Everton v Sunderland, UFC 127 tomorrow

Everton host Sunderland tomorrow, looking to build on the momentum gained by knocking Chelsea out of the FA Cup last Saturday.

The league is still tight enough for a win to move Everton’s thoughts from a relegation fight to a last-gasp chase for Europe, but given our record against teams we should really beat at Goodison this season it wouldn’t be surprising if we slipped up again here.

Sunderland are struggling with injuries all over the park, with Michael Turner, Lee Cattermole, Danny Welbeck and Frazier Campbell all sidelined. Cattermole being out is particularly good news, as he’s exactly the kind of high-tempo nutter that Everton’s talented but fragile midfield has struggled with this season (think Karl Henry and Cheik Tiote).

Everton have a good record against Sunderland and there’s really no excuse for us not to win this game. They’ve only got one fit senior striker in Asamoah Gyan, and while he’s very good, Jagiekla and Distin should have enough between them to keep him quiet.

Sulley Muntari, who is on loan from Inter, and Stephane Sessegnon will be ones to keep an eye on. Muntari was quality during his spell at Portsmouth and Sessegnon looks a decent flair player from what little I’ve seen of him so far (it’s always nice to see a Football Manager superstar looking the part in real life).

Jack Rodwell and Louis Saha are Everton’s two most notable absentees. While we’re on the subject of Rodwell, what exactly has he done to merit interest from Real Madrid and Manchester United? Surely the sight of Jack Wilshere dominating Barcelona’s midfield in a high-profile Champions League tie shows that Rodwell, who has barely strung two quality performances together, isn’t ready for the big stage just yet.

As with every Everton game, I’m hoping that our opponents come at us from the offset and leave space open at the back for Baines and Coleman to attack. I don’t know if I can take another 90 minutes of a team sitting tight and letting Everton get ten yards over the half-way line, where we inevitably run out of ideas and start making stupid mistakes.

For all his limitations, Jermaine Beckford has to start. His ability to make intelligent runs that drag opposition defenders out of position may be his only real attribute, but that’s still more thing than the useless Victor Anichebe offers.

The key to victory for Everton will be Mikel Arteta. He needs to show belief in Fellaini’s ability to protect the defence and perform the simple sideways passing that our no.10 has limited himself to this season. Arteta’s last two performances showed signs that he may be on the verge of recapturing his form of last season, and we’ll need him to drive forward and commit players in search of the killer pass that the rest of our team sadly lacks.

Also, it’s UFC 127 from Sydney, Australia tomorrow. I’d love to predict a BJ Penn knock out win over John Fitch, but chances are that Fitch will pin Penn against the fence and tire him out en route to a decision. That’s the obvious pick here, but I’m still going to praying for a Penn stoppage.

WAR PRODIGY!

UFC 118: Edgar vs. Penn II

Frankie ‘The Answer’ Edgar laid to rest any doubts over who the best lightweight in the UFC is, as the New Jersey wrestler dominated BJ Penn over five one-sided rounds to defend his 155lbs title for the first time.

Many, myself included, thought that Penn did enough to win the first fight and would set the record straight once and for all at UFC 118. Much of the former champion’s pre-fight rhetoric centred around claiming that Edgar could do no better than his performance in Abu Dhabi, while insisting that he would be suitably motivated to up his game and blow ‘The Answer’ away at the second attempt.

It wasn’t to be though. Penn looked very much the same slow, plodding fighter that he did in the first bout, whereas Edgar, while employing similar tactics to those that beat Penn first time around, appeared faster, stronger and more confident than ever before.

Edgar showed fantastic conditioning and energy, bouncing around the cage and landing fast, accurate combinations at will on his ponderous foe. Penn appears to have fallen into the same trap as Quinton Jackson of simply trying to stand and box with his opponents, and it wasn’t until late on in the bout that he mixed up his offence and took Edgar to the mat. Even then though, Edgar showed tremendous technique and power as he reversed position on one of MMA’s most decorated jiu-jitsu players.

It’s customary after any BJ Penn defeat to look for reasons as to how such a talented fighter could perform so poorly. Apparently Penn has broken away from the Maranovich brothers, who led his training camps prior to dominating victories over Diego Sanchez and Kenny Florian, with some speculating that his performances against Edgar suffered as a result. There has also been criticism levelled at Penn’s corner during the fight, particularly from UFC commentator Joe Rogan, for the way in which they simply coddled him in between rounds rather than giving any real instruction.

