Random Rants: Thoughts on Weekend Fights
March 18, 2008 by Sam Caplan
There was so much MMA action from this past weekend that I am still catching up. The problem though is that this sport never stops. There really is little time to play catchup because each day brings a whole new list of to-dos.
I was able to watch Eddie Alvarez vs. Andre Dida from DREAM.1, Phil Baroni vs. Kala Kolohe Hose at ICON Sport, and Jake Rosholt vs. Chad Jay from the Xtreme Fighting League.
I’ll start with Alvarez vs. Dida. I felt it was a great match and I was really impressed with Alvarez’s performance. It was kind of strange seeing Alvarez fight as such a light weight. I don’t remember seeing him that small before but he looked good. Alvarez showed some very good wrestling skill in the fight and his takedowns were solid. He also showed a strong chin in that he took several big shots from Dida and was able to maintain.
It wasn’t a flawless performance though as I felt he missed some opportunities to execute an armbar and a couple of rear naked chokes. Alvarez’s punching was solid but not quite as accurate as it normally is. There really aren’t many fighters with better technical boxing than Alvarez so I hold him to a different standard.
All in all though, it was a great lightweight debut for Alvarez and he definitely has a huge future at 155-160 lbs. It was a strong win against a a top guy in Dida.
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I’m going to rant about “Random” being spelled wrong!
j/k - don’t know if you saw it, but during the ICON webcast, they had a ProElite commercial that mentioned you by name and showed a pic of you sitting behind a computer.
Alvarez did look fantastic. I even won some money on him! I think he will go far in the tournament, possibly to the finals. I hope EliteXC makes mention of this participation in the future.