a parallel that can be made directly to professional wrestling but the fact remains that they are drawing on it. It's not just about the product in the cage it's about the atmosphere that surrounds it. There's no denying that.

Ryan doesn't outright bury the UFC. He ends his article with this:

Dana White is obviously doing something right. The full houses nationwide and the hefty pay-per-views have made UFC a big deal. But it’s like a lot of other things in life: it’s not for everybody.

I suppose he's right. This sport is not for everyone. But you could say that about anything, couldn't you?

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As he usually does, Good Ol' JR blogged about UFC 118 this past weekend. A few of his thoughts were interesting enough to talk about so here we are with some excerpts.

Overall I would give the PPV an average grade. While most of the fights looked good on paper, the execution of some of the bouts was lacking.

Hometown boy Joe Lauzon had one of the best performances of the night in his one round destruction on free TV, Spike, which one could surmise helped garner a few PPV buys as Lauzon turned it on for his fellow locals and that emotion carried over right into my living room. If a fan was sitting on the PPV fence, seeing an exciting pre-PPV fight for free is a great marketing tool. UFC should always book one, great overachieving bout on Spike when Spike airs the prelims for free.

Agreed on the PPV as a whole being average. That Diaz-Davis fight was epic but nothing else was overly special. Then in the second paragraph his pro wrestling background really comes out. There is no question that Lauzon put on the best performance of the night with what he did to Gabe Reudigar. The fact that it happened on Spike during the airing of the prelims was a bonus for the UFC. Ross seems to think the UFC should make sure to book a fight like this for each prelim that appears on Spike. The problem with that? The UFC doesn't control the action or the outcome of the fights. Not to mention the fact that they always load up the Spike fights with former cast members of The Ultimate Fighter.

On Friday I blogged that Randy Couture would finish James Toney in one round or less and that's what happened. I'm no MMA savant but it was easy to see that Toney was going to be in way over his head inside the Octagon and that once the former boxing great was taken down the meter would begin running. 

Many boxing fans took exception to my comments regarding that a skilled boxer would likely never defeat a skilled MMA fighter in a MMA bout simply because most boxers have no ground skills. It's no knock on the 'sweet science' but simply a statement of fact. Muhammad Ali told me the same thing years ago and I would consider him somewhat of an expert on all things boxing.

Couture vs. Toney was an attraction bout. In the world of pro wrestling, it would have been akin to the attraction bouts from back in the day when Andre the Giant performed against multiple opponents simultaneously and the question wasn't IF Andre was winning but how long it would take for the Giant to be declared victorious.

Jim Rome on his Twitter mentioned the same thing about Ali. That even an Ali in his prime couldn't beat a 47 year old Randy Couture on Saturday night. It's interesting to hear Ross say that Ali personally told him this. Bix did a post about Ali fighting Antonio Inoki before UFC 118 on Saturday. It wasn't the same in that the rules were different but the result was what you would expect. Ross is exactly right in calling the Toney-Couture fight an attraction bout. I like the analogy he uses with Andre the Giant. This was a squash match through and through. No doubt about the outcome, just pay to see it happen.

I perceive that Mike Goldberg and Joe Rogan are stars ala like back in the NFL days of Summerall and Madden and that their load should be lessened when it comes to reading the seemingly endless volume of copy that comes across their announce table. It would be very easy for UFC to retain the services of a 'big voice guy or gal' who does commercial reads for a living to read many of the promotional considerations, sponsor billboards, etc with which Goldberg gets saddled. Considering UFC essentially features only two, primary voices on a PPV, deviating from Goldberg and Rogan from time to time keeps them more special. After hearing Joe and Mike for the Spike show and then a three hour pay per view it's like how much BBQ can Ol J.R. consume? 

JR has talked about this before and I agreed with him then just as I'm doing now. Goldberg has a voice that just seems to grate on the nerves. I'm a huge fan of Joe Rogan and hope he keeps his job for a long time to come but Goldie is really hard to listen to for 3 hours. That said, what the UFC has been doing for years now has worked perfectly fine just the way it is. Everything can be improved with a few tweaks but it's always dangerous to mess with a product that's sold so well for so long.

Some more thoughts from Ross and my take on them in the extended entry.

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Mike Chiapetta transcribes some of the words of UFC head honcho Dana White, via Bloody Elbow, that Kenny Florian is not a fighter that rises to the occasion:

"I hate to say this because I don't want to take anything away from Gray Maynard, but I think Kenny is just one of those guys who chokes in big fights. I'm not bad-mouthing him or trying to disrespect him; I'm just being honest. Every time it's a big fight and there's a lot of things on the line, Kenny just ... Kenny's hands are unbelievable. Kenny's ground is unbelievable. Kenny usually kicks guys to the body and legs so hard that he busts guys up. You didn't see any of that tonight. He stood there and stared at Gray Maynard for three rounds."

It really pains me to hear him say such a thing. First of all it doesn't make any sense for him to outright give us a reason to ignore any future Kenny Florian fights. If he chokes in the big one, which means his career is not headed anywhere special, then why should we care about him anymore? What's the ultimate goal for his career now? Those aren't questions that really need to be asked though. They're hypothetical based on what White is saying. In some ways he is right but for the most part he's wrong.