All that aside, you have to give full credit to Frankie Edgar. The lightweight champion displayed a level of speed and stamina that 'The Prodigy' just couldn’t live with, and at this point it’d be remiss to say anything else other than that he simply has Penn’s number.

UFC 118’s co-main event saw the MMA debut of multi-division boxing champion James ‘Lights-out’ Toney. After chasing UFC president Dana White up and down the country, Toney was finally granted his opportunity to prove himself in a bout with former two-weight champion Randy Couture. It lasted all of four minutes, as Couture took Toney down with laughable ease and eventually worked his way into an arm triangle. It appeared as if Toney didn’t even know how to tap out, causing referee Mario Yamasaki to intervene on his behalf.

Elsewhere on the card Gray Maynard cemented himself as the no.1 contender for Edgar’s lightweight title with a decision victory over Kenny Florian. Maynard used his impressive wrestling to take Florian to the mat and keep him there, and while his safety-first performance didn’t go down too well with Florian’s native Boston crowd, it was enough to secure him an overdue title shot against a man he has already beaten once.

Nate Diaz was another to stake a claim for himself as a top contender. The younger Diaz brother showed crisp boxing and excellent jiu-jitsu as he choked out Marcus Davis in round three of their bloody ‘fight of the night’ confrontation.

A clash of heads early on opened up a nasty cut above Davis’ right eye and impaired ‘The Irish Hand Grenade’s’ vision throughout. The fight was eventually stopped after Diaz caught Davis with a guillotine choke in the third round; Davis refused to tap and referee Yves Lavigne eventually called a halt after seeing that he had lost consciousness.

The win was Diaz’s second at 170lbs but, when interviewed after the fight, the Stockton native expressed an interest in returning to lightweight to challenge Gray Maynard, a man who he defeated on season five of The Ultimate Fighter.

Former middleweight title contender Demian Maia took on fellow Brazilian Mario Miranda to round off the main card. The clash of jiu-jitsu black belts followed much the same pattern for three rounds, with Maia dragging Miranda to the ground and hunting for submissions. Miranda, a student of the Nogueira brothers, showed impressive submission defence to escape several perilous positions and probably did enough to earn himself another UFC bout, despite dropping a unanimous decision.

Blackburn 1-0 Everton, Big Nog out of UFC 119

After all the pre-season talk of being potential dark-horses this year, Everton began the new Premier League season with a disappointing defeat against Blackburn Rovers.

Ewood Park has become a difficult place to pick up points since ‘Big’ (which is just a nice way of saying fat) Sam Allardyce rolled into town with his barbaric brand of percentage football. Blackburn only lost something like three home games last season, but Everton were so poor that it makes it difficult to simply put this one down to a one-off stumble in the face of difficult opposition.

Much of the praise that is heaped on David Moyes and his players is well-deserved. We have a good team who work hard for each other and, more often than not, play with some style. However, such are the gaping holes in certain areas of the pitch that I can’t help but feel as though a lot of Evertonians think we’re a lot better than we actually are.

Many blues have been boldly predicting Champions League qualification, pointing to the superb run Everton went on during the second-half of last season as evidence that Moyes finally has a squad good enough to compete at the top-end of the table. Factor in the manager finally having the majority of his players available to him after various long-term injuries, as well as there being no added Europa League fixtures to deal with, and it’s easy to see why people are feeling so optimistic.

Unfortunately though, things are rarely as easy as they first appear in football. Going on a great run of form when your season is effectively dead and buried anyway and there’s no real pressure or expectation from the fans or media is all well and good, but it means very little if you can’t repeat the feat when there are prizes to be won. Losing away from home on the opening day of the season is hardly an indication that a team is doomed to fail, but there were a number of issues evident on Saturday that need to be addressed.

Everton’s biggest problem lies in the final third, where a total lack of movement from the forwards prevents space being opened up for the midfield to attack. Louis Saha and Tim Cahill are useful players in their own ways, but as a pair they seem more interested in contesting individual battles with centre-halves than linking with the midfield or running the channels to drag defenders out of position.

