OCC Aftermath: UFC 71 'Liddell Vs. Jackson'

Here's what we've learned after tonight's UFC 71.

CARE Results:
Casey-Art-Ric: 4/5
Euan-Scott: 3/6

It is a rough night for all of us. Click the cut for more.



The first thing we learned is that if all members of CARE agree, you're screwed.

We all picked Din Thomas and he was victorious, same for Karo "The Heat" Parisyan. We all picked Chris Leben, Keith Jardine, Sean Salmon, and Chuck Liddell who lost.

If you're a favorite in a UFC main event, you're also screwed. Sylvia, St. Pierre, Mirko Cro Cop and Chuck Liddell.

Terry Martin is for real.

Fun fact, I had originally picked James Irvin, Quinton Jackson and Terry Martin to win their fights before changing my mind on all of them. I'd be doing much better had I not changed my mind.

Houston Alexander will never be made fun of again on a CARE podcast. The members of CARE will however accept people making fun of us for being dumbasses.

The upsets will continue for awhile longer, because this is the MMA version of the market correcting itself. Things will continue to be hard to predict with the influx of Pride fighters into the UFC.

It was a good show.

I wonder if we won't see Chuck Liddell at Heavyweight now. The fact is that the prospects of a rematch are greater now than if Liddell had one. Yes, I realize he is now 0 and 2 against Jackson, but the first fight doesn't mean anything to the majority of the MMA audience in the U.S. For most fans, all that matters is this guy took Liddell's belt and they want to see if Chuck can get it back. If Chuck had one to a majority of fans, he would've just beaten another challenger. I actually think a rematch could do a better buyrate than the show tonight.

Please, no hate mail. I'm not saying that what happens in Japan or Pride isn't important. I'm saying that most people watching MMA today are new fans and don't have any connection to that match which is why the champ looking to get his belt back still has a strong story in it even if the new champion already holds 2 victories over him.

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UFC 69 Aftermath

UFC 69 'Shootout' is in the books.

In the predictions challenge:
Casey: 6-3
Art: 5-4
Euan: 4-5
Scott: 4-5

Best Fight: Huerta-Garcia
Worst Fight: Sanchez-Koscheck


Well, the important thing is that you can never say that a fighter has no chance. Serra's humbling of GSP made a lot of people, well those who bet on him anyway, some money.

Grove-Belcher: A good way to start the fight card out and a big win for Grove after Belcher did that trash talking.

Swick-Okami: Okami showed me something tonight, props to Art for picking him to win. He's third in a long-line of challengers for Anderson Silva's Middleweight title after Nathan Marquardt and Rich Franklin.

Huerta-Garcia: I have said it before but I love the 155 pound division. This fight was a classic example of why. It was a fast-paced slugfest. Both men really showed their stuff, Huerta got the win but Garcia will be back.

Sanchez-Koscheck: I've got to think that Koscheck is moved up the ranks in the title contender line at 170. I don't know where he stands though as this is the deepest division in the UFC with names like Hughes, Serra, GSP, Fitch, Sanchez, and Parisyan. A boring fight, Koscheck had a good strategy and Diego's wrestling is still not up to par and his striking needs work.


GSP-Serra: A complete stunner, Serra just handled his business and threw a bunch of UFC plans out of wack. So much for Hughes-GSP for the title in Montreal anytime soon. Serra had a great gameplan and executed it perfectly and proved that he can strike with some of the best.

Overall, the show is a thumbs up.

Join me at 3:00 AM ET for coverage of Pride 34 'Kamikaze'.

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The Aftermath: TNA Final Resolution 2007

You read my coverage, now for my thoughts. This will be the last word on Final Resolution for hopefully another year. Warning, this column contains a horrifying visual thought proceed at your own digression.



Thumb position: down, this show didn't offend me so much as it was just incredibly boring. There were some things I found quite stupid on this show and I will run them all down. This was a boring show that actually had some moderately decent in ring.

Best Match: Kurt Angle Vs. Samoa Joe, this was not as good as either of their previous matches. It didn't have the drama or the heat and once you got to where it was 3-2, you knew what was coming.

Worst Match: The Main Event. I lost track of who was interfering and who's side they were on and why. Vince Russo has a lot of problems and 1 of the biggies is swerving people to the point where they don't know what outcome they're supposed to even want to see so they stop caring.

