UFC 87 has come and gone, we’ve had some time to digest it, so it is time to reflect — GSP defended the Welterweight title against the clear #1 contender, and while he didn’t finish him, he absolutely dominated him. Brock Lesnar scores his first win in the UFC, but does so in a very underwhelming fashion. Kenny Florian moves up the ladder of 155 against a very tough Roger Huerta. Chieck Kongo doesn’t like Joe Rogan. We had a lot go down last night, so let’s run down some of the more important aspects of UFC 87:

Brock Lesnar
Brock Lesnar turned into the biggest story of the night, picking up his second career victory in MMA, first in the UFC ring. But, we’ve learned absolutely nothing about Brock Lesnar when it comes to MMA, again. This is going to get frustrating, I think. What Brock displayed last night was what most people already knew or assumed about Brock: he is a giant ball of muscle, he has very good wrestling and his hands are so big that is hard for them not to hurt. Much like his opponent Herring’s lack of killer instinct when facing off against Nogueira in UFC, Brock did not know how to follow up on what was a huge right hand to start off the fight. It was almost comical the force behind it — he levels Herring with it (who to his credit stayed in the fight) and then spears at him, overshooting Herring by a bit. Lesnar’s speed and sheer power were impressive. The fact that he could launch himself like that, I believe was meant to impress everybody in the arena and watching on PPV. The punch knocked Herring onto his ass and the momentum actually had him roll over. With a little bit more seasoning, Lesnar could have easily finished that fight right then and there. The rest of the fight was very uneventful, 3 rounds of Brock taking him down, getting superior positioning and not knowing how to follow up on it.

The important things we still don’t know are: Can Brock Lesnar take a punch? Has he learned enough to defend submission attempts from those well-versed in BJJ? How is his stamina when somebody is taking the fight back to him or he himself is working really hard? We learned none of these things, as Herring on the ground had absolutely no chance at doing much of anything, as Lesnar’s sheer size alone kept Herring down. I don’t know if the weight range for heavyweight has ever been questioned in my mind before this fight, but there was about a 40 - 50 lbs weight difference between these two guys. Lesnar cut to 265, but told Goldberg he walks around at about 285. I mean, that is muscle, too. Herring got off a few ok shots, but never anything clean or with any power behind it. Then comes the fact that Lesnar really didn’t do all that much in this fight, as he didn’t have to. He could simply pin Herring down, throw a few quick hammer fists and then change positions. He kept active enough to prevent the stand-up from the ref, but did little enough to never really tire him.

If we did learn anything, it was that Brock has the ability to stay calm and think things through. Maybe in the future when he has more tools to rely on this can be, beyond his size and ability, his best asset. We also learned that sportsmanship is not in his vocabulary.

Jon Fitch
After last night, it is clear (not that it wasn’t before, but more so now) that Jon Fitch is a very tough competitor. Fitch took everything GSP had to offer, was pummeled almost endlessly it felt, and still keep coming or found a way to defend himself. I think if it were a different ref things might have gone differently, but Fitch still found ways to keep in the fight, like after getting stunned go for GSP’s legs or pull guard right away. The only problem was, he really did nothing to ever put GSP in even an ounce of danger. If you believed the hype going into this fight with GSP being #1 at 170 and Jon Fitch being #2, it is going to get pretty lonely at the top for GSP. This is where Mike Goldberg enthusiastically says “Absolutely!”

GSP
Was it just me, or were Rogan and Goldberg completely ignoring anything of note GSP did? Fitch would get hit in the jaw and throw some wild, reactionary jab that grazes St. Pierre and you’d hear “Oh wow what a right from Fitch!” On top of that, he doesn’t get a post-fight interview due to time constraints and the rushed BJ Penn encounter. “I’d like to thank….” “Great fight, Georges, we’re out of time.”

Kenny Florian
Kenny Florian is for real. I don’t know if there is much else to say about Florian. There was some doubt going into this fight if he could take it to Huerta, if he would overrate his own stand up and stand with Huerta and get schooled, but he held his own and dominated Huerta. Anything Huerta did, Florian was able to defend. I think it is now or never for Florian to get his shot at BJ Penn, but of course, it looks like Penn will challenge GSP first, which means Florian will most likely have to wait to fight Penn, or even have to fight Sean Sherk again.