The best and worst from UFC Fight Night 133

The first-ever UFC show in the state of Idaho, Fight Night 133 ended up being a relatively entertaining show. There were some really bad points to the show but in terms of the fights, there wasn’t really a lot to complain about at all really, as we got some fun finishes and the fights that went the distance were relatively entertaining too.

Here are the best and worst moments from UFC Fight Night 133.

#1 Best: Niko Price’s crazy knockout

Niko Price left Randy Brown unconscious in seriously unique fashion

MMA is one of those beautiful sports that somehow finds a way to surprise you right when you think you’ve seen it all, and last night we got one of those surprises in the form of Niko Price’s wild knockout of Randy Brown.

The first round of the fight was primarily a grappling match, and one that Brown appeared to be winning. And it appeared that the second round was going the same way, until the fighters went into a scramble that saw Price look to roll for a leglock. As Brown defended the move, he found his head in an exposed position and that was all it took, as Price hit him with a series of hammer fists from the bottom that were somehow enough to knock him unconscious.

It was one of the craziest KO’s in UFC history – after all, who has the striking power to knock someone out from the bottom? The replay showed the key to Price’s success, though – he had his left foot braced around Brown’s head, which meant the head was held in place and guaranteed far more impact for the shots.

While it’s doubtful this move will take off like Anthony Pettis’s ‘Showtime kick’ or Anderson Silva’s front kick to the jaw will – both of those saw plenty of copycats – it was still the most memorable thing on last night’s show and another finish for Price, who has still never gone the distance in 6 UFC outings.

#1 Worst: Questionable judging marred some of the fights

The judges made a mess of the call in the fight between Dennis Bermudez and Rick Glenn

It feels like a while since we’ve had some really egregious judging in the UFC, but if questionable scorecards are your thing, then last night was the show for you. Okay, so realistically, of the 8 fights that went to the judges’ scorecards on this show, only 2 of them probably should’ve gone the other way. But even in the fights that went the right way, there were some weird scores.

Case in point, Alexander Volkanovski absolutely dominated Darren Elkins. He almost finished him in Round One, and clearly won all three rounds. But somehow the judges not only didn’t give him a 10-8 first round, but one actually gave Elkins a round! Meanwhile, Cat Zingano was given a 10-8 round in her fight with Marion Reneau and while she clearly won, none of the rounds in that fight saw her do as much damage as Volkanovski did.

The really bad call came in the fight between Dennis Bermudez and Rick Glenn, though. The first round clearly went to Glenn, as he pieced Bermudez up with his striking and didn’t allow ‘The Menace’ much offense despite Bermudez’s aggression. But the second and third rounds saw Bermudez get his takedown game going, and the third round, in particular, saw him do damage with elbows from the top, although he was also cut by an elbow from Glenn.

Somehow though, two of the three judges saw fit to award the fight to Glenn, with one somehow calling it 30-27! It was a truly baffling call and worse still, it probably leaves Bermudez clinging onto his UFC career by a thread, as it was his third split decision loss in a row.

#2 Best: Chad Mendes is back with a bang

Chad Mendes took out Myles Jury in seriously impressive fashion

It’d been over two and a half years since Chad Mendes had last fought in the UFC, and given his last two fights had ended with him on the wrong end of a knockout, most observers were quite rightly questioning how much ‘Money’ had left in the tank – especially as he was matched with a tough opponent in the form of #12 ranked 145lber Myles Jury.

In the end, we needn’t have worried. After taking his time to find his range, Mendes nailed Jury with a brutal left hand that sent him crashing down, and was relentless in looking for the finish, pounding Jury with bombs to the head until the referee was forced to step in. It looked like the time on the shelf following the two knockouts might’ve done Mendes a favour, and physically he looked fine too – not like a man coming off a PED bust at all.

The win should move Mendes back into the UFC rankings on Monday and the best thing is that the division has totally changed since he was last around – meaning he’s a fresh matchup for everyone from #6 Josh Emmett and #7 Mirsad Bektic to the champion Max Holloway and #1 contender Brian Ortega. Mendes is a little older than the rest at 33, but he’s clearly still got a lot to offer to the division.

