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MAIN CARD
FOX Sports 1, 10 p.m. ET

Rafael dos Anjos vs. Benson Henderson
Jordan Mein vs. Mike Pyle
Francis Carmont vs. Thales Leites
Mirsad Bektic vs. Max Holloway
Tom Niinimaki vs. Chas Skelly

PRELIMINARY CARD
FOX Sports 2, 8 p.m. ET

Alex Garcia vs. Neil Magny
Timothy Elliott vs. Wilson Reis
Valmir Lazaro vs. James Vick
Beneil Dariush vs. Tony Martin

PRELIMINARY CARD
UFC Fight Pass, 7:30 p.m. ET

Matt Hobar vs. Aaron Phillips

Wow. First card ever that doesn't even have a single fight that interests me.

That's pretty weak for a Fox card.

lilfishi22 wrote:That's pretty weak for a Fox card.

It's not on FOX, on FS1.

SDM wrote:Wow. First card ever that doesn't even have a single fight that interests me.

Not even the main event? Bendo vs RDA.

Nemesis21 wrote:

SDM wrote:Wow. First card ever that doesn't even have a single fight that interests me.

Not even the main event? Bendo vs RDA.

Spoiler: Benson wins.

Spoiler: not by dominant decision or finish unless late in the fight against a gassed opponent

The card took a pretty huge hit in my eyes when Bektic dropped out. He was a bona fide prospect to give Holloway another test. Now he's just going to beat up another overmatched fighter almost surely. It will be a little fun to watch because Holloway has a sick striking style and is evolving on the ground, but won't tell us anymore about how bright his future is.

I'm still interested enough in Mein-Pyle. Pyle is chinny, but I still don't feel like I know what will happen in that fight cuz at the same time he's tough, crafty as hell, and well-rounded. He could pull a Hathaway.

China had Goldie and Florian, who's announcing this one?

No Rogan, and apparently the prelims had the first UFC omoplata.

Nice.

Didn't watch yet, but lol @ reddzone.

Bah. I think Bendo might have an awesome chin, that had not finished him. The left hook took him off his feet but he seemed immediately able to brace himself with his arms to push himself back up.

It may have been imminent, though, RDA throws heavy and was putting together some great strikes.

Sucks. Early stoppage. Mirgs had almost stopped a fight early too. But pulled back thankfully.

Oh crap, is Bendo punchy? He always had a bit of Grover but he sounds slurry too.

I haven't watched more than a few of the fights from this weekend but, having skimmed through, there was some really poor quality fighting. Even Woodley (no spoilers) looked a little ridiculous leaning into looping punches.

The UFC's model aside, it looks bad on MMA. I would be embarrassed to have a skilled boxer watch this stuff. It's 20 years after the Tulsa show, they themselves are talking about this, but there's still some Tough Man left.

Big John is one of the worst refs in the sport these days. Way early stoppage in the first round of a five rounder with Bendo fighting and scrambling after the flash kd. Still, it was a beefy attack by RDA. I didn't know he had that in him.

Bendo is not getting slurry I don't think. He has a speech impediment and a toothpick in his mouth. He used to refer to Dana as Danna and got Khabilov confused with Khabib. He doesn't hear words in his head quite right.

Collard was a meathead. They were really going overboard in trying to hype him. He's got a pretty weak resume and no plan out there, just raw machismo and aggression. Holloway looked as good as one could against him. Showed off his evolution as a fighter. Talk about polar opposites when it comes to appropriate reps for the sport.

Only BJJ geeks would be excited by the first ever ompalata in the UFC. j/k Saunders is crazy flexible, and was close to pulling that off before. I think he almost had Sapo. Once he had that locked I was worried he was just going to use it to sweep or bail on it. He had control and the arm was right there. He just had to bend it. If nothing else the UFC reacquired another fun fighter, although he's clearly made massive ground improvements since his first stint. Can't hold those brutal ko's by Lima against him, but he still did get controlled disappointingly by Brian the Beast Baker in a fight, so his bottom game doesn't appear to work against everybody, and his tdd is pretty shaky.

A poster on sherdog theorized that Big John actually didn't want to stop the fight, but his momentum took him too close to the action, and at that point he had no choice. I gotta tell you, in looking at the gif, it's not a bad theory.



It looks very possible that's actually what happened. He even runs into RDA's foot, and may have tripped.

That's the drawback of using a big ref. We only hear about the benefits in fights with big aggressive dudes, but a guy like Jason Herzog will never have the problem with physically getting near the action quick enough or stopping is momentum if he likes.

Fell asleep early in the event and didn't care enough to avoid spoilers for another day.

Sounds like there was some good action on this card though.

Watched the main event, and yeah, that was a bad stoppage. The theory based on that gif looks like it may very well be true.

Matchmaking coming out of this will be interesting. I'm kind of glad Bendo won't be anywhere near a title shot for a while. What do you do with RDA?

Killa B!

The dude put himself in the omoplata, that was weird. His arm was on the correct side of the hip for the omoplata and he just spun into it. I'm not sure if Ben was threatening another submission (I'm not at all familiar with rubber guard) so the guy decided to sacrifice the omoplata and gamble that he could escape that instead of the armbar/triangle (super common I feel like), or if he just didn't know what the hell was going on.

Bernman wrote:Big John is one of the worst refs in the sport these days. Way early stoppage in the first round of a five rounder with Bendo fighting and scrambling after the flash kd. Still, it was a beefy attack by RDA. I didn't know he had that in him.

Bendo is not getting slurry I don't think. He has a speech impediment and a toothpick in his mouth. He used to refer to Dana as Danna and got Khabilov confused with Khabib. He doesn't hear words in his head quite right.

Collard was a meathead. They were really going overboard in trying to hype him. He's got a pretty weak resume and no plan out there, just raw machismo and aggression. Holloway looked as good as one could against him. Showed off his evolution as a fighter. Talk about polar opposites when it comes to appropriate reps for the sport.

Only BJJ geeks would be excited by the first ever ompalata in the UFC. j/k Saunders is crazy flexible, and was close to pulling that off before. I think he almost had Sapo. Once he had that locked I was worried he was just going to use it to sweep or bail on it. He had control and the arm was right there. He just had to bend it. If nothing else the UFC reacquired another fun fighter, although he's clearly made massive ground improvements since his first stint. Can't hold those brutal ko's by Lima against him, but he still did get controlled disappointingly by Brian the Beast Baker in a fight, so his bottom game doesn't appear to work against everybody, and his tdd is pretty shaky.

Bendo was out when he got dropped and only woke up when he hit the floor but looking at his eyes, he was super dazed. Big John saved Bendo from unnecessary punishment. Bendo has decent recovery but RDA would've put the pressure on and never would've let Bendo back in. It was a good stoppage but I could see how some could see it as being early.

Collard was sloppy but for a guy coming in on a week's notice, he put on a decent showing (in the first round and a half) against a UFC vet. I think he's got the skills and the chin to be a solid prospect, keeping in mind he's only 21.

Hm I think that stoppage could have gone either way, although I do think there is a good possibility that Fat John blew the stoppage.

My computer froze right as Ben was dropping and man he looked OUT to me. He was fighting it instinctually so maybe it could have gone on. Overall I say bad stoppage but from reading the other forums I thought it was going to be a lot worse.