I’m excited about tonights fights! UFC 126 should be a good one. Here are my quick picks.

Although I’d like to see Vitor Belfort win tonight, my gut is telling me he’s getting TKO’d. So…

Anderson Silva over Vitor Belfort
Rich Franklin over Forrest Griffin (decision)
Ryan Bader over Jon Jones
Miguel Torres over Antonio Banuelos
Donald Cerrone over Paul Kelly
Norifumi “Kid” Yamamoto over Demetrius Johnson
Gabe Reudiger over Paul Taylor
Kyle Kingsbury over Ricardo Romero

Wow, Brian Bowles hits really hard. He put Miguel Torres to sleep, and walked away with his championship belt, remaining undefeated (8-0). He rocked Torres early, scored a takedown, gave him some shots on the ground before they both stood back up. Miguel Torres hits Bowles with some good shots and was moving forward. Torres perhaps got overly aggressive, and Bowles threw a right hand that connected and sent Torres to the mat. Brian Bowles followed him to the mat and pounded his head until he was unconscious.

After the fight, Bowles said “He had me rattled there pretty bad and I kind of recovered, I seen him coming in a little hard and just swung a good hook and hit him right on the jaw.”

This was the first loss for Miguel Torres since 2003, he had won 17 fights in a row prior to this loss, and had never been stopped.

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

This was really a good show, and Urijah Faber had a dominant 5-round performance against a very worthy Jens Pulver. Both fighters kicked much ass and showed a lot of heart, but Urijah Faber definitely did the most damage, and surprised Jens Pulver with some great striking skills. Not many people were expecting to see Faber come out and throw strikes like he did. Jens Pulver looked like he might have had a broken orbital bone on his left eye, homeboy was looking rough after the fight.

Miguel Torres and Yoshiro Maeda had a great fight also. Maeda put up a good fight and was able to survive through 3 rounds before the fight was stopped by the doctor. Maeda’s right eye had completely closed and he was getting picked off by the left hand of Miguel Torres, because he was unable to see punches coming.

Official WEC Results
-Urijah Faber def. Jens Pulver by Unanimous Decision, R5
-Miguel Torres def. Yoshiro Maeda by TKO (Injury Stoppage) at 5:00, R3
-Mark Munoz def. Chuck Grigsby by TKO (Strikes) at 4:15, R1
-Rob McCullough def. Kenneth Alexander by Split Decision, R3
-Donald Cerrone def. Danny Castillo by Submission (Armbar) at 0:30, R1
-Mike Brown def. Jeff Curran by Unanimous Decision, R3
-Will Ribeiro def. Chase Beebe by Split Decision, R3
-Tim McKenzie def. Jeremy Lang by Submission (Guillotine Choke) at 0:40, R3
-Alex Serdyukov def. Luis Sapo by TKO at 5:00, R1
-Jose Aldo def. Alexandre Franca Nogueira by TKO at 3:22, R2
-Dominick Cruz def. Charlie Valencia by Unanimous Decision, R3