UFC light heavyweight champion Jon “Bones” Jones successfully defended his title for a seventh straight time, defeating Brazilian Glover Teixeira in a five-round affair that highlighted an exceptional evening in Baltimore.
Lumberjack Performance by Bones
During a clinch against the cage in the first round, Jones used an elbow crank on Teixeira’s right arm, similar to the submission used by Frank Mir in his UFC 36 victory over Pete Williams in 2002. It generally puts an extreme amount of pressure on the inside of the shoulder, but a dual benefit for Jones was that he felt Glover’s elbow pop twice.
From that point on, the Brazilian was likely never the same, with the champ continuing to pick away at him like a lumberjack to a tree. While the first cut was small, he did so much more over the next four rounds that the challenger left the arena with not just pain in his shoulder, but damage to his ribs and the obvious cuts to his face.
It was another masterful performance by the young champion, who is now set for a rematch against Alexander Gustafsson, someone he refused to comment on at the post-fight press conference.
While early prognostication pegged the second encounter between these two to take place at the location where they first met (Toronto), UFC president Dana White hinted that it could go down in a stadium in Sweden, where the company can benefit from a potentially massive large gate (due to an estimated attendance figure over 40,000 fans) in conjunction with what his expected to be a larger than normal pay-per-view buy rate, in excess of over one-million buys.
Rumble, Young Man, Rumble
Anthony Johnson’s return to the big show was an exceptional one, as he dominated highly ranked light heavyweight Phil Davis for three straight rounds. “Mr. Wonderful” simply could not get his game going as “Rumble” stifled him at every intersection of the fight. While Johnson did not call anyone out, rest assured, the upper echelon of the division has taken notice.
A Deserving Performance Bonus goes to…
While the UFC understandably handed out the Fight of the Night bonus to Takanori Gomi and Isaac Vallie-Flagg, the performance of the night bonuses were much more difficult to to select. While I concur with Dana’s assessment that newcomer Chris Beal’s flying knee was deserving of one, I did raise an eyebrow when he and UFC matchmaker Joe Silva selected Joseph Benavidez for the other one.
While the “Joe-a-constrictor’s” performance was a thing of beauty, I would have given the nod to Luke Rockhold’s finish of Tim Boetsch.
To wit, Rockhold defended a single leg takedown on his left leg by first sprawling then swinging that very leg under “The Barbarian’s” chin, then locking it up with his other leg, placing his opponent into an inverted triangle choke. While applying pressure with his legs, he then maneuvered and grabbed Tim’s right arm, setting up a kimura, which he used to end the bout at 2:08 of the first round.
It was high level submission grappling that was very technical and extremely well implemented. In my honest opinion, I believe Rockhold should have earned one of the performance of the night bonuses. Then again, Dana did state he’ll be cutting some extra cheques for many of the fighters, which likely means Rockhold will get some extra money, but I wonder if it will be around the $50K the official bonus winners accumulated.
Three Stars
In typical Canadian fashion, my three stars for UFC 172 are:
1. Anthony Johnson
2. Jon Jones
3. Jim Miller (for being a class act and not kicking Yancy Medeiros off of him after choking him unconscious — Jim has always been classy, and that’s more proof right there)
News and Notes
During the post-fight press conference scrum, White mentioned Nate Diaz is ready to come back and fight, so Joe Silva will attempt to get him a bout. Not so much for Nick Diaz though, who Dana stated has enough money to keep him away from competing for awhile … The signing of Andre Arlovski was because White “liked him” and that the former UFC heavyweight champion and his management approached him, stating he was ready to come back to the UFC … Despite Vitor Belfort’s claims that he has passed all self-taken tests, “The Phenom” still has his work cut out for him before he gets a license to compete in Nevada.