Ennis' Take
ENNIS: Thumbs Up/Thumbs Down for UFC 142 - Rabid crowd, Jose Aldo, Edson Barboza, and more
Jan 15, 2012 - 11:00:09 PM ENNIS: Thumbs Up/Thumbs Down for UFC 142 - Rabid crowd, Jose Aldo, Edson Barboza, and more

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By: Shawn Ennis, MMATorch Senior Columnist

Crazy. That's really the only way to describe what happened at UFC 142. While I came away from this event feeling very positive, there were also a couple of things that deserved a thumbs down. Let's have a look at the good and the bad. As always, these are in no particular order - just in the order in which I think of them.

Thumbs Up: to seeing fights. We saw every fight that took place yesterday, and it wasn't even a stretch to fit them all in. It's really something to remember how unthinkable this was just a few years ago. You used to have to get a membership to UFC on Demand to watch prelims. Now you can not only see them, but see them on your TV, mostly as they happen. Unreal.

Thumbs Up: to Gabe Gonzaga! You won't find a bigger Gonzaga fan than your humble columnist here, and I was thrilled to see him actually win with jiu jitsu, which is his best way to win a fight. Gonzaga has good enough striking to hold his own, but in the past he's relied on it way too much, mostly to his detriment.

Thumbs Up: to a great atmosphere. A hot crowd makes sports great. A great event can't take place in a vacuum, and a rabid crowd can make a mediocre event seem good. This was a very good event that became epic due to the crowd.

Thumbs Down: to not accentuating the crowd. That sounds weird after saying the crowd was great, I know. But if you've been to a live event with a good crowd, you know that the UFC does not mic its crowds nearly as well as they should. I vividly remember attending UFC 77 in Rich Franklin's hometown of Cincinnati where Franklin lost to Anderson Silva for the second time. During the main event, you couldn't hear yourself think. We couldn't hear entrance music, and we thought the fight was over after the first round because we couldn't hear the horn. I mean that place was rocking. I couldn't wait to get home and watch the event so I could remember how loud the crowd was. I thought for sure it was the loudest a UFC crowd had ever been. What did it sound like on the recording? Tepid. Mildly excited. That's not good enough, and it speaks to how insane the crowd must have been in Rio to sound as good as they did without being mic'd well.

Thumbs Up: to Michihiro Omigawa. I've seen a lot of people trashing Omigawa even after his fight yesterday, and I don't get it. The guy is tough as nails and always comes to fight. I thought his arm was broken after the first round (and that's after he almost got knocked out in the same round), and he came back and fought two more rounds. He's not setting the world on fire perhaps, but he's certainly not deserving of so much scorn if you ask me.

Thumbs Down: to not tapping out. Or tapping too late. Did Mike Massenzio really need to wait until he felt his knee being destroyed to know he was going to lose? Because Joe Rogan called it over before Palhares even had it close to cinched. If that guy gets a hold of your leg, you tap. Don't even wait for him to get a hold of the heel hook, because he's going to. If he has your leg, you lose. Don't be a hero. Save your leg.

Thumbs Up: to Palhares. There's something to be said for doing something so well that it can't be stopped even when everyone knows it's coming. I've seen Palhares compared to Masakazu Imanari, but it's not even close when it comes to how prolific Palhares is with leg locks. Imanari has won nine times with leg locks out of 24 wins. That's a rate of 37.5%. Palhares has tapped seven people to leg locks in 14 fights. That's a full half of his wins. And this isn't Cody McKenzie throwing guillotines on a bunch of regional fighters. This is something insane. He's like the Chuck Liddell of busted knees - he doesn't need much of an opening to do his thing, and when he gets it, the fight is over.

Thumbs Down: to Anthony Johnson. It's certainly not unprecedented for a fighter to have trouble with the weight cut in a new weight class. But usually that fighter is moving down in weight. I get that it was dangerous for Johnson to continue cutting weight. The problem isn't that he missed weight. The problem is that he has no business fighting anywhere south of light heavyweight. Either that or Johnson needs to get a new team that can help him cut weight safely, because the fact that he ever made welterweight is unthinkable given what we saw on Friday.

Thumbs Up: to Edson Barboza. In one of my pre-UFC 142 predictions, I said that this would be Barboza's coming out party. For once, my prediction came true. That was quite possibly the greatest head kick knockout in UFC history. That one's going to be on highlight reels forever, on par with Franklin-Quarry. Barboza's got a high ceiling. I like him fighting the winner of Dunham-Lentz. The lightweight division is a shark tank - no reason to rush things.

Thumbs Down: to bad officiating. It's a subject that hasn't come up as often as it used to, and that's a good thing. But it was certainly an issue at this event. Anthony Johnson certainly wasn't going to beat Vitor Belfort, but that doesn't mean it was right for Dan Miragliotta to stand the fight up when he did, or to separate them in the clinch. Johnson was going to gas sooner or later, but there's no excuse for those stand-ups.

Thumbs Down: to more bad officiating. Whether or not Erick Silva was hitting Carlo Prater in the back of the head doesn't even matter. Mario Yamasaki should have stopped the fight as soon as he saw the blows that he thought were illegal, before they caused Prater to be unable to recover. Remember Steve Mazagatti in the first Lesnar-Mir fight? He didn't wait for Lesnar to knock Mir out - he thought the punches were illegal, so he stopped the fight, warned Lesnar, and restarted it. That's the way to do it. It was apparent pretty quickly that Prater wasn't going to get out of the situation he was in - if there were illegal blows being landed (or if they're perceived that way), the ref owes it to both fighters to stop the fight immediately instead of disqualifying when it's too late.

Thumbs Up: to making a star. It's not often that you can catch lightning in a bottle, but the UFC may just have it in Jose Aldo. The image of him celebrating in the crowd and being lifted on their shoulders is an enduring one. Add that to the fact that he preceded the celebration with a spectacular last-second knockout, and with the fact that he's as dominant a champion as the UFC has right now, and that's money in the bank. The only question now is whether the UFC can capitalize on a star-making performance that was likely not seen by many.


@shawnennis - ennistorch(at)gmail