Saturday, December 27, 2008

My Christmas Has Arrived!

UFC 92 takes place in Vegas tonight and I can't tell you how pumped I am about it, even though I won't be sitting in front of a TV screen watching it live.

As odd as this may sound, I've been waiting for this night for quite some time now, as there are a number of fights that I really want to see.

I want to see the Light Heavyweight Title match between Forrest Griffin and Rashad Evans.

I want to see "Rampage" Jackson returning to the ring to take on Wanderlei "The Axe Murderer" Silva for a third time. Hell, I even like a couple of the undercard fights a great deal.

But the fight I like the most is the battle for the UFC Interim Heavyweight Title, pitting The Ultimate Fighter Season 8 coaches Frank Mir and Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira against each other. The reason I can't wait to see this fight? I hope "Minotauro" breaks something of Mir's...

Mir comes across as that guy who thinks he is the greatest at everything. He's the guy that always has the better story. You made a hole in one, he made two. D'you know what I mean?

So all through the buildup to this fight, Mir has been going on about how his ground game is better than Nogueira's and he's going to break his bones and blah blah blah blah blah. The best response - and most accurate one too - that I've heard to Mir's over-confidence came from Sarah the other night when we were watching the Countdown show on Spike:

He got run over by a truck and didn't break any bones!

In the words of Kurt Angle, "It's true, it's true!"

When Nogueira was a kid he got run over by a truck - it mangled some of his insides and left him in a coma for six days, but no bones were broken. Doctors didn't think he would be able to walk properly, yet alone be an athlete...

"Minotauro" has never been knocked out and he's never submitted to anyone. He's 34-4-1-1 in his career and those four defeats came at the hands of Fedor Emelianenko (twice), Josh Barnett and Dan Henderson. Mir is 3-2 in his five fights since returning from a horrific motorcycle accident and dropped a fight to the recently dropped (though re-signed now) Brandon Vera.

Some will say, "Well he beat Lesnar," referring to current UFC Heavyweight Champ Brock Lesnar and while it's a valid statement, Mir got totally bull rushed to open the fight and managed to get a leg when Lesnar got careless. While I doubt that would happen again if the two were to square off, I know Nogueira isn't going to make those kind of mistakes.

Bottom line: it's gonna be a helluva fight and a helluva card.

For a full preview of the card, check me out at The Love of Sports.

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