UFC 132, from a Casual Fan's Perspective

What a card!

I'm more of a casual fan of the Ultimate Fighting Championship, but a few of my close friends are huge fans, and they're slowly but surely drawing me in. The first UFC show I watched in full was UFC 116 exactly one year ago, the card featuring Brock Lesnar vs. Shane Carwin. It was an awesome show and was my favorite PPV (of the handful of shows I've seen) up until last night's show.



Prelims:

George Sotiropoulos vs. Rafael dos Anjos

Sadly I don't even remember anything about this fight, I was ordering food or fiddling with my phone or something and then BOOM, it's over.

Melvin Guillard vs. Shane Roller

Before this fight, my friend Kris quoted something another friend said once: "If there's a white dude fighting a black dude in a UFC match, ALWAYS bet on the black guy." Sound advice, as Guillard won the fight.

There was another fight they aired from the Facebook Stream or whatever they do before the Spike TV broadcast, but I don't remember it. The bad thing about watching these at a restaurant is that I'm always fiddling with the menu at the beginning and chatting it up with everyone who is sitting there.

I also want to point out that before PPV started, Buffalo Wild Wings didn't switch their TVs off of Spike TV for a few minutes. Spike starts airing The Empire Strikes Back and everyone in the restaurant is all "NOOOOOOOO" and I'm all "WTF, this is the best Star Wars movie!" But they switched to the PPV feed just in time, thus calming the upset MMA lovers who apparently hate The Empire Strikes Back.

Main PPV Card:

Carlos Condit vs. Dong Hyun Kim
No clue who either of these guys are but Condit won with a KICKASS flying knee that knocked the Korean dude out. Totally awesome visual, like something out of one of those Capcom arcade fighting games.

Tito Ortiz vs. Ryan Bader
Oh snap! Tito has been around since the 90's I think, but my only exposure to him was when he was a guest referee for NWA-TNA back in 2005. In fact, I was going t post a sarcastic Facebook status about how he should go back to TNA because I fully expected Tito to lose here. Instead, the opposite happened, with Tito dominating Bader with a stiff right hand and then making Bader tap. A guy on the Blog of Doom said it best, "it's the year 2011 and a dude lost to Tito Ortiz." Crazy!

Dennis Siver vs. Matt Wiman
No clue who these guys are either. This is where my limited knowledge of MMA hurts me. The fight went all three rounds and thus it was up to the judges to declare a winner. Despite Wiman dominating pretty much the entire fight, the judges awarded the contest to Siver, shocking pretty much everyone at the restaurant we were at. I thought Wiman should have won, but like I said, I have no clue how the judges score these things or what they look for.

Wanderlei Silva vs. Chris Leben
I remember Leben from UFC 116 where he had a cool fight with this awesome Japanese dude, and Wanderlei is a guy that is a legend in MMA. Of course Leben knocks Wanderlei out in like 30 seconds, making Wanderlei look really old and tired in the process. Another awesome fight in a series of them tonight.

Dominick Cruz vs. Urijah Faber
This was another crazy fight that went all five rounds (five because it was for a title). Towards the middle, one of my friends said that Faber needed to do something big because if the fight had to go to the judges, they would award the fight to Cruz. That's pretty much exactly what happened. Faber had multiple opportunities to get something going, I thought, but could never quite take advantage of Cruz. People are calling this an "all time classic" and I don't really see how but then again I'm still a casual fan at best, so hopefully one day I'll know enough to know why people are rating this fight so highly.

OVERALL, this was an awesome show, and pretty much overtook UFC 116 as my favorite UFC card, out of the handful that I've seen. I really need to start watching some more MMA. Tons of awesome knockouts, and even the longer fights were entertaining. I wish every UFC show was this good. Thumbs Up.