It remains to be seen whether or not Jermaine Beckford is going to cut it in the Premier League or if Yakubu even has a future at Everton, but at this point it looks as though Moyes is going to have to find someone better to lead the line. Money is clearly in short supply so the only option is to move on the likes of Yakubu and Joseph Yobo - two big earners who really shouldn’t be at the club if the manager doesn’t rate them as good enough for the bench.

Speaking of the bench, where was Seamus Coleman? The lad has excelled whenever given a chance in the first team and featured in every pre-season fixture. Considering Everton’s total lack of attacking pace, and the fact Johnny Heitinga was on the bench, it seems bizarre that Moyes felt the need to include Tony Hibbert among his substitutes at Coleman’s expense.

It’s fairly obvious that Everton can’t afford to buy Landon Donovan or any other winger of note to play on the right of midfield, which makes having Coleman over-lapping one of our many centre midfielders that get stuck out wide seem like a no-brainer. Unfortunately Moyes appears to value shoe-horning class prefect Phil Neville into the side above all else.

The goal itself was a freak. As much as I don’t rate Tim ‘lead boots’ Howard it would be stupid to call his comical dropping of a standard catch anything other than a one-off that could have happened to anyone. The American doesn’t seem to let errors damage his confidence so hopefully this won’t lead to a run of poor form.

It’s difficult to say how big an impact Howard’s calamity goalkeeping had on the match. Kalinic’s goal certainly gave Allardyce the invitation he craves to have his team sit back and smash the ball as hard and far as possible, but given how much Everton dominated possession there’s little excuse for not being able to carve out a couple of chances against limited opposition.

Moyes made the changes you’d expect when chasing a game: Beckford came on for the obligatory ten minutes of 4-4-2, Cahill moved to the right of midfield because taking him off is apparently incomprehensible, and Diniyar Bilyaletdinov was given fifteen minutes to try and score a screamer. Jack Rodwell also got on the pitch but didn’t have much time to make an impact.

Everton’s only real effort on goal came from a Phil Jagielka piledriver in the dying minutes, although Beckford did manage to drag a shot about twenty yards wide on the turn. Blackburn didn’t do much themselves but still looked the more likely to add to the scoring with on-loan forward Mame Biram Diouf looking particularly dangerous after replacing Kalinic.

A convincing performance is a must in Everton’s next game at home to Wolves on Saturday. Saha deserves to be dropped and Leon Osman has no business playing wide-right. It’ll be interesting to see whether Rodwell comes into the side at the expense of the blatantly unfit Marouane Fellaini (who was all over the place at times on Saturday), though it seems more likely that the only change will be Bilyaletdinov coming in for Osman.

In other news, Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira has pulled out of his UFC 119 main-event rematch with Frank Mir, citing long-standing hip and knee injuries which require surgery. Former Pride GP winner Mirko ‘Cro Cop’ Filipovic has agreed to step in and face Mir in the card’s headline bout.

As a big Cro Cop fan who can’t stand Frank Mir I’m really hoping to see a vintage Filipovic performance, but even in his recent win over Pat Barry the Croatian Jack Bauer looked a shadow of the man who terrorised heavyweights in Japan. It’d be sweet to see Mir be the first to suffer a classic Cro Cop left high-kick knockout in a UFC ring though, even if it is pretty unlikely.

UFC 117, Arteta signs new deal

The surprises have been coming thick and fast in MMA throughout 2010, and last night the main event of UFC 117: Silva vs. Sonnen came within half a round of topping the lot.

Outspoken All-American wrestler Chael Sonnen made good on almost every threat he made towards Anderson Silva during the protracted build-up to last night’s middleweight title bout, except the most important of all: that he would take the champion’s belt.

Sonnen used his elite wrestling and suffocating top-control to keep ‘The Spider’ on his back for the majority of all four and a half rounds, only for Silva to prevent one of the biggest upsets in UFC history by submitting the challenger with a triangle choke at 3:10 of the fifth and final round. Sonnen had dominated virtually every minute of the fight up until that point, even getting the better of Silva in stand up exchanges on several occasions, but once again the Oregon-native’s poor submission defence cost him at the death.

From the opening bell Sonnen took the fight to Silva; boldly refusing to show any respect for the champion’s vaunted muay-thai skills as he searched for takedowns. Sonnen displayed solid striking himself as he rocked Silva with a straight-left hand, with which he became the first man to visibly hurt Silva during his UFC run.

