-The UFC has to be happy with all the quick finishes tonight. With a lack of a big draw or any hype for the card, the UFC was able to deliver quantity, with nine of the ten bouts making the broadcast (some twice), instead of quality.
-Thiago Silva will be kicking himself for a long time. After Rashad frustrated him for two rounds with a stifling wrestling game, Silva landed a combination that rocked the former champ. Instead of pressing, pressing, and pressing some more, Silva backed off. What may have began as quick breather ended as a chance for Evans to recover. Thiago couldn’t find the trigger again, and allowed Rashad to escape with a decision victory.
-Could we PLEASE have five round non-title fights? It feels a little dirty leaving this fight where we did.
-I was impressed with Evans finally bringing his game together in this fight, even if he didn’t really seem to make many improvements on the faults I’ve pointed out.
-Dear Mike Goldberg, simply bobbing your head around for no discernible reason is not effective head movement.
-Dustin Hazelett may have lost the fight, but ROLLING KOPPO KICK? Um, yes!
-Seriously, though, how do you fight Paul Daley for over two minutes without making some sort of attempt to drag him to the floor?
-Sam Stout looked fantastic, but how much of Joe Lauzon’s ineffectiveness should be attributed to coming off ACL surgery? Not to take anything away from Sam, but Lauzon appeared to gas sometime in the second round.
-I enjoyed Jordan Breen’s analysis of Duane Ludwig: “Next time you find yourself saying, ‘Just give Striker X a year or two to work on the ground game…’ think of Bang Ludwig. He’s had nine.”
-Junior dos Santos continued to impress, but was anyone else confused why the Zuffa mouth pieces kept hyping Yvel leading up to the fight? I’m sure they were just trying to prop up Yvel as a legitimate opponent for Cigano, but they started to have me conspiracy theorizing that they were banking on the Yvel upset. In either case, dos Santos may or may not be for real, Joe, but beating Gilbert Yvel isn’t the opponent to prove it.