UFC 100: LESNAR DOMINATES MIR

Written by Jim Murphy   |   Sunday, July 12 2009

Brock Lesnar surveys the crowd from his cagetop perch following his UFC 100 demolition of Frank Mir.  (Photo:  UFC)

On a historic night for the UFC and the sport of mixed martial arts, Brock Lesnar avenged his early loss to Frank Mir with a TKO victory and in the process unified the promotion’s heavyweight championship.  Mir/Lesnar was the main event of a stacked card and the culmination of an insane week in Las Vegas.  The anticipation surrounding UFC 100 was unprecedented among the fight sport media and, more significantly, among mainstream sports media.  MMA has long has been an object of scorn, disdain and ignorance among ‘traditional’ sports media, and in this context the fact that every major outlet including ESPN, SI.com and Fox Sports featured UFC 100 as their top story of the day is downright amazing.  (For a collection of images from a variety of sports websites featuring their UFC 100 coverage visit THE SAVAGE SCIENCE BLOG)

The broader implications of UFC 100 remain to be seen, but it could become a turning point for the sport where MMA transcends ‘cult’ or ‘niche’ status to burst into the mainstream consciousness.  While the big metric of the event’s success will be its PPV buy rate—which will almost certainly shatter existing UFC records—the attendance numbers and other tangible measures that are already known underscore the significance of the event.  Friday’s weigh in was a ‘standing room only’ affair with over 2,000 fans turned away.  A ‘Fan Expo’ held in conjunction with UFC 100 counted over 30,000 visitors on Friday and an equal or greater number on Saturday.   Even veteran fight media experienced in covering big boxing and MMA events worldwide have reported that the energy and general ‘vibe’ around this event is like nothing they’ve seen.

And the ‘main event’ of the week was Saturday’s UFC 100 fight card where Lesnar established not only his dominance of the promotion’s heavyweight division but his status as the biggest ‘heel’ in MMA.  To his credit, he had a perfect gameplan for Mir that allowed him to use his strength and power to maul his opponent on the ground while minimizing his exposure to submissions.  By contrast, Mir made a tactical mistake in allowing Lesnar to put him on his back so quickly and control him on the ground.  He may have considered this his best opportunity to win—wait out Lesnar and look for an opportunity for a submission—but it never materialized and by the end of the first round he’d already absorbed a brutal beating.  Lesnar quickly took Mir down again at the start of the second round, ending the fight with a punishing ‘ground and pound’ assault that prompted referee Herb Dean to call a stop to the contest at 1:48 of the second round.

Lesnar diminished his dominating performance with his postfight antics—he taunted Mir after the stoppage, prompting the crowd to boo him mercilessly.  He responded to this with a double handed ‘middle finger salute’ before a short and arrogant postfight interview that would have been much more at home in the WWE than in this setting.  Mir was the consummate professional in defeat, giving credit to his opponent and generally displaying all of the class that Lesnar lacked. 

There’s never a concern about a ‘lack of class’ when welterweight champion Georges St. Pierre is in the cage, and the presumptive ‘pound for pound’ best fighter in the sport earned a one sided unanimous decision victory over Thiago Alves.  Alves is a fighter that lives and dies by his power striking ability, and when it quickly became apparent that ‘GSP’ was every bit his equal in the standup exchanges the outcome of the bout became a fait accompli.  Despite suffering a pulled groin muscle late in the third round, St. Pierre overwhelmed Alves on the ground as he scored an incredible 10 takedowns over five rounds and effectively pounded and controlled his opponent on the canvas in between.  GSP would go on to a shutout unanimous decision victory by scores of 50-45, 50-44, 50-45 (The Savage Science scored it 50-45 for GSP).

Earlier in the evening, a long awaited battle between opposing coaches on ‘The Ultimate Fighter’ turned into a one sided rout as ageless Dan Henderson used his heavy hands and all around toughness to wear down Brit phenom Michael Bisping before knocking his foe unconscious in the second with a powerful right.  Bisping looked at times like he didn’t have a clue what to do tactically against the dangerously well rounded Henderson—he didn’t want to exchange punches with an opponent with KO power in both hands, nor did he want to go to the ground with an Olympic Greco Roman wrestler.  He avoided trouble for awhile by circling away from Henderson, but as he continually circled to the left he routinely put himself in the flight path of ‘Hendo’s’ money punch.  Just past the midway point of the second round, Henderson nailed Bisping with an overhand right that put him out before he hit the ground.  Henderson dropped another hard punch from the top before referee Mario Yamasaki jumped in to spare the Brit further punishment.

In the opening bout of the live PPV, Japanese judo master and media star Yoshihiro “Sexyama’ Akiyama earned a hard fought split decision victory over a game Alan Belcher.  Akiyama came to the ring with much of the pomp he became known for in Japan, including his traditional Sarah Brightman/Andrea Bocelli entrance music that stood in marked contrast to the metal and rap most fighters use.  Once in the cage, he at times displayed very sharp punching combinations but never really seemed to get his momentum going.  Belcher clearly hurt him with his Muay Thai leg kicks, and a nasty inadvertent low blow suffered by Akiyama in the first round didn’t help his cause.  Early in the third round, Akiyama suffered an apparent poke to the eye which limited his vision during the final five minutes of the fight.  Belcher landed a few power shots throughout the fight, but when the judges scores were tallied Akiyama had escaped with a 30-27, 29-28, 28-29 split decision (The Savage Science scored the fight 30-27 for Akiyama). 

Another preliminary fight between Jon Fitch and Paulo Thiago was bumped to the very end of the card after the main event.  Fitch would prevail by unanimous decision handing Thiago his first UFC loss in the process.  After the fight, Fitch conceded that it was difficult to compete in this position as the fans were streaming out of the arena and even ring announcer Bruce Buffer’s rapid reading of the scores suggested that everyone was ready to put it in the bag.

The biggest story of UFC 100 may still be forthcoming—in the pre-event media blitz Dana White was surprisingly conservative in his estimates of the PPV buyrate throwing around a 750,000 buys figure on a few occasions.  Despite his cautious number, it’s important to remember that Lesnar’s last PPV appearance did just under a million buys and the overall ‘vibe’ surrounding this event was far greater.  A 1.2 million buy rate is almost certain, with estimates among the SAVSCI staff ranging from 1.2 million all the way up to 1.7 million.  While UFC 100 won’t touch the PPV record of 2.4 million buys set by the Oscar De La Hoya/Floyd Mayweather, Jr. boxing match it will almost certainly produce a number that will surprise the mainstream media and further validate MMA’s status as a legitimate sport.

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