OWGP Finals Live Up To Superhuman Expectations
Posted by RB, 13 Sep 2006
By late Monday night I had finally laid my hands on the Pride OWGP Finals. I went ahead and projected it onto the wall, kicked back on a couch with a beer, and watched the card into the small hours of the night. It was already two days old, but I had cut myself off from all contact with the MMA world on Friday night and was oblivious to the results, locked in my own MMA time bubble where the event was beamed live from the Saitama Super Arena onto the wall of my flat.
The precautions I had taken to avoid learning the tournament's outcome had been vast and wide-sweeping: I had stayed away from my online betting account over an entire weekend of sporting events, since my balance would have given me an indication of the tournament results—particularly as to whether Josh Barnett had or had not won it, which was my main wager along with Alexander. I finished watching the card around 3am and could not get to sleep—still buzzing from how good the card was. And at 4am with work the next day, I still wasn't any closer to sleep. I was busy replaying memorable moments of the fights in my head, contemplating new rankings, future matchups set in motion, and re-examining each of the fights over again.
In short, the card lived up to its expectations. There was not a sub-par fight broadcast on the PPV.
There is little doubt the Silva vs Cro Cop fight left the greatest impression of the night. Cro Cop was about ten times more effective in striking throughout the entire fight (which is the nice way of saying "he ran through Silva like a field of daisies"). Within a couple of minutes Silva's right eye was all but closed, and after a long examination by the ringside doctors (to Mirko's increasing frustration) the two were put back together and the fight continued. From here Silva looked frantic, fuelled by an anger that at times seemed reckless, rushing and throwing wilder hooks in a determined effort to redress the balance and cause some damage of his own. As determined as his offence might have been however, Silva was no more successful than he had been at the start of the fight, and Cro Cop continued to impress.
At some point it became clear that Cro Cop was going to finish Silva, sooner rather than later, if the fight's momentum did not swing. It did not, and the moment of the knockout came five and a half minutes into the ten minute round, when Cro Cop's lethal left high kick came gliding up on Silva's blind side and connected to the top of his head, knocking him out cleanly—something that has not happened before in Wanderlei's long and illustrious MMA career.
Watching Silva being knocked out, instead of watching him doing the knocking out, is not something that is easy to forget, and it shows the marathon-like distances Crop Cop has travelled as a fighter since the first Pride contest between him and The Axe Murderer. His display was cold, calculated and brilliantly destructive, not only against Silva but throughout the tournament—from the first bell to the last time the referee saved his opponent.
As for Silva, while the decisive defeat of a legendary fighter always knocks something off their aura of invincibility, and Silva's stock will take an immediate, knee-jerk drop in some quarters after this knockout, his ranking should not be reconsidered based on this loss alone: after all, he did step up a weight class to participate in this tournament, and even then managed to dismantle Fujita's 'iron head' in the second round in a more decisive fashion than Cro Cop did his in the semis.
What will be interesting is watching his next fight—where a poor performance could legitimately be seen as symptomatic of a slide beginning with his losses to Hunt & Arona and continuing with his recent defeat to Crop Cop. Unfortunately, this next fight will not be against Liddell as was prematurely announced at UFC 61—it is more likely be to a Pride fighter whose purpose in the ring is to bleed tomato sauce.
Barnett had a strange night on Sunday: he did not look in his element as he usually does pre-fight, right up until his ring entrance and stare down. Certain signs of doubt or frustration seemed to have replaced his trademark charisma, and at many times he looked either pissed off or unsettled. He admitted as much in his pre-fight clip: "I can't quite put a finger on it," he mused, "but it's as if there's something stuck in my side irritating the crap out of me everywhere I go." Compared to his first two tournament fights against Alexander and Mark Hunt, Barnett appeared in the eyes of this spectator out of tune both mentally and physically. He later commented that he thought he had burnt himself out in training.
Having said this, when the bell rung his style snapped into place quite effectively and he did put on some extremely formidable performances. Against Nogueira he was the more successful fighter on the feet, dropping the Brazilian with a left straight after landing a solid knee to the body, and on the ground he was also extremely impressive given the level of submission fighter he was facing—managing to lock on a guillotine which looked very dangerous for a couple of seconds, and applying a tight kneebar eight seconds before the final bell. Nog rode this kneebar out, but wincing in pain he looked close to submission as the bell sounded.
