UFC 83 Review
A couple of days late but I’ve finally gotten down to putting together my recap of Saturday’s event.
I’d never seen a UFC event live before and I’ve been planning on taking a trip to Vegas for a while but I was glad that the show was in Canada, so I did not have to travel to far to watch it.
We got into the city around 1pm on Friday, it seemed that everyone there was from Toronto to watch the fights. The Habs were in a playoff series with the Bruins but it seemed like people could care less, this weekend was for the UFC and Georges St. Pierre.
We checked into the hotel which was conveniently located right accross from the Bell Center. There we saw Pete Sell in the elevator. He must have been in town with Matt Serra (who also must have been staying in our hotel) but we figured we didn’t need to raz the guy since he could deffinitley kick our ass and the Montreal crowd would do enough heckling for us. After that we headed to the weigh-ins but were unsure if we would get in since we heard that there was a massive line-up since the morning. Fortunately we did get into the building although we had to find seats on the second deck. It was a lot of fun and got me real pumped up for the fights. There was some trash talking and the crowd was loving all the Canucks. Really the only non-Canadian fighters that got good responses were Rich Franklin and Michael Bisping.
After the weigh-ins it was time to hit some patios but first we went to this party sponsored by the Fight network. Randy Couture was there along with “Big” John McCarthy. We didn’t stay too long though since it actually turned out to be pretty lame. Instead we hit up some clubs, including one that had some ridiculous people ordering 2000$ bottles of Grey Goose.
The next day we grabbed some breakfast and hit the patios again before the fights started. There was a ton of people on Crescent street being absolutely ridiculous. The weekend definitely brought out the best and worst of UFC/MMA fans. But the overall atmosphere was really exciting and everyone was hyped over the fights. Even the locals who don’t really watch the UFC were asking us questions and seemed to get into it.
Finally around 8 we headed over to catch the show. We had missed a couple of fights, which really sucked, but got there just in time to see Sam Stout take on Rich Clementi. Clementi had good positions early but Stout fought real hard and came back to make it a close fight. The decision went to Rich but the momentum was definitely swinging Sam’s way by the end.
Another great fight was Demian Maia vs Ed Herman. You don’t often see guys drop guard in an MMA fight but Demian’s Jiu Jitsu is THAT good. He finished Ed with a great triangle in the second round. I can’t wait to see this guy again.
Finally the main card started with Mark Bocek taking on Mac Danzig. Markis well known in the Toronto BJJ community and we were all cheering him on. He had a great opening round where he controlled most of the positions on Mac but that changed in the second when Mac caught him with a wicked knee that altered the course of the fight. Mark did a good job re-guarding and protecting himself but Mac just poured on the elbows and punches and eventually put Mark away in a really great contest. I really hope Bocek gets another shot in the UFC because his performance was terrific despite the tough loss.
After a couple more lackluster fights with Nate Quarry chasing Kalib Starnes, Michael Bisping winning and Rich Franklin disposing of Travis Lutter, it was time for the main event.
The whole place was just buzzing as St. Pierre came out and my heart was just racing. I was more nervous for Georges’ fight than I’ve been for any of my Jiu-Jitsu matches! When the contest got under way the crowd was just nuts, constantly chanting and cheering and heckling Matt. Georges just dominated the whole fight from every position. The thing that impressed me the most had to be the way he combined his punches and elbows from guard top with guard passes. It was like the passes were part of the combinations themselves and were just beautiful.
After the fights we headed to another after party, this time sponsored by Tapout. There I got a couple pictures with those crazy guys and tried to joke with them, although they didn’t seem to get it when I said I was going to start my own clothing line called Split Decision. They just kinda stared blankly and one of the said: “Well you just have to work real hard and believe in yourself”. Not long into the night Forrest Griffin showed up to chill. I was totally the guy who would yell random stuff that he’d heard a million times before. Things like: “You’re the man Forrest!”. Yeah that was me.
After that we split from the bar and were out of cash so we headed back to our hotel and crashed for the night. We woke up in the morning, had breakfast and headed home to Toronto for some much needed rest.
Overall the weekend was just great, the city, crowd, fights and everything else were terrific and I can’t wait to see the UFC live again. Hopefully though, the Ontario Athletic Commission will get its act together and make MMA legal here because a UFC event in Toronto would just be ridiculous and Mixed Martial Art has definitley proven itself as a true sport. I’m sure it is not too far off though, especially considering the size of Saturday’s event.