Sixty-four seconds. That’s how long it took for there to be a new champion when Junior dos Santos knocked out Cain Velasquez during Saturday night’s UFC on FOX event.
After months of hype and a ton of money spent on advertisements throughout the past few weeks, it all came down to the unbelievable punching power possessed by our new Brazilian champion, dos Santos, who landed a huge punch to the temple of Velasquez before pouncing on him with ground-and-pound to finish the fight.
Knockouts are the kind of ending that fans typically love to see. Decisions are too boring for many “casual” fans, and submissions generally require quite a bit of work on the ground, which is also often-times too boring. Knockouts never fail to deliver with excitement.
However, for some reason, there seemed to be a fairly significant portion of “new fans,” and even some older ones, who were upset that the Velasquez-dos Santos fight ended so quickly.
Part of me can understand this mentality, especially if MMA is something that the viewer is brand new to. It can be hard to really understand the more integral parts of the sport when there is absolutely no ground game involved and a potentially 25-minute fight ends in approximately one minute.
But for anyone who has seen the sport at all before, it’s completely unacceptable to be complaining about a knockout! I mean, really, what more do you want?
The sports of mixed martial arts is great largely because of its unpredictability. There are very obvious winners and losers with just about every other sport, but when two athletes step into the cage in a mixed martial arts bout, it often times simply comes down to who makes fewer mistakes. One simple slip can lead to one punch or kick, it can lead to a submission, it can lead to a million different things.
At UFC on FOX, Velasquez left himself open, and dos Santos pounced on his opportunity. Shouldn’t we be praising that instead of complaining about how short the fight was?
I’m completely in agreement that it would have been great to have more than one fight on the card for a situation like this, but it’s not the end of the world. If anything, it highlights what’s so great about MMA—you just never know what’s going to happen.
If you don’t like how the fight finished, as Dana White said in the post-fight press conference, please “shut up” and let the rest of us enjoy it. We don’t need your negativity. We simply want to enjoy our favorite sport, and we’re never going to disrespect someone for finishing the fight too early.
What a ridiculous complaint.
Be sure to stay tuned to Bleacher Report for all things UFC on FOX. B/R is your home for post-fight analysis of the Cain Velasquez vs. Junior dos Santos fight card. Also, be sure to check out our fight card hub page for news and opinion on the entire UFC on FOX fight card.
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