UFC 109 Educated guesses

The UFC has titled it "Relentless" but these guys came up with a better, funnier title: "UFC 109 Can't get it up". While I do think the main event is lame, unless it's 2002 again, and the Serra x Trigg should be a words only fight, at an elderly home weekend bingo or something, I am actually looking forward to the other fights. From the bottom I'll start:

Trigg x Serra: Wrestling goes to Trigg, BJJ to Serra who also has heavier hands. That puts Serra in a pretty comfortable spot for this one, so I'll go with Serra via TKO 2nd round. (But who cares..)

MIke Swick x Paulo Thiago: This fight is tougher than people think and Swick will be in danger of a TKO because Thiago has "1 punch Knock Down power" on both hands and he can smell blood from afar, while Swick relies more on landing sequences a la Wand style, but he, most likely will not be able to land many of those on Thiago. Having said that, I do think Swick will stay away from the big punches and barely out strike Thiago, yanking a split decision on this one.

Nate Marquardt x Chael Sonnen: When I first heard the rumor of this fight I begged Nate (via Twitter) not to take this fight. Henderson was still in the mix and the Silva x Belfort deal was not done yet. Since Silva was still healing from his surgery, I thought Nate could fight either Victor or Henderson but Joe Silva apparently had different plans. I mean no disrespect to Sonnen but he hasn't really done anything to deserve the number 1 contender. Sonnen is a good fighter with a good history and an even better future in my opinion. Having said that, he's got his work cut out for him on this one. Simply put, Marquardt does everything Sonnen does, better. I honestly feel that Nate will give him an ugly beating for 3 rounds and either get a very convincing unanimous decision or a ref stoppage, deep in the 3rd round. Nate will not finish Sonnen because there is no "quit" in that man. Sonnen will take a beating that would make many fighters give up, but not Sonnen and for that, he deserves our respect.
Marquardt by unanimous decision. (10-26)

The main event: Couture x Coleman may be an interesting fight according to a friend of mine and I agree but let's just put it this way: "It will not be up for fight of the year", not even close. I think it will be painfully boring to see two excellent wrestlers pressing against the cage, fighting for under hooks for 13 minutes. On the brighter side, we may get to enjoy a little bit of sub par striking devoid of any knockout power before they clinch for 3 minutes and Coleman gets out of gas and Couture scores a TKO before the bell ends the 1st round. So I'm thinking Couture via TKO before 7:30 minutes. If that happens, we'll actually be able to see Danzig and Rolles Gracie at work. Two very interesting match ups.

Fight of the night: Marquardt x Sonnen

Mr. Helio Gracie

GSP is brutal

BJ really improved since the last time he fought GSP. His conditioning seems to be better, his ground game is as good as it gets but aparently GSP didn't care much about it. This kid man handled the Prodigy. GSP is a beast! He made BJ's legendary guard look as strong as butter against a hot knife. Almost as bad as Sherk x Franca but GSP doesnt only ground and pounds you but he also puts his weight on his opponents like nobody does. He weights a thousand pounds man. All props to GSP. Can't wait to see him collide with the Pitbull from Fortaleza. Rock on BJ. You had a tough night but it ain't no shame to lose to GSP. The other monster is Lyoto. Thiago Silva had never been dominated like that. Much less KO'd. The Dragon is well on his way to a title shot. Guida represented once again and Diaz did his thing but clearly wasn't enough against the Carpenter. The judo match was pretty entertaining actualy, and Kim's BJJ is better than I expected. I understand the UFC is waiting on Rampage vs Jardine to decide who Sugar Evans gets next. (Rampage or the Dragon) I don't really care because Rashad is going to have his hands full either way and both match ups are pretty exciting to me. As for GSP, Thiago Alves should be no easy task standing up but once they're on the ground GSP should have a considerable advantage. Lastly, I would really love to see The battle of the Silvas now. I'm talking about Thiago and Wand. This one has fireworks written all over it.
Let's see what happens.

