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Post by LWPD on Dec 12, 2007 3:52:24 GMT -5
A heads up for those who may be interested. The UFC feeder system promotion WEC has what looks to be a solid card running on Verses Network tonight at 9 PM EST.
Hype VideosFinal Card
Urijah Faber Vs. Jeff Curran
Cub Swanson Vs. Jens Pulver
Paulo Filho Vs. Chael Sonnen
Doug Marshall Vs. Ariel GandullaPrelims
John Alessio Vs. Todd Moore
Bryan Baker Vs. Eric Schambari
Alex Karalexis Vs. Ed Ratcliff
Ian McCall Vs. Charlie Valencia
Brian Bowles Vs. Marcos Galvao |
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Post by hofclemens on Dec 12, 2007 19:42:55 GMT -5
best WEC show in history... was looking more forward to this then UFN..ufn delivered we shall see here
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Post by LWPD on Dec 12, 2007 20:41:46 GMT -5
best WEC show in history... was looking more forward to this then UFN..ufn delivered we shall see here It does look solid. Moments away.... |
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Post by dukedave on Dec 12, 2007 21:57:02 GMT -5
Sonnen should make sure to bend over before the Filho-hype wagon BF's him again.
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Post by habbalah on Dec 12, 2007 23:47:07 GMT -5
He kinda did it to himself. He had that match in the palm of his hand and blew it.
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Post by LWPD on Dec 13, 2007 3:50:38 GMT -5
Faber stepped up nicely and Pulver winning the way he did sets up a future main event. This was very good for a free show.
Courtesy of MMA Weekly
LAS VEGAS – Wednesday night, World Extreme Cagefighting champion Urijah Faber proved why he is considered one of, if not thee best featherweight in the world when he choked out Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu black belt Jeff Curran in the second round.
Curran gave Faber a run for his money though. He rode Faber’s back for almost the entire first round, but it didn’t seem to bother the champ, who said after the fight, “Hey, I fight off of my back all day long. I don’t care.”
He opened up a significant cut on the bridge of Curran’s nose in the second, but it was the deep guillotine choke that had his challenger tapping out and kept the gold around his waist.
Jens Pulver wasted no time making an impact in the WEC. He likely moved himself into contention for the featherweight title when he submitted rising star Cub Swanson in just 35 seconds with an Anaconda choke.
After the fight, Pulver stated, “(Cub) brought it out of me.”
He also said that he did not want to wait for a title shot. “I don’t want to wait any more than three months. Whoever wins this tonight, let’s go.”
Now it’s up to the WEC if he will get that shot at Urijah Faber.
“He’s out! He’s out!”
Those were the words of Chael Sonnen after he slammed Paulo Filho to the mat in the opening moments of the first round. Out or not, the fight wasn’t stopped and Filho soldiered on, albeit constantly on the end of Sonnen’s right jab, straight left combinations.
But late into the second round, eating punches from his back, Filho climbed his legs up and secured Sonnen’s left arm and referee Josh Rosenthal called a halt to the bout.
Sonnen vehemently denied the stoppage, not wanting to give in. After the fight, he said that Rosenthal asked him if he wanted to quit saying, “I declared, ‘No, no, no,’ but I blame myself for putting myself in that position in the first place.”
Through his manager, Filho said that Sonnen did hurt him early on in the fight and he was in a little bit of trouble, but stated that he’s been through a lot of beatings in his life.
In the end, Filho remains the WEC middleweight titleholder.
Light heavyweight champion Doug Marshall took a new tact in defending his belt against Cuban Ariel Gandulla. Instead of the scoring the “KD” or knocked dead, he finished Gandulla with an armbar in the first minute of the first round.
In the midst of the three-fight winning streak, Marshall says he is ready to take on all comers. “Whoever (the WEC) wants, I have tons of hostility to take out on them.”
John Alessio seemed to be able to do just about whatever he wanted in his welterweight battle with Todd Moore… except finish the fight. He applied kimuras, guillotine chokes, threw devastating right hands and even landed a right knee flush to Moore’s face, but to no avail. Moore had to have a heart as big as the room to go the distance, but it was Alessio that scored the unanimous decision and edged closer to a rematch with WEC champion Carlos Condit.
