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The UFC ended 2007 with a great card in UFC 79 capped off by an epic battle that has been years in the making. and Wandy vs Chuck didn't disappoint. 15 minutes of 2 of the greatest 205 lbers ever going toe to toe. We also saw the "passing of the torch" so to speak with St. Pierre defeating Matt Hughes by armbar. (Ironically enough the first time they fought Hughes won by armbar) We also got to see a much anticipated fight two up and coming light heavyweights Sokoudjou and Machida. From that fight I took away that Machida is good. Damn good. A master of his craft even. His stand up is just on another level. He's the #2 light heavyweight fighter in my book right now.
As usual there were tons of post fight reviews, press conferences, audio, recaps etc. Here a list of all the goods:
I didn't do a preview and review thread for the finale but if you're looking for a good review head on over to Five Ounces of Pain and read what Adam Morgan had to say. Sam Caplan also has a complete thorough breakdown at his ProElite.com blog.
While I think that some of the shows this season have been real weak and ending with weak fights I completely enjoyed last nights show. I don't really like Tommy's fighting style but it seems effective. I think that had Ben not gotten sick then that fight definately would have went the other way. Strength can go along way for Tommy but eventually he's going to run into problems when he can't rely on his strength. Same thing happened to Matt Hughes, they have very very similar fighting style. I'm just itching to see Ben fight again, he's exciting and he's as good off of his back as he is standing.
The whole part of the show about taking a shit in the upper part of the toilet was hilarious. I don't care who you are thats funny shit. Well maybe if I had to clean it it wouldn't be funny but Mac and J-ROCK to that shit way to serious. Maybe thats just me. Anyway here's the rest of the day-after-TUF madness:
MMA Junkie is reporting that UFC handed out $55,000 dollar bonuses for Fight of the Night, Submission of the Night, and Knockout of the Night. Fight of the Night went to both Thiago Alves and Chris Lytle for their back and forth undercard fight. Submission of the Night went to Akihiro Gono for his arm bar submission of Tamden McCrory in the nights first fight. The Knockout of the Night bonus went to Ed Herman for KOing Joe Doerksen in one of the undercard fights. At UFC 77, $40,000 bonuses were handed out after the fight. The bonuses have recently started increasing. They started at $10,000 dollars a year ago and have jumped to $55,000 at UFC 78.
The Junkie is also reporting that they sold out the event with 14,071 people in attendance. The crowd produced a live gate of $2.1 million.
I will post the post fight press conference when it becomes available...
As other blogs and recaps become available I'll post them here.
Overall I thought the show was a decent show. It seems like Matt Hughes is working his fighters way to hard. It was dumb of Dan to stan above Ben and let him recover but he is a novice to the sport. Like Mac Danzig said if it had been Mac it would be understandable but it wasn't. Mac seems to be a dick sometimes but overall I think he cares about the people in the house. He'll definately be back in the UFC.
J-ROCK has looked good practically the entire season in the training and like Matt Serra said the guy is diesel. But George is lanky and definately had the reach. George looked so smooth where as J-ROCK looked like a robot and rather clumsy. I was surprised to see George knock him the fuck out like that but it was inevitable it seemed with the way J-ROCK was stalking around. He looked timid and really needed to let his hands go. Matt Hughes just shook his head and didn't say anything in the cut to segment. I found that particularly hilarious. With that win Serra's team goes up 6-1. I think that we'll see Team Hughes finally get another win under their belt.
10.31.2007 - 11:02:00 AM -
UFC Press Conference notes
Sam Caplan once again has a great article recapping the UFC press conference yesterday at his ProElite blog. Sam did an awesome job with the last one and this one is great too. Here's the sweetness:
According to Mulkey, Randy Couture received a $500,000 signing bonus, half of which ($250,000) was paid at the time of his signing the contract earlier this year. This clearly contradicts Couture's claim last week that he asked for a signing bonus and was declined.
Dana White explained that it was a true signing bonus in the sense that if Randy, given his age, was injured and couldn't compete, he'd still get his bonus. As such, they decided to meet his request for a signing bonus of $500,000 but withhold the other half ($250,000) until after his fight at UFC 68 vs. Tim Sylvia.
The UFC also claimed that Couture signed an employment agreement. The employment agreement paid Randy two annual salaries of $200,000 and $56,000. The $56,000 was clearly defined as being for his role with the company as a commentator while I believe the $200,000 was for his promotional role as an ambassador.
For UFC 68, Couture received a $250,000 purse in addition to the other half of his signing bonus ($250,000), according to the UFC. I believe Mulkey also said Couture received $936,000 as a bonus for PPV sales.
My understanding is that it takes three months for the UFC to receive their money from the cable company and then they have until 10 days after they receive their payment from the cable company to pay a fighter his PPV bonus. According to Mulkey, to date, Couture has received $924,000 of the $936,000 bonus.
According to the UFC, Randy's total take from UFC 68 was $1.086 million. However, it appears he's still owed $12,000 from the PPV bonus.
UFC.com has their own recap available here. The funny thing is yesterday that article was different, i didn't read the whole thing and it also contained a link to the documents the UFC handed out. But it is no longer there. I saved it yesterday. You can view it here. Its in PDF format and you will need Adobe Reader to view it.
Mr. Sunshine has tons of audio from the presser. He asked some great questions too. Some of the journalists out there asked some really stupid shit. Cofield went right after the UFC at the press conference and asked some really good questions. It's good to see there are some people that aren't complete idiots covering the sport.
Last nights episode was a good show. The fight was great and they definately should have gone to 3 rounds. I thought Ben looked good in both rounds but I could see them giving the first to Dan. They should have really gone to a 3rd round. It was good to see Matt Hughes call out the judging. Although the comissioner looked like a douche bag and tried to say Matt Hughes was unprofessional when the judges are by far unprofessional and really don't know what they're doing. I think it was a great move on Dana's part to give both of the guys $5,000. They both deserved it.
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