Lei Tong

At least Silva actually beat Sentoryu, whereas Zuluzhino got a stoppage via the referee having bad view of the action.

It was actually on one of the old FSN affiliate showings (Sunshine Network, IIRC).

The bout is entertaining, and for an Andrei & Ricco fan such as myself, I'm glad I caught it (and recorded it).

Since Frye has been mentioned, I think it bears stating that he's always been overrated to some extent, and has by and large sucked since his return to MMA.

From the review I posted at UFC: Round 1: They start out circling with no strikes being thrown for first 20 seconds or so. Ricco then throws a decent legkick before charging in for a takedown. Arlovski sidesteps away from Ricco while throwing a punch at Ricco's head, and Ricco goes headfirst into the cage. Ricco turns around and begins circling away from the cage as Arlovski loads up a big right hand that Ricco shoots under. Arlovski sprawls, but Ricco continues driving and pushes Andrei against the cage. Andrei holds Ricco in a front headlock w/an underhook as Ricco is looking for a single leg or high crotch, with not much action going on. Finally, after about a minute of inaction, Ricco pulls Andrei away from the cage and converts on a high-crotch slam, but Andrei rolls with it a bit and they both scramble to their feet. Ricco paws at Andrei with some jabs, and gets a 1-2 in return, though neither land that cleanly. Ricco immediately responds with a shoot, and Andrei sprawls again. As Ricco begins to stand out of the shot attempt, Arlovski throws a huge right which misses and sends Arlovski slipping to the mat momentarily. After Andrei regains his feet, Ricco lands another nice legkick. He tries an inside leg kick, but Andrei responds with some punches whizzing mostly over Ricco's head, so he backs off. Ricco tries to throw a big right hand, misses and gets countered by Arlovski. Ricco throws another right hand as Arlovski loads one up as well, this time Ricco landing and Arlovski missing. Ricco shoots in for a single, and Arlovski sprawls. Ricco moves into the clinch and gets double underhooks, and pushes Arlovski against the fence. Nothing much happens as Ricco seems to try and pull guard but only gets half. However, Ricco quickly gets up and drives forward, reversing into AA's half guard against the fence. Ricco moves AA away from the fence and begins looking for an opprotunity to pass, but Arlovski has his leg trapped well. Finally, Ricco spins into a tight kneebar. However, Arlovski squirms and toughs it out for a bit until he finally wiggles his leg free and Ricco goes back into AA's half guard. Ricco mounts with seconds left in the round, but the round ends before he can land any G&P. Nothing much happening again to begin the 2nd, until Arlovski throws a low kick that has Ricco pulling his leg away momentarily. Ricco misses with a slow high kick attempt and equally slow right hand. Andrei backs Ricco against the cage. Ricco shoots under another right hand, but he gets sprawled & brawled continually, so he simply starts charging in & looking for double underhooks. He tries a knee to break Arlovski's barrage, and Arlovski misses on a right hand as Ricco retreats outside of striking range. Ricco throws a lazy left hook. Ricco shoots under another Arlovski right hand, but gets stuffed again by Andrei's sprawl. Arlovski stands as Ricco's still on his knees and lands a nice right uppercut, and Ricco rolls to his back before the ref stands him up. Ricco begins backing up before squaring up, charging slowly forward and firing a left-right-left-right combo, the middle two catching Andrei and seemingly causing him to half-shoot/half-fall, and Ricco sprawls on Andrei. Ricco looks to move around to Arlovski's side, and eventually moves around to Arlovski's half guard. Ricco using sparse G&P, yet with a few strikes landing well. Ricco gets mount with less than a minute left, and begins moving up, seemingly looking for an armbar. However, Andrei gives up his back and Ricco gets his hooks in, but Andrei quickly rolls around again and Ricco is now mounted on him once again. Ricco begins unloading with some punches, but all miss as the round ends. They both come out throwing single shots in the 3rd before Arovski shoves Ricco to the ground and misses a punt attempt on Ricco's head. Arlovski is breathing heavily as Ricco lands a clean right on Andrei's face, backing him up, then follows with another big right hand, and Arlovski just lowers his head as Ricco closes in with a knee that doesn't land cleanly, but the right hands hurt and Andrei just DROPS to the mat as Ricco front headlocks him. Ricco tries to spin around as Arlovski turns to his back, giving Ricco sidemount. Ricco throws some weak knees to the body before easily mounting AA, and moving up on his chest once more. He begins landing some right hands to the side of AA's head, and then sits up and begins firing lefts & rights, as Andrei just moves his head back and forth yet failing to avoid many of the blows. After a few moments of this, the ref jumps in and stops the fight at 1:23 in the 3rd.

