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By: Frank Hyden, MMATorch contributor
The Ultimate Fighter 17 Finale was this past Saturday, and the highlight was the fight between Cat Zingano and Miesha Tate. The two had a tremendous fight, with a relentless pace and both fighters putting everything they had into it. Zingano won by TKO in the third round, and now gets to coach The Ultimate Fighter 18 against Ronda Rousey.
Tate believes that the fight was stopped early, and claims that she was still in the fight. I know this is a slippery slope, but an early stoppage is better than a late stoppage. I would rather the refs stop a fight early than hesitate. There's no reason for fighters to absorb additional damage that's unnecessary. Sure, in an ideal world every stoppage would come at the exact right moment, but there's no way that's going to happen. The MMA world has to choose between early stoppages or late stoppages. Tate could have come back and rallied for the win, but it's highly unlikely. She had already absorbed so much punishment that the fight probably would have only lasted another 10 seconds or so at most.
Spinning this forward, Cat Zingano vs. Ronda Rousey should be a really good fight. I still pick Rousey to win, but she's going to have to work for it. Zingano looks so tenacious and so powerful that she's got a good chance at stopping Rousey. Zingano showed good scramble skills against Tate, and she'll need that against Rousey.
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Kelvin Gastelum beat Uriah Hall to win The Ultimate Fighter 17. It was an upset, to be sure, but one that shouldn't have happened. Hall spent the majority of the fight trying to imitate Anderson Silva, but there was one major problem. Hall may be the future Silva (impossible to tell at this point, though), but he's not him right now.
That's the thing about great athletes, they make what they do look easy. It's not easy, though, it's incredibly hard. Current greats like LeBron James, Adrian Peterson, and numerous others make it seem simple, but that's because they've put in so much work to make it that way. It's not enough to just have tremendous physical gifts, you have to pair that with an even greater work ethic.
I'm not saying that Hall doesn't work hard or anything like that, but it takes a long time to achieve greatness. If Hall is willing to put in the work he might achieve greatness someday. Perhaps this becomes a learning experience for him. As someone who loves seeing athletes mold themselves and transform into greats, I'm excited to see where Hall goes from here. He's got a high ceiling, and I hope I get to see him reach that ceiling and maybe even break it.
As for Kelvin Gastelum, I think he could be a serviceable fighter. I'm not going to take anything away from him, he beat Hall fair and square, and did what he could to win. Was it the kind of performance that makes you take notice and go "Whoa..."? No, but it was a win. If/when he drops down a weight class, he might find more success. He's also very young so he has lots of rooms to grow and improve. His future is what he makes of it.
Comments and suggestions can be emailed to hydenfrank@gmail.com
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