By Andrew Rosebrock

Thoughts from the balcony (literally, our seats were in the very first row of the upper tier):

Unfortunately I missed the first two fights, which included sadly Pequeno Nogueira’s debut. Perhaps that’s just as well, as the clips shown later in the night made it look like Pequeno took a pretty bad beating.

My friend Jameson and I made it to our seats just in time to catch the beginning of Alex Serdyukov vs. Luis Sapo.

Sapo started out the round looking slick–moving well, slipping Serdyukov’s punches, and throwing sharp counterpunches and leg kicks, but Serdyukov’s walking him down seemed to intimidate him to the point where he became less effective as the round went on. The end of the fight kind of abruptly in the first when Sapo flopped to the floor and Serdyukov jumped mount and pounded away until the end of the round, with Sapo subsequently quitting on the stool. As far as Jameson and I could tell, Sapo had an ankle injury going into the fight (one was wrapped, and heavily at that) and the… flop was a result of it giving out. I’m not sure how that explains Sapo looking punchy after only 15 seconds or so of mounted punches (granted Sedyukov was very effective in mount), but that’s at least part of the mystery solved.

Next up was Tim McKenzie fighting Jeremy Lang at 185, which I took as some sort of cosmic punishment for some of my more recent sins. Terrible fight. McKenzie had no takedown defense, Lang had no effective offense after the takedown: a classic clash of dudes with no discernible talent. The only entertainment in the fight came from the black comedy of Steve “The Angel of Death” Mazzagatti once again being late to stop a fight, after McKenzie caught Lang with the knee early in the third and brought it home with a guillotine choke that Mazzagatti didn’t step in to break up until a good 10 seconds after it was clear to everyone in the building that Lang was completely out.

Chase Beebe vs. Will Ribeiro was the next fight and thank God for it, because another fight the caliber of McKenzie/Lang would have driven me straight out the building. (McCullough/Alexander was worse, but I had recovered by then.) The first round was utterly brilliant with Ribeiro pushing the pace right from the start, throwing extremely vicious punches, mixing it up with spinning back kicks (two out of three of which landed flush in the first round alone, if I remember correctly), spinning backfists, and a nasty little back elbow, along with two or three credible guillotine chokes (which Beebe certainly might have succumbed to if his next weren’t built like Sean Sherk’s or Matt Hughes’). Beebe was not without his own offense however, including a beautiful little uppercut out of the clinch that wobbled Ribeiro early in the proceedings. That said, the first round clearly belonged to Ribeiro.

The second and third rounds slowed the pace considerably, as Beebe and Ribeiro spent most of the second round in a grounded stalemate with Beebe in top position, and by the time the third round had begun Ribeiro respected the takedown too much to let go like he had in the first.

At the end of the fight I thought it was more or less clear that Ribeiro had won two out of 3 rounds and wasn’t at all surprised to see him pick up the decision. What I was surprised by was the whithering reaction the decision got from the fans. Since Ribeiro put on a pretty damn good show and Beebe can’t have THAT many fans, I can only assume the type of person who goes to MMA cards in Sacramento is pretty damn xenophobic. Who would have thought?

After that was my third most anticipated fight of the night (behind the title fights), Mike Thomas Brown vs. Jeff Curran. Though I looked forward to this fight, I also dreaded it for obvious reasons: Brown is a strong wrestler with good submission defense who isn’t known for his explosive finishing ability and Curran is a terrible wrestler with great but not superlative jiu jitsu and (kick)boxing. Unsurprisingly, in between bouts of standup fighting where Curran showed handsome but not terribly effective striking, the fight reached a deadlock capable of sending Cell into paroxysms of joy. Brown was simply too good of a wrestler to let Curran up and too good of a jiu jitsu practicioner to be submitted or swept. Brown took the decision easily and I tip my hat to him (he’ll be an excellent challenger for Faber), but it wasn’t a terribly entertaining fight.

The final prelim fight, Donald Cerrone vs. Danny Castillo, didn’t make it out of the first minute so there isn’t much to comment on. Cerrone is a huge, 6′0 lightweight and his lankiness served him well in allowing him to grab an arm after a takedown and some attempted ground and pound by Castillo.

Kenneth Alexander vs. Rob McCullough doesn’t bear much commentary in my opinion: one inept fighter with good technique, one inept fighter with terrible technique, 10,000 seriously annoyed fans is pretty much the shape of it. The drunken heckling in my section was amusing, as was a coincidental moment in the fight where my supremely bored friend yelled out (to neither fighter in particular) “KICK HIM IN THE BALLS,” shortly before one of the fighters got kneed in the balls. That really was the highlight of the fight to me.

Grigsby vs. Munoz was a well-timed opportunity to get the crowd back into the fight as the arena was throughout the night extremely supportive of the hometown fighters and Munoz delivered a vicious knockout. My friend compared Grigsby’s physique to Cheick Kongo’s early on in the fight and I guess that jynxed him and allowed Munoz to take him down and pound him out.

Thanks to the big knockout/hometown fighter making good, everyone was pretty amped for Torres vs. Maeda which was HELLA NUTS. I know I’ve been kind of dry and verbose all this time but this fight was HELLA NUTS. Maeda/Torres is probably the prototypical Dana White endorsed brawl taken to the highest level of quality: both fighters showed ample amounts of heart, there was enough ground fighting to remind the audience they are in fact watching MMA, and there was lots and lots of striking. I’ll probably download the show (from THE USUAL PLACE~) tomorrow just to watch this fight over again. Also: the complete absence of Maeda’s right eye at the end of the fight was mildly disturbing. I guess that’s what happens when you go against an intelligent fighter with 8 inches (!) of reach advantage.

Finally, the main event. Jameson had been in Pulver’s corner all night and in the several weeks since we bought tickets to the show, I personally had no dog in the fight but was looking to be seriously entertained. We were both disappointed in our way, but it’s hard to not be in some form or fashion compelled by a Urijah Faber fight. His striking was totally unexpected for me: the powerful right hooks, the dirty boxing, the head movement, all of them surprised me to one degree or another. And with Faber displaying such talent and such athleticism, Pulver was forced to display his heart. I’d actually like to think Pulver could have won the fight if he had had more of a killer instinct; if he had ferociously jumped on Faber any of the multiple times one of Pulver’s punches gave him pause, but Faber may just as well have pulled through. He’s a fascinating fighter, there can be no doubting that.

I don’t think Faber/Pulver was an epically entertaining fight, but Pulver played a good foil for the Urijah Faber Show and that’s good enough.

All in all a fine waste of an afternoon, an evening, and $40. It wouldn’t surprise me if WEC comes back to Sacramento early and often, the crowd was ridiculously large for WEC’s profile (the entire lower bowl was sold out with a few thousand more hanging out in the upper tier) and appropriately rabid, especially for Faber. Despite his cornrows, the dude is a star.