By Michael Ford 
UFC 110, emanating from Sydney, Australia, set the stage for the sport’s future, while reminding us about its past, and answering a few of our questions about its present. With the card behind us, we can soberly consider the impact of the latest Zuffa PPV offering.
1. Cain Velasquez earned his spot atop the heap of heavyweight contenders – With his first-round drubbing of the legendary Antonio “Minotauro” Nogueira, Cain Velasquez has reinvigorated the hype train that had slowed a bit when Cheick Kongo showed that there were a few soft spots in his otherwise impenetrable armor. While it’s possible that his chin can still be cracked against elite strikers, Cain positioned himself as the fighter most likely to detach Brock Lesnar from his heavyweight crown. With apologies to the Frank Mir-Shane Carwin winner, neither Brock-obsessed heavyweight facing off at UFC 111 matches up as well with the current champ. Cain has dispatched every opponent he has faced in dominant fashion, and has ridden the path of the heavyweight prospect to the upper echelon of the heavyweight division. It’s a shame that Mir and Carwin’s verbal histrionics in regard to Lesnar figure as highly in the eyes of matchmakers as Velasquez’ reign of terror, and it remains to be seen whether he’ll get a tuneup fight or a title eliminator while he waits for Lesnar’s next defense to play out (my money’s on a showcase, while they line up Cain and Junior Dos Santos as contenders in succession), but the UFC has to do whatever possible to keep Velasquez in fans’ minds as the NEXT Next Big Thing in UFC’s Heavyweight Division.
2. Wanderlei Silva still has something in the tank – Like many fans, I thought that the Axe Murderer had seen better days, and despite a sense that he wasn’t matched against an elite fighter in Michael Bisping, I expected him to be outpointed and outlasted. That was not to be, as Wanderlei unleashed his crowd-pleasing, Tasmanian Devil-style striking, particularly at the end of rounds, and showed the fans that he was ready to make a fresh start at Middleweight. With an undersized Yoshihiro Akiyama expected to be his next opponent, Wanderlei could begin a winning streak that could culiminate with one more title run. Regardless of whether that happens or not, the 30-second blitzkrieg — my casual fan friend called it a “Berzerker Rage” — that he unleashes at the end of every round is a sight to behold, and can bring even a room full of pizza-stuffed couch jockeys to their feet. Zuffa would do well to keep pushing the Brazilian mauler as far as he can go, for as long as he can go.
3. CroCop doesn’t – Mirko “CroCop” Filipovic was once the most fearsome striker in the heavyweight division, and yet he delivered the least impressive one-sided beatdowns I’ve seen in a long time. Who knows if Ben Rothwell would have been able to exceed CroCop’s offensive effectiveness, but he definitely would have exceeded his intensity. While Anthony Perosh should be lauded for stepping up and taking a beating, he had little to nothing to offer the former K-1 star, and in depriving us and Zuffa the signature highlight reel KO that has eluded CroCop for his entire UFC career, he has left CroCop nearly exactly where we found him in the divisional standings, but MUCH worse off in terms of his legend. In a week where a debate raged about whether the myth of CroCop was built around squash matches and epic Japanese presentation, we watched him deliver the kind of performance that tarnished that legacy, while in the kind of matchup that provided his aura in the first place. Rothwell-CroCop might remain a fine matchup and a pretty good fight, but hopefully, the question about whether we’ll see “The Old CroCop” has been put to rest; the “Old” CroCop is the guy we’re watching now.
4. Chris Lytle is not just fighting for Fight of the Night bonuses – Admittedly, when you go on record before every fight and say you just want to “stand up and bang,” and that you are looking to “steal the show,” people get the impression that you are fighting not to accumulate wins or losses, but to rack up the highly lucrative bonus checks that Zuffa doles out at the end of each card, the kind that dwarf your contracted payouts. “Lights Out” Lytle may yet be fighting for bonus checks, but in addition to being able to bring Fight of the Night awards home to the family, he can also score a sweet Submission of the Night, as his first round kneebar made short work of Chris Foster, and made him $50K richer. Not bad for a night’s work.