#2 Worst: Is Dos Santos really back?

Junior dos Santos won, but still had problems with Blagoy Ivanov

Looking online after the show had finished, you’d have thought that Junior Dos Santos had dispatched of Blagoy Ivanov with a first-round knockout, there were that many calls that “JDS is back!” Unfortunately, while the former champion clearly won the fight – although I wouldn’t have given him a 50-45 scorecard – the only version of JDS that appeared to be “back” was the tentative shell of ‘Cigano’ that we’ve been seeing largely since 2013.

Sure, he put together some nice boxing combinations, threw in some flashy kicks for good measure, and appeared to have Ivanov in trouble in the fourth round, but he also took a lot of damage from the Bulgarian’s wilder punches – he arguably looked more of a mess than Ivanov by the end of the fight – and he spent much of the fifth round backing up despite Ivanov’s gas tank clearly being compromised.

Throw in the fact that physically, he didn’t look anywhere near as chiselled as he did in his 2010-12 prime, and I think it’s time to accept that while he’ll be able to defeat somewhat limited opponents like Ivanov, JDS will probably never be a true title challenger again. He’s simply taken too much damage over the past few years from Cain Velasquez, Stipe Miocic and Alistair Overeem.

I don’t think he’d stand a chance against Curtis Blaydes or Alexander Volkov for instance, and I think even Tai Tuivasa could give him problems. For a guy who was once recognised as a potential all-time great, that’s sad.

#3 Best: Northcutt is all heart

Sage Northcutt made quite the comeback to defeat Zak Ottow

While it looked like a flash knockdown at the time, the replay shown between rounds appeared to show that Zak Ottow’s short right hand in the opening seconds of the first round simply destroyed Sage Northcutt. His eyes rolled back into his head and for all intents and purposes, he was out. But Northcutt – a fighter who’s been accused of lacking heart before – somehow managed to survive the terrible start to the fight and by the end of the first round, it was he who was on offense – using a guillotine attempt to mount Ottow and do some real damage.

He was taken down to begin the second round – his takedown defense is clearly still a major weakness and one that Team Alpha Male will need to shore up if he’s to crack the upper echelon of the Welterweight division – but once he got up he peppered Ottow with some really crisp strikes, hurting him on a couple of occasions and knocking him down before finishing him off with some pretty violent hammer fists.

We’ve seen glimpses of Northcutt’s potential before but this was his best UFC showing by far – he showed a lot of heart to come back from a bad first round, and then showed some serious striking power to put Ottow away in the second. And it’s easy to forget because he seems to have been around forever now, but Sage is still only 22. If he can continue to improve at this rate – and can avoid taking too much punishment – then he might be a future contender after all.

#3 Worst: The shoddy pacing

Despite most of last night's fights being entertaining, the glacial pacing of the show made it hard to watch

Of the 13 fights on last night’s show, only 8 of them went the distance with 4 being finished before the end of the second round. Add up the cumulative time of all of the fights and you come out with a figure somewhere around 165 minutes. So why exactly did the whole show – from the opening Fight Pass bout between Jessica Aguilar and Jodie Esquibel to the end of the JDS/Ivanov fight – last for around 6 and a half hours?

The answer is the absolutely glacial pacing that the UFC’s shows on Fox Sports 1 tend to run at. The main card, for instance, was already over an hour old by the time a triumphant Chad Mendes left the cage – after just the second of the six scheduled fights. I know commercials are where the TV stations make a lot of their money, but the amount of dead time between fights last night made what was a solid card a real slog to get through.

With the UFC’s new deal with ESPN beginning in 2019 – and pacing apparently one of the things that the broadcasting giant want to address – hopefully, it won’t be a problem for too much longer. But with another 9 Fight Nights scheduled for 2018, it’s something we’ll still have to sit through for the remainder of 2018, and it’s head-scratching.