Ultimate Fight Night Live, 04/02

I'm an Ultimate Fighting Championship junkie. I have only been into watching Mixed Martial Arts since the first season of The Ultimate Fighter (TUF) reality show. I fell in love with the action and, through the show, I got to know and either like or dislike the fighters. I've watched every TUF since then and many of the Ultimate Fight Nights.

I was very excited about this Ultimate Fight Night because it featured many TUF alumni. In fact, the main event featured Kenny Florian from TUF1 and Joe Lauzon from TUF5. For the most part, all of the TUF contestants acquitted themselves well and it was a fun evening.

There were a couple of decisions by the referees that I disagreed with, but I'm not the expert. I thought the match between James Irvin and Houston Alexander and the match between Thiago Alves and Karo Parisyan were both stopped prematurely. In fact, the Irvin/Alexander match was stopped at only eight seconds into the fight. Granted, Irvin threw a nasty superman punch, but I didn't think that Alexander was done.

There was no controversy in the Anthony Johnson match against Tommy Speer. Johnson totally finished Speer in the first round. Even after the referee stopped the fight, Speer was huddled in the corner. No controversy in the Kurt Pellegrino/Nate Diaz fight either: Pellegrino looked to have beaten the crap out of Diaz in the first round, but TUF5 winner Diaz stopped Pellegrino in the second round with a triangle choke.

Matt Hamill is a favorite of mine from TUF3. He was robbed in his last fight against Michael Bisping in UFC75 and I was glad to see him come back strong. He won this match against Tim Boetsch in the second round by TKO. Boetsch got in some good blows in the first round, but it seemed to me like he was too busy trying to get in that one knockout punch.

The only fight to go the distance was the Gray Maynard/Frank Edgar match. It was a close match all the way. All three judges scored the fight 30-27 in favor of Gray Maynard. I thought Maynard did win the first and third rounds, but I was uncertain about the second. It could have gone either way.

The main event was well worth waiting for, and it was a long wait. Kenny Florian and Joe Lauzon put on a show. Florian was particularly impressive. He won by TKO in the second round. I was interested in seeing how this fight would go because of Lauzon's training: he trains in Hawaii, but he has been using an altitude training system to help him prepare for the difference in altitude in Denver. Maybe I would have seen the benefit if the fight had lasted longer, but Florian pretty much took Lauzon out of his game early.

All in all, this was a great Ultimate Fight Night. At three hours, it was too long, though, and had too many fillers; it could have been done in two hours. If they were going to stretch it to three, they could have shown more of the undercard. I was disappointed that I was unable to see Clay Guida fight. His last fight was one of the best fights that I saw last year. But this was an excellent lead in to The Ultimate Fighter 7, and that's all I could ask for.

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