Decent show tonight all in all.

Some of you may not be aware of undercard results but there were wins for 5 UK fighters on the card, amazing for British MMA.

Hardy was mega impressive in his fight, his gameplan was perfect for getting Davis wound up, but it's also made him a household name due to all the hype. He's a ligitimate top 10 fighter now IMO.

The Uno/Fisher fight was a mess and one of Joe Silva's infrequent poor match ups. Their styles were too similar and it lead to a boring stalemate.

Mike Swick is surely not far from a Welterweight title fight. He won't win it of course, but he deserves it for good performances as of late.

Cro Cop is just a complete fraud now tbh. You can argue that he won convincingly enough, but the fact that it took an eye poke for him to do this says it all. I'd probably have put Al Turk away by that point.

Velasquez is a beast, simple as. I'd like to see Velasquez v Carwin with the winner getting a match against the winner of Lesnar v Mir.

As for the main event, just an amazing fight. I'd be amazed if we see too many better this year. I agree with the judges, although Silva did a bit of damage, Franklin was techincally very sound all the way through, and his striking was very crisp. It'll be interesting to see who Franklin fights next, but he's still well down the pecking order for a shot at the title at 205.

Maybe it is my Wanderlai nut huggery coming through.

Do not be silly. Cro Cop had him reeling before that eye poke. Al Turk had already been knocked down once and was looking shaky. Unfortunate but it happens. The ref should have intervened really. Not Cro Cop's fault.


I agree that he looked impressive but a couple of points did come to mind after the fight. His stand up looked plain awful! For the first 5 seconds of each round when it was on the feet he was nearly knocked out! Needs to work on that. Second point is that when he was grounding and pounding Kongo he could not put him away. ON a few occasion he could have gone for an arm bar or even a kimura but he prefered to keep smacking him. Fair enough, but those shots were never going to be fight enders.

Both valid points on reflection.

Velasquez is still very green, but it's scary how good he could become. He reminds me of a very early Josh Koscheck. His ground control is scary and when he learns how to bang a bit he's going to be awesome.

I'm not really sure if he could get Lesnar to ground, and he might struggle to take down Carwin, so he needs to improve the other elements of his game.

Has anyone been following TUF 9?

It hasn't been a bad season tbh, even though there have been two standout guys in both weight classes (DeMarques and Andre).

It's such a shame to me that Dana picked some real bums on the USA team, I know he's got a business to run, but it looks like he picked the real cream of the crop UK wise to make new stars over here (see lightweight semi finals on this week's show).

Cro Cop is done in UFC again now after reading Dana White's comments. Back to Japan for Mirko.

Been past it for a while now in all honesty.

Mirko Filipovićs (Mirko Cro Cop) had already stated he didn't feel a connection with the UFC and wasn't a big fan of fighting inside the cage, His comments before were that Japan was like a second home to him and he has a good bond with the fans out there so it is no surprise he'd choose DREAM over the UFC...

Did Bisping win ?