If you watched the UFC 132 event then no doubt you will agree that it was full of surprises. Dominick Cruz vs. Urijah Faber won fight of the night but I think Wanderlei Silva vs. Chris Leben deserved it more. Knockout of the night went to Carlos Condit vs. Dong Hyun Kim due to Condit’s awesome flying knee, that award was well deserved. Submission of the night went to Tito Ortiz for putting Ryan Bader to sleep, I don’t think anyone saw that one coming, especially since Tito had only one real submission win to his name before coming into this fight.
Cruz vs. Faber for the Bantamweight title – Faber Gets Dominated
The fight went a bit slow but had good moments. Both fighters were great coming out of the scramble and showed good head and feet movement. As MMA fans I believe most of us expected more out of this fight as it was a bad blood rematch for a title belt. Dominick came out the winner via unanimous decision because he came in with an effective plan and kept to it, unlike what happened the first time he fought Faber in 2007.
Cruz was able to land a lot more combinations and take downs over Faber and that accumulated enough points to score a clear victory and retain his belt. Faber on the other hand was too hesitant in attacking and concentrated on trying to defend and counter attack to no avail. It will be interesting to see if these guys ever fight again now that they are tied up one for one.
Silva vs. Leben aka Battle of the Heavy Hands – Leben Lays the Smack Down
These guys are animals and I mean that in a good way. They go in with no fear swinging for the fences. Out of all the fights on this card this was the one MMA fans wanted to see the most, according to the survey on UFC.com. Leben made something clear in an interview before the fight. He said that when he gets hit it puts his level up much higher. So guess getting hit by the heavy hands of Silva really got him going because he finished this fight via KO 27 seconds in the first round.
Ortiz vs. Bader – Bader Takes a Snooze – The Huntington Beach Bad Boy is Back Baby!
“Darth” Bader now knows who is father is. It was go big or go home for Tito Ortiz. Ortiz had not won a fight in the UFC since 2006 and was for sure going to get cut from the UFC roster if he lost. He came into this fight looking prepared and fairly smooth. I am not going to lie, I was rooting for Tito as many were in attendance this past Saturday. He was one of the reasons I started liking MMA in the first place as I loved watching what he was famous for, brutal ground and pound. I remember playing the first UFC video game and always picking him because he had those awesome stand up combinations that looked killer when connected.
Safe to say, I think Tito won back a lot of fans tonight and also recruited a lot more Tito haters after he didn’t release Bader out of the choke hold right away when the referee called the fight off. I believe we will see a new and improved Tito as he is now training with a new crew and has got some good momentum on his side.