He fought "The Law" and he won.

Vítor Belfort put a stamp on Matt "The Law" Lindland. It was very impressive to see something that had never happened before. Lindland is the definition of a tough guy. The man is an accomplished Olympic wrestler and a top notch MMA fighter. He has fought the likes of "Rampage" Jackson and Fedor and neither of them could put him to sleep. Vitor did. I am not sure "The phenom" is back yet because, although impressive, it was a very short fight and I wonder how he would deal with Matt's smell, toughness and meanness after the 10th minute. Anyway, congratulations to brother Belfort and the best of luck to brother Lindland as heals up from the fight.
Sokoudju is going to have to figure something out because he doesn't look very dangerous right now. Babalu slowly applied the choke and the "African assassin" did nothing. Inexperience on the ground? Poor conditioning? Can't really tell but he's gotta do something. He has the stars of no less than Team Quest behind him so it shouldn't be hard to figure it out. Barnett is mean! What he did with Gilbert should be against the law. I really liked Minotoro's showing. Hopefully he'll be on the main card next time.
The WEC event was very, very good in my opinion. Little Evil has nothing to be ashamed of. Urijah is a beast and it could have happened to either of them. Now, to me, the star of the night was Jose Aldo. I was impressed. Killer leg kicks reminded me of he "Pitbull".
Anyway, this was a weekend packed with good MMA and the coming one is no different. I'm looking forward to it. In the meantime we'll keep talking about biblical manhood as I have a couple of interesting things coming up.
Until next time.

Fighting principles in the Word

I remember one day long ago when we were doing some drills and at one point we did "roundhouse kick" against "spinning hook kick". It was very intense and we really did simulate a real fight , with a lot of footwork and faking until this one guy would not attack me but would only hypnotize me with his "killer" footwork. Eventually he got too close for (my) comfort and the tension had really built up over the last minute so, on pure instinct, I fired an attack even though I was supposed to counter only. "The prey became the predator!" our trainer exclaimed with a loud voice and a positive tone. "Patrick (Coté) when you're not doing anything, he (Anderson Silva) is thinking on how to hurt you, so stay busy OK. " said Coté's corner between rounds.

These are principles that are true, both in the physical and the spiritual worlds. How so? One might ask. You see, the Bible is replete with military terms, fight references, war language, war analogies that depict one very important truth: the Christian life is a battle. It is war. It is a fight. It is on. One of the few things I've learned in my life is that Truth is disgustingly indifferent to my likes and dislikes, opinions or even awareness. We are in a battle whether we realize it or not. Many men end up being casualties because they don't see this reality. Paul tells Timothy "fight the good fight of faith" and part of how we can fight that battle is to stay on the offense.

The fight is a fight of FAITH. It does take place in many battlegrounds but the bottom line is Faith. Saving faith is to be kept at all costs. If there is anything that is threatening to your faith, you should attack it before it attacks you. How does that apply to real life? Well, Rachel in human resources. You just don't ever go beyond good morning with her. She's got the power to destroy everything you truly value. The abusive boss will not get an argument from you because you have been reading ( for the 4th time), Mahaney's "Humility", praying that God crushes your pride therefore you will see the abuse from God's perspective, not as an enemy but as a tool of sanctification conforming you to the image of Christ, to which you have been predestined , brought about by your loving God. A good fighter will be alert to all possible threats and even the remotely possible threats (i.e Houston Alexander's ground game) in the same manner the Christian man will do himself a favor by asking God to reveal to him constantly anything that could harm his faith. This should be done as a perpetual, frequent spiritual discipline. As a result of identifying possible attacks, action is taken against the enemy, whatever it may be. It is crucial that spiritual disciplines are in place here, because it is easy to DO the "right things" out of formula or self reliance or many things other than FAITH. So, be always on the lookout and shoot on sight.
May God give you the strength to fight until you die.