THE CANADIAN PRESS
FAIRFAX, Va. — Gray (The Bully) Maynard avenged a 2007 loss to Nate Diaz and moved a step closer to a lightweight title shot with a split decision win over Diaz in the main event of an Ultimate Fight Night card Monday night.
Maynard got the 30-27, 29-28, 28-29 edge in a scrappy mixed martial arts fight that was accompanied by plenty of smack talking in the cage at the Patriot Center on the campus of George Mason University.
The two have history and there was no pleasantries before the opening bell. Diaz won Season 5 of "The Ultimate Fighter," submitting Maynard in the semifinals, although the fight was not a three-round affair and so did not count against Maynard in his record.
The physical disparity between the two fighters did not add to the style value of the contest. The six-foot Diaz had four inches in height and six in reach on Maynard.
Maynard was bleeding from the right eye within the first minute. "You ran into his elbow. He didn’t hit you with nothing, he didn’t touch you," UFC Hall of Famer Randy (The Natural) Couture told him after an even first round that saw both fighters gesticulating at each other.
Maynard found the range in the second, tagging Diaz with a right to the head. Midway through, he put Diaz on the ground with a knee. Diaz scored from the outside and did some more talking as the round ended. Nasty looks were exchanged as they walked to their corners.
"Stop playing around with him. That’s his game, that’s not your game," Couture admonished Maynard.
It was more of the same standup in the third, with Diaz finding his range more.
Maynard (10-0 with one no contest) is unbeaten since the first Diaz fight and has won seven straight in the UFC. A date with 155-pound champion B.J. Penn may not be far away.
Diaz (11-5) is now 6-3 in the UFC.
Earlier, young Canadian welterweight Rory (The Water Boy) MacDonald celebrated his UFC debut with an impressive first-round win over veteran Mike (The Joker) Guymon.
The 20-year-old from Kelowna, B.C., dispatched the 35-year-old from California via armbar at 4:27 of the first round. MacDonald (10-0) was wobbled briefly by a right hand but kept his cool and worked his way into position for the submission.
Guymon (12-3-1) was also making his UFC debut.
Monday’s card featured two other "Ultimate Fighter" winners: welterweight Amir Saddollah (Season 7) and lightweight Efrain Escudero (Season 8).
Sadollah (4-1) looked impressive in winning by unanimous decision to end (Bad) Brad Blackburn’s six-fight unbeaten string. Sadollah rocked Blackburn (15-9-1 with one no contest) with a left late in the first round and hurt the IFL veteran with a knee to the chin early in the third.
Evan Dunham (10-0) handed Escudero his first loss as a pro, bending his arm at a ugly angle before Escudero finally tapped to the armbar at 1:59 of the third round.
Escudero (13-1) spent most of 2009 on the sidelines with a rib injury, fighting just once. But he showed the standup power that stopped Cole Miller at UFC 103 in September, hurting Dunham in the first round. Dunham took Escudero down in the second and did some damage of his own. He did it again in the third, then ended it after transitioning slickly to a triangle choke and armbar.
Middleweight Aaron (A-Train) Simpson (7-0) survived a beating in the first round to win an entertaining split decision over (Filthy) Tom Lawlor.
The 35-year-old Simpson, a former all-American wrestler from Arizona State who had won all six of his previous fights by TKO, was rocked early and often in a first round he was lucky to escape.
"He came at me hard … he surprised me a little bit. He hit me a little harder than I thought he was going to," said Simpson.
Simpson (7-0) rallied in the second, making it a far more even contest. The two exchanged takedowns in the third, with Simpson winning the war on the ground, controlling an exhausted Lawlor (6-2 with one no contest).
The judges scored it 29-28, 29-28, 28-29 for Simpson. One could argue the first round should have been 10-8 for Lawlor, which would have changed the outcome.
In other middleweight action, Chris (The Crippler) Leben won a unanimous decision over Jay Silva, Gerald Harris stopped John Salter on a third-round TKO and Nick Catone won a split decision over Jesse Forbes.
In other lightweight bouts, Rafael Dos Anjos scored a unanimous decision over Kyle Bradley and Thiago Tavares and Nick Lentz fought to a majority draw.
Welterweight Rick (The Horror) Story won a split decision over Jesse Lennox.
