Whats the matter with you??? You must have not been wearing your glasses if you think Franklin could have been given Rd 1. Hendo got in some punchs on the SU, and showed us some ground and pound.

I bought the PPV cause I was sitting around on Saturday afternoon. I was disappointed. I thought the Franklin-Henderson decision was correct. I had it 2-1 as well. But I also felt like I was watching 2 soon to be nothings battling for no reason. Franklin seems to be all hype and a casualty to the up and coming MMA guys. He was the right guy in the right place for years., but ultimately not that talented (see Liddell, Chuck). The Coleman-Rua match was a joke. Am I really supposed to take Rua seriously after struggling against my grandfather? Maybe match him up with Kimbo in the battle of the hype machines.......

Johnson-- I'm not saying I would have given it to him, but I would certainly hear that argument. One judge giving it 30-27 to Franklin though, that was just stupid.

Brad--I disagree with your assessment of Franklin. While Liddell is a non-factor at light heavyweight, Hughes is a non-factor at welterweight, Franklin is still the second best middleweight in the world. I definitely think he beats Henderson at that weight and he's proven himself against most contenders.

He has a unique situation because he's fighting out of his normal weight class.

I agree on Rua though. Looked miserable. Liddell should destroy him and that's a woeful main event.

I'm willing to give Rua the benefit of the doubt considering he was coming off of major knee surgeries and 16 months out of the ring and the fact that he was not long ago the most dangerous light heavyweight anyone has ever seen, but I want to acknowledge a surprisingly half-keen pre-fight observation Coleman's corner man Phil Baroni made that was relayed to the UFC 93 audience by Mike Goldberg and Joe Rogan. Baroni had commented that the Brazilian Top Team fighters who have come to the UFC have lost the "mystique" that they possessed in PRIDE, a mystique that intimidated a lot of opponents. I think Baroni is right about this, but what Baroni isn't acknowledging is that Brazilian Top Team essentially does not exist as it did in PRIDE in terms of its composition. The only appearance by BTT at UFC 93 to my knowledge was Palhares (who looked pretty solid in his fight in spite of a broken hand suffered in the first round).

Knowing that BTT has fallen apart in the last couple of years, is it a coincidence that Minotauro Nogueira and Rua, two former Top Team members, looked similarly awful in their respective fights at UFC 92 and 93, and is it a coincidence that these two had been training in the same Team Nogueira camp? Similarly, is Wanderlei Silva's less-than-stellar performance at UFC 92 (and again, Shogun's) at all related to the fact that both left Chute Boxe (another camp that has all but fallen apart) in 2007?

Maybe I'm reaching too far, but I think that both MMA fans and pundits (not talking about you here, Mark, but referring broadly to what has been written about Nog and Shogun in some very prominent MMA outlets) often underestimate exactly how important training is. I don't think it's a stretch to say that most fighters at some point or another (probably at many points) in the training process need a foot put in their backsides to push them to achieve the level of fitness necessary to compete at a world-class level. It's abundantly clear to me after watching Nog and Shogun put up abysmal performances in which their conditioning was pitiful (and their game planning really wasn't much better) that they are not pushing themselves or being pushed in their training. It's a hokey cliche, but it's true: if you want to be a champion, then you have to train like a champion. Free advice for Shogun and Nog: if you want to compete for championships again, mend any broken fences with Bustamante and go back to BTT. Maybe Nog and Rua have already fought their best fights, but if they aren't going to train to a world-class level as they once did, then it's hard to know if either of them have anything left.

I'm shocked that you would even hear an arguement that Franklin won round 1. It was not even close. Round two was much closer and even then I believe Hendo clearly won that round. The one judge who picked Franklin should be shot.

I really think there's something there C. Smith.

Of course, I have a friend who insists all the PRIDE guys were on steroids. He's making that argument because they all looked "ripped" in PRIDE and because of the drop in performance, sort of like what some guys went through in MLB.

Mark –
People can say what they want about the former titans of MMA (pride fighters). If you were to have fought your whole career following a set of rules and atmosphere (ring), how do you think you would perform when all is changed? Not, to mention the octagon is larger in size and would explain why these pride fighters tend to gas. Also what C. Smith said Baroni was stating on Saturdays show, makes sense. I am sure the former CB fighters are not as confident and do not feel the team support they once had.
Like I said years back. The contribution that org gave to this sport is unexplainable, would have to back to Nobuhiko Takada vs Rickson Gracie to understand…. The former pride organization will be forever missed and never forgotten…

Johnson--I totally agree on the pride comments. It's sad that a lot of new fans will look at these pride guys like Cro Cop and Shogun and Wanderlei get beat in the UFC and think pride was a sham.