Much of Sonnen’s pre-fight rhetoric centred around forcing Silva to leave his comfort zone and engage from bell to bell, and that was certainly the case as he got in the champion’s face from the opening seconds of each round, refusing him the opportunity to feel his way into the bout or gauge striking distance.

Despite appearing to have absorbed far more damage than Silva after leaving the Octagon, Sonnen managed to land 298 strikes during the 23 minutes and 10 seconds of the fight – an MMA record. Silva dropped Sonnen with a hard elbow and looked to mount early in the fourth, but even then the Team Quest wrestler was able to demonstrate his superior grappling by reversing position and again riding out the round on top.

The moment Silva lost his footing at the start of the fifth round and again allowed Sonnen to pin his back to the mat, it seemed all hope was lost for the widely-regarded pound-for-pound king. Sonnen continued to rain down punches on his battered foe, apparently unconcerned with the position which Silva was working his legs into.

Having secured wrist-control and shifted his long legs up towards Sonnen’s shoulders, Anderson Silva slapped on a triangle followed by an armbar to coax a submission out of the no.1 contender at 3:10 of round five. Initially there was some debate over whether or not Sonnen had tapped, but replays showed that referee Josh Rosenthal had made the right call and Silva extended his record-breaking UFC run to 12-0.

In the wake of the fight Silva spoke of how a rib injury sustained in the week before UFC 117 affected his performance on the night, and given the champion’s nervous disposition upon entering the cage and complete lack of any takedown defence it isn’t difficult to believe him. ‘The Spider’ looked out of sorts from the opening bell and failed to demonstrate any of the glittering stand-up offence that has defined his dominance over the UFC’s 185lbs division.

Maybe Silva was injured, but it’s also entirely possible that a wrestling juggernaut like Sonnen could dominate the middle-weight champion even without bruised ribs. At 35 years old Anderson Silva could well be starting to slow down, and only a re-match will confirm whether or not Sonnen has the champion’s number.

If Silva vs. Sonnen taught us anything it’s that beating ‘The Spider’ takes three things: world-class wrestling, a willingness to fearlessly absorb strikes in search of takedowns, and, perhaps most importantly, a slice of good fortune. Chael Sonnen was all out of luck on Saturday night.

MMA websites and message boards are predictably filling up with talk of how Sonnen’s manhandling of Silva proves that the much-discussed super-fight between the middleweight champion and welterweight ruler Georges ‘Rush’ St-Pierre would follow the same pattern, only with GSP having the submission defence to finish the job. I disagree.

Regardless of whether Sonnen’s dominance was a result of injury or subpar takedown defence, of equal importance was the fact that he is an enormous middleweight who showed absolutely no respect for Silva’s knockout power. While I believe too much is made of GSP’s TKO loss to Matt Serra in terms of judging his chin, there’s no way he would be willing to recklessly storm into the pocket like Sonnen did. Add to that doubts over whether GSP, a natural at 170lbs, would have the size to ragdoll Silva at middleweight, and I don’t think there’s reason to suggest that St-Pierre is a sure bet to squash ‘The Spider’.

Elsewhere on the card John Fitch scored his second UFC win over Thiago ‘Pitbull’ Alves with a unanimous decision victory. Fitch shutdown the Brazilian muay-thai artist throughout the three rounds and cemented his position as the undisputed #2 welterweight in the world. It remains to be seen if Fitch will face the winner of GSP vs. Josh Koscheck in December for the 170lbs title, or if a no.1 contender match with whoever comes out on top between Jake Shields and Martin Kampmann is next for the American Kickboxing Academy standout.

One thing that is certain is that Junior Dos Santos will face the winner of Brock Lesnar and Cain Velasquez’s heavyweight title tilt in October. Dos Santos battered game veteran Roy Nelson for three solid rounds, showing outstanding boxing and takedown defence en route to a landslide decision victory over the durable ‘Ultimate Fighter’ champion.

Clay Guida re-established himself in the lightweight division with a submission victory over top prospect Rafael Dos Anjos. The Brazilian appeared to be ahead on the scorecards only for a broken jaw suffered in the opening round to force him to tap out while caught against the cage during round three.

Matt Hughes shared submission of the night honours with Anderson Silva after causing Brazilian jiu-jitsu black belt Ricardo Almeida to pass out from a never before seen front headlock choke. The win re-affirms Hughes’ relevance in the welterweight division after subpar showings in his last two outings against Matt Serra and Renzo Gracie.

