Sunday, May 28, 2006

UFC: hughes vs. gracie results

last night Joyce Gracie fought Matt Hughes in the most talked about fight in the short history of the UFC. for details about the fight and the arguments surrounding predictions, refer to my previous post and comments: UFC: hughes vs. gracie. Royce Gracie won three of the first four UFC contests (fighting three or four matches in one night) and Matt Hughes is the current UFC welterweight champion.

BTW - if you're wondering what happened to my other posts about the UFC... I decided that they were too off topic for this blog and removed them. while this isn't an entirely work related blog (e.g. posts about traveling and SCUBA) it is primarily a work centric blog and having scores of UFC posts wouldn't be appropriate.

if you haven't heard yet, or watched the fight. Hughes was able to control Gracie on the ground and eventually took his back. when Hughes hit Gracie with a barrage of answered shots to the head, referee John Mcarthy stopped the fight. Hughes won by TKO in the first round.

I was reading some posts about the fight on sherdog.com and I was disappointed to read things like "Royce was robbed" and "the ref stopped it too quickly." just to be sure, I watched the fight again; I don’t believe the fight was stopped too quickly.

before the Hughes/Gracie fight, I heard a number of people (including some of my instructors) say things like "I would like to see Gracie win, but I think that Hughes will win." comments like this demonstrate a solid understanding of modern mixed martial arts (MMA). it’s not a real fight—there are time limits and rules.

a friend of mine argues that the first UFCs were basically ads for Gracie jujitsu and that Royce didn't have to fight any well-rounded opponents. however, one cannot ignore the fact that the Gracies were largely responsible for the success of the UFC (and all of MMA) and the introduction of grappling to the North American public. saying that they hoped that Gracie would win showed that these people respected what grappling has done for MMA. Royce deserves respect.

then there is the other side of these prediction. Matt Hughes is an example of the modern MMA fighter. he proved this by defeating Gracie-- Royce's first loss in the UFC. Matt Hughes has forced fans to deal with the reality of modern MMA.

9 comments:

Blah Blah Blah said...

I bet 300 bucks on Hughes, I knew he would win all along. Now, what to spend 600 dollars on..? Perhaps an Xbox 360.

inhimdependent_lds said...

Well it looks like you were very right. Apparently a country boy CAN survive!

I was shocked and hated to see it- but that is reality. I was shocked because Matt acctually beat Royce on the ground- bad. Royce just seemed to be one step behind. Time limits and judges decisions played no part in it whatsoever. It was clear and decisive.

The ironic thing is that esentially Matt beat him with Jiujitsu. Perhaps a tell tale sign of UFCs evolution.

I sure wish it could have gone longer though- just so we could have more data to analyize etc.

Hats off to Matt though. He is was the better man that night and definatly a champion. I was actually suprised and impressed with his humility after the fight. He was very respectful. I have to give him credit for that too. A landmark and historic nite for sure.

Stephen Cawood said...

inhimdependent_lds, thanks for the message. I've been getting my share of annoyed comments from gracie fans. I appreciate your objectivity.

I agree that Matt handled the victory speech well. if he had started trash talking, it would have been difficult to watch.

Anonymous said...

I was, and still am, a Gracie fan. When I first heard about this match, I kind of felt sick, and I didn't want to see it(it's obvious to anyone without bias who's been following the sport what was going to happen, although to what extent was still debatable). Gracie, along with Gracie jiu- jitsu, is great when combating another form of martial arts, as long it is in its pure form. Gracie had no business going into that ring, passed his prime and fighting a very well rounded fighter like Hughes. It would have been better if he bowwed out of the sport gracefully, unlike Shamrock, who's know a huge joke. Oh well.

Stephen Cawood said...

eric, I understand your point of view. it's clear that part of the motivation for this fight was the UFC attempting to 'jump the shark' and there is the money factor.

I hope that there were some honourable reasons as well, such as royce's desire to fight for the family name and the UFC trying to bring new fans up to speed on the history of the UFC.

I think it's obvious that there will be more matches like this one. I mean... other than shamrock vs. ortiz 2.

oh sweet... the oilers are getting a penalty shot.

anyway, I hope that the UFC picks better contests when they do these sorts of things. speaking of which... let's hope that shamrock has been working on his guard.

GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOALLLLLLLLLLLL!

Anonymous said...

I am a huge UFC fan and my vote was for Royce. However, it was not without doubt due to the increase of skill on all fronts with MMA in todays training environment. I did want to mention hawever, that anyone who feels that the first few UFC battles were simply a commercial for Royce Gracie and his field of JuJitsu has obviously never seen the brutality with which these men have fought. The only rules were clear and few and yet even with this lack of concern for the fighters Royce was victorious due to skill and not for any other reason.

Anonymous said...

I grew up watching joyce and if matt hughs were back in joyces fighting days in the ufc, (he was still in diapers), then he would have gotten his fucken ass kicked like all the rest, Joyce will always be better than Matt! Sucks we gotta get old. I hope when matt gets old he gets his ass kicked the same way of course he wont have the balls to try at that age like joyce, he will retire with the belt,what a puss!

Stephen Cawood said...

anonymous, normally I would just reject your comment based on the fact that you didn't put forward any logical points, but you're obviously aware that you're speaking from the heart, so what the hell.

a bit of advice though - you can't rant about honour anonymously. it just doesn't work.

oh, and a point of clarification. hughes was about 20 when the UFC started.

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