5. The UFC needs an overarching regulatory structure for its international shows – An often overlooked fact of Zuffa’s international expansion is that they essentially create their own regulatory structure, with Marc Ratner overseeing the drug and medical testing, as well as approval of referees and judges, that are provided in connection with the overseas cards. However, as the number of cards staged outside of the US increases, the benefits of a system that is uniform, transparent, accountable, and progressive become more stark. The Stephan Bonnar vs. Kryzsztof Soszynski fight was a perfect example. The fight ended when a cut opened up in Bonnar’s forehead in the Third Round, leading to a doctor’s stoppage. However, because the referee determined that the cut was caused by a legal strike rather than an illegal head butt, Bonnar was charged with the TKO loss, instead of the fight going to the scorecards, where it could have been ruled a draw. And because Zuffa provides neither videotaped replay review nor an appeals process, that loss will stand. Now Zuffa could, in setting up an independent regulatory regime for events held in countries without MMA commissions, provide the best possible system, as well as a Model Regulatory System for states with weak or fledgling athletic commissions. Proceeding without this kind of oversight could one day cost a fighter more than just a win. A title might one day swing in the balance, and the legitimacy of the sport could be harmed if Zuffa makes some kind of ad hoc determination, rather than proceeding pursuant to established protocol. No fan of the sport should want the UFC to continue its international expansion with such a glaring hole in its institutional framework.
6. TUF Fighters Hit Their Ceilings – Stephan Bonnar, Keith Jardine, Michael Bisping, and Joe Stevenson are not bad fighters, and are certainly UFC-caliber. However, what these fighters’ respective performances did do was make clear to fans that their greatest successes were behind them, and while they had been successfully employed as PPV headliners, they never ascended to the level of serious title challengers. (Yes, Stevenson fought BJ Penn for the Interim Lightweight Championship, but that was never seen as anything more than a coronation for The Prodigy.) Bonnar is now little more than a well-known gatekeeper, who has been surpassed by his dance partner in the Fight That Changed Everything, Forrest Griffin. Jardine, who has a win over Griffin, was previously praised for his “awkward style,” but has now been exposed as a fighter who is susceptible to getting dropped by left hooks, and who has faltered against elite opposition. (It remains to be seen whether Ryan Bader becomes an elite fighter, but he wasn’t on this occasion, and still scored the TKO win.) Michael Bisping still has holes in his game, and regardless of status of UK’s UFC trailblazer, and his talent for getting under fans’ skin, he won’t see that status validated with title gold unless something drastic happens. Joe Stevenson was supposed to get that drastic rejuvenation by joining MMA Guru Greg Jackson’s camp, but despite looking a little better, he too has reached the figurative wall, and will likely be a high-level gatekeeper from here on in.
7. George Sotiropoulos is the best thing to come out of TUF 6 – The Ultimate Fighter – Season 6 might have the enigma that is Mac Danzig as its champion, but the Aussie brought the fight to Joe “Daddy” Stevenson in a way that enthralled the hometown crowd, and fired up the fanbase…precisely the reaction that UFC attempts to cultivate from its TUF prospects. Now, the challenge is to feed Sotiropoulos a steady diet of challenging named opposition, so that he can be groomed to be a challenger when UFC next returns to the Land Down Under. I like the TUF 6 Final That Never Was next, with Georgie taking on Mac Classic in front of the Spike TV audience. From there, he can battle with the big boys like Clay Guida, Tyson Griffin, or Sean Sherk.
8. WEC didn’t get the promotion it needed – When WEC announced that it was moving to PPV, the conventional wisdom was that Zuffa needed to work overtime to increase the awareness of the WEC within the UFC PPV-buying public, and attempt to leverage as much of its goodwill towards the proposition that WEC is to the lower weight classes what UFC is to the higher ones. Despite a few promotional spots for WEC, UFC 110 didn’t make substantial progress towards that end. Remember, if UFC can feature videogame trailers and cageside interview segments with actors who star in whatever movie happens to have bought sponsorship time in a particular month, the same can be done for an upcoming PPV that falls under the same promotional umbrella, and offers a greater long-term benefit to the company. Luckily, there are still quite a few more UFC cards to give us the hard sell.
9. PRIDE lives – Not really, but a card which had three of PRIDE’s all-time superstars in high-profile bouts could have been viewed as the end of an Era. But even as Nogueira fell victim to Cain Velaquez’s two-punch combination, and CroCop gave us a tepid performance, Wanderlei rose to the occasion, and fans were treated to a show. Even Nogueira showed heart and class in defeat, and while his days as a title contender are behind him (he will likely cede the way to his protege Junior Dos Santos to pursue the Heavyweight title), he still remains a legend, a Top 10 fighter, and a dangerous opponent for anyone in the division. Hopefully, he’ll get a rematch against Frank Mir, and be afforded the same level of respect as a Randy Couture within the UFC. Wanderlei Silva is already afforded that respect, and here’s hoping that with Zuffa’s Best of PRIDE program airing on Spike we’ll still be able to see the former PRIDE standardbearers in all of their glory. They never quite took over the UFC, but they set the bar for greatness, and allowed the fighters in the UFC to exceed it, in order to become greats themselves.
