Sunday, February 7, 2010

By Isaac Kuhlman

  In a battle for the ages (or ageless), Randy "The Natural" Couture faced Mark "The Hammer" Coleman in the main event of UFC 109: Relentless Saturday night from Las Vegas at the Mandalay Bay Events Center. The fight card was filled with some interesting fights (with some pretty big upsets as well), but the icing on the proverbial cake was definitely Couture's dominant performance against fellow UFC Hall-Of-Famer Coleman. The fight proved that Couture is a physical phenom at 46 years old, and he shows no signs of stopping.

  Without getting too much into whether or not Coleman was a good match for Couture in the first place, there is one thing that is certain. Couture is still at the top of his game, and it seems like he is getting better and better, as crazy as it sounds. Couture's boxing and "dirty" boxing was at an even more incredible level than in all of his previous fights combined. Maybe it was the fact that Coleman seemed to get tired quickly after being physically controlled by Couture for the entire first round, or maybe it was Couture's technique is really just that good. Either way, Couture thoroughly abused Coleman on the feet leaving Coleman practically speechless after the fight.

  "Wow. The guy's tough. The guy's real tough," said Coleman in the post-fight interview. He continued, "I don't know what the hell happened. I'm disappointed. I think I could do better. I'll be back."

  According to Dana White, if Coleman does fight again, it won't be for the UFC. In a post-fight interview, the UFC President stated, "I think tonight was Coleman's last fight in the UFC. He looked good against (Stephan) Bonnar...I'm not taking anything away from Mark Coleman. I have nothing but respect for him, and I'll say this now too. Mark Coleman has always been a stand-up guy with me. He'll always be a part of this organization."

  In the fight, Couture ended it at 1:09 of round 2 by rear-naked choke saying in the post-fight press conference, "Everything went great. I couldn't have mapped it out better."

  In a spectacular upset, Chael Sonnen defeated Nate Marquardt by unanimous decision after sustaining a very large cut suffered after Marquardt landed an elbow from bottom position. The blood poured out of Sonnen's head, but he still controlled Marquardt and dominated the fight throughout all three rounds. So much was said about Sonnen leading up to the fight (mostly about Anderson Silva), that some people thought he may be just talking too much trash. It turned out that he had good reason to say the things he did. He will now be next in line for the title after Vitor Belfort attempts to beat the champion of the middleweight division, Anderson Silva in Abu Dhabi later this year.

  Demian Maia, Paulo Thiago, and Matt Serra were some of the other big winners on the night, and the entire card only had four fights that ended before the last horn. It was a good card with some exciting fights, but the overall feeling that remained was that the fighters who were meant to perform well (Marquardt, Stann, Trigg, Coleman, Swick) went into their fights and got dominated. That alone shows how deep the talent pool is in the UFC.