Everyone knows what went down regarding UFC 143. I'm not going to talk about the main event, or the matchups that might happen in the wake of it. I want to talk about the things coming out of the show that I personally found interesting...but the rest of the MMA community must simply disagree. Regardless, I think these points deserve a little more attention.

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John Tuliver: Places to go. People To Kill.

September 16, 2009

Ellenberger rocked Condit down not once but twice early on and nearly had him finished, perhaps if he decided not to go for that choke and just keep throwing hammer fists the bout may have been stopped but Carlos hung on for a few moments to weather the storm and continued a fight to win a split decision.

June 12, 2010

MacDonald was just 7 second away from a winning decision when he got finished by the natural. Rory dominated most of the fight only to slip up in the closing moments and lose to Condit.

In closing, Condit doesn't exactly shine vs the top tier competition but showed good resolve to hang on for a win.

But to beat GSP you have to have more then just resolve.

[Hardy, Kim - NOT ELITE - the only fights he truly shined throughout]

To steal a quote from Brock Lesnar, I can't wait for GSP to pull that horseshoe up Condit's ass and beat him over the head with it! ...WOOOOOOOO!!!!

and yes I am mad.

While I didn't officially make a pick, and I doubted if Condit could keep it up for five rounds, I told you all EXACTLY how he could do it, right down to the individual techniques.

http://www.cagepotato.com/ufc-143-striking-breakdown-nick-diaz-vs-carlos-condit/

"The front-foot-turned-in stances that the brothers present mean that they are particularly vulnerable to kicks to the outside of the leg, rather than the inside. As southpaws, kicking the outside of their lead leg requires the opponent to use his lead leg, just as Fedor Emelianenko did to break Jeff Monson’s leg in November, and this would be a good strategy for Condit to follow."

"If Condit has used that win over Hardy to convince himself that his hands are world-class he may run into problems as he finds out just the same way Donald Cerrone did a few weeks back against Nate Diaz that good punching does not equate to good boxing."

"One of the interesting points coming into this fight is the weakness against low kicks that both the Diaz brothers have show in the past. Evangelista Santos, Hayato Sakurai and Paul Daley use kicks far less commonly than Condit and found great success against Nick Diaz with low kicks before mysteriously abandoning them to swing for Diaz’s head when he taunted them. Several weeks ago, Donald Cerrone, after being beaten savagely in the first round attempting to box with Nate Diaz, showed how effective kicks could be against the Diaz brothers, but also demonstrated the need to commit to them early when he gassed — just as Santos did against Nick Diaz."

"Carlos Condit is not going to be able to knock Nick Diaz out with pure punching any more than Paul Daley, Cyborg Santos, or Scott Smith could. However, if he combines his biting kicks (particularly his push kick to the knee) with punching combinations, and never attempts to engage Diaz in prolonged exchanges, instead choosing to tie him up or circle out, he may be able to strike his way to a decision or even stop Nick with a high kick or knees."

Pretty pleased with myself! I could be Greg Jackson. XD

Granted, this is premature, but could we be in for another Jones & Evans scenario?

With Condit winning on the weekend the intention would be for him to fight GSP at some stage to determine the true welterweight champion.

My memory isn't what it used to be, but aren't they both fighting out of Greg Jackson's camp? Could there be an issue with these two Jackson fighters fighting each other?

Or is the MMA world past that now, sick of hearing about the Jones/Evans situation, and everyone is a professional?

Thoughts please.

A methodical display from Carlos Condit was enough to rain on Nick Diaz's parade, on Saturday night.

Las Vegas's Mandalay Bay Events Center played host to a 'UFC 143' card that also featured key victories for Fabricio Werdum, over Roy Nelson, and Renan Barao, over Scott Jorgensen.

In the main event, the two top-ranked contenders to, the currently injured, Georges St. Pierre's Welterweight World Championship, came head-to-head.

In a five-round contest, for the interim gold, a composed Carlos Condit shocked the MMA world. The controversial Nick Diaz, the consensus favourite, was made to look much less dangerous than in previous fights. The dirty boxing specialist was reduced to launching brief, albeit highly-effective, salvos. Condit's natural range and intelligent movement frustrated Diaz throughout.

Diaz found himself unable to corner the mobile Condit, as the Muay Thai practitioner executed a high volume of leg kicks, often off the back foot. In coupling his rangy defense with some creative offensive combinations, including urakens and headkicks, Condit did enough to convince the judges of his value, on the night.

