Smark Rant: UFC 37 High Impact

The Ultimate Fighting Championship 37:  High Impact

– Live from Bossier City, LA.

– Your hosts are Mike Goldberg, Jeff Osborne, and FRANK MIR.  Yeah!

Lightweights:  Caol Uno v. Yves Edwards

Uno bounces all over the cage and uses a weird backwards stance, probably just to be weird for the sake of it, but it doesn’t help him get a takedown.  Edwards holds him in a facelock and they turn it into a clinch on the fence.  Edwards uses a leg trip for the takedown, but can’t do anything on the ground with him.  Round goes 10-9 Edwards.

Second round and this time Uno gets the takedown and works for the arm, but can’t quite sink in a kimura.  Edwards wisely jams his forearm into Uno’s throat to get out of it, but Uno spins back on top again.  The ref yells at them to get going, so they stand up again.  Edwards ties him up and throws some good knees from the clinch, so Uno takes him down again.  Nothing going on, so the ref stands them up and Uno is aggressive with striking before the bell.  10-9 Uno there for aggression, although Edwards had him in a Carlos Newton headlock as time expired.

Third round and Edwards rushes in and quickly gets the back on the mat, foiling an Uno takedown attempt.  Uno switches out of that, but Edwards moves into an armbar.  Uno reverses out and gets the back as they do a really great chess match on the ground, but Edwards reverses out of that and they stand it up again.  Great sequence there.  Back to the ground with time running out, and the round expires with no clear winner evident.  That was hella-close.  If I had to pick, I’d say 10-9 Uno.  Judges say:  29-28 Uno, 30-29 Uno, 29-28 Uno.  30-29?  I guess that was a 10-10 third round AND first round, from Cecil Peoples of course.  A super-technical ground fight, which was a nice change from the slugfests we’ve had lately.

Middleweights:  Phil Baroni v. Amar Suloev

The big news out of Baroni’s camp:  He’s been training like he’s never trained before!  Mike Goldberg is many things, but a tough questioning journalist is the very least of them.  Baroni showboats and jives, so Suloev kicks him in the head and then absolutely destroys him on the fence, unfortunately including a knee to the head of a downed Baroni.  He was just saved by Big John there because he was DONE.  And then Suloev takes him down like a punk and gets the back, but Baroni reverses and passes guard with explosive force.  And then he UNLOADS and Big John stops it.  Baroni’s thoughts:  “FUCK YEAH!”  Wow, I would not have bet on that ending.  Baroni looked like a star here, but he just never was able to put it together.  And classy guy he is, he wipes sweat at the recovering Suloev in the name of the good ol’ USA.  Yeah, that act’s been done by Tito already.  Hell of a fight while it lasted!