Does Florian choke in the big fights? In some ways, yes, he does. The problem with saying that though, is that you discount all of his other victories as if they aren't worth anything. Are we forgetting that he soundly defeated Joe Stevenson at UFC 91 in what was a number one contender match? Or even the fight before it in which he had no trouble with Roger Huerta, a guy who hadn't lost in 17 consecutive fights before that night? The Gomi fight that he dominated from the outset before choking him out? Suddenly these fights mean nothing?

When White says that Florian chokes in the big fights he is specifically referring to 3 fights in particular. UFC 64 against Sean Sherk, UFC 101 against BJ Penn and now UFC 118 against Gray Maynard. As far as the Penn fight goes, he was beaten by a fighter that is better than him. Nothing more, nothing less. He came in with a gameplan similar to what GSP used to beat Penn but Florian doesn't have the size to properly execute it. That same problem, his size, is also the issue in the other two fights. He just couldn't stop Sean Sherk from picking him up and throwing him around and once Maynard got on top of him he couldn't get out from underneath him. By the time he threatened with submissions it was too late.

So we can surmise that Florian has a problem with strong wrestlers who can control him once they get on top of him. That has nothing to do with the fact that he was in a big fight. When Dana comes out and says that, he's really killing Florian's credibility with the fans. Whether people want to admit it or not, what White says helps shape what people actually believe. If he thinks Florian can't win a big fight then what reason does anyone have to disagree with him?

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Well, it was not much of a night for surprises. The only thing that could have been more shocking than the repeat performance of Frank Edgar was James Toney knocking out Randy Couture. He didn't even a punch. Well, maybe one. From his back. By the way, turns out he can't knock someone out from his back like he said he could. In with a few thoughts about the show.

• I hope Randy Couture, as much as I like him, doesn't get too much praise for what he did tonight. He doesn't deserve it. No one on the entire planet thought anything different would happen. Except maybe James Toney and I'm sure that even he knew he didn't stand a chance. My fear is that Dana White will award Couture with some sort of big time fight for what he did tonight but that's not what should happen. He should end up fighting Rich Franklin like was originally rumored for UFC 115. It's a fight that should be competitive and it makes sense for the division.
  
• In the post fight press conference Dana White stated that we won't have to put up with James Toney anymore. He'll be going back to boxing. Good riddance.
  
• I stated this already in the post fight recap for the Penn-Edgar fight but I'll say it again. Frankie Edgar will lose his title to Gray Maynard. Edgar relies on speed and angles to frustrate his opponents while scoring and wearing them out. What is the perfect counter to that? A strong wrestler who can hold him down and keep him there. Of everyone in the Lightweight division there is one guy that fits that profile. One Gray Maynard. There is a reason he already beat him once. He will do it again.
  
• Speaking of that fight, the UFC is going to have to find a way to protect it. Gray Maynard vs Frank Edgar for the Lightweight championship cannot and will not headline a PPV. It would sell worse than the worst selling fight of the past 5 years. Sadly enough, it can't just be about the sport in MMA. As long as the business model is built on PPV, they will have to put together cards that sell. What should happen is they should package this fight with the GSP-Josh Koscheck title fight in December. The timing is right and that card will sell for sure. I expect this card to break the streak of 7 straight PPV's of over 500,000 buys. They can't rely on Edgar being a draw because he beat BJ Penn twice. And now that Penn has lost two in a row to the champion, one has to wonder how affected his draw is as well. The UFC Lightweight division may be without a major draw. Not good.
  
• Demian Maia is one of the most entertaining fighters in the UFC. The way he applies his jiu-jitsu to MMA is a thing of beauty. It's amazing how he can so seamlessly transition from one submission to the next without a single pause while there is another highly trained individual actively trying to crack his skull. There are already quite a few people out there complaining about his performance and saying his fight with Miranda was boring. For those people there is no amount of technique and skill that can be displayed that will please them. Not sure where he goes next but I eagerly await.
  
• What's next for BJ Penn? He didn't just look beaten as a fighter, he looked defeated as a human. Like he had nothing left to give. When I saw him walk out and then get into the cage with that stoic expression on his face I took it as him being more focused then he's ever been. Now, after the performance he put in, it seems more like it was a look of indifference. Like he didn't really care. That's probably not the case and it flies in the face of everything he said in the lead up to this fight but again he just didn't look right. Unlike last time, there will be no excuses for this one. He was beaten by a fighter who is better than he is. That's all there is to it.
  
• Nate Diaz was extremely vocal in the post fight presser that he either wants a top 3 guy at Lightweight or Welterweight. At this point, he doesn't deserve either. He also said that he would like to fight Gray Maynard again because he was jobbed last time. Dana quickly told him that wasn't going to happen. I think he should get the winner of the Carlos Condit-Dan Hardy fight at UFC 120. If it's Hardy, and I think it will be, that would be another Fight of the Night level fight that would actually propel him into title contention at 170lbs. He looks a lot better at this weight too despite his repeated insistence that he wants to continue fighting at Lightweight. No matter where he fights it will be entertaining so I guess I don't really care all that much.
  

Overall, after the amazing shows that UFC 115, 116 and 117 delivered this card was a bit of a disappointment when you judge the card as a whole. Not a single KO or TKO and from a business sense the UFC is worse off than they were when they came in. That said, it's always worth the dollars spent.