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UFC 142 is Saturday. It's co-headlined by Jose Aldo vs. Chad Mendes and Anthony Johnson vs. Vitor Belfort; and they should both be pretty good fights. This event takes place in Brazil and features a lot of Brazilian fighters, which is one of the factors that will have an impact on the buys, in large part due to the fighters not being big names outside of Aldo and Belfort.
MMATorch is running a poll asking people if they'll be watching UFC 142 or the NFL playoff game between the Denver Broncos and the New England Patriots. I expect the results to be a bit more even than what will actually happen. Reason being that visitors to this site are generally big MMA fans. To them it could be a hard decision to make. To most sports fans, the choice is easy.
The NFL game is going to do a monster rating. There's plenty of reasons for that, starting with the fact that it's a playoff game. The NFL is one-and-done, that generates a ton of excitement. Secondly, the New England Patriots are playing. Whether you love them or hate them, most have strong feelings about that team. Third, the Denver Broncos are the talk of the sports world because of Tim Tebow and the way the Broncos dispatched the Pittsburgh Steelers last week.
The UFC isn't necessarily throwing in the towel with this lineup for UFC 142, but it's certainly not their strongest. Jose Aldo is an exciting fighter, and the more he's exposed to a wider audience, the bigger name he'll become; he's still very young, and will only get better with age. Chad Mendes is a somewhat unknown fighter, but everyone's unknown at some point.
I expect Anthony Johnson vs. Vitor Belfort to be a very exciting fight, and a deserving co-main event. We all expect sparks to fly between these two, and it should be a great one. It's a large source of pride for a fighter to compete in his home country, and the UFC is doing a good thing by having all these Brazilians fight on this card. The pay-per-view numbers may take a hit, but you have to look at the big picture. Jose Aldo should, and probably will, be a big star for the UFC for years to come, and his fighting style will earn him plenty of fans. Fighting in his home country of Brazil will be a great honor for him.
The visual of all those fans cheering for him and chanting for him will make Aldo appear to be a big star, and it's only a matter of time before he becomes that big star. Exciting fights are what sell, and Aldo is more than capable of bringing the excitement.
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Last week I hit upon the issue of Brock Lesnar retiring and why I wasn't very surprised, as well as how I thought his career wasn't going to be that long anyway. One thing I didn't really touch on was how ridiculous it is that there are people coming out of the woodwork trying to diminish what Brock accomplished in his short tenure. They want to write it off as a fluke or tomato can opponents or something equally as dumb.
Do I think Brock Lesnar belongs in the UFC Hall of Fame? Absolutely, he does. I'll start with the most tenuous part of it first, and that's his record. Yes, Brock lost to Cain Velasquez and Alistair Overeem. He also lost to Frank Mir in his second pro fight, emphasis on "second pro fight." In between those losses he beat Heath Herring, Randy Couture (winning the UFC Heavyweight title), Frank Mir (a total domination, by the way), and Shane Carwin.
Those guys are not cans; even Heath Herring had 42 fights before his fight with Lesnar, winning 28 of them. That's not somebody I would describe as a bum. Lesnar won the UFC Heavyweight Title and defended it twice, and how many guys can say that? Two, other than Lesnar.
If this were based on just his win/loss record, though, it would be a bit difficult to vote him in. Those last two losses really looked bad, but you could still make a case for him. There's no question that Brock was put into fights against guys before he was ready. He didn't have the experience that his other opponents did, and he had to rely on his natural talent.
To me the strongest argument you can make as to why Brock Lesnar belongs in the UFC Hall of Fame is his drawing ability. If you compiled a list of the highest selling PPV's in UFC history you'd see the name Lesnar a lot. In his last five fights, four of them sold over a million buys. You can count on one hand the non-Brock events that have done over a million buys in UFC history. Half of all the UFC events that did 1 million+ buys were headlined by Brock Lesnar. That's something you can't deny. I believe he belongs in the UFC Hall of Fame for that fact alone.
I don't know why people are trying to diminish Brock Lesnar's career. I'm sure some of it has to do with his previous career as a pro wrestler, some of it might be because of his personality. Whatever the reason is, though, it just makes the person look petty. I guess it wouldn't be sports without these types of arguments, though.
Comments and suggestions can be e-mailed to me at hydenfrank@gmail.com
Source: http://www.mmatorch.com/artman2/publish/hydenstake/article_12098.shtml
Marcio Pe de Pano Cruz Luke Cummo Jeff Big Frog Curran Dai Shuanghai Mac Danzig Karen Darabedyan Viacheslav Datsik Marcus Davis Tony DeSouza Edwin Dewees
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