1) Murilo Bustamante vs. Jesse Taylor: This is the fight starting the card. I repeat - THE FIGHT STARTING THE SHOW.
FIGHT: Taylor TKO Rnd 2 (3)
Bustamante: Murilo comes out looking strong - he actually gets some near submissions in the fight in the first round and has dominant positions (sweeps Taylor and mounts him!). However, he starts looking gassed by the end of the first after failing to win. Taylor gets a takedown early in the second and just rides on Bustamante, landing small shots until there's a standup. When it happens, Murilo stands briefly, the waives his hand and quits, collapsing.
Taylor: Better job of defending submissions, as there were real dangerous attempts in this fight against him. He just kept grinding and eventually forced Bustamante to quit.
NEXT - A fight from the IMPACT FC fight collection. That means the other show.
2) Josh Barnett vs. Geronimo Dos Santos: Josh Barnett looks to make up for his lame performance against a fat and lazy Mighty Mo.
FIGHT: Barnett TKO Rnd 1. Not much of a fight. Dos Santos was actually able to pummel with Barnett without going down immediately but totally smothered his own offense jumping into Barnett's clinch. He got out from under Barnett's mount once when Barnett seemed to be looking to float into an armbar, but got taken down with a trip again later and was pounded out from mount in the first. (3)
3) Jeremy May vs. Murilo "Ninja" Rua: May was on Season 7 of TUF. Remember him? I don't. Ninja is Shogun's less successful brother. But he did really beat Rampage that one time.
FIGHT: Ninja Submission Rnd 1. You see a fight like this and you think, "Wow, how uncompetitive is that?" And then it turns out to be a short war. May just wings the wildest punches ever at Ninja and he lands because Ninja's reflexes are dulled by multiple bad KOs. He nearly finishes Ninja with a bulldog choke, but Rua gets up and fights it off, then takes down May with a double leg. May actually just flips out of that like its pro wrestling or something and takes Rua's back briefly before Rua gets out of it. Back on the feet May comes charging at Ninja again and ends up getting choked out with a guillotine. Ninja had some dominance on top briefly but the fact that he was nearly stopped by May was shocking and sad. Rua needs to retire, but he probably can't. (2)
4) Denis Kang vs. Paulo Filho: A dream fight for PRIDE's 183lb weight class in 2005. Since then, both men have encountered huge personal demons. Now here they are in Australia fighting in front of a mostly empty building. I even forgot this fight happened.
FIGHT: Draw. I am a guy who hates 10-10 rounds. I would have given round 3 as 10-10. And I would have had this fight 29-29. In a sense, this was a perfect example of a fight that was a draw. No man really went after it and was successful in imposing their will. Filho would get half guard and land some hammerfists but then have to fight off a kimura. Same in reverse. (3)
Kang: Kang came out and dominated the entire first round of the fight. I mean, he gets on top and just hits Filho a lot. It is clear at this point that it is Kang's fight to lose. So what happens? He abandons his superior striking game against Filho having dominated the position and ends up on the bottom for most of round 2 and much of 3. He didn't lose the fight because in round 3, he was able to get up and effectively do some work of his own, but he ended up not winning either. And that's as big a crime.
Filho: Slow, lethargic, solely capable of grappling. These are traits of the modern Paulo Filho, now the poor man's Ricardo Arona. Its hard to believe looking at Filho's record that he has tumbled clear out of the top ten in the middleweight division, in fact dropping all the way to being nearly out of the top 20. This in spite of never technically losing as a middleweight, and only dropping one fight. Hell, he has a win over the guy that is still consensus ranked top 5 at this moment post roid positive (Sonnen). But it is deserved. He has pissed away what talent he had and fallen into disrepair mentally. Watching him lay on his back most of the first round smiling as he does nothing but keep a closed guard is a stunning indictment of Filho as a top caliber fighter. He shows he can still grapple competently in this fight, but we knew that as he was forced to rely on it to beat Chael Sonnen and Joe Doerkson in US fights of yore.
I can't think of anyone in MMA that has had a similar career curve while not losing. Because he has only one loss still. He doesn't deserve to be elevated off of this performance either, because Kang is clearly not a guy who is competing at the elite level any more. It all feels a bit sad.
5) Carlos Newton vs. Brian Ebersole: What a strange fight. Ebersole's a journeyman from Australia and therefore is a legend there, while everywhere in the world, Newton is the legend. Well, a legend with a journeyman record. So perhaps this is really evenly matched? This was also from the Impact FC 1 show.
FIGHT: Ebersole Unanimous Decision (2)
Newton: The saddest performance of Newton's career. Carlos doesn't even shoot for a takedown in this fight and ends up just eating jabs and right hands pretty much the whole fight. He tries to counter punch a little and in terms of grappling, Ebersole actually is the one pushing to try and get takedowns.
Ebersole: Some strange hammerfists to the thigh is what is most notable here. Aside from that, he is very ordinary as a striker and even more ordinary as a wrestler trying to get a takedown.
6) Brad Morris vs. Soa Palelei: What a weird regional contest. Two heavyweights of some note who have competed with regularity in Australia.