In a solid middleweight match-up, Eric Schambari spent the majority of the fight trying to take Bryan Baker down. He controlled much of the pace as a result, but it was Baker that made more attempts to finish his opponent and ended up with a split decision victory in the end.
Alex Karalexis and Ed Ratcliff started and finished as a classic grappler versus striker match-up. Karalexis made a couple good guillotine attempts in the first round, but was saved by the bell at the end after being put down with a hard right.
He wouldn’t be so lucky in the second round as Ratcliff dropped him with what should have been a fight-ending left hook. After Karalexis floated to the canvas, Ratcliff started to celebrate a split second too soon as referee Steve Mazzagatti did not stop the fight. Instead, Ratcliff had to follow Karalexis to the floor and finish him off with a flurry of punishing blows.
He had to go into the second round to do it, but Hardcore Gym fighter Brian Bowles improved his record to a perfect 5-0. He dropped Marcos Galvao early in the second and seemed to have him finished with some brutal right hands while standing in the Brazilian’s guard, but Galvao somehow survived. Bowles kept stalking his prey with hard right hands and finished with a straight right that had the referee waving off the bout.
Charlie Valencia made a statement in the opening bout in a wild finish. He dropped Ian McCall with a big right hand, suplexed him, dropped him again with a barrage of punches and then treated him to a fight-ending guillotine choke to close out the fight in the first round.
-Urijah Faber def. Jeff Curran by Submission (Guillotine Choke) at 4:22, R2
-Jens Pulver def. Cub Swanson by Submission (Anaconda Choke) at 0:35, R1
-Paulo Filho def. Chael Sonnen by Verbal Submission (Armbar) at 4:55, R2
-Doug Marshall def. Ariel Gandulla by Submission (Armbar) at 0:55, R1
-John Alessio def. Todd Moore by Unanimous Decision, R3
-Bryan Baker def. Eric Schambari by Split Decision, R3
-Ed Ratcliff def. Alex Karalexis by TKO (Strikes) at 1:26, R2
-Brian Bowles def. Marcos Galvao by TKO (Strikes) at 2:09, R2
-Charlie Valencia def. Ian McCall by Submission (Guillotine Choke) at 3:19, R1
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Post by LWPD on Dec 13, 2007 19:56:50 GMT -5
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Post by LWPD on Dec 13, 2007 20:00:49 GMT -5
Here's a good Meltzer article on where the WEC may be going from here...
Faber-Pulver superfight seems inevitable
By Dave Meltzer, Yahoo! Sports
December 12, 2007
LAS VEGAS – World Extreme Cagefighting is set up for the biggest match in its history after Wednesday night's show at the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino.
Featherweight champion Urijah Faber submitted challenger Jeff Curran with a guillotine in the main event. Earlier in the night, Jens Pulver, the first UFC lightweight champion and arguably the biggest U.S. name that has appeared in the WEC, debuted in the promotion as a featherweight and shocked Cub Swanson with an anaconda choke in a scant 35 seconds.
Pulver's impressive win only added to talk of a natural showdown.
Faber, 20-1, survived some early trouble, as Curran took him down and controlled him from the back, working for a choke for about 3½ minutes. But Curran, 31-9-1, never came close to finishing and Faber was able to reverse him late in the round.
Curran got on top to start the second round, but Faber recovered to bloody Curran, and finally, as Curran shot in for a takedown, Faber caught him in a guillotine and a submissions win at the 4:34 mark.
Pulver, 22-8-1, had far less trouble in what had turned into a heated situation with Swanson. The two were scheduled to fight on September 5, but a week and a half before the match, Pulver suffered a knee injury and pulled out.
Swanson, 11-2, claimed that Pulver was pulling out because he needed more time to train, which infuriated "Little Evil."
"You can say what you want about my skills, but to say I made came up an injury shows you don't respect what I've done and who I've faced," said Pulver, who admitted he came into the fight with a do-or-die attitude.
Pulver beat Caol Uno on February 23, 2001 to win the UFC lightweight belt when the division was created. But after scoring a huge upset over B.J. Penn to retain the title, he signed a more lucrative deal to fight in Japan with an organization that quickly went belly-up.
His career had its ups and downs, with him largely fighting bigger competitors, before returning to UFC last year with a shocking quick knockout loss to Joe Lauzon.
