The old guys just didn’t have enough to make the night very competitive in Honolulu during EliteXC’s latest attempt to legitimize their organization in the world of mixed martial arts. In each of the five televised bouts, a thirty plus year-old fighter failed miserably against a younger, stronger opponent. Whoever scheduled this fight card should have done a bit more homework.
Only one of the five televised matches lasted beyond the first round. Actually, all four of those bouts were stopped before the first round even reached its halfway point. And it wasn’t that the victorious fighters were even that good. It was just that they were pitted against much weaker and less capable opponents. In fact, Nick Diaz was probably the best of all the winning fighters on the night. Yet, it took Diaz over thirteen minutes to finally finish off his elderly opponent.
Although Diaz’s fight was not the main event of the evening, he was arguably the best fighter on the card. He picked apart a defensive Mushin Corbbrey and finally dismantled his thirty year-old opponent more than halfway through the third round. Corbbrey put up a formidable defense for a while, but really had nothing to offer offensively. Nevertheless, Diaz was forced to use a variety of different tactics which led to a more intriguing contest.
Following the Diaz fight, KJ Noons defended his lightweight championship against Yves Edwards who was not a very game opponent to say the least. The thirty-one year old Edwards carried a glass jaw into the cage and couldn’t even last a minute against Noons. He felt the wrath of a Noons thirty seconds into the fight and simply couldn’t recover.
Title fights should last longer than the 47 seconds it took Noons to flatten Edwards. Apparently, the thug part of the thugjitsu that Edwards practices must have went to the wrong Hawaiian island.
The other three fights on the undercard were also mismatches of a very poor nature. In the night’s first bout, thirty-seven year old Wayne Cole looked as if he didn’t even want to be in the cage. The younger Rafael Feijao only needed 2 minutes and 48 seconds to send his aged opponent stumbling back to the locker room.
Things didn’t get any better when 42 year-old Ron Waterman stepped out of the old folk’s home and took a quick beating from Dave “Pee Wee” Herman. The twenty-five year old Herman upped his mma record to 11-0 and left people scratching their heads as to why the EliteXC couldn’t find a better opponent. There was 2 minutes and 41 seconds remaining in the first round when the referee had to pull Herman off a battered Waterman.
The final old guy to prove he wasn’t getting any younger was thirty-five year-old Tony Bonello. Bonello brought in an mma record of 16-0-1 with 14 of those wins coming by submission. After watching Murilo Rua dispose of him in a little over three minutes, one would have to question who Bonello actually defeated.
Perhaps part of that record dated back to Bonello’s high school wrestling days because when Bonello went to his back he looked like a novice. It was almost like watching a bully pick on a defenseless kid in the schoolyard, only the defenseless kid in this case was seven years older than the bully.
The action didn’t get any better when announcer Bill Goldberg tried to interview Nick Diaz and KJ Noons inside the cage following the Noons fight. The two exchanged words and then proceeded to go after one another in something that looked better suited for the WWE.
Aside from the Diaz fight, there was only nine minutes of mixed martial arts action on the latest EliteXC television event. The organization did a very poor job of following up the Kimbo Slice debacle from a couple of weeks ago. However, the biggest mistake was made when these fights were scheduled.
Basically, a bunch of fighters who were past their prime came out and showed they were still capable of taking a quick beating. Most of the time, the action looked more like street fights than mixed martial arts contests.
The EliteXC does have some talented fighters, but as it showed on Saturday night, those talented fighters are far and few between. And if they continue to dig up television events similar to the previous two, a lot of people are going to start changing the channel. Every month, it seems as though the EliteXC is not helping, but rather hurting the sport of mixed martial arts.
EliteXC, Pictures, Recent News EliteXC, Kimbo Slice, KJ Noons, Murilo Rua, Mushin Corbbrey, Nick Diaz, Rafael Feijao, Ron Waterman, Wayne Cole, Yves Edwards
October 4th is the next time EliteXC will put on another national television event. That means it will have plenty of time to figure out how to improve on the deplorable ratings it received this past Saturday night. The Kimbo Slice factor will help boost the ratings as people are still curious. However, the EliteXC may be better off finding a quality opponent this time around.
This Saturday night, EliteXC will hold its first live event since the Kimbo Slice extravaganza that took place just two weeks ago. The event will take place in Honululu, Hawaii and will be televised live on Showtime. The cable audience will not be as widespread as the national televison audience that watched the May 31st event. In the past, the Showtime fight cards have been a positive for both the EliteXC as well as the sport. For whenever the bouts air on Showtime, there was significantly less fanfare than was seen on CBS. The organizatioin did without the elongated breaks or the elaborate entrances. It was simply a fight card featuring the main component everyone came to see, actual fighting.
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