Penick's Take
PENICK: UFC 140 Notebook - The incredible Jon Jones; Frank Mir's unforgettable kimura; Lil' Nog stops Tito, and much more
Dec 11, 2011 - 8:15:48 AM PENICK: UFC 140 Notebook - The incredible Jon Jones; Frank Mir's unforgettable kimura; Lil' Nog stops Tito, and much more

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By: Jamie Penick, MMATorch Editor-in-Chief

UFC 140 was a majorly exciting and newsworthy event in Toronto, with decisive wins in each of the top three fights, a record setting TKO and more. Here are some post-event thoughts on each of the night's fights

-Jon Jones capped off an excellent night of fights by proving himself as the best light heavyweight in the world with his fourth win in 2011. It's incredible what Jones has accomplished this year. Think about it, he's not only beaten Ultimate Fighter winner Ryan Bader and three Champions (or former Champions) in "Shogun", "Rampage", and Machida, but he's stopped all of them. It was a crazy showing of dominance thus far from the young Champion, and it's hard to see any way his potential challengers in 2011 upend him. Machida cracked him in the first round a few times, but Jones made his adjustments and rolled through him in the second. That standing guillotine was one of the more brutal chokes we've seen in some time, and considering Machida's never been submitted it's all the more impressive. He keeps taking on bigger and bigger challenges, and he keeps getting past them in impressive fashion. Whenever he suffers his first true loss, it's going to come as a major shock, because it's not easy to imagine a way he gets beat right now.

-It's easy to lose sight of just how good Frank Mir can be with his knockout losses to Brock Lesnar and Shane Carwin, but man was his rematch with Nogueira an incredible one round fight. He was nearly finished in the exact same fashion that Carwin stopped him, but Nogueira made a mistake in stopping his assault and trying for the submission. That kimura is going to be burned into the mind of fans everywhere for a long time to come. It was one of the single most brutal submissions ever, with Nogueira's arm popping out nastily, and it's easily one of the most shocking finishes in years in the UFC. Mir is on fire right now, and he'll rightfully return to the title picture in 2012 at this pace.

-Rogerio Nogueira looked excellent against Tito Ortiz. He took a couple of early strikes, but held off the takedown attempt right off the bat and then landed the strike he needed to in order to send Ortiz reeling. With Ortiz then covering up on the ground, Nogueira smartly attacked the body and really hurt him with a vicious array of elbows and punches. He's still got a future in the UFC's light heavyweight division, and as long as he's not up against a wrestler that can continue to control him for three rounds, he's going to be favored in any of his fights. As for Ortiz, even though he's 1-6-1 in his last eight fights, the UFC will give him his final fight on his contract, and that's probably the right thing for them to do. They're well within their rights to cut ties with him, but he hasn't been a pot-stirrer since returning to the organization, and as he's mended some bridges, he's given himself the right to use his veteran status and former headliner importance to get one more payday. However, win or lose, I don't see him fighting past early 2012.

-The Brian Ebersole victory didn't sit well with some people across the web, but honestly just about any score in that fight with Claude Patrick would have been acceptable. Neither truly took control of the fight in a fairly boring affair, and with much of the fight taking place in a stalemate, you're going to get scores for both fighters as the fight brought.

-Chan Sung Jung was already a fan favorite off of his war with Leonard Garcia in the WEC last year, but 2011 has brought him to a completely different level. After pulling off that incredible twister submission over Garcia in the rematch in March, he followed that up with this record-tying seven second TKO over Mark Hominick in a fight most were expecting him to lose. Hominick was far too cocky in his striking game and came in wild, and that Jung had the wherewithal to take advantage of that.

-Krzysztof Soszynski's 35 second loss to Igor Pokrajac wasn't even the fastest loss he's had in his career. His quickest defeat came at the hands of Ben Rothwell in the IFL at heavyweight in 2007, when he was stopped in just 13 seconds. He's 6-3 overall in his UFC career, so this is far from the last time we've seen him in the UFC, but this is a rough loss for him and brings his overall record to 26-12-1. Pokrajac is running the opposite, and is starting to gain a little momentum after two first round finishes and wins in three of four. He doesn't have a high ceiling in the UFC, but he can continue to carve out some nice paydays for himself with more performances like he had tonight.

-Jared Hamman has an inhuman ability to survive punishment, but even he couldn't keep going with the assault Constantinos Philippou brought tonight. Philippou picked his spots well and landed four huge shots that really hurt Hamman, but he wasn't able to get the finish until the final one. Hamman did his best to try to recover, but that was far too much punishment and it was mercifully brought to an end after the final knockdown. Philippou is showing improvement from fight to fight, and as he gets more comfortable in the Octagon he definitely has some skills to be a challenge for most in the division.

-In retrospect, the outcome of Hallman-Makdessi wasn't surprising at all. We haven't seen Makdessi really have to grapple in any of his fights, and Hallman was coming down from the welterweight division. With Makdessi already being a smaller lightweight fighter, that size disparity, as well as the major difference in their grappling games, made this Hallman's fight all the way. But outside of the complete domination aspect of the fight, it was unfortunate to see that a lot of the damage came via illegal strikes from Hallman, as he landed far too many to the back of Makdessi's head, including two vicious forearms straight down when he had Makdessi's back the first time.

-Despite two near submissions of Yves Jabouin and a higher level of output and success in the striking game, Walel Watson lost a split decision. The 30-27 score in Jabouin's favor was mind-boggling, as there's not a chance he should have gotten the third round. The second was the swing round, and while it was close and not at all a blowout for Watson, it still should have gone his way, and I'm really surprised by the fact that it didn't. Bad decision, unfortunate loss for Watson.

-Mark Bocek didn't do much with top position in any of the rounds against Nik Lentz, and in fact had to survive a couple of tight choke attempts in the fight himself, but the fact that he was on top for the majority of the 15 minute fight swayed things his way. Lentz didn't have enough of a sense of urgency to get up from his back, even though he wasn't taking much damage and was defending really well. Unfortunately for him, being on your back isn't going to score you points even when you're attacking it seems, and it goes down as his first loss in the UFC.

-Jake Hecht came back from a rough first round to pick up a very nice win in the second round. Attonito had taken him down with relative ease in the first, but he unleashed a couple of vicious elbows as he was holding off another takedown, and Attonito was done. Josh Rosenthal gave him a chance to recover, but Attonito wasn't even attempting to fight back there. It was a good stoppage, and a nice win by another newcomer.

-John Cholish had a really nice UFC debut to kick off the show tonight. He showed off some nice conditioning, good striking skills, and a patient ground game to take out Mitch Clarke in the second round. The scramble in the second round that led to the finish was just a beautiful sight, as he wrenched for a kimura, then as Clarke attempted to position himself out of it, Cholish held control of his body with the hold and swung his leg over. As Clarke turned over again, Cholish was already on his back, and he picked his shots, landed some hard strikes that cut Clarke open and got the win. Great stuff from the newcomer.