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Day After: UFC 146 Caps MMA's Memorable May

2012-05-27T18:59:07Z

LAS VEGAS -- It seemed like the bad news never stopped coming in May: Dominick Cruz out with a knee injury. Nick Diaz suspended for a year. Jon Jones arrested for DUI. Terrible television ratings for UFC on FOX 3.

Even on Saturday, before what turned out to be a home run of a UFC event, the ill tidings flowed, with Octagon girl Arianny Celeste arrested for domestic violence and Vitor Belfort dropping out of his UFC 147 main event with Wanderlei Silva.

And yet, just when even the most optimistic among us were starting to question whether the MMA bubble was finally showing signs it was about to burst, another trend, with much less fanfare, emerged: Every time the arena doors opened in May, the action was fantastic.

Start with UFC on FOX 3. There's been so much made about the poor ratings in the show's aftermath that it's easy to forget the fights delivered. From Lavar Johnson's TKO of Pat Barry to Alan Belcher's breathtaking finish of Rousimar Palhares to Nate Diaz's virtuoso performance against Jim Miller, the main card was action-packed.

Then we had, in the span of five days, a fight of the year contender in Chan Sung Jung's fourth-round submission of Dustin Poirier; an epic five-round encounter between Gilbert Melendez and Josh Thomson; and Daniel Cormier announcing to the world his status as a future champion by dismantling Josh Barnett.

Which brings us to UFC 146. Saturday night's event will go down as one of the most memorable MMA evenings in a long while for all the right reasons.

The buzz was back in Las Vegas with a festive, close-to-full house on a holiday weekend. Nearly every fight on the card delivered. There was something for everyone, from the opener, in which Mike Brown and Daniel Pineda put in 15 minutes of hard-nosed action, to the co-main events, in which Junior dos Santos and Cain Velasquez set up what figures to be a monster rematch with no-doubt-about-it performances.

So, yes, the sport is clearly going through one of its stretches of growing pains, and it times it might feel like the wheels are about to come off the wagon. The approach to the sport's drug issues needs to be reconsidered; it might be time for the UFC to institute a code of conduct; and clearly the way the UFC is being presented on FOX properties needs some tweaking.

But while the drama continues outside the cage, inside, this month proved the level of competition has never been healthier. And while May will be remembered in the short term as one of the crazier months in memory, in the long run, from Diaz to Belcher to Jung to Cormier to seemingly half the card at UFC 146, it could also be remembered as a period in which the next generation of headliners were born.

UFC 146 Notes

*It's hard to pick a favorite feel-good moment from UFC 146, since there were enough redemptive tales to fill a faith-healers convention, but if I had to go with one, I'll pick Dan Hardy. Few guys get a fifth chance after four straight UFC losses, but Hardy, recognized by many as one of the sport's most genuine people, got a badly needed win over Duane Ludwig. Granted, Hardy was served up another slugger in a favorable style matchup, and in the long haul he's going to have to do something about wrestling. But it was still nice to see one of the good guys get his moment in the sun.

*It was taken as a given that Alistair Overeem's absence hurt UFC 146, but was that really the case? Quick reminder: Overeem wasn't on this card because he got caught with an absurd level of testosterone in his system. This is the same Overeem who suddenly packed on about 40 pounds of muscle while fighting for years in Japan, where they don't do drug testing. Lo and behold, Overeem went on a miraculous win streak during that time frame. If we've reached the point where we just assume everyone is juicing and accept those consequences, fine. But if we want to at least maintain the pretense that we're trying to clean the sport, then keeping one of the sport's most flagrant cheaters out of the main event is a plus, not a minus.

UFC 146 Quotes

"Hitting home runs and kicking soccer balls and all that [expletive] is fun, but everyone wants to be heavyweight champion of the world." -- Dana White, on why he feels MMA will attract more elite heavyweight athletes.

"Mandalay Bay." -- Frank Mir in his corner at the MGM Grand, when asked about his whereabouts moments after absorbing a brutal flurry from dos Santos in the closing seconds of the first round.

"Stand ‘em up! Let's go, Yves!" -- Stephan Bonnar, heckling referee Yves Levigne from the media area at cageside during a lull in the action in the second round of the Jason "Mayhem" Miller-C.B. Dolloway fight.

