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A lot of people were expecting this to be the best UFC show ever, and the fight card certainly had some great match-ups.

Ryo Chonan vs. Brad Blackburn – Brad Blackburn won via decision

Dan Evensen vs. Pat Barry – Pat Barry won via TKO from kicks to the leg.

Matt Hamill vs. Reese Andy – Matt Hamill won via TKO from punches.

Antoni Hardonk vs. Mike Wessel – Hardonk won via TKO from punches.

Yushin Okami vs. Dean Lister – Okami won via decision.

Cheick Kongo vs. Mustafa Al-Turk – Cheick Kongo won via TKO from punches.

Wanderlei Silva vs. Quinton Rampage Jackson – Rampage won via KTFO out of Wanderlei.

CB Dollaway vs. Mike Massenzio – CB Dollaway won via TKO, but he got rocked early on and then it damn sure looked like he started to tap from a guillotine but the referee didn’t see it. I’ll need to see a .gif or replay.

Frank Mir vs. Antonio Rodrigo “Minotauro” Nogueira – Wow, total domination by Francisco Mir. TKO’d Nogueira in round 2.

Rashad Evans vs. Forrest Griffin – Rashad Evans won via TKO in round 3.

Damn it was just a few days ago I posted about Justin Leven’s death, and now I find out Justin Eilers was shot dead early this morning after an argument with an ex-girlfriend. Sounds like her current boyfriend did the shooting, but details are kind of sketchy.

Two MMA “Justin” deaths in one month. Bizarre?

Justin Eilers was a 4 time UFC veteran, with fights against names like Andrei Arlovski, Pual Buentello, and Brandon Vera. Eilers overall pro MMA record stands at 19-7-1.

RIP Eilers.

Topps Forms Exclusive Partnership With The Ultimate Fighting Championship® Organization

Multi-Year Deal Gives Topps Exclusive Rights to Produce UFC Brand Trading Cards of UFC’s Biggest Stars 

The Topps Company, the leading creator and marketer of sports and related trading cards and entertainment products, and The Ultimate Fighting Championship® (UFC®), the world’s leading professional mixed martial arts organization, have announced an agreement that will give Topps exclusive rights to produce UFC brand trading cards featuring current, future and former UFC athletes. The deal lasts through May 2011 for UFC trading cards and stickers.

The new collector brand will allow fans to experience the history and excitement of UFC and will include all of the biggest mixed martial arts moments from the start of the brand at UFC 1 to the upcoming Nov. 15 mega-fight UFC 91, featuring returning Heavyweight Champion Randy Couture vs. Brock Lesnar (predicted to be the organization’s biggest event ever), and all the action-packed fights to come.

MMA continues to become one of the most popular sports in the country and Topps is looking forward to joining forces with UFC’s rising stars and illustrious history,” said Warren Friss Topps’ GM of Sports & Entertainment.  “We are extremely excited to work with UFC and give our collectors access that has never before been available in our industry.”

As part of the deal, UFC will provide Topps with unique elements of their organization including images and memorabilia such as match-used gloves and pieces of the UFC Octagon.  These will give the loyal fan a literal piece of the UFC or that special event.  These cards are highly collectible and sought after and usually sequentially numbered to a limited quantity.  Some of the UFC brand cards available to collectors will feature: Randy Couture, Chuck Liddell, Matt Hughes, Brock Lesnar, Royce Gracie, Forrest Griffin, Quinton Jackson and many others.

“We are excited to be working with Topps to showcase our incredible athletes on UFC trading cards,” said Dana White, UFC President.  “We look forward to having great success with Topps, and to giving UFC fans a product they can collect and trade with other fans of our sport.”

The UFC trading cards will launch in early 2009.

Unbelievable. Just 28 years old, UFC veteran Justin Levens and his wife Sarah McLean-Levens were found shot to death in their home in California. TMZ first reported the death, and their website says that cops are investigating the deaths as a murder/suicide.

