UFC Fight Night: Overeem vs Arlovski - May 8th

[David]

Yeh, it might because im thinking of his history but it all seemed a little weird to me.

 

It feels wrong to question the balls of a pro fighter but given this is the 3rd time i can recall Oliveira getting out of a fight in weird circumstances it does make me wonder.

 

He wasn't actually losing the fight though, was he?

[Egg Shen]

nah not really, but maybe he just wasn't liking what he was feeling in there? It's pure speculation, nothing more, conspiracy theory shit   

[Egg Shen]

the KID Yamamoto fight is off, both guys injured

 

was anyone even aware that the UFC did a mini-TUF running into this show called Road to Japan? it's on Fight Pass with Big Country and Josh Barnett as coaches.

[wandshogun09]

I mentioned that in the preview post. Had no idea that Road To Japan thing even happened until I knocked that post up. It came and went and I was totally oblivious to it.

 

Sucks about KID's fight. That was actually one of the more interesting things about the card for me. KID's clearly on the way out but I was kind of encouraged by what I saw of him in his last fight before the eyepoke ending. He looked decent. And with this fight being in Japan it would've been cool to see him there again.

 

Really looking forward to Barnett vs Nelson. Horiguchi vs Camus could be fun as well.

[Dead Mike]

Barnett & Nelson should be a tonne of fun. Uriah Hall can get fucked though. Is this on Saturday night? For some reason I thought this was a Sunday show?

[Guy Bifkin]

Yeah Saturday night/ Sunday morning Mike. Looking forward to Barnett v Nelson too. Always enjoy Mousasi too, but yeah Uriah Hall. 

 

Can't decide whether to tape the prelims or Bellator dynamite....

[wandshogun09]

Yeah Saturday night.

 

As far as I can tell we're getting this one live on BT Sports 2. Prelims at 1am, main card at 3am.

 

Bit surprised at that. We don't usually get the Japan Fight Nights live do we? Hopefully the listings aren't wrong.

[David]

Yeah Saturday night/ Sunday morning Mike. Looking forward to Barnett v Nelson too. Always enjoy Mousasi too, but yeah Uriah Hall. 

 

Can't decide whether to tape the prelims or Bellator dynamite....

 

You still tape things?

[seanz25]

 

Yeah Saturday night/ Sunday morning Mike. Looking forward to Barnett v Nelson too. Always enjoy Mousasi too, but yeah Uriah Hall. 

 

Can't decide whether to tape the prelims or Bellator dynamite....

 

You still tape things?

 

You know about Sky +, Virgin Media Tivo, Freeview + or this other thing called Torrents right?

[David]

 

 

Yeah Saturday night/ Sunday morning Mike. Looking forward to Barnett v Nelson too. Always enjoy Mousasi too, but yeah Uriah Hall. 

 

Can't decide whether to tape the prelims or Bellator dynamite....

 

You still tape things?

 

You know about Sky +, Virgin Media Tivo, Freeview + or this other thing called Torrents right?

 

 

You use these things? Or do you still use tape though? 

[Guy Bifkin]

 

Yeah Saturday night/ Sunday morning Mike. Looking forward to Barnett v Nelson too. Always enjoy Mousasi too, but yeah Uriah Hall. 

 

Can't decide whether to tape the prelims or Bellator dynamite....

 

You still tape things?

 

I'm blighted with a communal dish for my Sky with only one cable so can only record one thing at a time....so yeah a bit like having a fancy Betamax. I'm too much of a luddite to work a torrent!

 

I'll go for Bellator and record the rerun of the preliminaries if the reviews are good. If only that Noah geezer still posted them!

[Egg Shen]

. Uriah Hall can get fucked though.

i'm hoping that in fighting a top guy like Mousasi we may see something dragged out of Hall that we rarely see. The running theme on Urijah Hall is that he's incredibly talented he just never really puts it altogether in the cage. Maybe tougher opposition will make him raise his game?

