UFC 141 should prove to be one for the books.  Not only is Brock Lesnar back from his diverticulitis but the introduction of Alistair Overeem to the UFC will be as exciting as a fight can be.

And yes, it will probably only last about a minute.

But it’s not the only fight on the card.  The under card of Nate Diaz and Donald Cerrone is the actual fight of the night.  These two lightweights are experts in every sense of the word.  They both fight moving forward and have the lumber and the ground skills to put anybody out like a cigarette.

Mark J. Rebilas-US PRESSWIRE

Diaz vs “Cowboy” is the equivalent of Jordan vs Kobe in their primes, playing one on one.  One thing is certain Friday night, one man will be asleep on the canvas in two consecutive fights (Friday night is not an oversight – Dana White is brilliant when scheduling his fights).

I recently stumbled across a great iphone app that allows one to find a bar where the fights will be televised.  It’s appropriately called UFC Bar Finder and it’s free.

There is no quit in these four men.  Lesnar and Overeem will NOT “feel each other out” for the first round and Diaz and Cowboy will prove to the MMA haters that this is a legitimate science as they transition from submission to submission while dropping looping bombs and landing teeth shattering jabs.

If you avoid New Year’s Eve parties like I do, you will hit the nearest watering hole and enjoy a few hours of burgers and blood the night before.  Don’t miss it.  I know I won’t.

Saturday will be the main stream roll out of MMA on network television.  If you have ever wondered what all the hype about MMA and UFC is, you may want to tune in Saturday evening.  Cain Velasquez vs Junior Dos Santos should prove to be one of the best introductions of a major sport in the common era of mega billion dollar sports.

Junior Dos Santos

These are not the prototypical fighters the UFC puts in front of the public.  These guys are true heavyweights that will try to kill each other, relatively speaking.  Squeamish people need not tune in but for those that want to know what the big deal is, this is your opportunity to find out why this is a multi billion dollar concern.

The Fox broadcast is scheduled for 7pm Tucson time.  After a great day of watching college football you should check this out and find out if you like this sport as much as the addicted fans do.  And it’s free!  You can’t argue with free.  Then you can switch over to the UofA game and not miss a snap.

If you are already a fan of the UFC product and you use Facebook, you can also like the UFC Facebook page and watch all the prelim fights for free on your desktop.  The last prelim fight is a barn burner between Clay Guida and Phoenix’s Ben Henderson.  Fireworks are guaranteed.

Clay Guida

Guida may be the toughest fighter alive and he bleeds like a stuck pig in every fight.  Henderson is about as exciting as the sport gets because of his wild style that is extremely difficult to handle for most opponents.

As far as predictions go, I have Junior Dos Santos winning by knockout early in the 2nd round.  Would I wager any hard earned money on that?  Not on your life.  Gambling on sports is for suckers that enjoy losing money.

Tucson’s Dominick Cruz put together another impressive win last Saturday as he went the distance against Demetrious “Mighty Mouse” Johnson.  The fight was another free fight from the UFC that keeps us MMA fans begging for more as if it was a drug.  Mighty Mouse got out of a rear naked choke that was anchored by a body triangle.  For those not up to speed on the MMA submissions or holds, that is the equivalent of Chinese finger trap on a 2 year old.

Mighty Mouse did survive the fight but lost on the judges cards due to the Domin8tor’s relentless attack.  Dominick “The Dominator” Cruz is probably the most unique fighter in Mixed Martial Arts today.  His highly unorthodox head movement and footwork gives fighters fits.  The guy flat out fights like a mongoose against a snake.  He fakes and bounces and darts in and out while delivering crisp punches that set up his take downs.

Dominick Cruz is actually from San Diego but he moved to Tucson as a child and now calls both the Old Pueblo and San Diego home.  He also calls the UFC home as he occupies the Bantamweight Championship (and the belt fits well).  Cruz has quickly risen to the top of the MMA world with consistent wins and now is in the conversation as the best of the best.

I would love to see Cruz finish his next fighter to really propel him into a marketing force.  He carries himself with grace and respect as I have never witnessed him talking trash or taking the pre-fight game to garbage levels like so many do to sell a fight.  The only thing I am worried about right now is busted hand.  A fighter with an injured hand is like a lawyer without a suit.  They just can’t work without it.  So our need for more from this amazing fighter may just go on 6 months or so.

In a perfect world these guys would fight every 3 months.  Waiting twice that long is not good in a sport where the evolutionary learning curve is now a steep cliff.  I remember a redneck funny guy, that looks a lot like me, saying “If you ain’t first you’re last”.  In MMA you ain’t last, you’re either unconscious or begging for mercy.  No second place in a two horse race.

