UFC 150 came and went last Saturday and delivered a compelling main event along with first-round knockouts, TKOs and a submission.
It was the ninth UFC event this year and delivered, with the exception of Jake Shields’ lacklustre win against Ed Herman, one of the best cards of 2012.
Kicking off with Nik Lentz’ satisfying TKO of Eiji Mitsuoka inside three minutes, 45 seconds, it was followed by two more TKOs on the undercard and a highly technical three-round war between Chico Camus and Dustin Pague.
That fight could have gone either way, but Camus’ assured performance in his UFC debut swayed the judges overall and he is set on a course for much tougher competition in his next bantamweight match.
The main event also delivered a closely fought rematch between Ben Henderson and Frankie Edgar which was just as exciting and controversial as their first match.
But this has been a year that saw Junior Dos Santos defend his title for the first time in a heavyweight extravaganza at UFC 146, Jon Jones settle his deeply personal feud with Rashad Evans at UFC 145 and Anderson Silva finally settle scores with arch-nemesis Chael Sonnen at UFC 148.
It’s also the year when we still expect Jones’ second fight of 2012 against Dan Henderson and when George St. Pierre marks his long awaited return to action against interim champion Carlos Condit.
With such headliners, it’s hard to rank UFC 150 as high as some of the other pay-per-view events this year.
It didn’t, for example, deliver the same hype as the UFC’s entry into Japan at UFC 144, which was the arena for Frankie Edgar and Ben Henderson’s first showdown.
Nor was it seen as a landmark event such as the promotion’s first event in Brazil in years which took place at UFC 142 in January and seemed to hook a whole nation onto mixed martial arts.
At a live gate of only $650,000, UFC 150 was also disappointing as far as pay-per-view figures were concerned. So much so, that Dana White declared it the worst gate since 2007.
Still, the event delivered far more than the injury-ridden shows that have dogged some of the other main cards this year, which include Wanderlei Silva’s match against Rich Franklin at UFC 147 and Urijah Faber’s showdown with Renan Barao at UFC 149.
That alone makes it one of the stronger events to have taken place this year.
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