like bullets on tin

Last night's UFC 85 event in England was a fairly boring affair, and which made me very glad I didn't pay to watch it. The only notable fight was the savage beating Matt Hughes suffered at the hands of Thiago Alves. Alves stuffed nearly every take down Hughes attempted while landing solid punches and knees. By the second round it seemed it was only a matter of time before Alves pummeled Hughes into unconsciousness, until Alves connected with a flying knee that put Hughes on the mat and forced referee Herb Dean to end the fight. After such a brutal loss coming not long after he was dismantled by Georges St. Pierre--and having lost three of his last four matches--, I would be shocked if Hughes didn't retire sometime in the very near future...

I'd never been much of a hockey fan before this year, but I happily jumped on the Cincinnati Cyclones bandwagon halfway through the 2008 season. I ended up having a blast at the first game I went to and went back a couple more times, especially for the sixth and final game of the championship series against the Las Vegas Wranglers. It was a close game, but the 'Clones ended up scoring twice in the third period to escape with a fantastic 3-1 victory and--most importantly--become the 2008 ECHL Kelly Cup Champions! Next year will find me cheering the team on again, although the sad reality is the team will likely see its best players leave for positions with teams in the NHL and AHL...

Jess and I went out for our six year anniversary last week. Crazy to think about how long six years really is. Anyway, we went to dinner at Nada, which was delicious, and afterward went to Nicholson's for a drink. Both establishments were fantastic; I would highly recommend both of them...

Thanks to Christy and Rob for registering and voting for my Capture Cincinnati pictures. I will add more as time goes on, so keep checking back.

big money on the line

UFC 75 turned into a disgrace last night. Never has the sport's blatant favoritism towards certain fighters been more obvious than the sham of a match that the Bisping vs. Hamill bout turned into last night. Held in London, one of the main event's featured the UFC's UK pretty-boy Michael Bisping getting dismantled by Cincinnatian Matt Hamill for three rounds in front of Bisping's home crowd, only to have two out of the three judges give the fight to Bisping at the end. One judge was absolutely correct in giving all three rounds to Hamill, and somehow the other two judges (the incredibly incompetent Cecil Peoples and Jeff Mullen) scored the match 29-28 for Bisping. This all comes after mounting criticism from fans over preferential treatment from referees for UFC's high-profile fighters (including some questionable officiating in Bisping's favor during his previous fight against Elvis Sinosec) and just plain bad decisions from judges (as seen in UFC 74, when judge Adalaide Byrd scored the one-sided fight in favor of the loser, Marcus Aurelio). The judges were so blatantly wrong that there were a noticeable number of boos from the British fans during Bisping's post-fight interview.

The whole thing was made worse by Bisping continuing his cocky Brit act in the post-fight interviews. His comment after getting dominated for three rounds on his feet was that Hamill should go "back to wrestling". The man has instantly jumped to the top of my list of fighters I want to see get destroyed. Hamill, meanwhile, was nothing but gracious in defeat. I cannot wait for Bisping to get pitted against some real competition like Chuck Liddell or even the up-an-coming Houston Alexander and see him get completely destroyed, both to spite the UFC and to put him back in his place. Or better yet, give us Bisping-Hamill II, but put it in Cincinnati this time.

I don't know whether to attribute last night's travesty to the incompetence of the judges, or if something more sinister is at work, with the heads of Zuffa--the owners of UFC--doing everything they can to make sure their hyped-up, big name moneymaker fighters don't suffer any setbacks in their rise to the top. It's obvious already that they build up guys like Bisping and Roger Huerta by spoon-feeding them easy opponents; considering questionable actions from referees and judges in the past, culminating in that debacle last night. For the first time, I find myself questioning the integrity of the UFC. I know one thing: I won't be buying any Pay-Per-View events for awhile, and I'll be contacting the UFC to let them know what I thought of that garbage last night. I'm sure it won't do any good... although since money seems to be the only thing that matters to the UFC now, and with all the outraged fans, who knows...