THE PROPHET'S TUESDAY TAPOUT: JAIME PRESSLY SIZZLES SATURDAY AT UFC 76

by The Prophet, ProphetFighting

In the interest of full disclosure, note that while Jaime Pressly *was* in attendance at UFC 76 I won't go so far as to say she "sizzled". In fact, she was on-screen for less than a minute. Her presence does give me the excuse to use a picture of her instead of one of gnarly looking Keith Jardine bleeding out of six or seven different cuts on his head.

After a few relatively uneventful weeks in the MMA world where I've been struggling to find things to write about, all hell broke loose Saturday at UFC 76: Knockout. The card was pretty entertaining in its own right, but more importantly for someone who's been called "the future of fightsport journalism" like myself it offered enough interesting storylines to keep me writing nonstop for the next week or two. I'll summarize the big developments here, and look for more in-depth coverage of these topics here at EpicCarnival and at Prophet Fighting.


"SHOGUN" RUA LAYS AN EGG IN HIS UFC DEBUT:

For the past year or so MMA fanboys--myself included--have without hesitation called Mauricio "Shogun" Rua the best light heavyweight in the world. Holier than thou PRIDE nuthuggers--myself included--suggested that the recent Dan Henderson/Quinton "Rampage" Jackson "unification" bout was really to determine the #2 light heavyweight in the world, who'd get the honor of keeping the belt warm until it could find its way to its rightful place around "Shogun's" waist. Rua's UFC debut fight against Forrest Griffin at UFC 76 was to be the first step to his eventual coronation, and some suggested that he would be healing the sick outside the Honda Center in Anaheim before and after his bout.

Hyperbolic puns aside, Rua had demonstrated insane versatility during his MMA career. He's one of those guys who can knock an opponent senseless standing up and submit you on the ground. I went so far as to compare "Shogun" to pound for pound best boxer in the world Floyd Mayweather, Jr--a guy with sick skills and insane conditioning whom mere mortals could never hope to defeat.

Rua may still have those sick skills, but at this point even if he *were* able to win the light heavyweight title it couldn't fit around his waist. He lumbered into the octagon on Saturday night looking more like a shirtless Homer Simpson than the best 205 pound MMA fighter in the world. Based on the fact that Rua was gasping for breath by the end of the first round and looked like a nursing home resident after a two hour power walk at the mall by the end of the fight I'm assuming that, like John Belushi, he'd been training on a diet of little chocolate donuts.

FORREST GRIFFIN BECOMES THE ARTURO GATTI OF MMA:

"Shogun" Rua didn't do himself any favors by adopting John Candy as a fitness role model in preparation for his MMA debut, but major props go out to Forrest Griffin for taking advantage of his superior conditioning and dominating the artist formerly known as the best 205 pound fighter in the world for the majority of the fight before tapping him out with a rear naked choke. Until this fight, Griffin was known as a likable guy--he always reminded me of Richie Cunningham on "Happy Days" had Richie grown up to be an MMA fighter and not a journalist/film director--who had limited skills but made up for it by being a tough SOB. His fight against Stephan Bonnar at the finale of the first season of "The Ultimate Fighter" is arguably the best MMA fight in history. Griffin hadn't done well when stepping up in class, losing a highly disputed (read "crooked") split decision to Tito Ortiz in 2006 and suffering a KO loss to Keith Jardine (who we'll talk about in a moment) in his last fight prior to his matchup with Rua.

According to the storyline, when he found out that "Shogun" was coming to the UFC Griffin told Dana White that he wanted to fight him. This became a great source of amusement for MMA fans--I saw a few wise guys post Photoshopped grave stones with "Forrest Griffin" on them and "September 22, 2007" as his date of death. Sherdog's Jake Rossen, one of my favorite MMA writers, came up with this line in his prefight narrative:

"I wanted to fight Shogun," Griffin says. Yeah, and girls want a pony, until it craps on the floor."

In the end, there wasn't pony crap on the floor--just a freshly choked out "Shogun" Rua. Things didn't look good for Griffin early on--he always fights like a wolverine on meth, but the conventional wisdom was that Shogun would weather his initial onslaught and then would take over thanks to his superior conditioning and technical skills. Of course that was before he came to the ring looking like a pre-gastric bypass Star Jones. Things didn't look good for Griffin early on, and after a Rua elbow strike opening a gushing, v shaped cut on his forehead it seemed that a Rua victory was a foregone conclusion. Griffin reacts to his own blood gushing out of his forehead like Popeye sucking back a can of spinich, and he dominated rounds 2 and 3. Round 3 was almost laughably one sided, with an exhausted Rua trying to "turtle" on the ground and avoid Griffin's strikes until he finally succumbed to the choke.

The bad news for the UFC is that another highly touted PRIDE vet looked like he had no business in the ring with a "lesser" UFC fighter. The good news for the organization is that the popular Griffin puts himself in line for title shot consideration. And the good news for everyone is that no ponies ended up crapping on the Honda Center floor.

CHUCK LIDDELL'S LAST STAND?

The main event on Saturday's card was the return to the octagon of Chuck Liddell. Liddell's opponent for his first fight since being KO'd by Quinton "Rampage" Jackson was Keith Jardine, a fighter that appeared to be on a fast track to stardom until he was KO'd in the first round of his last fight by a solid, if unspectacular, guy named Houston Alexander. Jardine was essentially a hand picked opponent for Liddell--the thinking being that if a mid level guy like Alexander could overwhelm him with his striking that he'd be a showcase for arguably the most feared striker in the sport.

Liddell looked very old, slow and beatable but more about that in a moment. He got off some good punches in round 1 but inexplicably Jardine had morphed from a guy with a glass jaw to the toughest SOB in the world. He took everything that Liddell threw and kept scoring with his own punches and some nasty kicks to the legs and mid-section. By the end of round 1 Jardine's already ghastly looking face was showing the effects of "The Iceman's" punches as he was bleeding from seemingly a half dozen different cuts on his dome.

If Jardine *looked* like a beaten man he sure didn't fight like one. He connected with an overhand right early in round 2 that floored the former UFC light heavyweight champ and after that he was in complete control mixing up punches with nasty leg kicks. Liddell showed some toughness of his own, but looked like a pale shadow of his former fearsome self otherwise. He had trouble with Jardine's unorthodox style, and appeared to be having trouble "letting his hands go". The few punches he did get off didn't really faze Jardine much and his effective counterpunching gave him the net advantage in those exchanges. By the end of the fight he was so underwhelmed by Liddell's power that he wasn't even holding his hands up.

After the fight Liddell indicated that he's seriously considering retiring. He's probably made more money from the MMA craze and the popularity of the UFC than any other fighter. Of course a Liddell retirement leaves the UFC without their top box office/PPV draw. It also puts the kibosh on the years in the making matchup between Liddell and Wanderlei Silva. Silva sat at ringside during the Liddell fight looking downright moronic as his big money payday flew out the window with every withering Jardine low kick. UFC President Dana White, clearly exasperated with the proceedings, suggested that Silva was in "complete denial" as to the financial setback he'd just suffered.

We'll have more on the aftermath of UFC 76 and other MMA news later this week. And you can always get the latest on MMA and boxing at ProphetFighting.com.