UFC 96: Jackson vs. Jardine Discussion

[jakkups]

UFC 96: Jackson vs. Jardine



UFC 96: Jackson vs. Jardine is an upcoming mixed martial arts event to be held by the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC). It will be held in Columbus, Ohio on March 7, 2009 at Nationwide Arena.

Fights
Main Card
Light Heavyweight bout: Quinton Jackson vs. Keith Jardine
Heavyweight bout: Shane Carwin vs. Gabriel Gonzaga
Welterweight bout: Matt Brown vs. Pete Sell
Light Heavyweight bout: Matt Hamill vs. Mark Munoz
Lightweight bout: Gray Maynard vs. Jim Miller

Preliminary Card
Welterweight bout: Tamdan McCrory vs. Ryan Madigan
Middleweight bout: Kendall Grove vs. Jason Day
Light Heavyweight bout: Tim Boetsch vs. Jason Brilz
Light Heavyweight bout: Brandon Vera vs. Mike Patt
Lightweight bout: Aaron Riley vs. Shane Nelson

Countdown


In-Depth Preview


Dana White's UFC 96 Video Blog
Taped on 3/2/09


Taped on 3/3/09


Taped on 3/4 and 3/5

[Dice]

What did Ohio do to get such a terrible card?

[Testdead]

Jackson will tax Jardines ass.

[Dice]

Gray Maynerd and Jim Miller is gonna be a good one if Maynerd doesnt Lay and Pray like always

[JabSandwich]

Gray Maynerd and Jim Miller is gonna be a good one if Maynerd doesnt Lay and Pray like always

i'd love to see him try, Miller's got some slick jitz. just hope he doesn't get a trigger happy ref like in his last fite

[jakkups]

The People vs. Keith Jardine

As he usually does, Keith Jardine will jog into Saturday’s Octagon appointment -- this time against Quinton Jackson -- against a soundtrack of silence.

No one boos Jardine, exactly, but no one really cheers for him. Ask how he invites apathy, and no one will be able to articulate why.

He’s hardly a reluctant slugger: He’ll wade in and get dirty, as he did against Chuck Liddell. He’s not a braggart, not a reformed street thug with a mouth bigger than his ability. He holds wins over three of the biggest names in the 205-pound division: former champion Liddell, former champion Forrest Griffin and Brandon Vera.

So what’s the problem? Why accuse Jardine of contributing to an overpriced, underwhelming UFC 96? ($44.95, plus applicable sales taxes.)

Three possible answers:

1. He hears the final bell nearly 50 percent of the time. There are no spectacular finishes in the Jardine arsenal: If he’s going to win, it’s likely going to be because he sucks you into a war of attrition, taxing your conditioning and earning the victory by unraveling a few more feet of guts.

Put more succinctly: He don’t win pretty.

2. He’s been broken before. If Jardine’s roughhouse style remained unsolved, there would be some mystery -- as in the case of Lyoto Machida -- as to whether this fight will be the one in which he’s figured out.

Instead, he’s suffered abrupt batterings that have made him look like Peter McNeely to his opponent’s Tyson. Houston Alexander made him forget the entirety of third grade; Wanderlei Silva used his head for batting practice. There’s no aura surrounding his methodology. He’s talented but not immune to a primitive bee-swarm of an attack.

3. He’s kind of a bore. Not necessarily athletically, but in general. In a sport full of big archetypes, he looks the part of a Hell’s Angel on parole: nasty, frightening, prone to clubbing people with a plumber’s wrench.

But that’s about where the color ends. His attitude isn’t particularly intimidating. (Seems like a pretty pleasant guy, actually.) He doesn’t say anything to make the audience love him or hate him. As a result, there’s not much emotional investment in the outcome. If he beats Jackson, hey, he’s delivered the upset special on a platter before. If he doesn’t, it’s just the latest in a line of losses that didn’t shake anyone’s ground.

Bizarrely, it’s this kind of collective public coma that makes me want to root for the guy. Jardine puts in his hours at Greg Jackson’s gym in Albuquerque, sweats and bleeds in just as much volume as anyone in the sport and enjoys few of the fringe benefits. I’ve yet to see him endorse a corporate giant (Rashad Evans and Microsoft), bag the ring card girl (do your own research) or throw an after-party (everyone else).

Maybe his lack of a niche is his niche: the blue-collar guy who doesn’t feel the need to invent a persona or take big risks in order to rally a following. He goes to the gym and does his job: no fanfare, no fireworks, little attention. That’s 95 percent of the working population.

I doubt much would change if he goes on to beat Jackson Saturday. It puts him on the fast track to nowhere, as he and Evans have already declared they would never fight each other. Jardine could go on to defeat the majority of the UFC’s light heavyweights and probably never be a substantial ticket draw.

