UFC 134 AKA UFC in Rio Spike TV preliminary results.

Palhares vs. Miller

Crazy fucking fight. I’ve been a little dismissive about the Millers but after this fight I’m a fan of Dan Miller. I hate to say something as stupid as this, but the heart he showed in this fight was phenomenal. The fact that Palhares thought he won the fight in the first round and started to celebrate when the fight was still going on, and then that Miller seconds later almost ended the fight. The painful to watch second round where Miller just got brutally beaten. And then the judges scores. It was no surprise that Palhares won the decision but how do three judges come up with 29-27 30-27 30-25. One judge thought Miller won a round, but then must have given in an 8 in the second. One thought it was a clean sweep for Palhares, but thought Miller earned a 9 in the second round when he was being brutalized, and the third must have given Miller a 7 in the second round. A crazy fight. If you want to see two rounds of some non-stop brutal action then go find this and see it (I hate that I said crazy fight, when I was trying to rewind to make sure I heard the judges scores correctly I kept skipping to spots where I’d hear Kenny Florian saying, “crazy fight”. Oh well.

Oh, and guessed this one correctly across the board. 1-0 for me, along with way the fight would end.

Tavares vs. Fisher

My prediction for this fight is barely literate. Maybe my summary of the fight will be too. I should really start proof-reading this shit before posting it on the internets.

Fisher’s looking like spastic Clay Guida. Does he always fight this way, I don’t remember him being so jerky with Guida’s overly caffeinated-esque style.

Ha! One of the search terms that got someone to my predictions was, “fisher tavares fight fucking lame“

Partway through the second round I agree, it’s not the greatest fight ever, but that’s ok, so far all of the fights on this card up until now have been better than average.

Oh, remember how I say bad things about the facebook fights in most of my predictions? That is only because I can’t watch them because I’m at work, but because of the hurricane and the pre-emptive shutting down of the NYC public transportation I was able to watch all of those fights!! An unexpected day off and the chance to see a handful of really good fights. Ok, back to the Tavares / Fisher fight…..

….One minute later……

What the fuck? It’s over? After the beating Miller was given in the last fight and Herb Dean didn’t stop it (rightfully, so), Fisher gets tapped a few times in the head while being mounted and the ref waves off the fight. It wasn’t like Fisher was knocked down and stunned, he was blocking, it didn’t look like he went limp.

There has been some questionable calls on this card (yes, I did say the fights were good, but I think the refs have been less than good, and the judges as seen in the previous fight are as wonky as usual). Mostly, I think the refs have been jumping the gun on standing people up in the facebook fights, I get that some people are bored with ground fighting, but most of the calls to stand the fight up so far tonight have been very very premature.

Back to this fight, bad call I say, but the bad call did get me a second perfect prediction! Yay me! Watching the fight up until it got called I thought it was going to be a boring clinch fight with Tavares winning the decision just because he was holding Fisher down for most of the fight.

2-0 me. 100% across the board so far.

Oh, and as of the end of the Spike preliminaries I’m fairly sure that a Brazilian has won every fight (this isn’t so impressive when you realize about half the fights on facebook were Brazilian vs. Brazilian).