Levens has fought notable names such as Evan Tanner, Vladimir Matyushenko, Jorge Santiago, Scott Smith and Reese Andy. However, Levens hasn’t fought in more than a year, and lost his last 5 fights.

Last nights Fight For The Troops event had some devastating looking injuries, most notably Corey Hill. The UFC reports that Corey underwent surgery for a broken leg Thursday morning in Fayetteville, North Carolina. The injury was sustained in the second round of his fight versus Dale Hartt on Wednesday night at the Crown Coliseum. He is expected to be out of action for a year to 18 months. He is said to be handling the injury well and is in good spirits a day after suffering the gnarly shin-break. I like Corey Hill, and hope he rebounds quickly.

But.. I’ve got to LOL @ Razaak Al-Homeboy for not tapping to that damn armbar. I thought Al-Hassan said he was good on the ground? He honestly looked like he’s never trained any grappling in his life. I don’t feel bad for pro fighters who refuse to tap. Thankfully, it sounds as though he will be OK. He was treated for a dislocated elbow and released from the hospital.

In other injury updates from the December 10th event, light heavyweight Razaak Al-Hassan was treated and released from the hospital last night after suffering a dislocated right elbow in a submission loss to Steve Cantwell, and welterweights Yoshiyuki Yoshida and Jonathan Goulet were both treated and released for concussions after KO losses to Josh Koscheck and Mike Swick, respectively. Goulet will also have his knee checked out when he returns to his native Canada.

First off, you should go to www.FightForTheTroops.com and donate something to the cause. This was a fantastic event with some awesome finishes and great fights.

Joe Rogan said Jim Miller is a freight train (aka Frate Trane?). Jim Miller definitely looked good, but how about Wiman’s chin? Holy crap that dude takes a punch.

Nate Loughran was taking some good shots from Tim Credeur too, but failed to answer the bell for round three.

OMG @ Razak Al-Hassan getting his arm torqued by Steve Cantwell. That looked nasty, I wanna see a .GIF… also, LOL @ putting a dude with an Al-Quaeda name in a “Fight For The Troops” show.

Damn, there have really been some good fights tonight, and some great finishes. Jonathan Goulet got mess up by that right hand, and Mike Swick adds another quick victory to his resume.

BRUTALITY Ben Saunders with those knees! Homeboy he was fighting, Brandon Wolff, didn’t have a chance once he ended up in that muay thai clinch.

And for the worst thing of the night, poor Corey Hill got his leg broke off. Gnarly gnarly gnarly. My thoughts are with him and I really hope he heals from that injury 100% and is able to fight again. That leg break is a limb-threatening injury.

Here is a picture courtesy of Fight Magazine.

and my picks to win are:

Yoshida by submission
Swick by TKO
Steve Cantwell by KO
Tim Credeur vs. Nate Loughran – possible fight of the night? both seem to have nice submission skills. I’ll pick Credeur because I’ve seen more of his fights, thanks to the reality show.
Matt Wiman vs. Jim Miller – another possibly great matchup. I’m picking Wiman to win.
Luigi Fioravanti
Ben Saunders by JKD
Corey Hill by being 6’4″ and 155lbs.
Justin McCully

Check back here for results immediately following the Oscar De La Hoya vs. Manny Pacquio boxing match. I won’t be at my desk to do play-by-play, but I will post the winner as soon as the fight ends.

…and it’s over. Oscar De La Hoya failed to answer the bell for round 9, after being totally dominated by Manny Pacquio in every previous round. Pacquio is badass. De La Hoya just couldn’t find his target, and could barely land a jab because of Pacquio’s to his constant head movement.