Good Call

Steve Mazzagatti is one of the MMA world's favorite whipping boys, but he made the right call in stopping Roy Nelson's knockout win over Dave Herman. Herman's body went limp after "Big Country" belted him with that devastating overhand right. Herman quickly recovered, was soon back on his feet, and protested the stoppage. But when a referee sees a fighter go out, it's his job to end the fight, period. Mazzagatti made the right call in stopping it as soon as he saw Herman's lights go out.

Bad Call

One of MMA's best referees had a tough night on Saturday in letting Cain Velasquez's destruction of Antonio Silva go on far too long. Josh Rosenthal stood by while Velasquez beat Silva to the bloodiest pulp seen in the Octagon since B.J. Penn carved up Joe Stevenson, before finally calling off the slaughter. At the post-fight press conference, White volunteered his opinion without even being asked: "[Silva] had blood in his eyes, nose, and throat. He couldn't see or breathe, and he's getting smashed over and over and over. Come on. That was as bad as bad can be. Rosenthal blew that stoppage bad."

Stock Up

Jamie Varner: There was a time when the WEC lightweight division was a three-horse race between Ben Henderson, Donald Cerrone, and Varner (There was also a time when critics said none of the three were UFC caliber, but that's for another time). Varner became the forgotten man of the trio. The former champion was dropped from the WEC after going winless in four fights. As recently as September, he lost to Dakota Cochrane on a Titan Fighting Championship show. Saturday night, though, he looked like the Varner of old in his win over Edson Barboza, a fearless, bomb-throwing warrior who gives the fans 100 percent, win or lose. "It was surreal out there," Varner said. "I still can't believe it went down like that." Believe it, Jamie.

Stock Down

Jason "Mayhem" Miller: Miller deserves all the credit he gets for making a success of himself in life. He was smart enough to use the brief window of opportunity the fight game provides to make himself a television and radio presence. But his matches with Michael Bisping and C.B. Dollaway have made it painfully clear it's near-impossible to juggle as many balls as Miller does and remain an elite-level mixed martial artist in 2012. Maybe "Mayhem" will drop the other stuff and buckle down on his fight career. Most likely, given how successful he's been as a media personality, he'll stick with that career path, and there's nothing wrong with that. But as things stand now, he just doesn't belong on a major UFC event.

Fight I Want to See Next

Junior dos Santos vs. Cain Velasquez: Yeah, I know I'm supposed to come up with some creative, out-of-the-box fight here, but sometimes the obvious choice is the right one. It's all too rare in mixed martial arts that things play out as they should on paper. But that was the case at UFC 146. Dos Santos looks like he could potentially be the UFC's elusive monster heavyweight champion. But in his title-winning effort, he caught Velasquez with the first big punch of the fight, the sort of thing that can happen to anyone. Velasquez looked like the Velasquez of old in destroying Silva. Whether the rematches is held on these shores or in Brazil, the UFC has a surefire megafight on its hands for late 2012 or early 2013.

Does UFC 146's Success Signal a New Era for MMA's Heavyweights?

2012-05-27T17:29:33Z

If you’d told me five or six years ago that the UFC was planning an event where the main card was nothing but heavyweight fights, I’d have told you it was probably a mafia movie-style plan to get all the heavies in one place for a decisive hit that would eradicate the division altogether.

Back then, leaning so heavily on the big men would have been unthinkable. The UFC didn’t have enough of them, and the ones it did have were mostly on the mediocre end of the scale. Remember 2006, when Tim Sylvia was the heavyweight champ? He got to the top by beating Assuerio Silva, Andrei Arlovski (twice), and Jeff Monson. That run was so impressive it prompted Randy Couture to come out of retirement as a 220-pound heavyweight just to fight him.

And yet now, in 2012, the UFC felt so confident in its big men that it asked them to carry the load for the entire UFC 146 main card. More amazingly, it actually worked. It worked better than anyone had any right to hope for, providing all the fireworks we’ve come to expect from heavyweights with none of the plodding wheeze-fests we’ve come to dread. UFC president Dana White thinks "bad s--t" happens to him every day? Outside the cage, maybe. On the police blotters? Definitely, at least recently.

But in the cage, White and the UFC caught a major break on Saturday night. The heavyweights on the UFC 146 card delivered in a big way, making me wonder if maybe White is on to something when he says that we’ve reached a new age for MMA’s biggest competitors.

More Coverage: UFC 146 Results | UFC News

"The heavyweight division was lacking in our early days, and it’s not now. It’s flourishing," White said at the post-fight press conference. "Lot of good talent, lot of up-and-coming talent. I think the bigger the sports gets...you’re going to see bigger, athletic guys that would have played other sports getting into mixed martial arts."

