Uriah Hall versus Bubba McDaniel and Josh Samman versus Jimmy
Quinlan. What's not to like about these match-ups, huh? So let’s
get right to it.
Holy smokes, Josh Samman! You finished Jimmy with those
ridiculous double punches. I did not expect that. The round was
gearing up to be one of those semi-boring ones where a superior wrestler held
down a squirrelly fella who was active off his back, but ultimately couldn't keep the wrestler from holding him down. Until he did. And that was
all Josh needed. Once he took Jimmy’s
back, it took him only a short time to start landing those double punches and
it only took a few of them to convince Jimmy to tap.
"It basically
comes down to quitting." Jimmy admitted it. I am going to use
a word that I hate. I mean, I really freaking hate this word. But,
in this case, the word is appropriate. Refreshing. It is refreshing
to see a fighter straight up admit that he quit. I'm sure he hates that
he quit, but he's man enough not to lie to himself and to others by using some
lame excuse for the loss. He quit! The going got tough and he
pulled a No Mas. The good news is that
unlike Roberto Duran, Jimmy Quinlan is a mixed martial arts fighter. A loss is not the end of the world. Everyone loses. It’s all about learning from the loss and
becoming a better fighter. Hopefully
Jimmy can do that.
Speaking of learning from a loss, I’m not sure what Bubba is going
to learn. I can't help but think that
Dana White was punishing Bubba for his post-fight comments by feeding him to
Uriah. I am paraphrasing here, but Bubba basically shouted to the world
that he made King Casey quit. Those comments would be okay had Bubba beat
the living snot out of Casey, but that simply didn't happen. Casey tooled
him on the ground in the first stanza and claims to have had kidney problems in
the second. Who knows if the kidney problems were real? Regardless,
Bubba was rewarded with an oh-so-fun fight against the beast known as Uriah
Hall.
Hall is a
perplexing individual. At times this season, he has shown compassion
unlike any I have seen in 17 seasons of the Ultimate Fighter. In his
first fight to get into the house, he broke the arm of an ambitious young man.
No one knew until after the fight that the arm was broken. The kid
had fought through the pain. Uriah waited for him after the fight and
gave him, what appeared to be, genuine props for his heart and ability.
He also showed genuine concern for Adam Cella after he landed the
spinning heel kick that rocked the MMA world earlier this season. Yet
Uriah has also shown glimpses of a completely different guy, a guy who asked
Adam Cella if Adam's girlfriend was a bitch like he was. For no apparent
legitimate reason. And this was days AFTER he knocked Adam stiff with
that spinning heel kick. He has called out a team mate ("I guess I
would like to fight Luke") at a time when he should have been focused on
fighting members from team Jones. He has also lost his temper twice in
sparring, once against Luke and once against King Casey. At least, that's
what made it on television. Were there more outbursts?
With all that
being said, Uriah is a monster in the cage. There is a reason nobody
wants to fight him: because he wrecks their s#*t. What’d it take him? 10 seconds to knock Bubba McDaniel out? And Bubba is one of Jon Jones’s chief
sparring partners. He is a guy that
gives good work to the guy many
people claim is the best fighter alive not named Anderson Silva. As Joe Rogan would say, “That’s craaaazy.”
So that’s how the quarter finals played out and now we have a
pretty fricking cool pair of semi-finals to look forward to. The fights are:
Josh “Double Punch”
Samman versus Kelvin “Who’d Have Thunk?” Gastellum.
And
Uriah “I Can’t Wait for my Rematch with Chris Weidman” Hall versus
Dylan “I’m a Lot Better than You Thought” Andrews.
Should be good. Tune in
next time for my take on those fights.
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