The official fight line-up for The Ultimate Fighter finale show that takes place on December 13th:

• Phillipe Nover Vs. Efrain Escudero
• Ryan Bader Vs. Vinicius Magalhaes
• Jason MacDonald Vs. Wilson Gouveia
• Kevin Burns Vs. Anthony Johnson
• Junie Browning Vs. Dave Kaplan
• Krzysztof Soszynski Vs. Shane Primm
• Eliot Marshall Vs. Jules Bruchez
• Kyle Kingsbury Vs. Tom Lawlor
• Shane Nelson Vs. George Roop
• Rolando Delgado Vs. John Polakowski

The Ultimate Fighter wasn’t on last week due to the holiday, but this week they showed two episodes back-to-back to catch us up.

I think at the beginning of tonights episode, the narrator Mike Rowe called Ryan Bader “Bryan”.. not that it matters, just what I noticed. I also think Nogueira calls him Bryan sometimes.

Anyway, first fight of the show is Ryan Bader vs. Eliot Marshall. Gawd what a shit fight, imo. Bader score tons of takedowns, but did ZERO with any of them, I kept expecting him to ground-and-pound, but he didn’t do shit. Sure, he controlled the fight, and won, but damn. I sure hope we don’t see him win like that much more. He literally looked almost asleep laying & praying on Eliott’s chest.

Phillipe Nover defeated George Roop, as expected.

Vinny submitted Krysztof Soszynski with an armbar. I was hoping Krysztof would win this, but now I really hope Vinny submits Ryan Bader quickly at the finale, or we’re in for a long boring fight with Bader on top avoiding submissions. However, if Bader had been fighting Vinny earlier instead of Eliot Marshall, he would have been submitted already. Where Marshall was having trouble pulling an omoplata, Vinny won’t have a problem. As soon as Bader is just being lazy in Vinnys guard and puts his hand on the mat, Vinny will get the omoplata and at least take control — in other words, I don’t think Bader will be able to lay-and-pray to control Vinny like he did Eliot Marshall, but we’ll see.

And finally, it was nice to see Junie Browning choked to submission.

I havent blogged anything here in awhile, mostly because I was busy last week with the holidays, but I will try to post more often now. Wednesday night was a busy night for fights, several good shows came on, most notably the LIVE WEC event on Vs. featuring a main event bout between previously undefeated Manny Tapia and WEC Bantamweight Champ Miguel Torres.

Torres took just a little more than 1 round to KO Manny Tapia. The reach seemed to much for Tapia to handle, and after being rocked, the referee gave him every chance to recover but Tapia couldn’t do it. With this 16th win in a row, Miguel Torres makes it more apparent that he is one of the best pound-for-pound fighters in the world. He controlled the fight with his long jab, but ended it with a hard right, improving his record to 35 wins and just 1 loss.

After the fight, Torres said “I wanted to fight a little bit calm this time, last time I fought, I got kind of emotional and got kind of crazy. If I calm myself down, I fight like this pretty much all the time. I knew Manny was gonna come with big punches. I wanted to keep my range, use my jab to measure him up and then throw a couple of feints and a big right hand.” He went on to say “The next step is to fight the next person in line, whoever that may be. The WEC has a lot of great 135-pounders out there. To me, they got the best in the world. I’m here to fight the best in the world.”

Other fights on the card included undefeated Brian Bowles, who remains without a loss after an impressive win by guillotine over Wil Ribeiro.

Joseph Benavidez defeated Danny Martinez by unanimous decision, improving his record to 9-0.

Waggney Fabiano defeated Akitoshi Tamura by arm triangle choke with just 12 seconds left in the fight, which was controlled on the ground the entire time by Fabiano.

Non-televised fights included:
Shane Roller defeating Mike Budnik by Submission (Guillotine Choke) round 1
Cub Swanson defeated Hiroyuki Takaya by Unanimous Decision
Bart Palaszewski defeated Alex Karalexis by TKO (Punches) round 2
Diego Nunes defeated Cole Province by Unanimous Decision
Mark Munoz defeated Ricardo Barros by TKO (Punches) round 1
Johny Hendricks defeated Justin Haskins by TKO (Punches) round 2