Worst Finish: Ok, so apparently the world heavyweight title can change on a disqualification but the tag titles do not. I don't understand that one but that was not the worst offender.
So AJ Styles can tell that Rhino is about to Gore him a third time so rather than take it he loses on purpose. He knows enough to know where he is and what's coming but would be unable to avoid the move if he got up? Not only that but he just lost a match on purpose. If this were a real sport they'd call that kind of thing point shaving and you can go to jail for that. AJ basically said I'd rather lose than get beat up which makes no sense. I can't decide if this finish is even worse than the finish of the tag title match from last year's show but its close.

Best way to drag something out: The Bob Backlund thing was an example of a story that is told in comedy quite often. If you play a joke out, it will get laughs, if you play it out long enough people will stop laughing and if you play it out further than that they'll laugh even harder. The Bob Backlund stuff tonight must have been the exception to this rule because they lost the audience and never got them back.

Worst outcome of best intension's: Something tells me that the Christy Hemme idea was at least influenced a bit by Dixie Carter. The problem is that wrestling is a male dominated industry because it is a male dominated fan base. Christy's promo was OK but she's the heel in this feud even though she stands for equality against a chauvinist pig in Kip James.

Most predictable outcome: Wrestler A pins Wrestler B to win Wrestler C's title. Sabin pinned Lynn and won Daniels' title. Is this the only finish to a 3-way that Russo knows? I've just had a horrid thought but its in my head so I'm sharing it with the world but you've been warmed. I bet that Russo was in a threesome, did all of the work on the girl and had the other guy steal the orgasm. I know that's quite the visual and I'm standing at the sink next to you trying to decide which liquid will burn my eyes the fastest but that has to be how he's fixated on this one.

Final thoughts: Watching Raw made me want to watch this show as I thought I'd see some decent wrestling even if the booking was hit or miss or way miss or dude not in the same universe miss. However, watching this show made me want to watch Raw another try.

Thumbs so far down.

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OCC Aftermath: TNA Wrestling - Bound for Glory 2006

I gave you the live blog of the show, now for my thoughts.

• First, I hit a wall. I'm beat. I'm tired more than I have ever been in my life, just typing hurts. I am feeling like I have an upset stomach, I need sleep its been a long week.
  
  
• Best Match: 6 Sides of Steel. We had a stretch of 3 good to great matches in a row with the X-title match, Rhino and Christian and then this match. This was just the best way possible to blow off of this feud. The feud had decisive winners and losers, LAX didn't win only to see AJ and Daniels get their heat back they won and beat them down. Yay, for non-parity booking. I thought it was a nice mix of old and new school in terms of the stuff they did in the match. Probably a ****1/4 match if you wanted me to pin something as subjective (almost typed suggestive) on it.
• I might have rated it higher if not for the silliness involved. It was a cage match that started with traditional tag rules. Anytime a weapon was involved, West would talk about Earl Hebner not seeing it. Its a cage match what's he going to do, DQ them? Ok **** seriously I just decided to take off another 1/4* for that.
  
  
• Worst match: This is hard but its not that we don't have some worthy options. I was underwhelmed by Monsters Ball as I expected more than I got. No where near as great as last year's BFG Monsters Ball that's for damn sure. I guess since it didn't meet my expectations in a sense it would be my worst match. However, this is because I expected little to nothing about the X-gauntlet, the 4-way tag and Young/Larry Z.
  
  
• The different crowd made this show easier to watch than any TNA show in awhile. The Orlando fans have a tendancy to chant for the sake of chanting. They are a real clever crowd but they've also seen everything, it was nice to see say Petey Williams' tease of the destroyer get a big pop. You don't get that in Orlando.
  
  
• Biggest highlight was the Joe and Angle segment. I don't know if it was better than the one on iMPACT or not, but it was the next logical step as it was another brief taste of what may happen when they wrestle and it was a bit more than we got the first time but still it wasn't completely filling. The only question is why did Angle and Joe seak one-another out in the first place? Its easily explainable but will TNA bother?
  
  
• Jim Cornette's promo tonight was painful just because he lost his voice. Even with no voice though he was easier for me to understand than Jake the Snake Roberts.
  
  
• I was wrong division. I don't have an issue with the way they booked Austin Starr tonight. He got to showcase himself and he won the battle royal in the end. I was afraid going in that if they debuted him in that environment, he would get lost in the shuffel or overwhelmed by the "silliness".
  
  
• At least it was short. Eric Young Vs. Larry Z, nobody really believes Larry is gone especially since Young cheated to win.
  