There was good news for Everton fans on Saturday as Mikel Arteta somewhat surprisingly signed a new five year contract. The deal, worth a reported £75,000 a-week, will make Arteta the highest earner in the club’s history. The club did well to break the news on the same day that the team were comfortably beaten by the first decent side they’ve faced in pre-season, falling 2-0 away to Steve McLaren’s Wolfsburg.

World Cup final, UFC 116

The 2010 World Cup final capped an interesting but largely uninspiring tournament on Sunday night. Andres Iniesta’s extra time goal gave Spain a deserved victory over an incredibly dirty Holland team, led by the evil Mark van Bommel.

Van Bommel’s ability to escape bookings for horrendous challenges became more and more amazing with each passing game, but the final just took the piss. Both van Bommel and Nigel de Jong should have been dismissed before half-time, although de Jong’s chest-high, studs-up tiger crane kick didn’t seem as bad as it should seeing as though it was Xabi Alonso he hit.

The best chance of the game fell to Holland’s Arjen Robben, but the ancient-looking winger couldn’t beat goalkeeper Iker Casillas after making Carles Puyol look like Alan Stubbs and racing clear of the Spanish defence.

David Villa should have scored, and won me £80 (shithouse), after Everton’s own Johnny Heitinga fell over while trying to deal with a difficult cross. Villa looked certain to break the deadlock, only for Heitinga to somehow swing his legs around and block the shot. The defender’s night took a turn for the worse in extra time though, as Howard Webb showed him a second yellow card for seemingly placing his hand on Iniesta’s shoulder.

Overall Spain are worthy winners and unquestionably the best team in international football. They weren’t as exciting to watch as the young German side that everyone is obsessing over, but the way they’re able to completely dictate the tempo of the game through midfield is brilliant.

Elsewhere in the world of professional sport, Brock Lesnar submitted Shane Carwin to become the undisputed UFC heavyweight champion. Lesnar weathered a brutal storm and looked dead and buried after Carwin battered him both standing and on the ground for the duration of the first round, only for the Minnesota native to rally back and secure a submission victory in the second.

Many observers claimed that referee Josh Rosenthal should have called an end to the fight during the opening five minutes, but Lesnar responded to the official’s orders to keep active and managed to absorb many of Carwin’s outrageously powerful punches with his forearms, keeping himself in the fight until the end of the round.

By the beginning of the second stanza Carwin was visibly tired - he later admitted that his legs were completely cramped up at that point – and Lesnar immediately smelled blood and successfully shot for a takedown. Landing in side control, Lesnar was able to mount Carwin but, quite shockingly, instead of trying to ground and pound his gassed out opponent, the former WWE superstar shifted into a triangle choke position and proceeded to stun the watching world by scoring the first submission win of his MMA career.

Despite being a hugely unpopular figure amongst hardcore MMA fans, Lesnar earned a lot of respect for the guts he showed in surviving Carwin’s onslaught – something that no other heavyweight was able to do in Carwin’s previous twelve outings. Even though Carwin didn’t finish Lesnar it appeared that he at least beat some humility into the champion, who spoke respectfully about his opponent during his post-fight interview.

Lesnar and Carwin headlined what turned out to be a fantastic card. Chris Lytle tapped out Matt Brown with a rarely-seen arm bar from a mounted crucifix position, cementing his status as the welterweight division’s premier gatekeeper.

Fight of the night honours went to Chris Leben and Yoshihiro Akiyama for their bloody three round war. Leben took the fight on extremely short notice, having stopped previously undefeated wrestler Aaron Simpson just two weeks prior to UFC 116, but he showed little sign of fatigue as he pulled out a third round triangle and submitted the world-ranked judoka.

Akiyama, who voiced his dissatisfaction at having to face Leben after Wanderlei Silva pulled out of the fight with a knee injury, looked good early on and was probably ahead on the score cards having used his world-class judo skills to take Leben down numerous times. The Japanese superstar’s cardio came into question late on though, as he allowed Leben to drag him into a stand-up war before gassing and getting caught in a triangle.

Another fight of the night contender was Stephan Bonnar vs Krzysztof Soszynski, which ended in a second round TKO victory for Bonnar, who downed his foe with a crushing knee before landing a barrage of punches to the downed Soszynski. The win snapped a three-fight losing streak for Bonnar.