By now anyone who has ever watched a boxing match or an MMA fight knows the scoring system.  If you don’t it’s pretty simple, but maybe not.  Here goes.  They call it a 10 point must system.  The verbiage escapes me but you’ve got to give guys, who punch each other in the heads for a living, a little slack.  The winner of the round gets 10 points.  The loser gets 9 points.  But in some cases the loser gets 8 points if they really got slapped around.  Sounds simple right?

What the system doesn’t allow for is if a fighter gets slapped around in the first round and only gets the 8 points but just squeaks out the second and third rounds.  Then it’s a draw.  That’s right, no winner.

Dana White

Now Dana White, in one of his divine moments of clarity, is moving the UFC to 5 round fights.  Now this is good for money and will reduce the number of draws but it will not eliminate them.

The only way to get rid of the draw is to make each round win or lose.  One fighter wins and the other loses.  This system (that I call the Morons Can’t Screw-it-up System) would eliminate draws forever.  Mathematically one cannot break my system.  That’s the beauty of it.  Perhaps these organizations don’t want to get rid of draws as rematches are a great story and multiple fights generate lots of dead presidents.  But as a super fan of Mixed Martial Arts I would like to see more fights with a more diverse pool of fighters.

Maybe I don’t understand how boxing has done it for so long.  Maybe I don’t like corruption and theft when it comes to my sporting events.  Maybe I just don’t have any sympathy for people and their lack of common sense, logic, reason, responsibility, or visual comprehension.  Maybe I will take a sniper bullet tomorrow for exposing the matrix.  What ever the case, the game can still be fixed.  Maybe I’m just asking way too much.

As for my top 10 reasons…  I just thought it would get your attention.  One of the big websites out there likes to publish top 10 lists regarding every thing.  I really hope the title didn’t suck you in to this one.  If it did, I apologize for for the welder’s torch.  But not really.

In my first MMA blog I must challenge one of the newest favorite topics.  Who would win in a super fight between Georges “Rush” St. Pierre (GSP) and Anderson “The Spider” Silva?  The first of a few hurdles in this debate is the weight they fight at.  GSP fights as a 180lb welterweight while Silva fights at the middleweight 200lb mark.  The assumption here would be a catch weight fight at 190lbs.  Not a big deal for either fighter as GSP walks around at 180 and Silva, who looks like he hosts a family of tape worms, probably struggles to stay close to 200.  The next hurdle is money.  UFC fighters are more like company men unlike greedy boxers that have all but destroyed professional boxing; however, they still get to negotiate contracts for big fights and this would be the biggest fight ever.  Just like aforementioned weights, the money will be there and they would both stand to take home a few million dollars each for their 5 round fight.  Not bad for a maximum 25 minutes of action.  The final hurdle is that of the ultimate Dictator and UFC President Dana White.  How many more fights can he squeeze out of these guys before he makes this fight happen?  The UFC’s cash grab has propped the sport up and made it a formidable force in the world of pay per view events.  You could say the war chest is all full up.

With Dana White having GSP and Silva squash everyone in their division to get a few more pay per view events out of them, and us the viewers, we have to wonder how much more can their bodies take?  Let’s face it, this isn’t golf and there ain’t no senior tour in the UFC.  Now you can make the argument that they really aren’t taking a whole lot of punishment too.  But how entertaining is a fight between two washed up geriatrics?   The reality of the now is they destroy their competition and embarrass up and comers.  But who would win?

GSP fans are very open and eager to tell everyone GSP would crush Silva.  Truth is GSP should be terrified of Silva and probably is.  Never before has a fighter been so calculating, patient, and precise as Silva.  His quickness is the product of getting rag dolled in the now defunct Pride Fighting group in Japan years ago.  That’s right, he was just another slap for the veterans to bully but little did they know that he was learning, taking notes, and they were stoking a fire that is raging out of control.  GSP trains like no other and he is an Adonis.  But his physical attributes are dwarfed by his tolerance for risk, or lack thereof.  He fights defensively.  He is way too concerned with losing and doesn’t look for wins.  GSP is content with jabbing and wrestling to a five round decision.  In fact, I cannot remember the last time he submitted or KO’d a fighter.  This is the biggest discrepancy with these fighters.  GSP doesn’t finish anyone.  Silva finishes everyone.

The blue print for beating Silva was “given to us by Chael Sonnen” said Kyle Kingsbury on the Jim Rome show.  The thing is, Sonnen lost that fight in the waining minutes of the fifth round to a triangle choke and Sonnen was juicing.  I doubt Silva will be matched up against a roided out GSP.  The only super fights worth talking about are Silva vs. John Jones because they are the best fighters or perhaps Fedor vs. Lesner because freak shows are impossible to ignore.  So in closing, unless GSP finds himself a gamma ray machine that makes him very angry and twice as strong when eating from the knee and elbow buffet, he needs to stay in his lane and keep chalking up unanimous decisions where it’s safe.