I was a huge pride fan boy when I started and I hope new fans don't underestimate how strong that organization was at one point.

Also, there's a lot to be said for the switch from ring to cage. Not enough to cover for Shogun's miserable showing, though.

I've sat through more than one UFC fight featuring a former PRIDE fighter and listened to a buddy next to me making that same argument, Mark, but much like the MLB steroids argument, the claims are (in most cases) just as difficult to substantiate as they are to deny because there aren't any drug tests to back it up. I'm not suggesting that Barry Bonds and His Amazing Growing Head didn't take steroids nor am I suggesting that people in PRIDE didn't take steroids (coughkevinrandlemancough), but if one thinks about it, the two PRIDE veterans who have in my opinion been most successful in the UFC, Dan Henderson and Quinton Jackson, both were always in freakish physical condition in PRIDE. But like I said, it's really hard to substantiate or deny any of these claims, and to my knowledge, Hollywood and Rampage haven't failed a drug test in the UFC where they both have still looked in great shape.

I'm willing to allow that maybe we can explain the failure of some of the PRIDE guys by the juicing thing, and maybe we can by citing some problems with training, and maybe we can pluck out specific rule differences that benefited guys like Shogun such as soccers kicks and stomps, but as I continue to rack my brain about this issue, I still keep going back to the differences between the cage and the ring, just like Mark and Johnson say above.

The ring really benefits guys with finesse games such as Shogun and Cro Cop and even Wand, guys who throw big kicks and who like to stand in the middle of the ring and use their boxing, kickboxing, and Muay Thai games to defeat their opponents. The cage obviously benefits wrestlers and guys who function largely on brute strength (i.e., they like to straight brawl) who can both grapple with and shoot on their opponents without fear of running someone through the ropes and who can use their knowledge of grappling and of leverage in general to take advantage of an opponent pressed against the cage. Current UFC champions like Lesnar, Mir, Evans, and St. Pierre are all solid-to-outstanding wrestlers, and other recent champions like Couture, Sherk and Liddell and recent top contenders like Fitch are as well, and I could probably come up with more if I thought a little harder. Wanderlei Silva, Shogun, Minotauro, Cro Cop, Nakamura, Sokoudjou...I see some BJJ skills in some cases but not really a good pure wrestler in the bunch. Couple that with unfamiliarity of the dynamics of the cage (I'd guess most American fighters started out inside the cage from day one of their MMA education, and I should probably also acknowledge here that amateur wrestling flat-out isn't as omnipresent as a youth sport in Japan and Brazil as it is in the States), and I think it might help to explain at least in part why so many PRIDE fighters are struggling in the UFC, and it probably helps explain why the respective PRIDE-to-UFC transitions of Quinton Jackson and Dan Henderson have gone as well as they have. I'll also throw in a brief Fedor plug here: all of this I've stated in this paragraph is why I think Fedor would do well in the UFC. His game translates well to the UFC rules and, as Johnson says, atmosphere.

Thanks for letting us go on, Mark.

You have to really feel for Ace Franklin. He was going into that fight with basically nothing to gain. Sure, Hendo is a solid contender, but in the UFC he hasn't exactly been lights out, so a win wasn't going to vault him into any sort of high contender status. Plus he would have been forced into another season of TUF. Though he toed the company line, he clearly didn't want to do that again, and why set him up for a fight at 185 with Bisping? Don't really understand the UFC's logic.

So in some ways it is good for Ace that he lost, as it lets him focus on 205, To answer your question, I think Franklin's future lies in 205 and I think he could still make noise. As ridiculous as seeing Jardine getting a shot at Rampage, who's to say Franklin can't slide into a few more big money bouts at 205?

This really speaks to the larger issue of what is going on at 205 as whole. All signs pointed to Rampage getting a crack at Evans to reclaim his belt, but now seemingly out of the blue he gets Jardine. What? Could this be the UFC's way of slapping Rampage on the wrist for his legal issues? Or, did it have more to do with Forrest being on the shelf for a while? Does the UFC see big money potential with Rampage-Forrest II?

Here is how I could see things playing out at 205:

Evans faces Rampage (assuming he dispatches of Jardine). Though Jardine doesn't get the shot if he takes out 'Page.

Winner of Machida-Silva gets a shot at Evans or Griffin. Loser gets Franklin.

Liddell-Shogun winner gets Franklin? None of those three are true contenders but they each still hold name cachet.

Obviously this is a good problem for the UFC to have, but it certainly makes it confusing to decipher their hierarchy within the division.