Tag: Ross Pearson

Few things are better in mixed martial arts than a genuine grudge match, and the beef between Luke Rockhold and Michael Bisping is as authentic as it comes.

The friction between the two top middleweights stemmed from the brash Brit going public with details from a sparring session where “The Count” got the better of the then-Strikeforce 185-pound champion. Rockhold was quick to dispute Bisping’s version of the story, and the past two years have seen both fighters launch verbal barbs and callouts in the other’s direction. And with both fighters being staples in the upper tier of the middleweight division, their paths were bound to cross eventually.

That particular collision came front and center on Friday, as Rockhold and Bisping squared off in the main event of UFC Fight Night 55 in Sydney, Australia. The pre-fight trash talk was fierce, and it turned the middleweight tilt into a highly anticipated affair. But the beautiful thing about MMA is that matters of this nature get settled inside the cage.

With both fighters having high-volume offenses, their squabble was figured to be action-packed, and it certainly lived up to expectations. The two men scrapped it out until Rockhold emerged victorious in the second round. The former Strikeforce champion dictated the range and pace of the fight until he found an opening to land a left head kick that put Bisping on the canvas. With his opponent hurt, Rockhold pounced and finished the middleweight staple with a one-armed guillotine.

The co-main event featured two rising talents in the lightweight division, as Ross Pearson and Al Iaquinta stepped in to trade leather. “The Real Deal” was coming off the biggest victory of his career with a knockout win over former title challenger Gray Maynard back in August and was looking to take a big step toward a top-10 ranking by defeating the Serra-Longo product in Sydney. There were similar gains to be had on Iaquinta’s side of the table, as “Raging Al” had the opportunity to topple the biggest-named opponent of his career.

After a close first round where both men took turns slinging power shots, it was Iaquinta who found his mark with frequency in the second frame and did so with authority. He dropped Pearson with a heavy shot shortly after the round began, then put the British slugger away with a vicious flurry against the cage to pick up the biggest victory of his career.

While the fights at the top of the card drew the most attention in the buildup to the event, bodies were dropping left and right on Friday night in Sydney. It was a raucous affair if there ever was one, and let’s take a look at the good, bad and strange from Fight Night 55.

 

The Good

Ladies and gentlemen….Luke Rockhold has arrived.

While it may seem strange to say a former Strikeforce champion and a fighter who has only suffered one defeat in his career has just arrived, Rockhold’s time in the UFC has come with criticism. During his run with the now-defunct San Jose-based promotion, the biggest knock on Rockhold was that he wasn’t fighting anyone the caliber of what the UFC possessed, even though wins over the likes of “Jacare” Souza and Tim Kennedy are no easy task.

Therefore, the AKA staple was eager to jump into the deep end of the proverbial pool up as soon as he hit the Octagon, and he did just that by facing former two-divisional title challenger and resurgent superstar Vitor Belfort in his promotional debut. Unfortunately for the Santa Cruz native, he would suffer a first-round knockout via spinning heel kick from “The Phenom,” and the chatter and doubt surrounding his talents would only amplify.

That said, when a fighter finds himself in that position, he can either fold or surge back harder, and Rockhold has certainly done the latter. The 30-year-old Californian smashed his next two opponents inside the cage and started his way back up the middleweight latter. Yet, it was going to take a big name to get him over the hump toward title contention, and that’s what his bout against Michael Bisping represented at Fight Night 55.

While the rivalry between the two men helped to create buzz around the tilt, the true goal for Rockhold was to defeat a perennial contender—a status “The Count” has held for several years. And where Rockhold came into his bout with Vitor pumped up to show and prove, his performance against Bisping showed marked improvement in that department as he stayed loose throughout and picked his windows to strike. That level of patience paid off, as Rockhold found his mark with a head kick in the second round then finished things off in style with a one-armed guillotine to put the brash Brit away.

Where defeating Souza to win the Strikeforce title could still be gauged as the biggest win of his career, defeating a UFC institution like Bisping is undoubtedly the most important for Rockhold thus far. He’s now won three out of four bouts inside the Octagon and looked tremendous in the process. His next fight could be for the middleweight title, and if that comes to pass, I have a feeling there wouldn’t be much of an argument from the MMA community.

Taking advantage of big opportunities when they come your way is the name of the game in MMA, and Al Iaquinta picked up the biggest victory of his career at Fight Night 55. “Raging Al” toppled British slugger Ross Pearson via second-round knockout in a fight many figured he’d lose. “The Real Deal” was the fighter poised to break into the top 10, while Iaquinta had never fought an opponent with solid name recognition under the UFC banner.

