UFC 117 card: after saturday

UFC 117 card: after saturday
• Saturday's headliner in the UFC has been called a great bout, says USA today yet Chael Sonnen fought in much the same way as Jake Shields and Georges St. Pierre, who are routinely booed these days for their wrestling-based approach.
Jon Fitch spent three rounds wearing down Thiago Alves in a fight that no one would call fantastic, and an hour later Sonnen did essentially the same thing to Anderson Silva. Sonnen blanketed him, but the champ was never in danger after recovering from being wobbled in the opening minutes. In fact, the most damaging blow of the fight was a Silva elbow from the bottom.
Fighting as a heavy underdog can cloud people's perceptions. Success becomes magnified when you're supposed to lose badly, so anything Sonnen did well became a magnet for praise. But a grinding fight is a grinding fight no matter how you look at it.
• Still, give Sonnen credit for his effort. He drew attention for his many outlandish statements over the last several weeks, but he touched on the truth at least twice: even when he loses, he tends to dominate the scorecards; and he's a better striker than people realize.
The submissions that produced seven losses on Sonnen's record are moves often applied from the bottom, including four triangle chokes, two armbars and a guillotine choke. Nate Marquardt nearly submitted him with a guillotine choke, as well.
In other words: Sonnen dumps every opponent to the ground, both with wrestling and punches.
He wobbled Silva more than once on the feet and controlled him on the mat for more than 20 minutes. He blanketed Paulo Filho for most of their first meeting. He put himself atop Forrest Griffin, Renato "Babalu" Sobral and Jeremy Horn. All of them went on to beat Sonnen, but not before giving up positions.
Sonnen seemed to confirm the conventional wisdom that says Silva must be beaten with wrestling, but the challenger actually outstruck the champion on the feet. Sonnen boxed intelligently by punching from angles and moving laterally, rather than charging forward in the manner of Forrest Griffin or Chris Leben. Future opponents of Silva should take note.
• Tactics of attrition are hard to maintain over an extended period. Had the main event lasted three 5-minute rounds or the Pride Fighting Championships/Dream system of a 10 and two fives, Sonnen would be the new middleweight champion.
But everyone makes a mistake at some point, and 25 minutes offer plenty of chances for jiu-jitsu experts to work their chess moves. It was far too much time for someone such as Sonnen, who has a hard enough time keeping his defense tight for 15 minutes.
• The 35-year-old Silva might be feeling his age. He was caught by punches that he has dodges in the past, and his counterstrikes seemed to be slower than usual.
Quickness and speed are the first things to go for most athletes, especially by the time they hit their mid-30s. Randy Couture and Bernard Hopkins are rarities in combat sports -- most fighters peak physically before 35, particularly below the heavyweight division.
Silva afterward said he was suffering from ribs injured in training, but even that suggests that he's getting older. He didn't seem to suffer any serious wounds during his time with Chute Boxe Academy, which was renowed for the brutality of its training. But as the aches and pains of regular sparring and practice become harder to take with age, the vulnerability to injury increases and the ability to recover decreases.
• Roy Nelson wasn't the only one with a tough chin in his fight. He connected more than once with the right hand that produced one-punch knockdowns or knockouts against Brad Imes, Antoine Jaoude, Brendan Schaub and Stefan Struve, yet Junior dos Santos came back firing every time. Combine that with his outstanding takedown defense, and he appears to be a very difficult match-up for anyone, even Brock Lesnar or Cain Velasquez.
It might take someone who can quickly slap on submissions from his back after being knocked down. But dos Santos already put that guy to sleep in October 2008 and sent him packing to Strikeforce; UFC has no other Fabricio Werdums in its pipeline at the moment.
• Matt Hughes had a surprising choke-out of Ricardo Almeida, but it was simply a headlock out of classic wrestling that Hughes learned in his college days, rather than a new and exotic maneuver. In choreographed pro wrestling it's sometimes used as a rest hold while the performers plot their next sequence, but like many of that industry's moves, it has real applications as long as you apply it quickly and have the muscle to pull it off.