Hardy and Condit

This was the best fight on the card, and didn't disappoint. Basically, the advice is "Don't hook with a hooker," but Condit went out and did just that, Carlos Condit and Dan Hardy threw hooks that landed pretty much at the same time.

But Condit landed on the tip of the chin, and Hardy hit Condit on the side of the head/jaw–Condit got pushed to the side, but Hardy's head snapped around like a weeble-wobble and down he went.

This is precisely why GSP fights the way he does. Going out and striking with a good striker with 4 oz gloves is basically getting into 50%-50% territory. If you want to tilt the odds in your favor, you got to hit and not get hit, and the best way to do that is superior position. Dan Hardy was critical of GSP for fighting boring, but in MMA you have to either A) sometimes be boring or B) lose fights.

And I'm not just talking about takedowns and ground and pound. Look at what happened to Anderson Silva–he went out and tried to jump all over Chael Sonnen, he tried to "be exciting" and he got caught by a vastly inferior striker and he was lucky to pull out the win. (And the UFC was even luckier, with Sonnen later failing a PED test–imagine if he'd won the title?) Silva usually lets at least half a round go by, just conducting the interview, checking on range, gauging speed. But responding to near-universal vilification, he went out and started banging and nearly lost his title.

I was rooting for Carlos Condit and a somewhat maligned Greg Jackson, so I was thrilled by the fight.