George Sotiropoulos fired himself into title contention in the lightweight division after dominating Kurt Pellegrino over three rounds. Sotiropoulos controlled Pellegrino on the ground and outstruck him standing en route a unanimous decision victory.

Hopefully Gerald Harris has earned himself a future spot on the main card after KO’ing highly-touted prospect Dave Branch with a vicious power slam. Branch showed his lack of experience by trying to jump into a standing guillotine against a powerhouse wrestler like Harris, and the TUF 7 alumni took advantage of the situation, grabbing Branch's head before slamming him into the mat. The win was Harris’ third in a row in the Octagon and moved him to 19-2 in his MMA career.

It’s already been announced that Brock Lesnar’s next title defence will come against 8-0 wrestling juggernaut Cain Velasquez. In the wake of Lesnar getting tooled on the feet by Shane Carwin, many are speculating that Velasquez (who displayed excellent boxing in his bout with Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira) will beat Lesnar to the punch and have the cardio to finish what Carwin started.

I’m picking Lesnar though. No one in the division hits harder than Carwin and Lesnar was able to survive him, so I don’t see Velasquez finishing the champion either.

UFC 101: Declaration

The UFC ran out of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania for the first time in its history on Saturday night, as UFC 101: ‘Declaration’ saw ‘The Prodigy’ BJ Penn successfully defend his lightweight title by submitting top contender Kenny ‘KenFlo’ Florian, while middleweight kingpin Anderson ‘The Spider’ Silva moved up a division to destroy former light-heavyweight champion Forrest Griffin in just over three minutes.

After a demoralising loss to Georges St-Pierre earlier this year, Penn was out to prove that while he may struggle against monstrous welterweights such as GSP, there is no doubting his superiority over the 155lbs weight class. Florian, who spent time training with Saint-Pierre in preparation for the fight, attempted to implicate the same game plan used by the Canadian in his battle with Penn at UFC 94. Florian spent much of the contest’s four rounds attempting to press the champion against the cage in an effort to wear Penn down, but the strategy was not nearly as effective without the sort of size and strength advantage that St-Pierre enjoyed over ‘The Prodigy’.

Florian made Penn work throughout the bout, but it was the champion who came off better in each of the exchanges on the feet before taking the challenger down in the fourth round. Once the fight went to the mat it was only a matter of time before Penn’s world-class Brazilian jiu-jitsu became a factor, as he coaxed a tap-out from Florian with a rear naked choke at 3:45 of round four.

The night’s biggest talking point came in the co-main event, where middleweight ruler Anderson Silva made his second foray into the light-heavyweight division to face former champion and top-five ranked contender Forrest Griffin. Silva had faced heavy criticism over lackluster performances in recent title defences against middleweights Patrick Cote and Thales Leites, and it was clear from his performance against Griffin that ‘The Spider’ was determined to show why he has long been considered the sport’s pound-for-pound best fighter.

Silva dropped Griffin twice early in the fight with straight punches and displayed incredible speed, accuracy and reflexes by standing right in front of his opponent, hand at his sides, evading punches with the sort of head movement usually reserved for kung-fu movies. Griffin, visibly distressed at how the fight was unfolding, charged towards Silva in a final attempt at causing some sort of damage, only for the Brazilian to back pedal before knocking the crowd favourite out with straight jab at 3.23 of the opening round.

Upon regaining his senses Griffin immediately fled the ring, with his camp citing a dislocated jaw and loss of hearing suffered early in the fight as an excuse. Griffin’s management company has since refuted this, confirming that Griffin is physically fine but struggling to come to terms with the loss emotionally. It’ll be interesting to see how, and indeed if, Griffin comes back from what Joe Rogan described as “one of the most embarrassing knock-outs” in UFC history.

‘UFC 101’ turned out to be a very poor night for ‘Ultimate Fighter’ alumni. As well as Griffin and Florian’s losses there were also defeats for series winners Kendall Grove and Amir Sadollah, while former contestant Shane Nelson also dropped a unanimous decision in a rematch with Aaron Riley. Grove showed good striking and ground defence in spurts during his bout with former #1 ranked middleweight Ricardo Almeida, but could have no arguments when all three judges called the contest in favour of Almeida.