[wandshogun09]

^^ Good call, Ebb. Didn't see Hall beating Mousasi at all, much less stopping him. Not that Mousasi has looked stellar himself in the UFC but I just thought he'd prove too much for Hall. It looked that way in the first round to me as well. Hall came back well. We'll see where he goes from here though. He's so inconsistent you can't rely on him to build any real momentum. This was by far the best and biggest win of his career though.

[wandshogun09]

Really enjoyed Barnett vs Nelson. They slowed down massively in the last couple of rounds but on the whole I really liked the fight. Thought Barnett looked good both physically and performance-wise. He looked pretty sharp for a guy in his late 30s who hasn't fought in nearly two years. He looked leaner and in better shape than he has in a while as well. Hopefully his drug tests come back OK. Wouldn't mind seeing Barnett vs Arlovski now. Why not?

 

Like I said above, the Hall win over Mousasi surprised me. The finish was absolutely spectacular as well. How Mousasi never went completely out amazed me. The jumping spinning back kick landed flush on the side of his head, then the flying knee that followed looked quite clean as well. Just brutal. And Mousasi was still moving at the stoppage somehow. He's never really had to show his chin before but clearly Mousasi has a solid jaw on him because that spin kick alone would've done most guys.

 

The Nakamura vs Jingliang fight started slow but turned into a great fight. Great comeback from Nakamura and a brilliant and dramatic highlight reel submission with Jingliang faceplanting in the choke.

 

Rest was nothing special really. Kikuno got fucked up quick by Brandao. Brandao isn't a great fighter but he's as dangerous as anyone early on. Glad to see Horiguchi bounce back with a good showing over a tough opponent.

 

Decent little show all in all, I thought.

 

The next Fight Night sees the UFC return to Dublin on October 24th.

 

 

FIGHT PASS MAIN CARD

Paddy Holohan vs Louis Smolka

Norman Parke vs Reza Madadi

Nicolas Dalby vs Darren Till

Neil Seery vs Jon Delos Reyes

 

FIGHT PASS PRELIMS

Stevie Ray vs Mickael Lebout

Scott Askham vs Krzysztof Jotko

Aisling Daly vs Ericka Almeida

Cathal Pendred vs Tom Breese

Darren Elkins vs Robert Whiteford

Bubba Bush vs Garreth McLellan

 

An obvious few steps down from the McGregor vs Brandao Dublin card but I still like this one. And anyone thinking this show might struggle without McGregor - this one reportedly sold out within about 60 seconds of the tickets going on sale!

 

 

Poirier vs Duffy should be a cracking fight. Really looking forward to it. Both are looking in tremendous form right now and it's a step up in both opposition and card position for Duffy which I think he fully deserves. He's looked phenomenal in his first two UFC fights. A first round TKO and a first round submission. He clearly needed a tougher test. And this is it.

 

Almost feels like Déjà Vu that it's Dustin Poirier providing that test for another Irish prospect. Everyone remembers the whole Poirier vs McGregor thing. That ended with Poirier face down dribbling on the canvas but he's rebounded since then with a move up to 155 and two impressive first round stoppages of his own.

 

Duffy's ace up the sleeve is obviously that he has that win over Conor McGregor on his record. It was five years ago now so it means little in real terms because they've both improved a lot since then but still...with the heights McGregor has risen to, having a 38 second submission win over him on your record is no bad thing, is it? As long as Duffy can keep the ball rolling and stay in the win column, it's only a matter of time until we see McGregor vs Duffy 2. It gets brought up every time Duffy fights or is interviewed already and with McGregor's inevitable move to lightweight in the not-too-distant future, I think Duffy is a no-brainer as McGregor's first opponent in the UFC lightweight division.

 

Anyway, I've gone off the point. Yeah, Poirier vs Duffy is a great fight. Both are too aggressive at everything for it to be shit. Poirier is a good striker, seems more powerful at 155 and has an active and dangerous ground game. Duffy is also an excellent striker, even having a 7-0 pro boxing record and has sparred with the likes of Chris Eubank Jr, George Groves and Andy Lee. He's got a black-belt in Tae Kwon Do and a purple-belt in BJJ to go with that boxing experience. So yeah, he's a bit of a badass. You wouldn't really think so looking at him or listening to him speak. But he's a beast. He's the polar opposite to Conor McGregor in terms of personality. But as far as fighting goes, I think he's every bit as promising as McGregor.