  
• I'd say that the show was a tale of 2 halves. The first half was not that good even though the crowd was hot for everything. One Angle appeared for the first time it got real good until the end of the cage match. The main event was ok but it had to follow the cage match and nothing they did was going to top anything in any of the prior 3 matches and so it naturally dropped from here. I did like the spot where Sting no-sold Jarrett's guitar to a freaking huge pop. I want them out of the iMPACT Zone a lot more in 2007 because a fresh crowd made up for a lack-luster first half of this show.
  
  
• Biggest show of the year? No, not really, I give them credit for one thing though. Many times TNA PPV events seem to be self-containing where they lead wrap up everything nicely there's no hook for next week's iMPACT or the next PPV. This time in the form of Angle/Joe we got that and you want to see what the next chapter is between Angle and Joe. We'll see if that actually translates to anything but the thought was there.
  
  
• Nothing completely offensive that made me cringe to watch it other than perhaps Jake's promo.
  
  I'd give this show probably a 7.5 out of 10, so good but not great. Of course, I see TNA as so far under the radar that they need to be doing 9/10's to get any kind of a buzz.

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OCC reevaluation: UFC 64 Unstoppable - Marrero-Kongo & Jon Fitch's music

Before I get in to the things I want to say in this column, I think I should explain why it exists in the first place.


One of the difficulties of doing a full recap as opposed to a summary of each round at the end of the round is that it requires that I divide my attention between the fight, what's going on in the room and the computer.

So, this has resulted in my feelings after thought and reflection being different than they were when I was writing the live blog.

Well, sometimes that carries over to the aftermath column.

In that piece I wrote last night about the Kongo Marrero fight that I hated to give anything on this show the label of worst fight but this would be the one.

This is no longer true because now I don't hate to give this fight that label, they earned it. This fight after looking back at my notes and after viewing it again, well it benefited from my mood last night.

How many times during that fight did I write the phrase: "The Referee stood them back up". or a variant thereof. Refs don't stand them up for their jollies they do it because the fighters aren't providing satisfactory action.

I will try not to let bad fights benefit from a general good mood in the future. I will say this, I have seen worse fights than this one but this wasn't anywhere near what I would consider good on second look. Now that I think about it, I'm not sure where I would rank this show when comparing it to UFC 63 or 62.

The only other thing I wanted to mention here is that if Matt Hughes has the best walk-in music in UFC according to Joe Rogan than Jon Fitch is 1-A because I've been listening to the Johnny Cash song he entered to last night and it is all kinds of awesome.

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OCC Aftermath: UFC 64 Unstoppable

The show is in the books so lets take it apart and examine it.



Best Fight: Sean Sherk Vs. Kenny Florian
I don't like Florian's nickname, Sherk's either for that matter but this was a tremendous fight. There was no spot where I thought they needed to pick up the pace any and the end of the third round was a hot one.
I wasn't surprised by the outcome and I think the length of the fight definitely worked to Sherk's favor as I thought he dominated the later rounds more than he did the early ones but I always thought even though Sherk won every round that Florian was always in the fight.

Worst Fight: Cheick Kongo Vs. Carmelo Marrero
I hate giving out the title of worst fight on this show as nothing was really bad but of all the fights I saw I'd call this one the worst. There was a lot of times where the ref stood them back up because they weren't doing anything. Marrero is a really good wrestler and Kongo is not. Things like this matter and things like this are also why you shouldn't follow my UFC picks ever if you're smart.

Biggest news: Anderson Silva Def. Rich Franklin
Yes, I picked Silva but it wasn't because I knew what was coming it was just a hunch. I also thought the fight would go the distance which shows again what I know. Silva is going to be one hard guy to beat and I don't know who is out there that is going to do it.

Most impressive victory, undercard division: Jon Fitch
Fitch looked real good in his fight with Kuniyoshi Hironaka. Spencer Fisher is also a high ranking candidate in this category as is Clay Guida as they all looked good to me but Fitch is a Beast as was said during the show.

Most impressive in defeat: Kuniyoshi Hironaka
I want to see this man fight more, he was in with a better man tonight but I hope we get to see him again.

Overall: I think I liked this show better than last month's which is something I write about UFC a lot these days. Hughes/Penn was a better fight than Silva/Franklin but I don't think anything on UFC 63 was as good as Sherk Vs. Florian. I've said this so many times that I'm sure you're all tired of reading it. I am a huge mark for the lightweight division.

Special note: It appears that today may have been one of the most successful days in terms of traffic that the corner has ever had. I very much appreciate anyone that logged on for coverage tonight, I hope you enjoyed what you read.