Although, in an expletive-laden post-match interview, Diaz identified his trademark forward movement as the strongest argument for himself as the winner, Condit, in truth, had many of the Diaz hallmarks well scouted. Even the mindgames of the unpredictable Cesar Gracie trainee failed to impact upon the focused Condit. At times Diaz attempted to showboat – posing and, at one point, even slapping his opponent. However, these superfluous gestures came in lieu of any kind of sustained, scoring offense from the former Strikeforce and WEC champ.

Diaz's strongest sequence of the night occured in an exciting sprint finish. As the contest came to a close, he scored a takedown on a tiring Condit, before beginning to trouble the New Mexican with chokehold and armbar attempts. Disappointingly, from Diaz's perspective, Condit was able to weather the late storm to guide his ship home.

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Shungo Oyama finishing Hae Suk Son in the final of the Middleweight Grand Prix. Courtesy of Manabu Takashima.

Shungo Oyama continued his recent renaissance by defeating two opponents in one night to claim the Road FC Middleweight Grand Prix title. He has now won five straight fights and improves to 13-13, leaving him one win short of having a positive record for the first time since 2001.

The quarter finals took place at Road FC 5 in December with Oyama defeating Denis Kang in the most notable of the four matchups. The Japanese fighter's reward for that performance was a semi final with Jong Dae Kim, which he won with a first round heel hook, while Hae Suk Son stopped Eun Soo Lee with strikes early on in their fight.

It took Oyama just over two minutes to take Son down and finish him with punches for a victory which few would begrudge him given the calibre of opposition he consistently faced early on in his career. The Japanese middleweight has been in there with Wanderlei Silva, Mirko Crocop, Dan Henderson, Renzo Gracie, Melvin Manhoef and Carlos Newton.

As the middleweight Grand Prix reached its conclusion a 135 lbs tournament got underway with Andrew Leone taking on Kyung Ho Kang, the number one Korean fighter at the weight. The American had announced his intention to compete at flyweight in future but has agreed to continue to compete in the division at least for the duration of this tournament after being put forward by ONE Fighting Championship to provide an international presence.

Perhaps with this information in mind Kang, who had an 9-5 record going into this fight, decided to attempt an ambitious weight cut in order maximize his size advantage, The plan backfired when he missed weight by 5 lbs and even though reports suggest he rehydrated back up to over 155 lbs he was hit with a point per round penalty meaning that he effectively had to secure a stoppage if he wanted to win.

Leone was on the receiving end of some solid knees to the head while on the ground in the opening round and also survived an armbar attempt, but was never dominated to the extent that Kang could recover his three point deficit and progressed to the semi finals courtesy of a decision win.

There were three other fights in the bantamweight tournament. It is is unclear whether they were quarter finals or just qualifiers but the winners were Jae Hoon Moon, Dae Hwan Kim and Jae Hyun So.

Full results:

Jae Hoon Moon defeated Jin Suk Jung via TKO
Dae Hwan Kim defeated Kwang Su Park via decision
Jae Hyun So defeated Myung Sik Kwak via decision
Hyung Seok Lee defeated Chung Il Jeo via submission (Guillotine Choke)
Seok Mo Kim defeated Jung Min Kang via TKO
Eun Soo Kim defeated Sang Soo Lee via KO
Hae Suk Son defeated Eun Soo Lee via TKO advances to 185 lbs Tournament Final
Shungo Oyama defeated Jong Dae Kim vis submission (Heel Hook)
Jae Young Kim defeated Hee Seung Kim via submission (North-South Choke)
Andrew Leone defeated Kyung Ho Kang via decision advances to 135 lbs Tournament Semi Final
Lee Moon Han defeated Jung Won Lee via decision
Shungo Oyama defeated Hae Suk Son via TKO wins 185 lbs Tournament

After some of the reaction concerning the Diaz-Condit fight, it just got me wondering, why do people watch MMA for striking? I'm not gonna lie, in terms of MMA i'm still abit of a noob at the moment, ive watched much more boxing, but when i watch MMA i don't get overly excited by the striking, and ofcourse, why would they box as well as actual boxers. What gets me more excited is the submissions and the use of TDs and transitions, it's something different from MMA

I know that MMA is Mixed Martial Arts so striking is a big big part of it but for some reason ive got it tuned that the TDs, grappling and all the rest of it is more 'MMA' than boxing is. I also understand that the striking can be exciting for some people, (like i said, it excites me but not OVERLY, simply because if i want masterful striking, or slugging, or people just throwing punches for a whole night, i can just watch boxing for that

This whole post is gonna sound silly to alot of people, but maybe we can discuss...