FIGHT: Palelei Submission Rnd 1. Not much of a fight, to be honest. Morris goes push Palelei up against the cage like he's going to take him down, doesn't, they end up lying there for awhile with Palelei tapping him, then turning the tables and pushing Morris into the cage. He gets down Morris and quickly moves to a kimura that forces Morris to tap out. If only Palelei was willing to get under 265 and fight real fighters. And could beat them. Since he can't. (1)
7) Paul Daley vs. Daniel Acacio: Acacio was a big name when he was in PRIDE for three seconds. Daley had been cut two months prior for the attempted sucker punch with Josh Koscheck in the UFC.
FIGHT: Daley TKO Rnd 3 (3)
Daley: Its tough to fault a guy too much when he wins by KO. However, Daley shows why he was one of the most overrated guys in the sport the last 3-4 years. In rounds 1 and 2 Daley ends up on the bottom because he's overzealous in his offense, and he barely escapes a heel hook attempt in round number 1. He basically just pulls his leg free. That's great that he can do it with Acacio, who isn't physically strong. Try doing that with a much stronger man and see how well it goes. He lands some good leg kicks but gets taken down off one. He does show that as in the Shields fight, his submission defense is not bad at all these days.
Acacio: Quits when he is gashed open with an elbow on the bottom in the third round. Its hard to believe he was a middleweight when in this welterweight contest, he is clearly much smaller than Daley. His strange post-PRIDE career made him a journeyman, and as a welterweight he has a lot to offer in that regard. He showed he has a decent chin weathering the shots of Daley early on. His striking is still uncomfortable and robotic, but that's not uncommon in the sport. Really, there's a lot of worst P4P fighters in the UFC than him.
8) Pedro Rizzo vs. Ken Shamrock: What an incredible and incredibly sad fight.
FIGHT: Rizzo TKO Rnd 1. Was there any doubt how this would end? Pedro Rizzo rarely gets to use his patented leg kicks but they were on display for all the world to see here, as he lands a ton of them to Ken Shamrock. Ken doesn't bother to shoot in, instead trading leg kicks and the occasional jab with Rizzo. Eventually he's chopped down and Big John McCarthy lets Rizzo hit him a couple more times on the ground as Ken just covers up. A sad fight. Ken's nose looks worse than Jerome LeBanner's. Amazingly. Ken states he wants to fight big names except when he fights in small towns for fans. The crowd hopes for more Ken Shamrock. That is a thing. As long as the fans still want to see him, Ken admits jokingly (but really, this is for real) that he will keep getting beat up. (2)
This concludes the PPV broadcast, but here's an EXCLUSIVE BSHOWASSAULT REVIEW~. The points here won't count to the show above though. From Impact FC 1:
(thanks to the dude who posted this video - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MPT_5EM0ckA)
BONUS)Rameau Thierry Sokoudjou vs. Joaquim Ferreria: Terrible quality from a point and shoot far away, but whatever. Soccerjew fell on hard times. Really hard times. Here he fights off TV against the man that defeated Junior Dos Santos, a brazilian midget top control grappler. Sounds familiar.
FIGHT: Sokoudjou TKO Rnd 1. Amazingly the whole thing is clearly visible. Sokoudjou comes out swinging with a low kick and punches and Ferreria does the expected. He clinches and tries to stop the onslaught. Problem though - Sokoudjou was a judoka and didn't suck at it. He throws Ferreria in a really cool fashion and begins to pound him out. Ferreria briefly gets this fight back up but basically is muscled back down and punished with punches to the dome till the stop is forced. All he ever did was look for a single. (2)
FIGHT OF THE NIGHT: Acacio/Daley
KO OF THE NIGHT: Rizzo/Shamrock (even if it was like hitting a heavy bag in terms of difficulty)
SUBMISSION OF THE NIGHT: Ninja/May
OVERALL FOR THE EVENT: 6 out of 10. The problem with shows packed with guys like this is matchmaking. Honestly, most promoters who do it make fights with no thought given as to the sorts of bouts they'll be making, instead hoping to generate revenue off the names of the guys in the ring. That's not to say that better matchmaking was gonna save Impact FC, because it wasn't. It couldn't. Nothing could have except if Impact FC were called something totally different and operated in a totally different manner.
What I'm getting at is that here you have a bunch of fights that are actually sorta relevant or interesting to hardcore fans - IE people like me. But in terms of matching guys in ways that produce exciting or even contests, man, they came up way short. Aside from Daley's perennial act as underachiever against Daniel Acacio (a name no one has uttered as a serious contender in half a decade), what on this card is really arguarably as both indispensable and entertaining viewing? What do you come away from seeing, saying, "Wow, that was great MMA"? Viewing the competitive draw between Filho and Kang, its clear that neither belongs at the top of the MMA ladder anymore. They don't have the heart. They don't have the will. They fight not to lose instead of fighting to win. Mentally both men are shot and their souls taken.
Is it a worthless fight in the MMA pantheon? Of course not. Filho still has more potential in his pinky than Court McGee and Ryan Jensen have in their whole bodies combined. And they're in the UFC. Court McGee won TUF. Same goes for Kang. And they'll likely beat fighters at that level in the near and distant future. Hell, they may beat Court McGee himself on whatever the 2013 version of Battlecade is. But I can see why Joe Silva doesn't want them, and why they'll be sorta hopelessly searching for a position in this sport.
D&R Rating: 47.5% (19/40)
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