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OCC Aftermath: Ortiz Vs. Shamrock the final chapter.

Now that its over lets look at it.


Of the fights we saw I'd say the best was Hamill Vs. Petruzelli.

This show didn't have the best fight's I've ever seen but that's ok because I didn't expect that it would. I figure that Saturday Night's fight quality will be much, much higher.

Nice to see Tito basically admit that they do a lot of things just for the show, no, UFC is nothing like pro wrestling, why would people say that?

I was 3-1 on the live show and 7-2 overall for picking these fights. Its been a hot week for me.

I can't complain too much about anything on this show because I did watch it for free.

Yes, the Shamrock/Ortiz finish was decisive and brought the feud to a close.

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OCC Aftermath: TNA No Surrender 2006

First let me say that all major websites report that the time is 9 PM for iMPACT starting 11/16 not as I believe I wrote in the live blog, 8 PM. I could've swore that's what I heard but I'll check the DVD later, but for me it actually is 8 PM as I am in the Central timezone.

Now lets look at this PPV now that it is as Ric says "In the books":



*Eric Young Vs. A-1. Well the crowd was at least in to Eric Young which made the match something I could tollerate taking place.

*Jay Lethal Vs. Petey Williams. If you read my live blog which you really should've otherwise why are you reading this? Anyway, if you read it you already know how I feel about this match.
This looked like it had Russo's finger prints all over it even if he had nothing to do with it. As I mentioned in my benchwarmers review I do not like fart jokes as a form of commedy. Williams and Lethal are capable of having a good match if you let them have a good match.
Now let me be clear here, I agree with Ric that you can have the best wrestling matches in the world but that ain't enough on its own. However, I would take a good match with no story behind it on a PPV over a match that was bad because it was bogged down by a stupid story any day of the week. I felt this could've been so much more but was buried under the crushing weight of a silly angle. Sound like any booker you know?

*Raven Vs. Abyss Vs. Runt. I hate these matches now. Between TNA doing 1 at the last PPV, a thumbtack match on iMPACT then a hangman's horror match a couple of weeks after that I'm sick of it. Add in that ECW does these matches too and its more than I want to see. If I had it my way, I wouldn't see another one of these in TNA for at least 6 months to a year. So expect one thursday.

*Triple Chance battle royal.
Lets see here:

1. A bunch of teams nobody cares about.
   
2. Telegraphing the ending by the fact that only 2 teams have a story ark.
   
3. Over-complicate the rules for no good reason at all.
   
4. Have everything be predictable in every way, not only did I guess the final outcome but I practically could've predicted the chain of command as far as tag eliminations went.

Add all those up and you get a pretty boring match that the fans weren't into seeing.
Later this week I am going to explain why it is that the Naturals symbolize every single thing wrong with TNA's story department in 1 small package. But not now because I still have typing fatigue.

At this point I was hating this show.

*Chris Sabin Vs. Senshi. If you read the live blog, you have my thoughts on this. It was a fun match until the duo of Lethis and Sonj-head came out. At least the fans let them know what they think of this stuff. First good match of the night in my view.

*Rhino Vs. Christian. I thought overall this was a fine match but if I'm spending $30 I want more than fine matches. Christian winning was the right thing to do as it keeps him strong for an eventual Sting showdown.

*Ultimate X, again to stroke his ego I'll say Ric called this one and the rest of us got it wrong. I really liked this match especially compared to some previous Ultimate X matches. The crowd was into the match, the feud was the best built up in TNA probably since the days of AMW vs. XXX and I hope they continue to do something with LAX.

*Samoa Joe Vs. Jeff Jarrett, regular OCC readers already know how stupid I think this was to set up. Anyone that read our preview also knows how I felt. I still feel the same way as I did before but at least TNA didn't make it worse.
I know one thing I thought they might do was have a ref bump and have Jarrett score a visual 3-count over Samoa Joe. That would have sent me in to a rant unseen by me since the first Raiders game of the season.

Now for the major announcements: I knew something was up when Cornette made the first one. By the way I liked Cornette's delivery on this. It shows me that even though Cornette probably wants to kill Russo, that he's still a professional and doing his job. With Jim Cornette's past you did have to wonder how that would go.

The time change. Well, I don't know how much this will mean at all. It kind of means more given the other half of the announcement than it would've on its own.

Kurt Angle coming to TNA wrestling. We will be talking about the magnitude of this one for awhile. Ric hinted at a lot of the discussion points at least the things that should be discussed. Is this really good for Angle? Is Angle healthy? May we have to watch a Kurt Angle tribute show sometime in the future. I'll post the press release in a second but there was a quote that jumped out at me as being frightening from the get-go.

