Never Again in Denver — PLEASE!
I watched the Ultimate Fight Night 13 tonight and watched as numerous fighters were unlike themselves and this was due to the high altitude of the Denver venue. While it is easy to say that they are fighters and they should have been better prepared, the kind of training and conditioning that would need to take place in order to appear unaffected in this altitude would typically involve an extreme modification of a fighter’s training regimen.
I truly believe this was the cause of several fights results. Notably, Tim Boetsch completely gassed which was very unexpected and I believe this caused him to lose.
Kenny Florian was very impressive in his fight against Joe Lauzon. I expected it to be a lot closer and actually picked Lauzon to win as Florian hadn’t looked all that great to me recently. Perhaps Florian is back on track?
Thiago Alves caught Karo Parisyan with a knee to the face that dropped him and he was not defending himself momentarily and it was stopped by the referee. Parisyan was very upset with the stoppage. There are a lot of Karo haters out there that criticize him for putting on boring fights and eking out wins. This win by Alves will surely make them happy. Parisyan is now even further away from a title shot now that he was once poised to receive in the past but was unable to compete due to injury.
Houston Alexander got knocked out in 8 seconds which started with a superman punch from James Irvin followed by a solid connecting punch while Alexander was down which cemented the victory. Alexander claims he was fine and pled to Steve Mazzagatti that it was stopped prematurely.
Probably the fight of the night (although I haven’t seen the rest of the undercard) would be Nate Diaz vs Kurt Pellegrino. This fight was action packed from the start and teetered back and forth with momentum until Diaz finally through ‘Batman’ into his patented triangle choke upon which locking up, Diaz threw his arms out signifying victory and also flexed to place an exclamation point on his impending win.
It was awesome to see free UFC on Spike for 3 hours which is what the fans asked for in droves. It was great to see them respond and I’m sure the ratings will indicate that it was worth it. As mentioned though, I would never again put on a show in Denver again. Also, while I’m asking for favors – how about showing this in HD? Now that would be amazing!