The UFC 103 Takeaway

The Spike Pre-show
While the pre-show was rife with production gaffes at times, overall i think it came off fairly well in setting up the PPV and as a time filler/attention grabber against the Mayweather Marquez fight. Both Live fights were pretty action packed and they were also able to shoe horn in some of the earlier action. The pre-show interviews with Belfort and Franklin were a nice little touch, something different from the usual shadowboxing that we get on the PPV's.

While i doubt they will use the Spike prelim as a regular device, i would love to see it in the future as a set up to some of their bigger cards. An ideal candidate would be the UFC 106 card, which will be headlined by Brock Lesnar and Shane Carwinz. That card is chock full of interesting match-ups with a paucity of slots on the ppv to put them in. A couple of fights like Karo Parisyan vs. Dustin Hazlett, and Amir Sadollah vs. Phil Baroni would be good attractions to put on Spike to hype up a Lesnar card that might lack some of the sizzle that the Mir and Couture fights had. Ypu would still have three big fights on the PPV in the two headliners and the Lil Nog vs Cane fight.

PPV odds and sods

There seems to be some dispute as to whether the Kampmann vs Daley fight was an early stoppage, but I don't find any fault in the stoppage by Yves Lavigne. All to often the MMA mindset is that if someone isn't lying in a broken heap on the floor then it was a bad stoppage. Jordan Breen is often one to wax eloquent on that lack of a definitive, destructive conclusion but often that isn't nececessary when the die has clearly been cast in a fight.A fight like Sidelnikov vs Buentello could, and should, have been stopped earlier than it was, but instead it was allowed to go beyond the point where the case had been made for the dominant fighter in the bout. The stoppage seemd just about right in this case. The alternative is a fight like the Brandon Wolff vs Ben Saunders fight, a fight that was allowed to go way too long in my view, with a fighter suffering unnecessary punishment.

The upset by Paul Daley certainly through a wrench into the plans of the ufc in presenting a credible challenger to GSP in a welterweight title fight. Kampmann and Mike Swick were being groomed to be the next opponent for WW kingpin GSP, but Swick's pull out forn the fight and Kampmann's loss means UFC brain trust may have to dip into the re-match pool to come up with a plausible fight for St Pierre, possible with a Koscheck re-match, even though it is questionable whether he might deserve it at this point. There is talk of possibly matching up Daley with Swick for his next fight, but that fight doesn't really do much to further the idea that Swick would be credible challenger to GSP. While the Kampmann win was impressive, Daley is still the guy that recently had a couple of L's put on his dance card by non Zuffa fighters in Nick the Goat Thompson and Jake Shields. Daley wins a Swick fight, that knocks out another fresh match-up for the champ and it would boost the stock of Shields and the Goat, fighters looking in from the outside at the UFC's stranglehold on the WW hierarchy. IF Swick wins the fight, it does little to further the case that he is deserving a fight with GSP or that he is an elite fighter at 170. Further complicating the picture is the AKA conundrum of having three fighters from the same camp gumming up the works at 170.

The quick KO by Vitor Belfort may be just the tonic needed to liven up the MW picture. While Hendo and Nate Marquardt have had some impressive wins of late, the lingering impressions from their losses to Anderson Silva make the notion of another title shot for either of the two a hard sell to the general public. Belfort's exciting style and dominant victory over one of the UFC's better name brand's (in Franklin) will make for a sell-able fight to the general populace. Comments from Dana White in the aftermath seem to indicate that Belfort may be fast tracked directly into a shot against Anderson Silva, and it is hard to argue that wouldn't be the most desirable outcome. Hendo and Nate probably won't be happy about it but they have had their bite at the MW apple, but they both bit off more than they could chew in their respective fights. Slotting Belfort into a fight also makes sense stylistically, in that odds are we won't be presented with Cote/Leites type gameplan predicated on flopping into guard or a general avoidance of contact.

Tyson Griffin scored an impressive KO win over Hermes Franca to solidfy his status in the upper tier of the lightweight picture. He joins Gray Maynard and Frankie Edgar in that netherworld of being at or near the head of the lightweight class in Zuffa-land but clearly not ready to graduate to a showdown with BJ Penn. Such maturation issues have lead to another Florian title fight and the importing of Diego into the 155 class. It should be interesting to see the UFC's navigation of these three into the title picture, and what role Florian plays in that vetting process. Florian would seem to be something of a gatekeeper at this point until their is a title change.