 |
|
UFC 48: Payback Short Summary
June 19, 2004 Mandalay Bay Events Center Las Vegas, Nevada
The UFC comes up to the plate...the pitcher is ready...there's the pitch...the UFC hits a long fly ball....okay, okay....Not diggin' it...got it...I'm just trying to say that the UFC hosted a pretty good show on Saturday night. Some of the fights, on paper at least, didn't seem to garner a lot of attention from people and if you fell into that category, then you missed out.
All the fighters looked ready for action - like Phil Baroni thinking he was going to go out and dominate Evan Tanner to Tanner actually dominating Baroni (this time no controversy). Baroni gave props to Tanner as did most of the fighters to their opponents throughout the night. It was good to see.
One of the more surprising moments of the night was the Matt Hughes vs. Renato Verissimo fight. Hughes won a unanimous decision over Verissimo but the way I saw the fight, I thought Verissimo attempted more submissions and almost caught Hughes a few times to edge out a win. Not to take anything away from Hughes, he was able to escape what looked to be a tight triangle choke but Verissimo's defense pretty much nullified Hughes offense. The judges didn't see it my way... but 30-27 on two scorecards?
Then there was the so-called controversial fight between Frank Mir and Tim Sylvia. The fight ended when the ref stepped in to stop the bout which many in attendance and watching on TV thought was a bad call at the time - vocalizing their displeasure. Mir had Sylvia in an arm bar at the time of the stoppage but Sylvia looked alright after the stoppage. Sylvia was ready to continue. Believe me though, the ref did the right thing. The ref was right on top of the action and he must of seen what the rest of us didn't - Slyvia's forearm snap. Well, all those people who yelled and booed had to eat their words because the UFC announced that Sylvia had broken his arm. Great call ref.
All this led up to the main event - Kimo vs. Ken Shamrock. Kimo looked good as he clinched with Shamrock at the start of the fight. Shamrock landed a few knees but they didn't seem to bother Kimo. But as Kimo dropped his head while they were still in the clinch, Shamrock took advantage of a perfect opportunity to kind-of shove Kimo back and land a knee right on the money - and that's all it took. Kimo went down and out. It seemed that Kimo was fresh and could of gone many more rounds, but all it took was that one split second for Shamrock to see the opening and capitalized on it.
The UFC also announced a few fights for their upcoming show - UFC 49. Former King of the Cage light heavyweight champion Vernon "Tiger" White will be facing "The Iceman" Chuck Liddell. And Randy Couture will take on Vitor Belfort one more time to to settle the tie with both having a win and a loss against each other.
All in all, UFC 48 turned out to be a pretty good event. AL
(6/19/04)
|
 |
