If fan interest is any indication, Super Saturday was a big success. No one will know anything for sure until the final viewing estimates roll in, but at a glance it seems UFC 180, Bellator 131 and World Series of Fighting 15—all three promotions competing head to head for the first time—yielded some nice dividends for combat sports lovers.
At UFC 180, Fabricio Werdum landed a flying knee on Mark Hunt to take the interim heavyweight title and partially redeem an otherwise lackluster card.
Bellator 131 made a major splash with Will Brooks’ victory over Michael Chandler and that wacky but entertaining main event between Tito Ortiz and Stephan Bonnar, to name just a couple of things.
WSOF even got in on the act with a fun brawl between Justin Gaethje and Melvin Guillard and a very competitive title defense from strawweight champ Jessica Aguilar.
But the night created a peculiar subtrend that’s worth remembering the morning after. Several relatively big names on all three cards were unceremoniously exposed as fading talents, no longer capable of hanging tough under the brightest lights. They are popular among fans, and as such may still have robust careers ahead of them, but they were diminished Saturday, and maybe for good. Who were these fighters?
UFC 180
Two years ago, or even more recently, Jake Ellenberger was considered a threat to the top of the welterweight division. Those notions may have been permanently dispelled Saturday when Kelvin Gastelum made short work of the Division II wrestler with a slick first-round rear-naked choke.
Ellenberger just hasn’t looked good lately. The knockout threat has dissipated, and his ground work cuts corners. The loss was Ellenberger‘s third straight. Is he in danger of being cut? Maybe not, but his days near the top of the card are gone, at a minimum.
Bellator 131
Nam Phan came out of The Ultimate Fighter 12 with some promise. But he never really caught on, fighting close fights that increasingly didn’t go his way. He may never have recovered from a demoralizing ground-and-pound beating from Dennis Siver, a loss that spurred Phan‘s move down to bantamweight, which didn’t slow his exit from the UFC. His Bellator debut Saturday was a 46-second knockout loss to Mike Richman. Phan‘s not going in the right direction here.
Everyone gets excited for Melvin Manhoef, and then everyone gets disappointed. Lather, rinse, repeat for the middleweight, who, despite 27 career knockouts in pro MMA, can simply not get over the hump. We all lathered and rinsed again at Bellator 131, when Manhoef was knocked clean out by Joe Schilling, a talented kickboxer but a pretty anonymous MMA fighter. It was probably the biggest letdown in an otherwise outstanding night for Bellator.
WSOF 15
Everyone knew it was going to be a slugfest. But Melvin Guillard left his want-to in the hotel room on the way to face Justin Gaethje. After missing weight, Guillard came out energized early, but showed his trademark poor defense and shallow gas tank down the stretch.
His power diminished substantially, too. A judge gifted him the win, which had the the effect of handing Gaethje a deceptive split decision, but there were precious few moments in this fight when the scary Guillard of old reared his head. Fun fight, but not a great line item for the New Orleans native and longtime UFC vet.
Had fun last night @Young__Assassin is a warrior glad we got to put on a show for everyone. @DavidcBranchMMA nice finish. @MMAWorldSeries
— Justin Gaethje (@Justin_Gaethje) November 16, 2014
Yushin Okami will never be confused with an exciting fighter, but he did very little even by his own standards Saturday night. He just never got going against middleweight champ David Branch, turning in a hesitant and clinch-heavy main event that felt anticlimactic after the Gaethje-Guillard pub brawl.
It got exciting for about 15 seconds in the fourth round, but unfortunately for Okami, those were the 15 seconds in which Branch clipped him with a right hook and pounded him out. That’s 1-1 now for Okami under the WSOF banner. Probably no more title shots in his foreseeable future.
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