PS - My take on the Condit fight was that he did well, executing a good gameplan, to be honest, i saw IKilled007's post and he didn't seem too happy with the manner of the fight, i see where he's coming from ofcourse but at the same time it's easy for us lol, were watching the fight, for Condit, any form of trading couldve been disastrous, and at the end of the day, him losing wouldnt affect us in any way, so ofcourse we can moan but he's actually in the situation, if that makes sense

First off, I'm glad the UFC has finally put official in-fight statistics on their duly improved score-graphic. It's got a boxing-esque feel to it and presumably they're using FightMetric for their numbers and not CompuStrike, which probably had Matt Riddle landing 459 strikes.

Unfortunately, this very helpful new feature of the UFC's revamped broadcast production has now become Mike Goldberg's only source of play-by-play. I lost count of the number of times he would blatantly ignore the action right in front of him to spout off completely uninteresting stats from a fight. So now this is the rough shortlist of things Goldie will mention in every commentary:

- Statistics passed along to him during a fight of any sort (e.g Werdum has landed 80% of his significant strikes).

- Anyone associated with a Karate background or even a Karate stance is automatically another version of Lyoto Machida. Stephen Thompson is an American Machida, don't you know?

- If you just as much land multiple knees in the Muay Thai clinch, it's reminiscent of Anderson Silva.

- If you're small and throw a lot of kicks, you're Jose Aldo. Renan Barao is like a 135 Jose Aldo....until you realize Barao hasn't recorded a KO in forever and has slick offensive submission skills.

- Personal stories of fighters that he's determined to finish reading as Joe Rogan screams all over the actual action going in the cage.

- Any spectacular knockout will be met with "OH MY GOODNESS! HOW GOOD WAS THAT?!"

- Teep!

- Turk!

- Boom!

- It is all over!

- Mediocre fighters like Matt Brown or Matt Riddle are never in a boring fight.

- Every terrible striker like Dean Lister, Jake Shields, Karlos Vemola, or Matt Riddle is described as "ever-improving".

- In pre-fight talk, every loss is simply described as a "hard fought battle".

- Nut shots: "So you wanna be an Ultimate Fighter?" to serve as a reminder that if you want to be an "Ultimate Fighter", you will get kicked in the balls occasionally.

Have I missed anything? Try turning my list into a drinking game. You'd be dead within seconds.

Diaz/Condit was hyped as a sure-fire fight of the year candidate. Fans were teased by a giddy Joe Rogan at the end of the FX prelims for the oncoming onslaught of carnage, blood, and violence that was sure to rain down upon the live crowd at the main event later in the night. We were urged to buy the card if we considered ourselves "true MMA fans", because two fighters "in their prime" and "at an elite level" rarely meet, let alone two supposed "killers". Yes, I'm air-quoting. No, I'm not upset. I watched it at a local bar because I could smell the hypetrain's familiar post-card failure fresh in my nostrils.

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So, it turns out weed, cognac and going to bed after 8am isn't the best cure for a cold. Thankfully I was able to wake up to some spreadsheeting and 16 fanposts about how the Condit - Diaz fight was the worst disappointment since Duke Nukem Forever.

A couple of thoughts before I dive into the results: that was a pretty high scoring event. A prett-ay, prett-ay, prett-ay, prett-ay, prett-ay, pretty high scoring, in fact. UFC 136 had an average score of 64.2 but UFC 143's average score blew it away and came in at a RIDICULOUS 69.4 points. That's the third time in five events that the BECW camp has scored 60+ points on average. Either this year's competitors are better or MMA picking got easier, because UFC 136 was the only event last season that featured a 60+ point average.

Despite the plethora of high scores, John Danaher's Hair's BECW record of 105 points for an event (UFC 136) still stands. However, Noahwob and benten20's scores of 103 mean that JDH is no longer the only CW player to score 100+ points. Well done, guys!

The median score for the event was 72 points but the average was dragged down by a couple of poor scores and quite a few incomplete sets of picks (0's aren't counted in the average). Those of you who posted incomplete picks - shame on you. You are a disgrace to the Civil War.

Every fight on the UFC 143 card featured a clear favourite and at least a 2-to-1 underdog, at least based on the BECW camp picks. Roy Nelson was the most popular underdog being picked by 36% of the camp (Caceres was second with 32%) while on the other end of the spectrum Max Holloway got 0 picks, Starks got 4, C-Murder got 6 and Martinez got 11. If Pierce, Martinez and Caceres had won their fights as they probably deserved the scores would have looked very different indeed.

Alright, without further ado, here's this week's table of contents. Follow the jump for stats & graphs.

Table of Contents

• 1a. Individual scores, UFC 143
• 1b. Individual scores, overall
• 2a. Team scores after UFC 143
• 2b. Overall team scores
• 3. More to come

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