Saturday night the UFC held a fighting event on Spike TV to compete with another organization's PPV event, and delivered with a main event fight between Anderson Silva and James Irvin. Silva would move up a weight class for this fight, seeing as how there was no competition for him in the middleweight division.
Jesse Taylor and CB Dolloway were the first fight of the night. CB submitted Jesse in the first round, and although I'm not a fan of CB, he knew how to capitalize on Jesse's sloppiness that was nothing like how he fought on the last season of the Ultimate Fighter. The next fight between Anthony Johnson and Kevin Burns ended with some controversy, and stood as the lowest point of the night. Burns accidentally poked Johnson in the eye in the third round, but because Johnson went down into the mat, the referee made the call that he was knocked out. If Johnson had stayed standing, we more than likely would've went on to a decision victory since he had won the first two rounds. Cain Velasquez put on a good show against Jake O'Brien by pinning him to the ground, and continually throwing punches to O'Brien's head that forced the referee to stop the fight. Hopefully Cain will be moving up more in the coming months as the heavyweight division needs a stand-out fighter.
Frank "The Answer" Edgar did what he does best against Hermes Franca: takedowns and ground-and-pound. Franca was not entirely prepared, and should've been considering that Edgar was similar to his last opponent Sean Sherk. Hopefully Edgar will continue his rise up the ranks. Brandon Vera moved down to light heavyweight to fight a debuting Reese Andy in what was the worst fight of the night. The first round was full of action, but the last two were boring to watch, and the usually impressive Vera got the decision win. The weight-loss probably led to this, but I think Vera was also fighting safe to secure his win. An undercard fight that was shown featured a stunning knockout delivered from Rory Markham to Brodie Farber. Farber has rocked Markham several times, but at when point when coming in with his hands down too low, Markham threw a kick to the side of Barber's head, putting him to sleep before he hit the ground (this reminded me of Rashad Evan's KO over Sean Salmon).
The main event fight was short, but impressive. Irvin threw a kick to Silva's body, which Silva caught and retaliated with a hard punch that sent Irvin to the ground. Silva threw sevaral strikes that put Irvin out just over a minute in the first round. This is why Anderson "The Spider" Silva is one of the most impressive fighters the UFC has ever had, and I always enjoy watching in the octagon.
Although the event had a couple of low points, it managed to come back with some very impressive knockouts and displays by its fighters. I look forward to the next PPV event featuring one of my favorite fighters Georges St. Pierre vs. Jon Fitch, a sure brawl in Brock Lesnar vs. Heath Herring, and a highly anticipated fight between Kenny Florian and Roger Huerta.
Joe
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