Still, Pulver gained national exposure as a coach on The Ultimate Fighter reality show, building to a rematch with Penn. Even before the loss, the decision was made that Pulver would move to 145 pounds, where he'd no longer give up size to all of his opponents.
"If things didn't work out, I was coming to the end of the line," said Pulver, who spent a few weeks working with jiu-jitsu coach Pedro Silviera to revamp his game.
Pulver felt his game had gotten predictable, as he relied on his boxing, even though his background included a strong wrestling base, including wrestling Division I at Boise State. He said that people said he was one-dimensional for so long that he was beginning to believe it himself.
The anaconda choke, worked from a front headlock position, was something he'd been drilling, since it's a position he expected to be in while using his wrestling. "I had to wake up the sleeping giant in me. I'm a wrestler and I had to get back to my roots."
"I'm excited for the opportunity," Pulver said about a title shot at Faber, who said he expected this would be different from his previous two fights because he didn't expect to build it up with trash talking.
"Jens Pulver is a legend in the sport," said Faber. "I watched him when I was a little scrapper back in high school. He was the man."
While no time frame was announced, both fighters and the promotion were openly talking about it as the obvious direction. WEC has six shows scheduled for live broadcasts on Versus in 2008.
Peter Dropick, the WEC's Vice President of Operations, said they'd likely move the fight out of the 1,000-seat Joint at the Hard Rock Hotel which had been the company's home base. The company is looking at running shows in 2,000 to 6,000-seat arenas in new locations around the country. Faber said he hoped the fight would take place in or near his home city of Sacramento.
Faber was clearly the star of the promotion from the moment he came out to the cage. Nicknamed "The California Kid," he's gone coast to coast trying to promote the organization, which is built around having the best smaller fighters in the country.
Faber was nullified early as Curran got behind him, and trapped him in a figure-four body scissors that took him several minutes to shake. Faber said he was only in danger of losing the round, which didn't much concern him in a five-round fight. He said he'd rather be in that position, because he's confident in his choke defense, than be in what would be considered generally a better position in a guard. He said that when he faced Bibiano Fernandes, a nine-time Brazilian Jiu-jitsu champion, he was in the same position and came back in that one as well.
Other results of note:
In the middleweight title fight, Paulo Filho kept his title, upping his record to 16-0, with a sluggish win over Chael Sonnen. Sonnen, a former All-American wrestler, dominated the entire fight, both the standing game and scoring several takedowns. Filho seemed to have nothing to offer, until the final seconds of Round 2. Filho hooked an armbar and referee Josh Rosenthal stopped it amidst heavy protesting from Sonnen's corner and even heavier booing from the crowd, thinking it was a premature stoppage. Sonnen, 21-9-1, admitted Filho had the move tight, but said he told Rosenthal "No" when Rosenthal asked him if he was going to submit, but Rosenthal made the call at the 4:55 mark of the round.
Doug "The Rhino" Marshall, 7-2 retained the light heavyweight championship beating Cuban refugee Ariel Gandulla, 4-1 with an armbar in 55 seconds.
Marshall noted that Gandulla said he was going to stand and trade, and that every one of his opponents says that. But after Marshall tagged him once, he was going for the takedown.
The first two matches, both involving bantamweights, had the most action.
Charlie Valencia, 9-3, outboxed Ian McCall, 6-1, early, and in the move of the night, dropped him with a high German suplex before finishing him in 3:19 with a guillotine.
Marcos Galvao, 9-2, who came in ranked among the tops in the division, was upset by Brian Bowles, 4-1 in a slugfest. Bowles was caught with a shot to the nose in the first round that bloodied him up and slowed him. But he came back in Round 2, knocking Galvao down. Galvao never fully regained his bearings and was finished with an overhand right at 2:09 of the round.
In a lightweight match, Ed Ratcliff, 6-0, stopped former Ultimate Fighter Alex Karalexis, 9-3. Ratcliff dominated the stand-up game in the first round, leaving Karalexis with major swelling under the left eye. The fight ended in Round 2, with Ratcliff putting Karalexis down and finishing him with punches on the ground at the 1:26 mark.
Bryan Baker, 6-0, took a unanimous decision over Eric Schambari, 7-1 in a middleweight match.
John Alessio, 27-11, had too much experience for Todd Moore, 9-1, winning all three rounds in a decision.
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