UFC #33 Victory in Vegas 10/02/01

Matt Sedore loves fighting.

On Friday the 28th of September, the UFC was back on PPV and in Las Vegas. Now sanctioned by the athletic commission and with 8 great fights lined up, I was very excited about Friday. At 6:30 we started watching the pre-show, which was kind of boring and repetitive, but okay for newer fans. It is important to know who and what you are watching. I didn't see the preliminary fights so I'm not going to talk about them except to say I don't know why they were not on the main card because they sounded very exciting.

The first fight of the night was Dave Menne Vs Gil Castillo. This was a great fight; both of these fighters are very skilled. Castillo is a Brazilian Jiu Jitsu fighter and Dave Menne is one of the best all around fighters out there today. These 2 fighters went to war for 25 minutes. Most fights that go the distance end up being boring - not this one though. After 25 minutes of fighting, Dave Menne sure had won over many new fans and had become the first middleweight champion.

The next fight up was Matt "The Terror" Serra Vs Yves Edwards in another great match that also went the distance. "The Terror" is a great BJJ player, while Edwards represented "Thugjitsu" which is apparently a mix of BJJ and Muai Thai kickboxing. "The Terror" dominated this match scoring takedowns and being very aggressive on the ground looking for submissions. Serra got the nod after 15 minutes. I had never seen Edwards before but I would like to see him again.

So far I was stoked on this event. There had been two great fights in and another coming up which I was looking forward to - Chuck "The Iceman" Liddel Vs Murilo Bustamante. Liddel is one of my favorite fighters and I was looking forward to seeing Bustamante live for the first time. Liddel is a great striker and wrestler while Bustamante is a BJJ player on the Brazilian Top Team (one of the best fight teams in Brazil). This was a strange fight however. Chuck couldn't seem to get off the strikes he wanted to and Bustamante couldn't get Chuck to the ground but was striking really well for a Jiu Jitsu guy. Chuck seemed to gas out in the first round which is not like him at all. This fight also went to decision after 15 minutes. I thought it should be a draw because neither of these guys really won or lost this fight but the judges thought Liddel won. This left Murilo with his first loss in MMA.

The next match had some promise because these guys supposedly didn't like each other. However, Jens "Little Evil" Pulver, the light weight champion, Vs Dennis Hallman was a mediocre fight at best. Snoozer to the max here - both fighters seemed way too defensive so neither got anything done. In the last round of this fight Hallman tried to do a WWF style dropkick, which failed spectacularly. Also in the last round Jens finally seemed to open up and use his boxing skills. It wasn't enough to end the fight so this was another that ended up in the hands of the judges. Jens got the nod, as he should have; he was in control of the fight most of the time.

The last fight of the night featured Tito Ortiz, the light heavy weight champ and fan favorite, Vs Valdimir Matyushenko. This fight was going to be exciting, I knew it. Tito is one of the best fighters at this weight, if not the best. A lot of hype had gone into Matyushenkos wrestling skill and strength, however neither seemed to help him at all against the powerful Ortiz. Ortiz was in control of this fight until the 4th round when my cable was cut off because Zuffa didn't buy enough time on PPV. So, annoyed at the PPV, I had to go look on the Internet for the final match's out come. Inevitably, it was Tito getting the win via decision.

Now there are a few things that should change in the "new" UFC. The rules have changed way too much - on the ground you are not allowed to use your knees. This alone changed the outcome of a lot of the matches and maybe if allowed, it would have spiced it up a bit. Another thing that needs to be addressed is that the UFC needs to buy enough PPV time or cut out some of the useless crap they had on the screen like little commercials for beer and other random crap. Yes, this is supposed to be the "new" UFC and the guys at Zuffa have come a long way in a few short months, a lot further than SEG got in years, but they need to not make some of the dumbass mistakes SEG made like not buying enough PPV time. They need to buy enough for every fight to go the distance because with their great match making the guys fighting could very well go the distance. Overall this was a good show, but not being able to see the last round of the main event is totally unacceptable. UFC 34 is coming up on November 2nd and it looks like it could be a great card. I will get it on PPV again but the word is that they need to make a few changes in how they run the show or a lot of people will stop buying them.

Matt Sedore

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