Got a few shows coming up soon here - let's get to talking about them. LIVE MATCHES * Randy Couture vs. Brandon Vera * Dan Hardy vs. Mike Swick * Michael Bisping vs. Denis Kang * Matt Brown vs. James Wilks * Ross Pearson vs. Aaron Riley TAPED MATCHES * Terry Etim vs. Shannon Gugerty * John Hathaway vs. Paul Taylor * Nick Osipczak vs. Matthew Riddle * Alexander Gustafsson vs. Jared Hamman * Roli Delgado vs. Andre Winner -- An interesting main event - looking forward to seeing how Couture and Vera match up. -- Bisping/Kang could also be good.
Average card but its free. I think Vera wins the main event easily, i cant see him losing at all. Kang will beat bisping. Swick/Hardy is hard one to call, i want hardy to win though. Wilks>Brown. Riley>Pearson.
I'd have given Couture a narrow win as well - he did control more of the fight, IMO. But it still comes down to the fact that you can't ever trust a judge to make the right call - Vera had 15 minutes to get a win.
Personally i gave the first round to Couture even though nothing really happened. The second round was clearly won by Vera. As for the last round the take down and full mount by Vera for me atleast won him the round. The last round could be debateable i guess, i can see people calling it as a tie at best but there's no way Couture won 2 rounds especially since he barely tried to hurt him from the clinch. It's after fights like these i respect how the judging is in Japan. Couture would've prolly been yellow carded by the 2nd round and it would've opened up the fight a bit. Not to mention Vera would've walked away with the win seeing as he's the only one who attempted to finish it.
It's an unwritten rule in the UFC, "you don't leave a fight to decision". The UFC has always had controversial fight decisions. To me the biggest one was the Randleman vs. Bas Rutten @ UFC 20. However, I think it would have been hard for Vera to finish Couture. Sorry, Couture might have won, but I think he should really consider giving up fighting & stick w/ coaching. Do you think he could pull these negative tactics w/ Shogun, Dragon Machida, or Suga Rashad Evans??? I don't think so. Imagine what would have happened if he had to face Anderson "Da Spider" Silva??? I don't want to even think about that result. I just hope Randy just calls it quits or if he fights one more, let him fight Mark "Da Hammer" Coleman. It could be touted as The Go Around.
Couture just signed a 6 fight contract, the only way i see him leaving early is if he gets a good beating from one of the fighters you named above.
Though I though Vera should of won I knew the judges were going to give it to Randy, it was very close either way but it it hard to figure out as it seems different judges rate different aspects of the fight. I look at something like takedown defense where Machida got a lot of rep for shutting down sho gun yet Randy tried many times to take down Vera and failed but oh well. I know there were some who made a too big of a deal about it, it wasn't as bad as the Machida win over Sho Gun imo.