1) Jon Hollis vs. Anthony Gutierrez: Nondescript local lightweights. As amateurs, Gutierrez beat Hollis. As pros, will it be different? Noteworthy fact: Hollis has his own name tramp stamped on him.
FIGHT: Gutierrez Submission Rnd 1. Hollis is a decent wrestler, but not much else. With Gutierrez having a height advantage, Hollis decides to take down Gutierrez repeatedly and take his chances. Hollis leaves his head or arm in over and over and over again and submission attempts just keep coming from Gutierrez. With 40 seconds left in the round, a triangle choke forces a tapout for Hollis. (0)
Here is a hype piece for Phil Baroni after the opener so we can all hear about how Phil Baroni, late in his physical prime, is about to make a comeback after fighting like shit for years.
2) Nathan Schut vs. James Krause: Schut is 13-4 against non-names but is a lifetime wrestler. Krause lost in Bellator and WEC and bounced from both. He is a lot taller and younger.
FIGHT: Krause TKO Rnd 1. Schut doesn't prepare at all for strikes and was thinking takedown when he gets hit with a headkick he didn't see at all. Fight is done and its 30 seconds in. (0)
3) Alonzo Martinez vs. Aaron Derrow: Derrow was getting the hell beat out of him when he beat Rich Clementi by miracle sub. Martinez is some guy who I saw in the last TFC show. Honestly, this is an irrelevant bout, but you know what? It is well matched.
FIGHT: Martinez Majority Decision. The first time I tried watching this, I was drunk. I felt that was a bad way to go. So I watched again later sober. Man, this is a good fight! (2)
Derrow: Derrow is the kind of un-athletic BJJ guy that works from the bottom all the time. You know that guy. He's tall, gangly,throws terrible punches as he rushes forward to get the clinch, but has to pull guard or get taken down to do anything. To win regularly as such a guy, you have to be insane tough and incredible from the bottom. Derrow is tough. He is just OK from the bottom. He's just not gonna be that kind of guy in the Noguiera/Maia/Diaz vein. His punches coming forward are really bad, but you expect to see a guy like this push shots and wander forward looking to clinch.
If you take the tact that he's never going to really concentrate on striking or MMA as a career, that's fine. Pushing punches and coming forward at least gives you the chance of backing someone straight up and landing as they keep going backwards. He actually gets Martinez with a few shots this way at the end of the first. But counter shots and the like - that is where champions are made. He hurts Martinez so badly in the 3rd that he gets like two solid minutes of beatdown out of it with a single right hand counter as Martinez comes in wild. If that had happened in the first round, he'd have won. Instead. he gets a 10-8 on one card to get a draw and 10-9 on the other two, earning him a defeat.
Martinez: Undersized compared to Darrow, he's just OK at most everything, has decent submission defense, better takedowns than his opponent, and his striking is more consistent, albeit still wild by any reasonable discussion. He's a good gatekeeper type for guys looking to get to the D level in the sport.
4) William DeSouza vs. Eric Marriott: 150 lb catchweight? I think? I dunno. Who cares.
FIGHT: Marriott Unanimous Decision. Very difficult fight to break down. DeSouza is a guy who has some degree of grappling skill but wasn't close to having enough strength or technique to take down Marriott. This was a major issue, because skillwise he was getting beat up standing and on the bottom, while there were a couple attempts at leg locks, there weren't any real scares to keep Marriott honest on top. In effect, you saw in the very first round that DeSouza could not win. Marriott is hardly unbeatable - he's strong, yes. But he's flat footed and keeps his hands very low. He doesn't really have an explosive shot either.
In my weekly discussions with Lee Casebolt, he mentioned to me that he hadn't seen a fighter like DeSouza in a major MMA show such as this one since 1997. As he put it, who comes into a cage today with nothing other than brown belt level BJJ? (0)
5) Nick Nolte vs. Phil Baroni: Finally, we reach the main card. Before the fight, viewers are treated to a sort of Baroni promo shot at AKA in which Baroni shows off his incredible digs that he shares with Justin Wilcox upstairs, above the gym. Apparently he is now cohabitating in a 300 square foot room with Nolte, sleeping in a twin bed, and eating meals Wilcox cooks up on a camping stove while still spending money on fake tans and shit. Wasn't this guy married again? I know he got foreclosed on, but really now.
FIGHT: Baroni Unanimous Decision. Nolte isn't the story here. He fights a good gameplan that keeps him in the fight and takes Baroni deep where Phil is always, always terrible. Humorously, he throws a pair of spinning heel kicks in the third, one of which lands to the mush. Baroni's gameplan is that of top control wrestler, and wrestling was never really his strongest point. He was a sprawl and brawl wrestler at his best. As a top control wrestler, he doesn't have the cardio nor the GNP to dent guys. An argument can be made for Nolte to win this fight, since he pushed Baroni into the cage and landed some dirty boxing for the majority of the first before being taken down and controlled, and in round 3 he landed a ton of bad ass strikes that hurt Baroni and nearly finished a gassed Phil before gassing totally himself and being taken down and held down for 2 minutes. Baroni arguably then has lost every fight since his 2008 Icon Sport bout in which he KOed Ron Verdadero. (2)
6) Aaron Rosa vs. Abe Wagner: Rosa has grown horizontally into a middle of the road heavyweight. Wagner has been one for awhile now too. Fairly competitive bout, right?
FIGHT: Rosa Submission Rnd 2. Not really that competitive. Wagner's chin up, hands down striking style and poor wrestling means he loses here. He gets dropped in the second coming forwards and ends up having his back taken as a result and choked out. In the first he is beaten in the exchanges, pushed around by the chubby Rosa, and taken down off a single and held there for a good chunk of time. Abe's a decent athlete but he's not a great wrestler, and Rosa isn't one either but he's at least competent. Rosa establishes himself with this win as a guy like Devin Cole who operates well outside the top 25/30/maybe even 40 and plays gatekeeper with more talented athletes. (2)
7) Bobby Lashley vs. John Ott: Main event for the night, and preceded with a feature on Lashley that showed him in ice baths and hot saunas to recover for his merciless training sessions. Ott was a middleweight and not a very good one either, making him a seemingly easy foil for Lashley.
FIGHT: Lashley Unanimous Decision. This is the kind of fight that someone wins and still gets completely exposed on. It was one thing for Lashley to have such a tough time years ago with Jason Guida. He was young and inexperienced then and also a part time fighter still pro wrestling. Today, 2 years later, he should be past it. He's not. What Lashley had then he still has. He has a lot of muscles and an OK blast double that puts Ott down on the mat in every round. What he also has is a poor gas tank, no submission skills whatsoever, and a poor IQ as far as positional control is concerned. What was Lashley doing rocking forward with his feet off the mat inside of Ott's guard? Pushing down using gravity? Ott has guts and taunted a completely gassed out Bobby Lashley in the early going of round 3 while doing nothing to win. He came forward with wild strikes and got taken down, losing the round. Whatever. Ott says afterwards that he wanted to win and Lashley asks for a step up. Rosa/Lashley is a decent fight I suppose but has
the potential of unbridled suckage. (2)
FIGHT OF THE NIGHT: Derrow/Martinez
KO OF THE NIGHT: Schut/Krause
SUBMISSION OF THE NIGHT: Gutierrez/Hollis
OVERALL FOR THE EVENT: 4 out of 10. The fights with names were absolutely dreadful and yet entertaining in being so bad. The rest was forgettable with one entertaining but meaningless contest. Actually, the DeSouza/Marriott fight could also be slotted as "so bad it was good".
D&R Rating: 22% (8/35)
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