Is it too bad? That depends on Jardine. We’re too quick to assume that everyone in the sport clamors for the accompanying attention and ego inflation. In some cases, athletes enjoy the competition -- and the relative anonymity of flying under the radar.

One advantage to being the invisible man: no one sees you coming.

[phallus]

i like the dean of mean, but i don't see him beating rampage. jackson will knock jardine's ass out and run around the cage howling with his chain around his neck

[jakkups]

MATT BROWN EXPECTS TO BANG IT OUT AT UFC 96

Matt Brown will be making his return to the Octagon at UFC 96 against Pete “Drago” Sell. Brown was last seen at UFC 91 where he submitted Ryan Thomas after taking the fight on short notice.

As he prepares to deal with Sell, he will do so at a different camp than in the past. Moving out to Las Vegas to expand his training regimen, Brown discussed his recent transition and the reasoning behind it.

“There was a lot of things,” he told MMAWeekly Radio recently. “The biggest thing was just to get refreshed in life. Change things up and get away from the norm. A lot of it, after being in the show and everything in Ohio, people started putting me up on a pedestal. I needed to come out here and be around a lot more UFC fighters where I'm kind of a nobody.

"I train mainly at Warrior Training Center. They're some great training partners out in Cincinnati. I love everyone out there. It wasn't so much the training that brought me out here. Jorge's gym, nothing against it, but it was more of a jiu-jitsu gym. That's never been my strong point. I like to stand up and bang. I work with better Muay Thai and boxer guys out here.”

As luck may have it, Brown’s next fight happens to be back in his home state of Ohio. Realizing that he was fighting on this card prior to making the move, he was planning to take his camp out of his home state regardless. “I was originally not planning to have my camp in Ohio to avoid distractions when I was going to fight on this card. Once I came out here in Vegas, I got a lot of good friends out here and decided to make it a permanent move.”

He is excited about having the opportunity to showcase his skills to his hometown fans. “This is a dream come true to fight in front of my home town. There is going to be close to 100 people in my family there, so it's going to be pretty crazy for me.”

Having a crowd chanting his name isn’t something that he’s necessarily used to. After all, prior to his stint on The Ultimate Fighter, Brown wasn’t the cheered-for fighter. This will more than likely not be the case for this fight.

“I've never really had crowds cheer for me until I went to Atlanta. That was the first time and it was just a weird feeling. I was never famous in the local scene and stuff," he recalled. "I never really had a fan following until I made it on The Ultimate Fighter. All of a sudden I got 20,000 people cheering for me. Once that bell rings, you're not thinking too much about the crowd. You're worried about the guy in the ring knocking your head off.”

Brown’s opponent is no slouch either. Sell has had an up and down career in the Ultimate Fighting Championship, however most would be hard-pressed to find a boring fight that he’s been part of. Sell trains with former UFC welterweight champion Matt Serra and has one of the most memorable fights ever in the UFC when he lost to Scott Smith. Even though he lost that fight, it was an extremely entertaining fight from start to finish. That’s what Brown is hoping for, not to mention the fact that this fight has fight of the night potential written all over it.

“I watched Pete Sell all the way back from UFC 51 when he fought Phil Baroni,” he said. “I always expected him to do a lot better than he did. I always thought he was a real talented guy. As soon as they called me and said they were looking to have me fight Pete Sell, I jumped all over that. I'm ready to get that fight of the night bonus. I don't think he's going to do a lot of shooting or pulling guard or anything like that. He's going to stand and we're going to beat the (expletive) out of each other.”

When you have an opponent that is willing to stand and trade with you, it can make a fighter increase his will to win and push himself just a little bit harder. That’s what Pete Sell is doing for Matt Brown.

“It definitely made me train that little bit harder. Not that I wouldn't train just as hard anyway, but I don't know, there's just something about it. When I fought Dong Kim, I knew it wasn't going to be the most exciting fight. It turned out to be a good fight, but he doesn't want it to be an exciting fight. Me and Pete Sell, we want this to be an exciting fight. We'll go in there and try to hurt each other. We're going to do everything in each others' power to put the other one to sleep. There's no possible way this fight will be boring.”

[Move BRICKS™]

I believe that Jardine's herky-jerky will surely be his demise in this fight. It works great against outside style stand up fighters - However against Jackson, a defensive fighter who favors staying in the pocket, it should be more of a disadvantage to be awkward. Everyone has a Puncher's Chance, but aside from that, Jardine has nothing going for him. I doubt that Jackson will ever be stuffed with leg kicks the way he was against Forrest ever again, especially with his new camp.

And as for the card, besides Jardine/Jackson and Carwin/Gonzaga, I really don't think the game is worth the candle.

[StillUnknown]

this card is pretty ****ty. the only 2 fights are really ppv quality