Winners and Losers from UFC 114

By: Adrian Wilkins

It’s been about a week since UFC 114 and in that time I took my time to soak in everything I could after watching this card.  There were some upsets and some bad judging calls and a main event that didn’t quite live up to what a lot of people were hoping for.  Well, at least it wasn’t for me. LOL

Let’s start out with some of the real winners from last weekend:

John Hathaway. Fighting Diego Sanchez at 170 lbs was good for him and bad for Diego. He wore out the “YES” man and made me look like an idiot! My wife would tell you that that isn’t really too hard to do, but for 3 rounds Hathaway manhandled Sanchez as if he was a rookie!  A lot of people see that win against Sanchez as a shocker as it was supposed to be a “welcome back to the welterweight division” party for Diego Sanchez. John Hathaway was mad that he didn’t get invited to the party and crashed it!!!

Antonio Rogerio Noguiera. This fight was supposed to be “Lil Nog’s” invitation to a shot to the UFC Light Heavyweight Championship.  He showed up and unfortunately for him so did his last minute opponent, the REAL WINNER…

Jason Brilz. Think about it…About a month ago when it was announced that he was going to fight Rogerio at UFC 114 not a person gave Brilz a chance.  Shoot, not many people knew who he was. Brilz showed up with possibly THE BEST attitude. For three rounds he brought it to Rogerio and in many people’s minds he won that fight! Rogerio had no answer for Brilz, who only had 4 weeks to prepare for the twin brother of “Minotauro”.  Brilz went in as a nobody, lost his fight, but his post fight interview really got him a lot of new fans the world over! Would you believe that he became a trending topic on Twitter in a matter of minutes after his fight?!?

Rashad Evans. Rashad took it to Quinton Jackson and at times took Jackson to the mat at ease.  I was really surprised at how Evans used his wrestling skills on Jackson as Jackson has GREAT takedown defense.  This fight didn’t live up to the hype that the UFC was pumping into it and it really could be due to the ring rust Jackson had. So Evans now has a shot at the UFC Light Heavyweight champion, “Shogun” Rua in the near future and that should be a GREAT fight!

And for the losers:

Mike Russow and Todd Duffee: Both of these two guys were in the same fight and for most of this fight Todd Duffee was using Mike Russow’s head as a speed bag!  Then in the 2^nd round out of nowhere Russow landed with a shot out of nowhere and KO’d Todd Duffee!  I watched that 5 times and still wondered what happened!  Russow even said the fight was awful…Maybe Russow wasn’t a real loser, but even in a victory, you don’t say right after a fight that you were awful. LOL. Todd Duffee’s stock in other words fell faster than the stock market in 1929.

Dan Miller: This man can’t win for losing! I mean with all the family problems he’s had and then he had to fight against a game Brit who was just itching to get back on the winning track. I couldn’t help but to realize that Miller didn’t try to takedown Bisping and that really hurt him in my eyes and that’s how Bisping got the unanimous decision.

Rogerio Noguiera: Yeah, I know I said he was a winner, but he was manhandled by a relative nobody in Jason Brilz.  I bet Dana White had a fit at that fight result!

Diego Sanchez: The former TUF winner didn’t look well in this fight at all.  I’m not the only one that thinks that. Even Dana White thinks that Sanchez should stay at Lightweight.  Who knows, maybe this fight will have the “YES” man to go back down a weight class and get back into the UFC Lightweight title hunt!

Overall, this was a pretty decent card, and I can’t wait to see how things turn out in the next big UFC card.  Then again, with Franklin taking over for Ortiz on The Ultimate Fighter starting next week things will be getting real interesting real soon!