Rich Hansen's Take
THE MMA BLOWTORCH: An open letter to UFC 119
Sep 26, 2010 - 7:22:04 PM THE MMA BLOWTORCH: An open letter to UFC 119

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By: Rich Hansen, MMATorch Columnist

Dear UFC 119,

It may seem weird for me to be writing a letter to you UFC 119, an event. Not even an inanimate object; certainly not a person. But I believe that you have wronged me, and I am certainly more than willing to air my grievances about the wrongs you have perpetrated.

I am willing to concede that your heart may have been in the right place last night. Sure, you decided to have a meaningless main event, and that was before Rodrigo Nogueira got injured five weeks ago. I understand that you seemed to be very deep, with competitive fights.

I understand that you were in a new market, and that it was the faults of Dana White and Joe Silva that your card had no title fight and no names. Believe me, the rage I feel towards you is not the only hostility I am feeling right now. I have plenty of unfocused anger about last night.

I am not only raging at you, but at Greg Jackson. I realize that you thought you were doing well by scheduling Melvin Guillard versus Jeremy Stephens. I realize that you were trying to sell this as a battle of huge punching lightweights who had a beef with each other. Knockouts and fireworks, Oh Me, Oh My! But you failed to take into account that once Greg Jackson got his evil grips on Melvin Guillard that Guillard would refuse to finish. That he would not remember how to be the athletic, wild, killer that he used to be. You should have realized that Jeremy Stephens was way too robotic, stiff, and slow to hit a defensive Melvin Guillard. So I am mad at you, UFC 119, for not realizing that Greg Jackson has killed Independent Melvin, and replaced him with a pale imitation of a clone. And of course, I am livid with Greg Jackson for killing one of my guilty pleasures.

But that’s not all. Matt Serra and Chris Lytle are on my list today, UFC 119. No longer can I call Matt Serra my favorite person in the history of the universe. And no longer can I consider Chris Lytle a true mixed martial artist. Can anyone doubt, UFC 119, that in order to save the horribleness (is that a word?) that you tried to pass off on the American public, that Serra and Lytle made a gentleman’s agreement to stand and bang? If I want to watch a bad boxing match, I’ll watch a bad boxing match, thankyouverymuch. Matt Serra is a bad boxer with good power. And in order to spice up you, UFC 119, he decided that he had to stand and bang with a former professional boxer. That right, UFC 119? You were so weak that one of the great jiu-jitsu practitioners in the world decided to fling crappy hooks and crosses with a professional boxer. And to you, Chris Lytle: boxing is DEAD, get over it. If you want to be a professional boxer, then fight out your contract and look up Bob Arum and box, already. If you want to be a mixed martial artist, don’t consider it a point of pride to make a gentleman’s agreement with a BJJ black belt. It’s clear to me that you were scared to compete on the ground, and you shamed Serra into a boxing match. For shame.

As for the Bader fight, UFC 119; I didn’t realize how awful, how bad boxing-y, how, um, UFC 119-y you were going to become. So I went into the Bader fight with high hopes and great expectations. I understand that plenty of cards have a couple of stinkers on them, but there was no way that the stink of UFC 119 would rub off on Ryan Bader and the great Antonio Rogerio Nogueira.

Oops. Bad call Rich.

That’s right UFC 119, you covered Ryan Bader in your stink. You managed to turn the undefeated and likable Ryan Bader into the worst type of fighter out there. A gassing muscle bound wrestle-boxer who doesn’t know how to, and doesn’t want to, finish a fight. Thank you UFC 119 for making me never again desire to see Ryan Bader fight.

And even when you were altruistic, UFC 119, did you have to be so cruel to Mirko Cro Cop? I mean, I suspected it at UFC 67 when he struggled with the 245 pounds of can that is Eddie Sanchez. And UFC 70 was nice enough to rip the band aid off in one fast yank. Anyone who knew anything knew that Gabriel Gonzaga had Cro Cop’s soul for dinner, along with a nice chardonnay. But at least UFC 70 was considerate enough to send the message in one split second. But no, UFC 119; you had to take fourteen minutes and two seconds to prove your point. And it was a point that didn’t need to be made. To make us watch that abomination was just plain cruel of you.

And no, UFC 119, I am not forgetting the one thing you did right, allowing Sean Sherk and Evan Dunham to put on an absolute war instead of the potential three rounds of bad kickboxing that I feared it would be. But you aren’t blameless here, UFC 119. You had Cecil Peoples and Glenn Trowbridge judging that fantastic fight; and they tarnished it by getting the second round incorrect. Now, it’s not a major beef, but I needed to get that on the record. I don’t have a problem with Sherk getting the win here. But unfortunately, this fight will forever have an asterisk attached to it because, close or not, the judges got it wrong.

So, UFC 119; I was looking forward to you. I defended you to everyone I know. I introduced two people who had never seen an MMA fight to you last night. Needless to say, you may have forever killed the chances of those two people ever again wanting to watch another big MMA show. Fortunately your marketing was as incompetent as your fights, so only 200,000 people will be aware of your existence.

In conclusion UFC 119, **** you.

Sincerely yours,

Rich Hansen