(Palelei vs. McCorkle, as reenacted by The Incredible Hulk and the mythical God Loki, respectively. The actual video is after the jump, but this is basically what happened.)
When we last checked in on Sean “Big Sexy” McCorkle, he had just lost a cardio battle to an amorphous blob and vowed to retire from the sport if he ever gave such a pathetic showing again. Unfortunately for Sean, his next scheduled fight was against Soa “The Hulk” Palelei — a fellow UFC veteran who was far more dangerous than the tomato cans McCorkle has padded his record with over the years — at AFC 4 last weekend. Fortunately for Sean, his piss poor cardio had absolutely nothing to do with his downfall this time out, so at least he won’t have to go back on his word. It’s a small victory, sure, but one that most of us would probably cherish if we flew all the way to Australia to land roughly zero punches and get smashed through the canvas by Palelei’s megaton fists of fury like McCorkle did.
In the past two years, Palelei has scored eight straight victories via TKO, with only one of those victories making it out of the first two minutes. Granted, he hasn’t exactly been fighting any world-beaters, but still, his penchant for obliterating dudes in a hurry is pretty gosh darn impressive. Unfortunately, there are no heavyweights competing at next weekend’s UFC on FX: Sotiropolous vs. Pearson card in Queensland, Australia, so unless Palelei can get himself down to 205 in time to replace one of the LHW’s that will inevitably suffer some sort of last second, debilitating freak accident, it looks like it will still be awhile before we see Soa in the UFC. Personally, I’d say he’s earned another shot, so let’s hope it won’t be too long.
And in case you’re wondering, one of the announcers definitely said “It’s time to shut up and BRO down” at the 35 second mark. Say what you want about Mike Goldberg’s many, many shortcomings as a commentator, but I don’t think he’d ever purposely drop a line as garbage-ass as that one on us. Please don’t prove me wrong on this one, Mike.
