Agreed. I enjoy MMA matches in general, but there is a vast spectrum of potential interesting matches and matchups and, like boxing, there are a lot of humdrum matches to sift through to find the real quality bouts.
The rule changes of recent years have moved matches to more of a multi-skilled contest where you see a good mix of stand up striking vs takedowns, and decisive victories instead of marathon endurance struggles. Early UFC & MMA were heavily biased toward grappling and had a greater proportion of long drawn-out grapple snoozefests IMO.
The present state is most interesting to me from a viewer who enjoys a tactical contest where either focus (grapple vs strike) can trump the other.
Interesting is the word for it. Everyone Cerrone has fought in WEC seems to be a standup-first type of fighter. I don’t see any NCAA-level opponents on his resume.
Not sure what I can add objectively here. Lightweight isn’t as strong a division in WEC since Zuffa tends to channel their best 155ers to the UFC. That said, the WEC LW champion (the winner of the Henderson/Anthony Pettis bout) is slated to face the winner of the upcoming Frankie Edgar/Gray Maynard fight for, I presume, unification of the UFC and WEC belts.
So, WEC 52 is on in just a few hours, you guys excited? For those who don’t know, it airs at 9 p.m. on Versus in the US.
I’m having a couple of friends over to watch it with me. Neither is a great fan of mma but the little guys are so exciting to watch that both of them have come over here for every WEC since I introduced them to it. Ironically, I have another friend that’s a huge fan of the sport but can’t be bothered to watch the lighter weight classes, so he just records the events for later when he’s got nothing else to watch. It’s a pity, but I guess it’s because so many people are like him that this is the penultimate event from the promotion. I think the merger with the UFC is great both for the UFC and the fighters, but I’ll miss the WEC when it’s gone next year.