There's actually some pretty intruiging HW bouts on that rumoured card. Also, I don't worry too much about Monson vs. Arlovski. Even 4 years ago, Ricco was a much better all around grappler than Monson, and Arlovski was able to give him problems before he gassed/got clocked.

Ouch. It hurts because it's true.

Monson's actually a pretty muscular guy, and doesn't have much problem muscling around most of the unskilled fatasses who litter the HW MMA scene, which in turns leads to finishes, and in turn leads to the horrifying possiblity of another shot in the UFC.

Monson is booed because unlike BJ, who'll still actively search for a submission or finish once he's gained position, guys like Monson are rather content to lay in someone's guard until they're opponent's patience runs out and actually TRY something (as opposed to trying to create an opening themselves), at which point Monson or whomever will pass their guard for 3 points, and hold on for the win. Conversly, if they can just score a takedown, they'll simply wait in an opponent's guard until the end of regulation.

UFC 36 played out a bit better in person, though that was due more to the atmosphere, with Hayato Sakurai's US debut, Barnett dethroning Couture, and Mir & Serra amazing the crowd on the ground. However, there were also a number of things that brought the card down, like Matt Hughes & Sean Sherk's slow, grinding wins, Maragaret Goodman's premature stoppage of Sinosic/Tanner, and a relatively uneventful stretch of action from the opening PPV bout to midway through Rizzo/Arlovski.

- Vitor Belfort, Evan Tanner, Dave Menne, Igor Zinoviev, Joao Pierini & Joe Hurley all suffered injuries that forced them off the card. - Aside from having 5 UFC debuts from guys few fans new about (Salaverry, Riley, Lawler, Berger & Radach), people showed little interest in either LW fight (Penn, Uno & Edwards had all lost their previous UFC bouts), Lindland & Ricco were seen as rather boring G&P guys, not many respected Bustamante much yet, and TK was seen as an old, past his prime fighter.

- UFC 37 is actually an example that gets thrown around of a card that was plagued by injuries & dogged by fans beforehand, but ended up turning out very entertaining nonetheless. - Semenov went into the fight against Salaverry with a slight fever, but what possibly hurt him even more (and definitely did in the future) were his shit training habits, as he was becoming more and more interested in becoming an actor than training for fights. Semenov was always a medium-sized MW (most MW's look smallish compared to Salaverry anyways), though he didn't have a lot of fat or excess muscle to lose anyways (and not many Russian fighters cut weight much, either). - Also, Ricco bloodying and bruising TK's face up still ranks up there with what Fedor did to him in the rematch.

Tanner used the arm triangle a lot throughout the earlier part of his career (especially in Pancrase), and a number of the "triangle choke" victories he's given credit for are actually from arm- triangles, though he doesn't use the technique as much nowadays.

Alexandre Franca "Pequeno" Noguiera: Ten Finger Guillotine Choke Yasuhito Namekawa/ Alistair Overeem: Guillotine Choke Fabiano Iha/ Yuka Tsuji: Armbar Vitor Ribeiro/ Evan Tanner (formerly): Arm Triangle Choke Bazigit Atajev: Spinning Back Kick Jutaro Nakao/ Cole Escovedo: Triangle Choke Naoya Uematsu/ Mikhail Illoukhine: Achilles Lock Matt Horwich: Rear Naked Choke Gilbert Yvel/ Yuki Kondo (formerly): Flying Knee Jens Pulver: Straight Left Ivan Menjivar: Back Suplex Matt Hughes/Sean Sherk: Double Leg Slam Stephan Palling: Left Hook I'll think of more later.

I'd go more along the lines of "kind of competitive."

A Smack Girl show that featured a submission wrestling battle royal and a 3 on 1, handicap tag team match.