At first, I admit, that claim sounded dubious to me. It smacked of promoter-speak, like when White insists that MMA will be bigger than soccer soon. With stuff like that, not only is there no reason to believe it, there’s not even many good reasons to believe that White believes it. It’s just stuff that a fight promoter has to say. It’s right there in the job description.

But when I looked around last night and saw guys like Junior dos Santos and Cain Velasquez -- not to mention a golden gloves boxer like Stipe Miocic and a seven-foot submissions wiz like Stefan Struve -- I had to admit that White might have a point. It’s not just that the UFC has collected more of the best heavyweights now that Pride is no longer around to monopolize them -- though, certainly, that is part of it. But whether it’s the money or the fame or the slow train to mainstream legitimacy, it also seems clear that MMA in general is drawing more and better big men to its ranks.

That’s not to say that I expect too many blue-chip football prospects or future NBA stars to look at the UFC and decide to say the hell with that college scholarship or disgustingly lucrative signing bonus -- they’d rather get punched in the face for a living. Sure, being the heavyweight champion is cool, but it’s also a bad gamble for most athletes.

Think about it: if you’re the tenth-best defensive lineman in the NFL, you’re still a millionaire pro athlete, still getting your picture on SportsCenter every now and then, still sipping champagne on yachts in the off-season. If you’re the tenth-best heavyweight in MMA, however, you’re busting your hand on other men’s skulls year-round, bleeding for your cash and trying to sock away as much of it as you can while the ride lasts. As much of an ego boost as it might be to call yourself the heavyweight champ of the world, how many people would really choose to reach for the brass ring instead of taking a full ride to one of those football vocational schools in the SEC where they’ll be treated like royalty just for making the team?

My point is, it takes a certain kind of human being to want to do this. The good news is, now MMA (and, specifically, the UFC) is finally profitable enough to reward those humans accordingly. Guys like Daniel Cormier, who, ten years ago, would have had few viable athletic avenues after his Olympic hopes ran aground, now have a chance and a reason to prove themselves in the cage. The money and the respect still aren’t good enough to attract too many athletes who have other options, but at least it’s heading in the right direction.

Saturday night’s main card showed us a glimpse of what that can look like. It gave us not just big, lumbering bone-breakers, but real athletes -- real martial artists. The heavyweight division is still a lot thinner than the lightweight class, where the dudes who were deemed too short for basketball and too small for football are constantly battling it out in a crowded field choking with talent, and maybe that’s the way MMA will always be to some extent. That doesn’t change the fact that the UFC currently has the best heavyweight roster it’s ever had, and there are still more names to add to it in the very near future.

On Saturday, the UFC gambled on the quality of its heavies, and it paid off big time. White might not have had much luck lately with injuries and illnesses and arrests, but at least on pay-per-view -- at least on this night -- fortune is still smiling on him.

Drug Testing, Alistair Overeem And UFC 146's Potential Legacy

2012-05-27T15:11:04Z

A few years from now, when memories of UFC 146 must be spurred by a quick Wikipedia scan, it will be remembered as a strong event filled with decisive finishes. It may be recalled as the night when Junior dos Santos first solidified himself as MMA's undisputed heavyweight king, or perhaps as the moment the heavyweights seized attention as combat sports' most exciting division.

If we're lucky though, the event will have a very different legacy, and a far more important one. It will be the turning point for drug testing in MMA.

Think about this: as good as the card turned out, how much better might it have been if Alistair Overeem hadn't visited a quack doctor and injected himself with testosterone before being busted by the Nevada state athletic commission? Because of that burning question, for me, it will be remembered for what might have been as much as for what actually transpired.

The overall product was undeniably entertaining, but as many expected, the main event was not particularly competitive. After the fight, Mir admitted he had no interest in participating in striking exchanges with dos Santos but was left with no other option before being knocked out. Because of his style, Overeem would have provided a very different test.

We might never know how a dos Santos vs. Overeem fight would play out. The massive Dutchman is still under suspension, and when his nine-month sidelining runs out in late December, he'll still have to go in front of an NSAC hearing to pacify any of their concerns in hopes of obtaining a new license. By the time he's ready to fight again (likely around March 2013), who knows if dos Santos will still be the champion?

