{"id":1592,"date":"2007-09-09T16:54:00","date_gmt":"2007-09-09T20:54:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/craigzablo.com\/?p=1592"},"modified":"2007-09-09T16:54:00","modified_gmt":"2007-09-09T20:54:00","slug":"some-surprises-and-a-disappointment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/?p=1592","title":{"rendered":"Some Surprises and a Disappointment"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\"\"<\/a>Last night’s UFC 75<\/span> card provided some surprises<\/span> and one major disappointment<\/span>.<\/span>
<\/span>
<\/span>Houston Alexander vs Alessio Sakara<\/span>
<\/span>
<\/span>Alexander<\/span> was coming off a first round knockout<\/span> of Keith Jardine<\/span> [who’s a pretty tough dude]. Although Jardine<\/span> had jumped all over Alexander<\/span> and looked to be headed for an early KO<\/span>, Alexander<\/span> weathered the storm and ended up knocking out Jardine<\/span>. So, was Houston<\/span> the real deal or simply the beneficiary of a lucky punch?<\/span>
<\/span>
The fight starts quickly with both fighters aggressively moving in. Sakara<\/span> takes Alexander<\/span> down, but can’t keep him there. Alexander<\/span> is strong but sloppy. He’s throwing punches and lands a knee which puts Sakara<\/span> down for the count. I’m somewhat surprised to say that Alexander<\/span> could be a real contender. I hadn’t even mentioned this fight in my pre-fight post<\/span><\/a> due to the fact that I wasn’t convinced that it would have much meaning. Alexander<\/span> winning so quickly and easily twice in a row against good fighters has changed my opinion. <\/span>
<\/span>
Micro Cro Cop vs Cheick Congo<\/span> <\/span>
<\/span>
I was surprised at how big Congo<\/span> is. The guy is in shape and huge. My prediction was that Cro Cop<\/span> would win and he did take the first round. The second and third rounds were Congo’s<\/span> and I think that the difference was that he fought most of the first round backing up. Cro Cop<\/span> pushed the action and Congo <\/span>seemed ill at ease. For whatever reason, Cro Cop<\/span> allowed [or couldn’t stop] Congo’s forward motion<\/span> in the last two rounds and he easily won a unanimous decision. <\/span>
<\/span>
I have to admit, I was surprised the Cro Cop<\/span> lost.
<\/span><\/span>
Matt Hamill vs Michael Bisping<\/span>
<\/span>
I like both of these guys, but felt that because Bisping<\/span> had more experience and was a more rounded fighter, he’d pull out a victory. Talk about surprises and even disappointment.<\/span>
<\/span>
Both men came in shape and ready to fight. I thought that Hamill<\/span> would rely on his superior wrestling skills<\/span> to take down Bisping<\/span>, but in the end Hamill<\/span> wouldn’t be able to end it and Bisping<\/span> would pull out a victory. My guess is that’s what Bisping<\/span> thought as well. Well, we were both wrong… sort of.<\/span>
<\/span>
Hamill<\/span> came out and stood toe-to-toe with Bisping<\/span>. He not only was winning the stand-up, but when he took Bisping<\/span> down, he let him up, only to punish him with more hard punches. The first round was easily Hamill’s<\/span>. The second round looked to be more of the same. Bisping<\/span> was backing away looking for an opening, but Hamill<\/span> continued to land the better shots. Bisping<\/span> knew that he couldn’t take Hamill<\/span> down, so what he really needed was Hamill<\/span> to make a mistake. When Hamill<\/span> took Bisping<\/span> down, he let him up rather than make a mistake and get caught in a submission. Round 3 was basically more of the same.<\/span>
<\/span>
I had the fight two rounds to one for Hamill<\/span>. Everyone watching the fight with me felt that Hamill <\/span>had won [some even gave him all three rounds]. The judges must have been watching a different fight. Bisping<\/span> won on a split decision<\/span>! I was surprised and disappointed. I was disappointed because of the bad decision<\/span> and surprised<\/span> because Hamill<\/span> had come out and defied expectations. He didn’t rely on his wrestling<\/span> and won the standup<\/span> against the more experienced fighter. <\/span>
<\/span>
We’ll see more from both of these warriors. My guess is that at some point they’ll have a rematch. Who knows, maybe even the judges of their fight will get to see it.<\/span>
<\/span>
Rampage Jackson vs Dan Henderson<\/span>
<\/span>
I picked Henderson<\/span> to win because I thought that his Olympic-level wrestling skills<\/span> would be enough to defeat Jackson’s punching power<\/span>. Although Jackson<\/span> couldn’t knock out Henderson<\/span>, he was still too strong, quick and skilled for Henderson<\/span> to do much with. Jackson’s skills<\/span> were better than I gave him credit for, and I had him winning a pretty easy decision. So did the judges. <\/span>
<\/span>
Overall for the night, I was 1-2<\/span> on my prefight predictions<\/span>. The sad thing is that the one fight I did predict right should have gone the other way.<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n

<\/span><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last night’s UFC 75 card provided some surprises and one major disappointment.Houston Alexander vs Alessio SakaraAlexander was coming off a<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":912,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1592","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mma"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1592","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/912"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1592"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1592\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1592"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1592"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1592"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}