That said, the New York native was the fighter who came in looking for the kill and in the process walked away with the definitive victory of his young career. In doing so, the Serra-Longo representative has now won five of his past six bouts, including back-to-back impressive performances where he finished the opposition in spectacular fashion. Yet, while a victory over Pearson will move him closer to the bigger names in the division, the lightweight fold is arguably the most talent-rich collective under the UFC banner.

Iaquinta’s win at Fight Night 55 will undoubtedly earn him another solid name from the 155-pound ranks, and if he can answer that test as impressively as he’s handled his most recent challenges, the Long Island-based fighter could earn a top-10 ranking in the lightweight division.

*** Switching weight classes is typically a move made out of desperation, but Robert Whittaker jumped up into the middleweight fold simply to see how he would fair. The 23-year-old New Zealand native didn’t care for the cut down to make the 170-pound limit in the welterweight division and wanted to test his skills and durability in a heavier weight class. The Tristar Gym representative faced fellow TUF alum Clint Hester in his divisional debut, and the choice to step up proved to be the right one as he battered the “Head Bussa” en route to a second-round TKO. The victory over Hester was Whittaker’s second consecutive win and will keep him fighting at 185 pounds for the foreseeable future. 

*** Soa Palelei has been a man possessed since returning to the UFC in 2013, and his resurgence continued on Friday night. “The Hulk” picked up his fourth victory in five showings inside the Octagon by pounding out Walt Harris in the second round of their tilt at Fight Night 55. While the opening frame was sluggish, the AKA Thailand representative turned up the heat in the second frame as he put pressure on “The Big Ticket.” It was the beginning of the end once the Australian put Harris on his back, as the referee jumped into stop the beating as Palelei doled out a buffet of hammer fists to get the win. And while his performance was solid, his singing post-fight left much to be desired.

*** MMA may be a young man’s game, but apparently Anthony Perosh wasn’t given that memo. The 42-year-old Australian bounced back from a bloody loss in his last outing to submit Guto Inocente at Fight Night 55. Once the action got underway, Perosh put the Blackzilians team fighter on the canvas and began to work his offense. He eventually took Inocente’s back and locked in the fight-ending rear-naked choke to pick up his second victory in his last three showings.  

*** Taking a fight on three-week notice didn’t appear to be working out too well for Louis Smolka at Fight Night 55. The talented young Hawaiian was getting tagged up by Richie Vaculik early and often and was down two rounds going into the final frame of the bout. Nevertheless, Smolka has a reputation as a gritty fighter, and he turned the tides in spectacular fashion as he smashed the Australian with a step-in side kick to earn the victory. With the win, Smolka has now found success in two of his three showings inside the Octagon and certainly appears to have a bright future. 

*** After suffering back-to-back losses, Marcus Brimage came into Fight Night 55 needing a win in the worst way. A loss to Jumabieke Tuerxun could have spelled unemployment for the American Top Team product, and he was determined to take that potential threat off of the table. The Colorado native wasted no time accomplishing the task at hand, as he landed a blistering left head kick knockout that left Tuerxun laying stiff on the canvas and staring up at the ceiling lights. Brimage needed to make a statement in Sydney, and his first-round highlight-reel knockout got that done.

*** Another fighter who came into Fight Night 55 with some pressure on his shoulders was Chris Clements. The veteran Canadian fighter had been looking rough as of late, and questions loomed as to what the 38-year-old welterweight had left to offer. That said, “The Menace” came out firing on all cylinders, as he put Vik Grujic away with a flurry of big shots in the first round of their tilt on the preliminary portion of the card. With the victory, Clements scored an impressive finish and picked up his first win inside the Octagon since April of 2012.

 

The Bad

Michael Bisping has been competing near the top of the middleweight division for years, but the time may have finally come where his dream of getting a shot at the 185-pound crown has vanished for good.

There have been a number of opportunities over the past six years for “The Count” to get over the proverbial hump and earn a title shot, yet, the 35-year-old Englishman has been turned back in every one of them. Granted, Bisping has operated at a level of success that has made him a staple in the upper tier of the middleweight division, but consistently losing crucial fights where future title implications hang in the balance has turned into his M.O. Bisping just can’t seem to win the big fights, and that trend continued at Fight Night 55.

The Manchester native stepped in against Luke Rockhold in a bout that would propel the winner to within striking distance of a championship opportunity. He was facing an opponent with a solid winning streak, and a win over Rockhold could have been the victory that prompted UFC brass to give him his long-awaited title shot. Nevertheless, Bisping just didn’t have an answer for what the former Strikeforce champion brought to the table and was submitted via guillotine in the second round.