 

 

Yeah, I'm excited for this one. It's kind of been forgotten because the back end of 2015 is loaded with huge cards but this is going to be a fight worth going out of your way to see, I reckon.

 

 

Miocic vs Rothwell is a fun battle of heavyweights. Seems a bit of a step back for Miocic in some ways coming off utterly smashing Mark Hunt, but then you look at Rothwell's recent form and the big bastard's coming off three stoppage wins himself including a KO over Alistair Overeem. He's not undeserving of this opportunity by any stretch.

 

 

Go on, son.

 

I think Miocic wins this. He's the more talented fighter to me, he's younger, faster and has more upside so I hope he wins too. But Rothwell's a guy everyone seems to sleep on and he's fucking dangerous. When you look past his dodgy dance moves and cringeworthy post-fight promos, we're talking about a giant of a man here with knockout power and who seems a bit mental.

 

And as much as I like Miocic, I do think people slightly overrate him. Everyone's high on him and they tout him as some next big thing but I'm not that sure about him myself. He's good but I'm not sure I buy him as a proper title level fighter. He beat up Hunt and looked impressive. But I think people might put too much stock into his performance against JDS when they're hyping him up. JDS came into that fight off a massive layoff and multiple injuries. Yes Stipe looked good and it was a great fight but I think that fight might've told us more about JDS' wear and tear than it told us about Miocic. And ultimately JDS still won despite all the setbacks he had to overcome going in.

 

I don't know. I think Miocic wins. I can see him mixing up his wrestling and boxing enough to confuse Big Ben and take a decision. But as well as being dangerous, Rothwell's also granite tough so he won't be easy to put away. Interesting fight.

 

 

Dalby vs Till could be decent. It's a battle of undefeated fighters. Nicolas Dalby is 14-0 out of Denmark. He's had one UFC win. Darren Till is 13-0 out of Liverpool, England and has also had one UFC win. Till is a unique guy in that he's from Liverpool but lives and trains in Brazil and is fluent in Portugese.

 

 

Paddy Holohan is back. The human fish finger. The long lost Irish son The Undertaker never knew he had. Love the Hooligan. Seems a great bloke and he's pretty fun to watch in the cage as well. If you never saw it go and watch his old sitdown interview with Ariel Helwani from a while back where they're just chatting shit and drinking tea. Top bloke.

 

Smolka's a tough Hawaiian scrapper so this should be an action-packed way to start the main card. The crowd will be well into it. Bit of a revenge factor to this one as well because Smolka beat Holohan's team mate Neil Seery at UFC 189.

 

 

Prelims have two Scottish fighters back in the octagon in Stevie Ray and Robert Whiteford. Ray's definitely the bigger standout of the two so his fight is going to be worth a look.

 

Aisling Daly vs Ericka Almeida could be a fun grappling match or a sloppy standup fight.

 

UKFF favourite Cathal Pendred is on the card. He'll be galloping around the cage missing punches and busting out the old knees to the thigh for your viewing pleasure. His opponent Tom Breese is an English fighter out of the Tristar gym in Canada, 8-0 with 8 finishes.

 

Swedish fighter Reza Madadi is back in the UFC as well. He last fought in 2013 on the Sweden card that Conor McGregor debuted on. He beat Michael Johnson that night in a fantastic fight hardly anyone probably remembers. But he then got arrested in Sweden for aggravated burglary and ended up doing porridge for it. Exciting fighter but a bit of a mental.

 

That's your lot.

[Carbomb]

Your recommendation last time you talked about this event in detail made me wish MMA had pro-wrestling-style stips - I really want there to be a stipulation on Poirier/Duffy that if Poirier loses, he has to change his nickname to "Ireland's Bitch".