So the second dual event day in UFC history began with a show in New Zealand that nobody saw with a bunch of no-names fighting their asses off, an epic fight between Hatsu Hioki and Charles Oliveira, Jared Rosholt stinking up the joint and Nate The Great turning back the clock a bit. The other show in San Antonio had great, quick prelims followed by a mostly boring main card mired by abysmal judging that was almost sleep-inducing at times until the main event came along and woke everyone up. Swanson vs Stephens was every bit the barn burner that was advertised to us and for the first time in forever we had a couple of main eventers who didn't sell us wolf tickets or try to bore us to sleep. They went in there to fight. Every main card fight prior to theirs went to decision and the twittersphere was praying to the asshole MMA gods not to allow this one to also go to the cards but by the end of it I don't think one person was pissed that it did. Top to bottom, the card did suck and even that great main event didn't lift the paying audience out of its malaise however. It was a mostly humdrum affair capped off by a tone deaf and basically Giesian statement during the post-fight show by sorry excuse for a journalist and self-proclaimed Rosa Parks of MMA Karyn Bryant awkwardly calling out Deadspin's Tim Marchman by saying that Deadspin was dead wrong (get it) for "daring" to ask the question "
whatever happened to the UFC?" because this card was AWESOME. I wish Fox Sports didn't allow this shameless cheerleading on their sports news show. But then again it's nothing compared to what they pass off as news programming on their Republican Propaganda channel so I don't know why I'm surprised. It's seriously the typical GAF caricature of enthusiast press come to life.
Oh and that Karyn Bryant thing was followed by a hilariously bad public statement read on the air by Bryant from Chael Sonnen about his new failed drug test basically saying that he was using this stuff to get off TRT and that he would work with the commissions to help educate them. Hilarious shit, really. I gave him the benefit of the doubt in his previous drug test failures because his explanations actually made sense, especially the more recent one coming off of commission-approved TRT, but this is just a bridge too far.
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