In his post-fight interview, Bisping assured fight fans that he wasn’t going anywhere, and while that may be true in the sense of his roster spot with the UFC, it certainly isn’t the case in regard to being a contender. The loss to Rockhold was his fourth setback over his past seven outings, and that will make it difficult for fight fans to rally for Bisping to get a title shot any time soon. That said, fans will still tune in to watch him fight, and that is an accomplishment by any measurable standard in the fight game. 

But he just can’t get over the hump, and the same thing applies for Ross Pearson.

Since winning the ninth season of The Ultimate Fighter, the British slugger was figured to do big things in the lightweight division. Yet, while he got off to a strong start by winning his first three showings in the 155-pound fold, a rough patch in 2011 would send “The Real Deal” looking for answers in the featherweight division.

Pearson would once again get off to a strong start in his new weight class, but a knockout at the hands of surging contender Cub Swanson would send the Englishman back up to lightweight after only two showings at 145 pounds. Typically, that type of instability is a sign of a major problems for a fighter, but Pearson silenced the critics by picking up back-to-back victories in his return to the 155-pound shark tank.

And while a “No Contest” against Melvin Guillard and a highly questionable split-decision loss to Diego Sanchez would keep things at a simmer for the Sunderland native, his knockout victory over Gray Maynard back in August put him back on the map in a major way. Suddenly, Pearson looked like the contender many initially thought he would be, but he needed an impressive win over Al Iaquinta at Fight Night 55 to solidify that notion.

Unfortunately for Pearson, his trend of failing to get over the hump would continue in Sydney, as the Serra-Longo product proved too much for him to handle. While Pearson’s boxing was supposed to give him the edge in the striking department, that wasn’t remotely the case, as Iaquinta landed power shots with regularity throughout the fight. “Raging Al” found his range toward the end of the opening frame, then landed a big shot that put Pearson on his back in the early stages of the second round.

And while Pearson was able to scramble to his feet and recover in quick fashion, Iaquinta never slowed down a step and ended the bout with a brutal flurry moments after the initial knockdown to hand Pearson his first clear-cut loss since 2012. That said, it was a crucial loss and one Pearson couldn’t afford. While he will certainly continue to get tough matchups from the UFC, his loss to Iaquinta at Fight Night 55 will serve to push him away from the top 10 for quite some time—especially when the ultra-stacked roster in the lightweight division is taken into account. 

*** Every up-and-coming fighter carries the prospect label differently. Some feed off the added pressure while others crumble under the weight of expectation. And while it may be too early still to judge the total picture, at the current time Guto Inocente appears to be in the latter category. The 28-year-old Brazilian came to the UFC on an impressive four-fight winning streak under the Strikeforce banner, but he hasn’t come remotely close to living up to expectations inside the Octagon. He’s had two showings on the sport’s biggest stage and was finished in the first round of both. The most recent of which came at the hands of 42-year-old Anthony Perosh on Friday night. 

That said, Inocente will most likely get one more opportunity to keep his position on the UFC roster, and he’ll need to bring something special to the cage when that night comes around.

 

The Strange

Just because things are cliche doesn’t mean they don’t hold truth, and it’s absolutely true that anything can happen inside the cage. Dylan Andrews came face to face with this phenomenon at Fight Night 55, as a curious turn of events in the first round of his tilt with Sam Alvey landed him in the loss column. While takedowns and slams are fairly routine maneuvers when the action goes live, the Australian learned a tough lesson in head placement, as “Smiling Sam” came down on his head at the end of the slam—putting Andrews in limbo.

As soon as he felt his opponent’s body go limp, Alvey jumped into top position and landed four punishing shots for good measure. Once Andrews realized what was going on it was too late, as the Colorado-based fighter was already well into his post-fight celebration. It was certainly a funky finish to a fight, but Andrews is becoming used to winding up on the business end of freak happenings inside the cage. In his most recent showing prior to his bout in Sydney, The Ultimate Fighter alum was defeated via doctor stoppage due to a separated shoulder suffered at the hands of Clint Hester.

With his second consecutive loss coming due to unorthodox methods, Andrews has to start to wonder if he’s cursed. Then again, maybe he simply needs to work on his technique. Either way, Andrews is going to need to turn things around in a big way his next time out to keep his spot on the UFC roster. 

Staying with the Twilight Zone theme of Fight Night 55, the violence on this card was outstanding. There were 11 fights on the billing and every single one of them ended by way of finish. All seven of the tilts on the preliminary portion of the card ended in violent fashion—five of which ended abruptly in the first round—and that magic wave of violence continued right on through the entire main card.

It was a fantastic display of ruckus in Sydney on Friday night, as the card delivered from top to bottom. There were blistering face kick knockouts, ground-and-pound mashers and a one-armed guillotine to finish things off in style.

 

Duane Finley is a featured columnist for Bleacher Report. 

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