NELSON KO’S SHAUB AT ULTIMATE FIGHTER FINALE

In the main event of the UFC’s ‘Ultimate Fighter Finale’, Roy ‘Big Country’ Nelson knocked out Brendan Schaub to win ‘The Ultimate Fighter Heavyweights’ competition.  Schaub’s impressive athleticism couldn’t overcome the crafty veteran, and Nelson set up a picture perfect right hook to the temple off the jab.  Nelson now wins a ‘six figure UFC contract’ and is an intriguing addition to the depleted UFC heavyweight ranks.  

The other big fight on the card was the UFC debut of Kimbo Slice.  To his credit, Kimbo won a unanimous decision over Houston Alexander.  Unfortunately, that’s really the best thing that could be said about this matchup.  Alexander spent most of the time circling around on the outside of the cage throwing an occasional leg kick.  Kimbo demonstrated some nice takedowns, but had no clue what to do with his opponent once he got him on the ground.   The fight was entertaining for brief moments when the two men actually exchanged, but most of the bout consisted of Alexander’s stalling/avoiding tactics and downright incompetent ground action.  Kimbo has improved as a fighter, but it’s still questionable if he belongs in anything approximating high level MMA promotion.

Dana White now finds himself in the same bind with Kimbo that EliteXC did.  The more he fights high level competition, the more his veneer of ‘badness’ is exposed.   There’s a no-win choice with Kimbo—either you feed him an endless succession of ‘tomato cans’ and hope for the best (which was EliteXC’s strategy) or you put him in the mix against top competition in which case he’ll quickly become this generation’s Tank Abbott.   On balance, there’s nothing wrong with milking Kimbo’s popularity by booking him in fights against ‘beatable’ opponents but it’s difficult to do this for any length of time.   In the UFC’s case, it looks even worse since Dana White went out of his way to criticize EliteXC for even having Kimbo in their promotion.
 
The co-main event of the evening resulted in a strange ending with a bit of history made in the process.  Jon Jones dominated Matt Hamill, finishing his opponent with a brutal ground and pound punctuated by a barrage of elbow strikes.  Referee Steve Mazzagatti called him for using an illegal elbow strike (a straight down strike, known as a ’12 to 6’ strike).  Hamill couldn’t continue and after some initial confusion Jones was disqualified.  Later it was revealed that Mazzagatti made his ruling with the help of instant replay—making it the first time in the history of Nevada fight sports that it had been used.    Jones showed impressive class and sportsmanship in defeat, and is clearly a fighter to be reckoned with in the future.