And even if he is, there's no guarantee that Overeem will get an automatic title shot. Even though UFC president Dana White said he would likely keep his place in line as a title challenger, there's a lot of time between now and then, and that means plenty of opportunities for a new contender to rise or UFC brass to simply change their minds.

More Coverage: UFC 146 Results | UFC News

You know this sport: one injury, one problem and the window to make the big fight is gone forever. That's why we never saw Anderson Silva vs. Georges St-Pierre or Fedor Emelianenko vs. Randy Couture. So regardless of White's comment, we don't know if dos Santos-Overeem will ever happen.

But if there is any silver lining to the Overeem cloud, it's this: after months of insisting the UFC could do little more to complement the existing drug testing done by state commissions, White finally acknowledged the promotion could and would take a more proactive approach, and in fact, emphasized what a crucial step it might be.

"You have to do this to save the sport," he told The Los Angeles Times.

Not long afterward, heavyweight Roy Nelson upped the ante, saying he would challenge his next opponent to take part in voluntary random drug testing and would out anyone who declined while placing them under suspicion of using.

"I'll be the guy who says it and then say, "That guy doesn't want to test. I wonder why," he said.

Nelson shouldn't be forced to take that kind of position, but at least he has determined that somebody needs to do something proactive.

The loss of Overeem off the card probably cost the UFC millions. After knocking out Brock Lesnar at last December's UFC 141 -- an event that drew approximately 800,000 pay-per-view buys, tied for the largest number of 2011 -- Overeem was at his peak drawing power.

He certainly would have been paraded in front of the mainstream media as the man who ended Lesnar's MMA career, and given that he was the last Strikeforce heavyweight champion, the UFC also could have promoted the event as a unification bout. It could have been a doozy.

Instead, it all got thrown away due to Overeem's injection.

Perhaps the UFC realized that the cost of implementing some sort of random testing plan, even with fighters around the world, would be less than the money lost when major fights like Overeem-dos Santos are scrapped. Or perhaps they realize there is a credibility problem when main event stars are getting popped for PEDs and drugs.

Either way, if it affects business and it affects the viewer, it's an issue worth addressing, so taking steps to enact true random testing can only be considered a positive. Many will suggest that the UFC policing itself in such a program is not an ideal situation, but they will most likely have to partner with an organization that conducts the testing and can act as its administrator. It may not be the best setup, but it's better than what we have now.

I can't help but feel that Overeem vs. dos Santos would have been a more interesting and more exciting bout than what ended up in its place. That's no knock on Mir, but the style matchup was not to his benefit. But if we had to sacrifice one major fight in order to give the sport the wakeup call it needed when it comes to drug testing, at least it will not have been in vain. Overeem's presence would have made UFC 146 seem even bigger than it was, but his absence might have a greater long-term impact than his presence ever would have.

Cain Velasquez Won't Be Happy Until The Belt Is Around His Waist

2012-05-27T09:01:00Z

LAS VEGAS -- Watch below as Cain Velasquez talks about his bloody victory over Antonio 'Bigfoot' Silva at UFC 146, his coach and training partner, Daniel Cormier's advice, reclaiming the UFC heavyweight championship and much more.

Roy Nelson Gives Beard Tips to TUF's Mike Chiesa

2012-05-27T09:00:00Z

LAS VEGAS -- Watch below as Roy Nelson briefly discusses his UFC 146 knockout of Dave Herman with Ariel Helwani, to be later joined by Ultimate Fighter contestant Michael Chiesa for an impromptu conversation on beard maintenance.

UFC 146 Post-Fight Press Conference Highlights: JDS, Mir Discuss Title Fight

2012-05-27T08:58:35Z

LAS VEGAS -- Watch below as UFC 146 headliners Junior dos Santos and Frank Mir answer questions from the media at the post-fight press conference.

Dan Hardy Felt Like He Was Fighting on Borrowed Time

2012-05-27T08:55:00Z

LAS VEGAS -- Watch below as Dan Hardy talks about getting back on the winning track after his UFC 146 knockout of Duane Ludwig, his appreciation of being a UFC fighter, the UFC coming to Nottingham and much more.

Dana White Talks Arianny Celeste, Vitor Belfort's Injury, and Strikeforce

2012-05-27T08:37:39Z

LAS VEGAS -- Watch below as UFC president Dana White met with the media following UFC 146 to discuss a whole host of topics, including Arianny Celeste's arrest, Vitor Belfort's hand injury, what's next for Josh Barnett and Gilbert Melendez and much more.