UFC 102 Results from Dish Network pay per view

Pay per viewonDish Networkprovided the UFC 102 on Saturday, and with names Like Couture, Nogueria, Thiago Silva, Keith Jardine, Marquardt, and Maia you knew the action would be great.Lets start with what many considered to be the twilight league of MMA with Randy the Natural fighting at 46 years old and Antonio Minotaro Nogueira fightingat 33 years old many feel these guys are to old to compete at this level. Well, once again they did not disappoint. These two warriors came out and fought to a 3 round decision despite their age. It seems as though father time has forgotten about these guys as they started the fight with stand up exchange that puts younger fighters to shame.

Although The Natural beat Minotaro to the punch most of the time, he remained patient then landed a hard right to drop Couture. Once on the ground the two put on what can only be described as a clinic on ground fighting. Reversing guards, ground and pounds, submission attempts you name it they tried it. Each round would end with an exchange that you do not see anywhere else. In the end it would prove to be Nogueria’s night, winning the three round decision, and making it public that he would like to fight Lesnar for the heavy weight title. I like both fighters, but you have to love Randy the Natural Couture. Hopefully Captain America is not done yet and as he says has a lot of fight left in him.Onto some of the shorter fights of the night, in the co-main event we watched a patient Thiago Silva rebound from his first loss of his career to Lyoto Machida against Kieth Jardine.

The fight starts and out came Jardine with a combination that missed, showed he was ready to fight. His first leg kick landed well but did not seem to phase Silva at all. Another missing flurry, then a second kick which Silva caught and made the dean of mean pay. Silva caught his leg and hit Jardine with a left hook sending him to the mat. Silva then threw a barrage of punches from the top which made Herb Dean stop the fight 95 seconds into the first round. Machida, it looks as though Thiago may want another shot.Now, for most of us we like to see good fight weather it is 1 round or 5. However the only thing that makes a short fight great is when it is ended in a spectacular way. Having said that, cue up the Demian Maia, Nate Marquardt fight. Maia came in with an 11-0 record, and some amazing submissions in recent fights.

The only question Nate had was how was his chin? Well in 21 seconds Marquardt got his answer in awesome fashion sending Maia airborne. It looked as if Maia was trying to come in with some sort of knee, or kick when Marquardt through a right hand that sent him in the air and then to the mat. As Nate moved in to finish, he did not even through another punch because he knew it was over. Dan Hagen stopped the fight as a confused looking Maia was laying on the mat. The look on his face was one of those was that a truck looks.Other fights, Chris Leben got submitted by Jake Rosholt in the third round. This fight started out pretty tactical. A knee, a few takedowns, some ground and pound through two rounds. Going into the third round the match was pretty much even until Rosholt sunk in an arm triangle which it seemed Yves Levigne may have missed a tap by Leben, but it really doesn’t matter because he stopped the fight anyway at 1:30 of that round.Brandon Vera won his second straight fight outscoring Krzysztof Soszynski over three rounds.Ed Herman lost his bout in the second round in front of his hometown crowd when Aaron Simpson caught his kick. Simpson through as right hand down the middle, which missed as Herman went down to the mat. Simpson then moved in for the finish but Yves Levigne had seen enough and stopped the fight 17 seconds into the round.Perhaps the most unexpected finish of the night happed as Todd Duffee made his UFC debut against Tim Hague.

This one is easy to sum up. The Fight Started, the fight ended that quickly. Both men came out aggressive Duffee caught Hague with a straight left that put him down. Duffe then began a devastating ground assault, which forced Mario Yamasaki to stop the fight in a new record time of 7 SECONDS of the FIRST Round.I don’t think anyone saw this coming. All in all another great night of fights from the UFC proving once again, you don’t need to have a title fight every night in the world of MMA. You just need to have great fighters with a drive to win, interesting matches and a few unexpected surprises. That is enough to grab and hold our attention, while this sports gains momentum as other are losing steam.