UFC 96 Recap

UFC 96: Jackson vs Jardine...if you watched this on tv, you might of mistaken it for the newest edition of the "UFC Ultimate Knockouts" DVD, because seven of the ten fights ended in either a knockout or a technical knock out. Overall for my predictions i got eight right, and two wrong.

The first preliminary bout of the night had Aaron Riley going up against "Sugar" Shane Nelson. This fight was ruined due to bad reffing. As soon as Riley hit the ground and Nelson landed one or two punches the referee called a stop to the fight, even though Riley was clearly about to get back to his feet and did not seem to be hurt. In the post fight interview, UFC President Dana White was furious about the call, and Nation Wide Arena was exploding with explicit chants towards the ref.

The next preliminary bout of the night showed the return of Brandon Vera as he took on Micheal Patt. Vera came into this fight only winning one of his last four fights, with his last fight being a split decision lost to top ten light heavyweight contender Keith Jardine. Many believed if Vera lost this fight that he would be cut from the UFC. But he showed up ready to prove his haters wrong, and won a second round TKO in dominant fashion after dropping Patt with a vicious leg kick...and no, not a kick to the head, he kicked Patt so hard on his leg that he fell back onto his head.

Next up was Tim Boetsch versus Jason Brilz. In the first round, Tim "The Barbarian" destroyed Brilz on the feet, but then from the second round up until winning by decision Brilz was able to keep Boetsch on the ground and control the fight to pick up the W.

Then it was onto Kendall Grove taking on Jason Day. Although Grove came into this fight off of a split decision win over the late Evan Tanner, Dana White had announced that if Grove was to lose, he would be cut from the UFC. Grove stepped up when it mattered and won with an impressive knock out, and proceeded to do his signature grave digging celebration to pay tribute to Tito Ortiz.

The last preliminary fight of the night had the world's toughest nerd, Tamdan McCrory, going up against Ryan Madigan. Although McCrory got dominated in his last fight against one of my personal favorite fighters, Dustin Hazelett, he controlled the pace this entire match up and went on to win by tap out due to strikes.

Now onto the main card, the first fight of the night featured one of the UFC's most skilled wrestlers, Gray Maynard, as he went up against Jim Miller. Just like I predicted in the UFC 96 preview blog, Maynard used his wrestling and strength to his advantage to work his way to a win by decision.

Next on the card was WEC veteran but UFC newcomer Mark Munoz versus Ohio Native Matt Hamill. When Hamill came out the arena exploded, people in Ohio love Matt Hamill. Even though Matt is deaf, he defiantly felt the vibration going on in that arena. And he didn't come up short of impressing his native Ohio fans, he won knockout of the night by kicking Munoz in the side of the head, and left Mark leaving the ring in a neck brace.

The third fight on the pay per view card had Ultimate Fighter alumni Matt Brown touching gloves with Pete Sell. Just like the first fight of the night, this ended due to bad reffing, but instead of stopping too soon, this stopped too late. For about two minutes Brown continued to just beat on Sell while Sell was unable to defend himself, and the whole time Dana White is banging on the cage yelling to the Yvels to stop the fight.

The nights co-main event of the night showed off two of the UFC's top heavyweights as Gabriel Gonzaga went up against the hype machine that is known as Shane Carwin. A lot of people had fell into the hype that Carwin is unbeatable because of his 10-0 record going into this match up, but in truth I don't know of anybody who could name one person Carwin had beat going into this fight, because they were all cans who were cut from the UFC soon after. Gabriel Gonzaga on the other hand has taken on a list of veteran UFC greats, and has already had one title shot. The fight started off all Gonzaga, who dominated Shane on the feet, and broke his nose with a punch. But despite being beat on for the first two minutes, Carwin silenced the haters with a one punch knockout on Gonzaga. Although Carwin won the fight, I am still not totally convinced. Other then his incredible knockout, he just didn't have an answer for Gabriel's striking, and Gonzaga is more of a submission fighter then a striker, which makes me wonder what Carwin could do against a top Heavyweight striker such as Cheick Kongo. I look forward to seeing who he is matched up with next.

And finally, the main event of the evening had MMA superstar Quinton "Rampage" Jackson taking on the always dangerous, awkward style fighter that is "The Dean of Mean" Keith Jardine. This was defiantly one of the most exciting fights I have seen in a long, long time, thanks in a big part to great calls being made by the ref. It was a stand up war with both men being rocked multiple times, including Jardine getting dropped twice and taken down twice. Every time that the two would tie up in a clinch, the ref would very quickly separate them, which kept it an extremely quick paced match. Jackson went on to win the fight by Unanimous Decision, but Jardine deserves all the respect in the world, because many, many people were saying that he would be knocked out in the first round, but he gave Jackson a very tough fight.

Thank you for reading my recap of UFC 96, look back in a few weeks as I will have a new blog up focusing on the upcoming Ultimate Fight Night.