UFC Ultimate 100 Greatest Fights Review - Disc 2 Part 1

And away we go with Disc 2!

87. UFC 54: Chuck Liddell vs. Jeremy Horn: The first of approximately 150 Chuck Liddell fights on the 100 Greatest Fights DVD set, and, well, it's not exactly a barnburner.
Yeah, I know Dana's buddies with Chuck, but there should be a general rule of thumb when judging "greatest" fights for this set - if there are periods where the crowd is booing because of the lack of action, then it shouldn't be up for consideration. Chuck beats up Horn badly, and Horn gets praised for having heart and continuing to come back. Fight ends with an anti-climatic thumb to the eye, Horn can't see, and it's over. Chuck defends his UFC light-heavyweight title for the first time. NEXT!

86. UFC 45: Evan Tanner vs. Phil Baroni: An intriguing match I've never seen before, and I have no idea what happens. Let's watch! Baroni surprisingly dominates Tanner early and I wonder if I'm about to see one of those rare sights in MMA: A Phil Baroni victory. But it's not to be, as he gets caught and ground-and-pounded. The ref asks him if he wants to continue, or if he wants to quit, or go shopping for new sparkly robes and sunglasses, or something, and whatever the question was, Baroni gave the wrong answer, the ref stops the fight, Baroni immediately freaks out to the point even the athletic commission dude is telling him to sit in his stool and shut up, and the announcers immediately go crazy over Baroni losing due to a "communication error". As opposed to losing to, say, 25 unanswered elbows to the head. Yeah. Fun and ludicrous!

85. UFC 49: Karo Parisyan vs. Nick Diaz: A fun, scrappy fight full of crazy jiu-jitsu reversals, wacky submission attempts and basically non-stop action. Thumbs up. Karo wins a split decision.

84. UFC 30: Pedro Rizzo vs. Josh Barnett: This, ladies and gentlemen, is what WWE announcer Jim Ross means when he calls something a slobberknocker. A surprisingly fast-paced and energetic heavyweight slugfest that sees the two guys go toe-to-toe and just trade blows. Rizzo eventually gets the best of it and sends Barnett crashing to the canvas with a punch to the temple for the KO victory.

83. UFC 49: Chuck Liddell vs. Vernon White: The pre-match promos make it abundantly clear that these two men do not like each other. And, indeed, they come out throwing bombs at each other. Irony alert: Announcers sing the praises of Chuck Liddell's chin. Which was great until, well, it wasn't. Anyway, after 4 minutes of the two men trading big slugging blows, Chuck lands one right on the side of White's eye, and he drops like a stone. Chuck wins.

82. UFC 54: Georges St. Pierre vs. Frank Trigg: Trigg trash-talks GSP in the pre-match promos by saying that for the first time in Georges UFC career, he's about to be in a real fight. Joe Rogan, about 2 minutes into the first round: "Georges St. Pierre is putting on a clinic!" Yeah, so how'd that work out, Trigg? GSP totally dismantles Trigg to the point that Rogan concedes Frank looks like an amateur in the octagon with St. Pierre. GSP wins with a rear-naked choke and then makes the "I want the belt" waist motion. GSP is so awesome.

81. The Ultimate Fighter Finale 6: John Koppenhaver vs. Jared Rollins: Koppenhaver is of course, now known as WAR MACHINE (seriously) and has had made some other interesting life choices. We'll leave it at that. Beyond WAR MACHINE's wacky personal issues, this fight is great - a short-strike ground war that quickly results in Koppenhaver bleeding buckets all over Rollins. The tremendous ending sees an exhausted War Machine all but done when he suddenly sweeps the equally-spent Rollins and elbows him into oblivion.

80. UFC 42: Rick Franklin vs. Evan Tanner: Good thing they have all the graphics, or else you'd never know the bald, lean dude in the octagon was Tanner. Not that it really mattered, as was dispatched in short order by Franklin. Another questionable inclusion in a 100 Greatest Fights list, but nothing terrible.

That's it for Disc 2 for now. I'll finish the rest of it up next week. Or eventually. (See, the plan for this set was that I'd watch it over the Christmas holidays, particularly during the long drives to and from Manitoba. So I have to save some of it for then!)

My review of the first disc are here: Part 1, Part 2.

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