Crazy Happenings in MMA

1) Saturday night at UFC 59, Georges St. Pierre took to the Octogon for his first title defense. Riding a 5 fight win streak over top shelf competition, with the fifth victory being a demolition of long-time champ Matt Hughes, Georges put his welterweight title on the line against Matt Serra. Georges came into this match up as the overwhelming favorite. After handling established veterans like Hughes, Frank Trigg, and Sean Sherk, fans began speculating whether or not St. Pierre might be the best pound-for-pound mixed martial artist on the planet.

Serra, on the other hand, secured his title shot by winning the UFC's reality show The Ultimate Fighter 4: The Comeback. Serra was brought onto the show because he, like the other contestants, had a mediocre UFC record and had never established a championship caliber career. Already in his later 30's, Serra had his best performances fighting in the 155-lb lightweight class rather than in the 170-lb class over which St. Pierre was king. Serra hadn't even won his division on The Comeback convincingly, having only eeked out an unconvincing split decision over Indy's own Chris Lytle.

Literally no one in the MMA press was picking picking Serra to take the gold away from the younger, more athletic, and much larger champion. The fact that Serra was even fighting for a title was considered by many (including me) to be an unfortunate consequence of the UFC's decision to promise title shots to a reality show's contestants. The welterweight division is the deepest in the Ultimate Fighting Championship, and Saturday night's main event was a largely an unwelcome diversion from more interesting championship possibilities, such as a trilogy making rematch with Matt Hughes. Even though I think Serra is a likeable guy, I was personally rooting for GSP to squash his challenger as quickly as possible so that the UFC would do everything in its power to prevent such a mismatch of a title fight from ever happening again.

The final result? MATT SERRA IS THE NEW UFC WELTERWEIGHT CHAMPION OF THE WORLD! Not only did Serra win, he won by Technical Knock Out in the first freaking round.



It still blows my mind that a prototypical warrior like St. Pierre got put down so easily and, on top of it, lost his title without one successful defense. The silver lining here for me is that my boy Hughes is next in line for a title shot. I'm praying that Matt Serra has already used up all the lighting he had in his bottle. If he indeed has, Hughes will become only the second 3-time champion in UFC history (a record just set by Randy Couture last month).


2) About 30 minutes ago, I saw a 3-second clip of Serra knocking down St. Pierre on Sports Center's "Ultimate Highlight Reel" right alongside clips of the NBA, the PGA, and MLB. I think we can now officially say that the UFC has infiltrated the mainstream. If Jim Lampley saw this same program, he probably shit himself in a moment of surprise and disgust. Let's just hope he didn't get so mad he hit another woman.



3) Tito Ortiz tried to start some crap at ringside with his next opponent Rashad Evans. Evans is currently undefeated and one of the UFC's top rising talents. Here's a video and some commentary about the altercation.

http://www.sherdog.net/forums/showthread.php?threadid=547170