My life will not be complete until I see SmackGirl's Royal Smack from 2002.

Throwing as in: "Hey, Matt, you'll probably do better in the upcoming rounds, so why don't I just give you an easy win? And while we're at it, we'll also try and win the Best Takedown and Fastest Submission cash bonuses while we're at it." They did end up getting the Best Throw award, but were out-"worked"by Renzo Gracie and Marcio Feitosa Souza in the quickest sub department.

Horn's submission skills are pretty proven in MMA, as he's submitted some good guys and come close to submitting others. Part of his success lies in some of physical characteristics, namely his flexibility and somewhat thin frame. Of course, he still gets hyped up by people like Rogan a bit too much, but that's the way it goes. I don't know much about Jeremy's history at grappling comps aside from his trip to Abu Dhabi in 2000, where he won his opening round match via sub before throwing his match with Hughes in the next round.

Jeremy tore his groin shooting in for a takedown in the 1st round of his fight with Silva, IIRC.

I thought I posted it already, but I guess not... Anyways, horrible rankings from MMAWeekly: HEAVYWEIGHT DIVISION 1. Fedor Emelianenko - 100 Points (10 first place votes) 2. Minotauro Nogueira - 90 Points 3. Mirko Cro Cop - 75 Points 4. Andrei Arlovski - 69 Points 5. Sergei Kharitonov - 56 Points 6. Josh Barnett - 43 Points 7. Tim Sylvia - 47 Points 8. Heath Herring - 20 Points 9. Fabricio Werdum - 17 Points 10.Alexsander Emelinanenko -15 Points Others receiving votes - (12)Frank Mir,(11)Ron Waterman, (10)- Ricco Rodriguez LIGHT HEAVYWEIGHT DIVISION 1. Chuck Liddell - 96 Points (6 first place votes) 2. Mauricio "Shogun" Rua - 89 Points (4 first place votes) 3. Wanderlei Silva - 74 Points 4. Randy Couture- 63 Points 5. Ricardo Arona - 52 Points 6. Rogerio Nogueira - 42 Points 7. Tito Ortiz- 23 Points 8. Alistair Overeem - 35 Points 9. Babalu Sobral - 34 Points 10.Quinton Jackson - 21 Points MIDDLEWEIGHT DIVISON 1. Dan Henderson - 89 Points (5 first place votes) 2. Rich Franklin - 88 Points (5 first place votes) 3. Matt Lindland - 68 Points 4. Anderson Silva - 65 Points 5. Murilo Bustamante - 49 Points 6. Jeremy Horn - 43 Points 7. Nathan Marquardt -45 Points 8. Ivan Salaverry - 43 Points 9. Evan Tanner - 33 Points 10. Joe Doerksen - 15 Points WELTERWEIGHT DIVISION 1. BJ Penn - 97 Points (6 first place votes) 2. Matt Hughes - 96 Points (4 first place vote) 3. Georges St. Pierre- 89 Points 4. Karo Parisyan - 60 Points 5. Frank Trigg - 55 Points 6 .Charuto Verissimo - 49 Points 7. Sean Sherk- 31 Points 8. Jake Shields - 26 Points 9. Diego Sanchez - 20 Points 10. Nick Diaz - 19 Points LIGHTWEIGHT DIVISION 1. Takanori Gomi 2. Hayato "Mach" Sakurai 3. Joaquim Hansen 4. Yves Edwards 5. Tatsuyo Kawijiri 6. Vitor "Shaolin" Ribeiro 7. Genki Sudo 8. Jens Pulver 9. Luiz Azeredo 10.Hermes Franca

Probably quietly praying for Jeff Monson's death.

That's a flying heel hook. As far as I know, there's no such thing as a flying kneebar, only rolling kneebars. See: Andrei Kopylov vs. Leo Castello Branco (whizzer to kneebar)

Guile via KO (flying deep Fierce chop, crouching jab, standing uppercut to Short Flash Kick), Rd.1

RRR, since you mentioned a lot of UFC 13's connections to modern day MMA: HW tournament competitor Dmitri Stepanov is Arlovski's training partner, and even gave his own nickname to Andrei.