UFC ULTIMATE FIGHTER FINALE REPLAYS THIS WEEKEND: DON'T MISS IT

by The Prophet, ProphetFighting

As most of you people are no doubt aware, I spent last Saturday night doing round by round on the Floyd Mayweather v. Ricky Hatton PPV event. I'm the first guy to admit it on the few occasions that I'm actually wrong and I did make a mistake last Saturday night. Not on my play by play or my prediction on the main event, which were flawless as usual. My mistake was to cover the Mayweather/Hatton undercard instead of watching the Ultimate Fighter finale. While the main event was pretty entertaining, with Mayweather putting an emphatic exclamation point on his greatness with a 10th round KO of Hatton, the undercard of the event may have been the worst I've ever seen on a boxing PPV. What was even more galling is that the matchups looked fairly good on paper, but they ended up being miserably boring and tedious contests. Now I have as much respect for professional prizefighters as anyone, and I'm very hesitant to question their heart and effort. Still, in all of the televised undercard fights it looked like one or both fighters didn't have their head in the game. I have more respect for a second rate pug who shows up to fight and gets knocked out cold than supposedly top tier fighters who sleepwalk through fights on a big PPV.

So in retrospect I wish I had watched the UFC Ultimate Fighter Finale live and done a round by round on that, switching over to the boxing for the Mayweather fight. I did Tivo the UFC and before I got around to watching it on Sunday I spoke to a couple of casual fans who watched it. They said it was "OK" and "not good, not bad". I now have no trust in their judgment as the Ultimate Fighter Finale may have been the best MMA card of the year top to bottom, and featured two legit contenders for "Fight of the Year." Those two bouts alone made it essential viewing for fight fans.

SPIKE TV will be replaying the show this weekend--Friday night (12/14) at 9 PM and Saturday afternoon (12/15) at 4 PM. Do yourself a favor and watch or record the event. You won't see any of the "going through the motions" nonsense evident on the Mayweather/Hatton undercard--to the contrary you'll see these fighters displaying insane amounts of heart, courage and toughness as they go at each other like rabid wolverines. I assume that many of you will already be watching at 4 PM Saturday since immediately before the UFC event SPIKE will show back to back episodes of "Trick My Truck" which is no doubt a popular show among the readers of this blog.

If you're the type that would rather watch the show without knowing anything about what happens stop reading here, or tell whomever is reading it to you to stop here. Otherwise I'm going to give you my thoughts on the two "must see" matches.

First of all, the final bout to determine the winner of the "Ultimate Fighter" reality show was a one sided blowout as Mac Danzig (no relation to former Misfits lead singer Glenn Danzig) dominated Tom Speer before choking him out two minutes into the first round after using him for a punching bag. Danzig is no joke and since he's planning to drop down to lightweight for the immediate future I expect him to be in the mix for the title in that division very quickly.

The "must see" matches are the main event involving Clay Guida and Roger Huerta, one of the more exciting MMA matches I've seen this year, and the fight between Jon "War Machine" Koppenhaver and Jared Rollins which is equally exciting and a huge bloodbath.