Now, I'll play fantasy booker to show what I am thinking I'd do for the debut of Angle.

I'd have Kurt Angle come out and cut his promo. I'm here to kick ass, take ames and add to my legasy. I want to add the NWA title to my resume. Stuff like that.

At the mention of the NWA championship I would have Samoa Joe's music hit and have him start out towards the ring. Get people thinking they're going to see a Joe Vs. Angle contribution right off of the bat. Then I'd have Jeff Jarrett and possibly AMW attack Joe from behind and beat him down so we never find out at least on that night what Joe was coming out for even though we all know. Now, Angle sees this happening and is distracted by the fight in the isle when Abyss comes in from the otherside and lays Angle out with a blackhole slam. Then in future weeks have James Mitchell cut promos about how Abyss has been here he has been waiting and Angle isn't going to be taking his spot.

Let me know what you think of the early part of my fantasy booking idea. Do you like it, do you hate it, is it at least better than what Russo will do? What would you do differently?

As for the other questions as difficult as it may be, we are going to have to wait and see. I understand if some people are reserved about this and a little nervous, I understand because I am one of you. What will this mean for TNA in the grand cheme? I have no idea, Angle does have a fanbase and if Spike actually blitzes the hell out of a promotion of this then they might get some people to take notice that are WWE fans that wonder what will become of Angle.

Kurt Angle is not Christian. He is not Rhino. Yes, he was fired from WWE but I'm sure WWE would rather not have done it. Kurt Angle is not a mid-carder that was underutilized or at least believed to be by fans. This is Kurt Angle legitimate wrestling superstar. This isn't Sting, superstar of 10 years ago, Kurt Angle is a superstar today. This is the kind of guy that if he were NWA champion his first night in it wouldn't be nearly as bad as when they handed it to Christian (phenominally stupid absolutely but not as bad from a credibility standpoint). So this is a big deal, its a big deal because of those other concerns of Angle's but even without those concerns its a big deal.

We'll have to see where this one goes but it is interesting to note that TNA went from being a company nobody was talking about to 1 that has generated a lot of discussion for both good and bad this past week.

No Surrender the show started horribly in my view and got better peaking with Ultimate X and dropping only slightly for the main event and announcement. I can't recommend a replay because even though I thought Ultimate X was a great match, you need more than that in this day and age.

UFC was obviously the better show this weekend.

Now, I'm tired of typing. 2 days of live blogging a DVD and 2 PPVs is quite exhausting. Tomorrow might be a light posting day.

I hope you enjoyed the coverage of UFC and TNA from this weekend.

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OCC Aftermath: UFC 63 Hughes Vs. Penn

Introducing a new feature to the OCC, the aftermath column. Where I take a broader look at the show that I just watched. Its hard to give my thoughts during the show while live blogging because of trying to keep up with things.



Fight of the Night: Matt Hughes Vs. B.J. Penn
I thought this was just a dramatic fight that the crowd was completely into and that there were moments when I was on the edge of my seat wondering if Hughes might make me look bad for picking him. Penn's conditioning or lack of it really bit him in the ass tonight.

Worst Fight: David Loiseau Vs. Mike Swick
The crowd booed a lot during this fight and compared to some of the other fights its not hard to understand why. I think that Swick thought he had won the first 2 rounds and tried to coast in the third where Loiseau started to take over. It was a little too late for Loiseau but at least he was trying all 3 rounds. 29-28 was the right call in my opinion.

Shocker of the night: Joe Lauzon Vs. Jens Pulver.
I don't know of anyone though I'm sure they are out there perhaps Joe Lauzon's relatives that picked him to beat Pulver tonight. This may put a monkey wrench in UFC's plans to put Pulver on Ultimate Fighter and build him up for a shot at the Light Weight title.

Knockout of the Night: Lauzon knocks out Pulver.
This didn't have a lot of competition but in terms of what this does for the future that may have been the punch heard round the world. Ok, so maybe not that huge but it surprised some people not the least of whom is Jens Pulver himself.

Thoughts on the show overall: I've got to give this show a big thumbs up. Even bigger than last month which I also liked. The fights were better across the board and while I love seeing Chuck Liddell manhandle someone I'd sooner watch Penn Vs. Hughes again than Liddell Vs. Sobral.
Only 1 fight that I thought was boring and the dark fights were entertaining as well.

TNA can't possibly be as good tomorrow.

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