Nogueira had positional dominance on the ground for a large part of the fight, getting the full mount a number of times and having success with some ground and pound, and he also had a good submission attempt when he came close to securing Josh's arm for an armbar—albeit Barnett was quick to see it coming and took the necessary defensive steps before it could be extended. In the end Barnett was given the split decision, reaffirming the great weight finishing attempts are given over positional dominance under Pride rules when compared to the UFC (and the better Pride are for it): while Josh reversed Nog's armbar fair and square, Nog looked on the verge of submission as the bell rang, and the decision may have come down to this key difference.
Cro Cop came out in the final fresher than Josh and showed the world how to have a good birthday (his thirty-second). The match went close to the full ten minutes of the first round, during which Cro Cop displayed the same kind of impressive striking we saw against Wanderlei earlier, albeit with Josh putting up a more resilient defence, even making some impact offensively with some good kicks to the legs and body.
It was a wicked shot to the liver that put Barnett on the ground, where he came under a relentless onslaught of hammer punches, barely surviving. Although he defended himself intelligently the entire time, the striking was not getting any easier on him, and when Cro Cop stuck an accidental finger in Barnett's eye Josh covered up and tapped out, showing an unwillingness to take the further punishment that would have been inevitable were the fight to continue from that position (his later comments were that he could not see and wanted to avoid getting soccer kicked on the ground).
Streamers and confetti fell from the roof of the Super Arena as Cro Cop fell to his knees overcome with emotion. He declared the day as the best of his life, and revealed shortly afterwards that had he failed to win the tournament he was planning to retire from MMA. Now he has a second matchup with Fedor and possibly several years of competition ahead of him, having just turned 32. But with thoughts of retirement already on the top of his mind it would be unsurprising if he chose his match with Fedor (probably on New Year's Eve) to make an exit from either Pride or mixed martial arts altogether. He also told Barnett after the fight they would not fight again (although after three straight wins, this is hardly surprising).
The non-tournament fights were all entertaining. Shogun and Cyborg outclassed their respective opponents, but in the case of Shogun's fight 'The Snake' turned out to be an extremely formidable opponent on the feet, getting the better of Shogun more than once and forcing him to take it to the ground—this was not a match Shogun could afford to let slip into the jaws of misfortune. The ref called it off as 'The Snake' was tapping amidst Rua's stomps, and Shogun got his win—but this match made many people take note of the name 'Cyrille Diabate'. If he can adapt his style to MMA he is sure to prove extremely competitive in the sport.
Arona came out looking angry against Overeem (who had repeatedly slated his style as boring in the pre-fight interview), and made an effort to engage more than we are used to seeing. He used his grappling prowess to take Overeem's back and hold him there while he pounded on the side of his head, and a frustrated and helpless Overeem tapped out shortly thereafter.
The Alexander vs Sergei fight was a great standup contest that Sergei could have won until he got gun ho after getting tagged a couple of times, and started openly challenging Alexander to hit him on the face. This Alexander did, and Sergei was knocked to the ground where he completely failed to defend ten or fifteen punches with anything other than his jawbone. The referee called a stop, and a clearly-beaten Sergei assumed the actions of a man who does not understand why the fight is over. He remained this way on this exit of the arena.
This loss will probably knock Sergei way off the track he was on towards Fedor, which is unfortunate as, aside from a shoulder dislocation against Overeem at Pride 31, Alexander is his only decisive loss.
So the culmination of the Open Weight Grand Prix easily lived up its billing, putting on some world-class fights between many of the best MMA fighters on the planet (Pride billed the tournament winner as 1/6,000,000,000). You couldn't find more quality on one MMA card than the finals this past weekend, and almost all the fights turned out to be great contests worth multiple viewings—I have already watched many of the matches several times.
Now, with Cro Cop walking away tournament champion, Fedor will have to start shaking the cob webs and oiling the ring rust—the last time he fought Mirko it went the distance, and now Cro Cop is on the upswing while he is coming off a ten month rest. After countless flawless demonstrations there are few genuinely investing belief in the fact that Fedor could lose his next match; but Fedor said it himself recently—his first loss is inevitable.
Given the surrounding circumstances of both mens' careers, the inevitable could happen sooner than we might have guessed.
