Jardine edges former champ Liddell in slugfest
The “Dean of Mean” Keith Jardine held session Saturday night at the Honda Center in Anaheim, Calif., with a shocking upset of former UFC light heavyweight champion Chuck Liddell.
Jardine chopped away at the “Iceman’s” legs for the duration of the bout, and floored the ex-champion with a right hand in the second frame before taking a split decision. “Kicking is my thing,” declared Jardine, who upped his record to 13-3-1. The loss for Liddell marked the first time in his career that he has dropped consecutive contests. Judges Cecil Peoples and Richard Bertrand saw the contest 29-28 for Jardine, while Marcos Rosales gave two rounds to Liddell. On the undercard, Mauricio “Shogun” Rua was supposed to be the PRIDE import that would tear through the UFC. Somebody forgot to tell Forrest Griffin.Griffin, the light heavyweight winner of the first season of “The Ultimate Fighter,” dominated the Chute Boxe star for 14 minutes before putting him away with a rear-naked choke with 15 seconds remaining in the final period.
Fighting with a deep cut above his right eye from an elbow in the second round, Griffin outwrestled and overpowered his way past the Brazilian before finishing the exhausted fighter.
“Fatigue is a son of a b—-” said Griffin, now 15-4-0. “Nothing fancy there.”
Rua dropped to 16-3 with the defeat, his first since suffering a horrific arm injury in the opening minutes of his bout with Mark Coleman nearly two years ago.
Jon Fitch won his fourteenth consecutive bout in a hard-fought split decision win over Diego Sanchez. Fitch improved to 15-2-0 with 1 NC in the close fight that saw Fitch dominate position from the top while defending Sanchez’s submission attempts.
Sanchez, who dropped to 17-2-0 with the loss, came close to finishing Fitch twice in the final period with a tight guillotine and a triangle-choke.
Fitch, who represents American Kickboxing Academy, was awarded the hotly-contested duel with tallies of 30-27 and 29-28.
Brazilian Ryoto Machida out-hustled PRIDE mainstay Kazuhiro Nakamura for three rounds before getting the unanimous decision nod. All three judges scored the bout 30-27 for Machida.
The elusive Machida, who stayed undefeated in 11 bouts, consistently beat his Japanese opponent to the punch and dominated from the clinch with elbows and knees to the mid-section. Nakamura, now 11-7-0, did little in the bout in terms of offense in his first trip to the Octagon.
In an entertaining, back-and-fourth ground battle, Tyson Griffin bested Thiago Tavares by unanimous decision after three hard-fought rounds.
Griffin, 10-1-0, played the role of escape artist through much of the bout, successfully sliding out of a torrent of submissions from the Brazilian Top Team lightweight, who fell to 13-1-0 with the loss.
Two judges scored the fight 29-28, while a third awarded all three frames to Griffin.
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