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Posted 05/16/2009 at 12:57 AM
I have been on record saying that UFC 97: Redemption had the worst ending on television since The Soprano's finale. I have also been talking with numerous friends and acquaintances on how to improve such a situation that we saw when UFC middleweight champion Anderson 'The Spider' Silva fought Thales Leites.
That boring five-round affair reminded me of the five-round snoozefest at UFC 61: Bitter Rivals, except that I had to attend UFC 61. That championship fight between Andrei Arlovski and Tim Sylvia saw very little action spread over 25 minutes.
The Silva-Leites contest pitted a Brazilian jiu-jitsu fighter with no standup game. Leites only chance to upset Silva was to get the fight to the ground, somewhere Silva had no desire to go. So what we saw was a five-round fight between a fighter that didn't want to go to the ground against a fighter unwilling to trade kicks and punches standing up.
My solution was for the UFC to adopt some rules from the former Pride organization in Japan. Pride had two ways to combat boring fights between fighters with different styles. The first was that Pride allowed opponents to use soccer kicks and knees to the head of downed opponents. State athletic commissions will never allow that due to health reasons, but those rules did provide plenty of knockout-reel highlights. I completely understand why these offensive weapons are not allowed in the UFC.
My other suggestion was for the UFC to allow referees to give yellow cards to fighters for inactivity. When a ref broke out a yellow card in Pride, that fighter would lose 10 percent of his fight purse and that usually would jumpstart the action. So I called Keith Kizer of the Nevada State Athletic Commission and asked why a yellow card type solution has not been installed.
"The ref does have the ability to deduct a point for inactivity," stated Kizer. "It happened in the Hermes Franca-Jamie Varner fight.
"Referee John McCarthy took a point away from Franca after he won the first two rounds and was stalling in the third round. After the point was deducted, Franca stepped it up and eventually secured an armbar.
Then Kizer provided me with one of the best quotes I have gotten in recent memory.
"We (the NSAC) do not agree with the yellow-card method in deducting money for lack of action. What if I walked by your desk right now and said I didn't think you were working hard enough, and I'm going to deduct some of your pay."
Fair enough, but I'm just hoping that the UFC 98: Evans vs. Machida main event doesn't make us bring up the question once again. Light heavyweight champion 'Sugar' Rashad Evans and Lyoto Machida are a combined 27-0-1, but Machida has been criticized in the past for being too mythodical.
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