Yea your having a great week keep it up.

I love that show but the UFC website inadvertently gives away who the winning fighters are before the show airs. I kind of stumbled upon the clues the other night, and then confirmed my suspicions when Rashad Evans and Brad Imes won in the semis. (Imes' mother is a KC native, BTW)

She also recently passed away (RIP)

I caught a few episodes early and then watched a good deal of the marathon leading up to the finale. Really fun to watch.

Joe said that he separated his clavicle from his sternum two weeks ago, but did not disclose it because he wanted to fight. Luke's ground defense improved greatly in the four months between the last episode and the finale. I was impressed.

I liked Rashaad from the very first episode. A welterweight, Melvin, was blasting off at the mouth about how he could beat anybody and what not. The usual stuff. Rashaad calmly explained to him that instead of all the talking, he should show everyone how good he was in the ring. He did it respectfully, though. Of course, Melvin lost his first fight.

Those punches that Brad and Rashaad landed would have knocked a lot of people out.

From mmaweekly.com

Speculation has run rampid about the future of Nick Diaz. There were some things backstage that did not sit well with management before the fight even began.

Apparantely it stems from a backstage incident between Diaz and Sanchez. There obviously was some heat before the fight started between the two fighters. One fighter who competed on the show told MMAWeekly.com quote "It was bizarre before the fight. We were all warming up backstage and Diaz and Sanchez were verbally jawing one with another. There isn't a whole lot of room backstage. Then Diaz took off his shoe and threw it at Diego. They almost had a brawl backstage before the fight even started."

Diaz didn't make many friends in the crowd either watching live at the Hard Rock Hotel. Before the fight started, Diaz flipped off Sanchez across the ring and yelled some profanities at Sanchez. The crowd watching in attendance that was already pro-Sanchez starting booing Diaz at the jesture. Was it part of Diaz's plan to win the pyschological war by playing mind games? Probably. The biggest arguement against that though was the problem the that this was on Spike TV, not pay per view television. People are much more lenient on pay per view compared to free tv.

As far as Diaz'a contract goes, this was NOT the last fight on Diaz's contract as a few websites had reported, but with any contract once you lose a fight you can be cut at anytime.

MMAWeekly Radio host and former UFC Fighter Frank Trigg talked about UFC contract's today on the radio show. Trigg said "People think that since you are cut from your contract that you will never be back. That isn't the case. Somewhere down the road guys come back. I think Ivan Salaverry will be back and other guys will be back. Bottom line, it's business. If you are making 10,000 for your first fight, 15,000 for your second and 20,000 for your third fight of a contract, it's smart for Zuffa to cut you after your second fight if you lose. Then they don't have to pay you 20 grand for your last fight. Instead, if you lose, then they can pay you less money which is good business period. As far as Diaz goes, it could go either way. If he pissed them off he won't be back, if they know it was gamesmanship, then he will."

Go to Pride where they pay you based upon winning and not micromanaging fighters. UFC is making a killing we need someone else to pick up the ball here. I am sick of looking at Dana Whites smirky ass anyway Southworth should have puched that punk in the face in the 1st Ultimate Fighter. I will say one thing though the UFC has really promoted the sport in this country but it's time they had a little competition here. BTW mmaweekly is another media source they gave the boot to recently.

Here's the link to a very good mma forum

http://mma.tv/tuf

Question??? Is there a ranking system in either UFC or Pride? I searched the UFC site and found only an alphabetical listing of fighters by class. I think if there was a better advertised ranking system, so we could learn who the fighters are more people would watch. Otherwise you really don't have anyone to root for that wasn't on the show.

Nope, no official rankings. All the rankings are done through polling by various MMA news organizations. Of course you can easily spot the contenders based on how big of a push the companies give them.

Diaz is a cocky prick.
I wanted Lawler to knock his head off, and really wanted Sanchez to mess his ass up worse.

[QUOTE=Black Ice]me either. Wish Seth would have made it to fight Rashaud, would have been a lot better fight than Imes gave him. Rashaud impressed me though, I didn't think he had it in him.[QUOTE]

That was my favorite fight of the night. Both those guys left everything they had in the ring. I have no idea how Imes was standing much less continuing to come at Rashaud after some of those shots. Imes will only get better with experience but he was outclassed that night.

I thought Rashad probably progressed the most as a human being through that show. He went from an arrogant prick to an intelligent human being. His comment when Rogan asked him about dropping down a weight class after beating Imes was impressive. Something like "There's a new breed of heavyweight in the UFC and they're built like him. I don't know how many more fights like this I have in me. Yeah, I'm going to think about dropping a weight class." Smart call. He'll dominate down a class.

Right now the UFC is dumping a TON of money into the marketing. It also looks like they're trying to break the strangle-hold some of the sponsors have on the fighters by not allowing them to stand there after the fight pimping Joe's Tire Shack.

Me too. I was glad to see him get his ass kicked. Rogan asked him after the fight if he now believed that Sanchez belonged in the UFC, and he still said no. I want to see the rematch so he can get busted up even worse.