I typed “the bottom” here and submitted the article, but then the editors got all grumpy (not really, but you get my point).
But no, seriously, I’m not going to pull your leg here. UFC 163 is one of the worst pay-per-view cards in UFC history and easily takes the bottom spot when ranking 2013’s events.
There are two big reasons for this.
First, and most importantly, is the weakness of the card itself. In a combination of laziness and figuring “hey, Brazilian fans will buy up any card we trot out there,” the UFC put three fights into the main card that truly, honestly, totally had no reason being there.
John Lineker trotted in overweight and fought somebody who, I kid you not, was making their UFC debut in Jose Maria. Thales Leites, who was cut from the UFC in 2009 after losing a preliminary card fight to Alessio Sakara, fought a 1-1 Tom Watson. TUF: Brazil 1 middleweight winner (more or less) fought against TUF: Brazil 2 washout Thiago Santos, who actually moved up in weight for the fight.
Yes, I know. A critical fight between Josh Koscheck and Demian Maia got axed due to a Koscheck injury. However, if the UFC wasn’t completely confident in a bunch of suckers buying whatever card they slapped together, they would have found a replacement for Maia who, by the way, would have been quite easy given the crowded nature of the welterweight division and the sheer number of fighters looking to move up the rankings.
While those fights ended up solid, they remain fights that would have been on Facebook on any average card.
Still, there were two critical tilts at the top of the card in Lyoto Machida vs. Phil Davis and Chan-Sun Jung vs. Jose Aldo for the featherweight belt. That makes up for it, right?
Wrong.
Machida-Davis was a standard Machida fight. He found homes for his straight left on occasion while dodging most takedown attempts. Davis, however, ended up controversially getting the decision win with two late-in-the-round takedowns.
Then came the main event. While “The Korean Zombie” is a downright tantalizing fighter, he spent the first 15 minutes of the fight basically standing in place, eating Jose Aldo jabs. They were good jabs, sure, but there is no real excuse for his lack of activity. Aldo, as per usual, tired mightily and right as Jung started to come out of his shell, he suffered a major shoulder injury that left him susceptible to an Aldo barrage.
Simply put, it was one of the most disappointing fights in UFC history.
So again, this card easily finds itself cemented at the bottom of any sort of rankings when it comes to card quality. It almost certainly will stay there, barring injuries to the champions lined up to fight over the next four months.
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