UFC: hughes vs. gracie results

last night Joyce Gracie fought Matt Hughes in the most talked about fight in the short history of the UFC. for details about the fight and the arguments surrounding predictions, refer to my previous post and comments: UFC: hughes vs. gracie. Royce Gracie won three of the first four UFC contests (fighting three or four matches in one night) and Matt Hughes is the current UFC welterweight champion.

BTW - if you're wondering what happened to my other posts about the UFC... I decided that they were too off topic for this blog and removed them. while this isn't an entirely work related blog (e.g. posts about traveling and SCUBA) it is primarily a work centric blog and having scores of UFC posts wouldn't be appropriate.

if you haven't heard yet, or watched the fight. Hughes was able to control Gracie on the ground and eventually took his back. when Hughes hit Gracie with a barrage of answered shots to the head, referee John Mcarthy stopped the fight. Hughes won by TKO in the first round.

I was reading some posts about the fight on sherdog.com and I was disappointed to read things like "Royce was robbed" and "the ref stopped it too quickly." just to be sure, I watched the fight again; I don’t believe the fight was stopped too quickly.

before the Hughes/Gracie fight, I heard a number of people (including some of my instructors) say things like "I would like to see Gracie win, but I think that Hughes will win." comments like this demonstrate a solid understanding of modern mixed martial arts (MMA). it’s not a real fight—there are time limits and rules.

a friend of mine argues that the first UFCs were basically ads for Gracie jujitsu and that Royce didn't have to fight any well-rounded opponents. however, one cannot ignore the fact that the Gracies were largely responsible for the success of the UFC (and all of MMA) and the introduction of grappling to the North American public. saying that they hoped that Gracie would win showed that these people respected what grappling has done for MMA. Royce deserves respect.

then there is the other side of these prediction. Matt Hughes is an example of the modern MMA fighter. he proved this by defeating Gracie-- Royce's first loss in the UFC. Matt Hughes has forced fans to deal with the reality of modern MMA.