[slickpoppa]

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Oh, also, Lyoto Machida is awesome and "Lay and Pray" is a poor description of how he fights.

Also, apparently Shogun had pretty major knee damage which [censored] up a lot of his training. He had or is having surgery shortly.

Overall, UFC 76 was the bomb even though 1) Shogun lost and 2) Wandy/Chuck might get delayed AGAIN. Awesome fights from top to bottom.

Dana should put Wandy/Chuck on in December anyway. He looks really [censored] stupid after criticizing Pride for setting up Hendo/Wandy (which was a much better fight than Jardine/Chuck on paper). Chuck looks like he has 2, maybe 3 fights left in him. Just get it done.

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Some random thoughts:

Ryoto is a good fighter, but there's no question that his style is the standing equivalent of lay and pray. 6 out of his last 7 fights went to decision, and he wasn't exactly fighting the best competition in those fights either. It's his prerogative as a fighter to win anyway he can, but I have little sympathy for his lack of popularity or notoriety.

The whole Wandy-Chuck thing is a mess from a business perspective. I'd still love to seem them fight, but the UFC probably doesn't want to set up a fight that will automatically result in one of their highest paid fighters losing 3 times in a row. Given how fickle most MMA fans are, the loser of a Chuck-Wand is almost guaranteed to be labeled as washed up. Also, the UFC essentially conditioned the Chuck-Wand fight on Chuck beating Jardine. Although Dana has reneged on his word in the past, the aforementioned issues with that fight make it less likely that Dana will say "Oh well, Chuck lost, but he still gets to fight Wanderlei."

205 is just a mess in general now. A year ago it was the most stacked division in MMA, but since then nearly all the top fighters have had some kind of embarrassing loss: Wand KOed twice, Shogun gassing and getting choked out, Chuck getting KOed and outstruck by a TUF fighter, Rogerio KOed, Arona KOed, Jardine brutally KOed, Forest getting KOed then crying about it, etc. Rampage has looked good recently, but it wasn't that long ago he got brutalized by Chute Box and struggled against a Japanese can. Sokodjou and Houston Alexander haven't had any embarrassing losses recently, but they're still untested. MMA hype and marketing depends upon two seemingly invincible fighters being matched up against each other. Thats kind of hard when all the top fighters have recently gotten their asses kicked.