Jason MacDonald

Jason 'The Athlete' MacDonald is a Canadian mixed martial artist. He lives in Red Deer, Alta., with his wife Kelly and four children, boys Tristin and Keel, and girls Jett and True. He blogs regularly for Sportsnet.ca.

Tito Ortiz went several minutes without throwing a punch in the third round.

I’m wrapping things up here in Las Vegas, doing the majority of my training with Mike Pyle, Jay Hieron, Martin Kampmann and Evan Dunham, as well as K-1 fighter Ray Sefo. It’s been really good. These guys are great guys, great training partners. I’ve had a lot of good rounds and I’ve picked up a lot of little things from them.

I heard through the rumour mill that Solomon Hutcherson thinks I’m going to be an easy fight. I don’t understand how anyone who has watched any of my fights thinks I can be an easy fight, so I think he’s in for a rude awakening. He said in his last fight he wasn’t his best. Well, against me he’s going to need his very, very best.

Last Saturday, we went to see UFC 106 live. It always takes me off-guard when I see a show in Vegas how nobody shows up for the prelims. We were there for the first fight and these guys were fighting in front of basically an empty arena. It blows my mind that people will pay $1,000 for tickets to the UFC and not show up to watch it in its entirety. There were some pretty good fights on the undercard.

Overall it was a pretty decent UFC considering it didn’t have any title fights. The UFC is putting on so many shows, sometimes you watch some of them and they feel watered down. I can remember when I used to watch the UFC and the main card was filled with big-name fights and the undercard was filled with young up-and-comers.

Now there are so many shows it does feel watered down with only five titles and a number of champions injured because they’re overworked. They fight so much and get banged up.

I spoke to someone who said he paid $2,000 for his ticket when the announced main event was Lesnar-Carwin. And when Lesnar got injured and the main event was changed a buddy, who sat right beside him, bought his ticket for $1,000.

I thought Josh Koscheck fought a brilliant fight against Anthony Johnson. He stayed in his face the whole time and never got bullied around. As expected, he threatened him with takedowns but also with solid punches. Johnson couldn’t just guard against the takedown, he had to worry about both.

Johnson definitely got exposed on the ground. He reminded me of Cheick Kongo; on the ground, he looked like a fish out of water.

As for Josh thinking he should be higher than Dan Hardy, the reality is the UFC is putting on so many cards that they need contenders so they’re fast-tracking guys. Koscheck already had his shot at Georges St. Pierre two years ago. Do I think Hardy is going to beat GSP? Absolutely not, but they need contenders.

Koscheck fought a great fight, but his last fight was against a guy who was out of the UFC for a long time, and the fight before that he was knocked out by Paulo Thiago. So I don’t agree with what he said at all.

I really enjoyed the Tito Ortiz-Forrest Griffin fight. But I expected more out of Tito, especially after all that time since his last fight, I figured he’d want to put on a better show.

I was also disappointed with him because it seems every time he fights he has an excuse. This time he said he was training hurt. I don’t doubt he was hurt (I heard from people that he was) but I think you have to really look at changing your training if you’re always getting hurt.

He also said he felt he was robbed of the decision. I don’t know about that. I think going into the third round it was Tito’s fight to lose. And he didn’t do anything at all for almost the entire round. I think it was almost four minutes into the third before he threw a punch. You can’t expect to win a fight when you do absolutely nothing for practically a full round. I expected him to come back and really put on a good show and I was disappointed with his performance.

And then of course there are the problems with judging. I think there are huge issues with the 10-point system in MMA. That system was made for boxing, and we’re not boxing. There really has to be a new way of judging fights.

Some of these great wrestlers are scoring a lot of points for a takedown even when the other guy immediately jumps right back up. But then another guy comes razor close to a submission but doesn’t quite get it and he gets no points!

Maybe they should have a system with check marks: this guy did more during an exchange, so he gets a check mark; this guy got more takedowns so he gets a check mark. I don’t know, but there’s got to be a better system.

One final thought about Phil Baroni. I think it’s sad that after all these fights to get himself back into the UFC that he’s not able to get through one round, let alone three. I think it’s appalling that he’s had all this time to prepare and he was gassed halfway through the first. On the other hand, Amir Sadollah had a great fight. He came out, with not a lot of experience, but he was able to land basically every punch he threw. He threw everything but the kitchen sink at him. Good win for him and a great experience.