I was pretty excited going into UFC 188, and overall the card lived up to my expectations, although I still feel like it could have been better had a certain few fighters chosen to engage more instead of stinking up the joint. The card started off on Fight Pass with a well-matched featherweight bout between Clay Collard and Gabriel Benitez. Collard is known for his exciting fighting style, but he had a poor performance in this one as Benitez hurt him multiple times during the fight with body kicks, nearly finishing him with a few guillotine choke attempts as well. It was a decent fight to kick off the card, although nothing amazing. Unfortunately, the other Fight Pass bout between Cathal Pendred and Augusto Montano was a real stinker. Pendred pulled a Pendred and won a close decision in the welterweight affair, but I blame Montano moreso for a bad fight, as he refused to engage until the last round. Overall, the Fight Pass fights for this card were nothing special. Next up was the televised prelims. The first fight was a lightweight bout between Johnny Case and Francisco Trevino. Overall I was impressed by Case, but Trevino is another guy like Montano who refused to engage with his opponent and overall looked terrible. Thankfully the next two fights were super exciting as both Patrick Williams and Efrain Escudero won in the first-round with sub one-minute submissions. Both guys looked fantastic, with Escudero subbing out Dober with a guillotine in a lightweight bout and Williams stunningly finishing Alejandro Perez in a bantamweight contest, and these two finishes really boosted the entertainment value of the televised prelims. The final prelim, a flyweight bout between Chico Camus and Henry Cejudo, was just okay, but those finishes from Escudero and Williams were something else. Then it was time for the main pay-per-view card. When you’re shelling out $60 for the PPV, you hope you are entertained with quality mixed martial arrts competition, and for the most part fans were… aside from the opening women’s strawweight bout between Tecia Torres and Angela Hill, which was just a horribly-boring fight that didn’t earn either woman a single fan. Thankfully, the rest of the main card was pretty awesome. The featherweight scrap between Charles Rosa and Yair Rodriguez was a back-and-forth affair that earned each man a well-deserved bonus of $50,000 for “Fight of the Night.” It was a fantastic fight, a real showcase of two talented young men, and definitely has rewatch value. The middleweight fight between Nate Marquardt and Kelvin Gastelum was a slaughter so it’s hard to rate it, but anytime there’s a finish in MMA it’s hard to say the fight was bad. The co-main event between Gilbert Melendez and Eddie Alvarez was a nail biter, but overall the fight didn’t live up to expectations, although it was nice to see Alvarez finally pick up a win in the UFC after all these years. Up until the main event the card was a bit of a mixed bag, with a bit more bad than good, but the headlining title fight between Fabricio Werdum and Cain Velasquez was fantastic and absolutely exceeded expectations. Most figured it would be a dominant beatdown from Velasquez, but instead it was Werdum who laid the beating, as he tooled Velasquez on the feet and then finished him with a guillotine choke on the ground in his most impressive showing to date and one of the most surprising title fight upsets in recent memory. It was a fantastic fight, and an awesome way to cap off an overall solid night of fights. As a whole, I rated UFC 188 a 7.5/10. Overall the main card was fantastic, but a few of the preliminary fights were stinkers and the Torres/Hill fight was absolutely terrible, bringing down the overall rating. But the PPV delivered for the most part and at the end of the day, fans shouldn’t complain too much about this event. And now, on to the next.