The subject of poor refereeing once against reared its head at ‘UFC 101’during Amir Sadollah and Johny Hendricks’ welterweight dual. Sadollah came into the bout having lost virtually all the momentum gained during his run to winning the seventh season of ‘The Ultimate Fighter’, having been left on the shelf for over a year following a severe staph infection and broken clavicle over the last twelve months – and it showed as he was dropped by two-time Division One wrestling champion Hendricks early in the first round.

With Sadollah down on his knees Hendricks continued his assault with a barrage of what looked like illegal shots to the back of the head, which seemingly went unnoticed by referee Dan Mirgiliotta. Replays suggests that Sadollah was on his way back to his feet when Mirgiliotta stepped in to call a stop to the contest at just 29 seconds of the very first round. Though Hendricks’ considerable talent and early dominance makes it impossible to suggest that Sadollah would have went on to win the fight, there’s no doubting that the stoppage was premature.

All in all ‘UFC 101’ was a solid show with plenty of talking points, both positive and negative. The main card started with an impressive display of grappling from Kurt Pellegrino as he controlled Josh Neer over three rounds to earn a unanimous decision in a battle of two men trying to climb the ladder in the UFC’s stacked lightweight division.

Most of the post-show discussion revolved around the future of Anderson Silva, as ‘The Spiders’’ outstanding performance brought about inevitable calls for a Dragonball Z-style super-fight with reigning UFC Light-Heavyweight Champion Lyoto Machida. Unfortunately though, Silva once again reiterated his unwillingness to do battle with his friend and training partner. We’ll just have to hope that UFC President Dana White can live up to his claim that should Silva deliver another impressive performance or two at 205lbs (and provided that Machida gets past Mauricio ‘Shogun’ Rua at UFC 104) that he will make the fight happen.

Machida Wins Light Heavyweight Title; UEFA Champions League Final

Lyoto Machida knocked out Rashad Evans in a battle of previously unblemished records to claim the UFC Light Heavyweight title at ‘UFC 98: Evans vs. Machida’, which was broadcast live in the UK from Las Vegas, Nevada on Setanta Sports.

Only future bouts will confirm whether Machida’s brutal second round KO of former 205 king Evans was an example of the Brazilian’s superiority over the UFC’s premier light heavyweights or proof that Evans’ status as the top light heavyweight in mixed martial arts was unwarranted. There’s also the possibility that it was a case of both.

Seeing Machida take his MMA record to 15-0 without absorbing any substantial damage from Rashad Evans certainly suggests that he could be the first man to keep a tight grip on the 205 crown since Chuck Liddell dropped the belt to Quinton ‘Rampage’ Jackon in 2007. Evans, who won the title from Forrest Griffin at UFC 92 in December 2008, became the second light heavyweight champion in a row to lose his title at the first attempt of defending it.

Machida’s unorthodox stance, razor-sharp footwork and sniper-like striking accuracy left Rashad looking like an amateur in comparison, and after just under four minutes of the second round he unleashed a blistering flurry of punches that had the champion severely rocked before putting him out of his misery with a straight left cross.

Right now it’s very difficult to see anybody coming close to cracking the Machida code, not least as you get the feeling that more top-level challenges will only result in ‘The Dragon’ unveiling further aspects of what looks increasingly like a perfect arsenal. Machida’s first title defence will come against former champion Rampage Jackson, who has followed his controversial 2008 title loss to Forrest Griffin with wins over long-time rival Wanderlei Silva and Evans’ teammate at Greg Jackson’s MMA academy, Keith Jardine.

While there’s no doubting that Rampage is one of the top fighters in the division, he will have to show a lot more than just the orthodox boxing that has been a staple of UFC run. Unless Rampage can return to the dynamic wrestling with which he made his name in Japan’s PRIDE organisation then one can only expect another example of Machida’s unparalleled ability to use his elusive movement and electric hand speed to pick-off static opponents.

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Also, the UEFA Champions League final between Manchester United and Barcelona is live from Roma’s Stadio Olympico tonight on ITV and Sky Sports. Barcelona are without both first-choice full-backs Dani Alves and Eric Abidal (both suspended) and centre-half Rafael Marquez is also a strong doubt.

I expect Man Utd, missing only the suspended Darren Fletcher, to take full advantage of Barca’s defensive frailties and catch the gung-ho Catalans on the counter-attack. If United can score before the hour mark and force Barca to push forward then I wouldn’t be surprised to see something of a rout for the English champions.