Hughes in the first round defied time by escaping Serra’s onslaught that should have finished him, shaking off the cobwebs, and nearly finishing Serra by round’s end.

Finally a young guy beats an old guy.

Twenty-six year old Chad Dawson stayed unbeaten with a decision win over forty year-old Antonio Tarver, the same way Dawson beat Tarver last year.

It was just Manny being Manny last Saturday night.

October 4, 2007 not only was my 21st birthday completing my ascent into adulthood, but was also the day that Pride Fighting Championships officially terminated operations almost six months after the promotion was bought out by the Fertitta brothers and UFC.

The events and changes within the mixed martial-arts world over the past two years have seen the rise of UFC continue on an almost unstoppable climb while the industry itself in Japan has had to go through an almost total reboot with the formation of World Victory Road and DREAM (ironically co-produced by former Pride executives and former Pride rival K-1).

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Last year it was EliteXC, this year it’s Strikeforce.

It is ironic that the promotion that purchased the assets to last year’s next big thing in the MMA world happens to be this year’s next big thing in the MMA world. But that is exactly what Strikeforce is at this very moment, not on par with UFC (not even close), but a new face past the Indy scene in the MMA world.

With the first post-Pro Elite buyout show in the books for Strikeforce, they may have actually benefitted from Josh Thomson injuring himself at the last minute and Frank Shamrock getting tagged for three rounds by another young and talented fighter. Because of Thomson’s injury, Gilbert Melendez was made to prove he deserved a rematch for the title he lost to Thomson last June (Melendez’s last fight until the April 11 Strikeforce show) and Nick Diaz got the career launching win via a near two round domination of Frank Shamrock in a fashion that even Cung Le didn’t pull of in his fight with Frank last March. Melendez’s win and subsequent challenge to Mitsuhiro Ishida—the first man to beat Melendez—should give Melendez another fight to adequately prepare for Thomson and with another win would make the Thomson fight the main-event of a Strikeforce HP Pavillion card instead of the semi-final, as it was positioned on the April 11 card.

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Phil Clark discusses the rivalry between boxing and MMA as it relates to pay-per-view business.

Check out Phil Clark’s 2008 MMA awards including Fight of the Year, Fighter of the Year, Worst Promotion, and more…

Fight of the year is a proclamation that might be a bit early. However, there are likely to be few fights that will reach the intensity, activity, and most importantly, the professionalism displayed in this fight. The one person who didn’t have to work on this night turned out to be the referee as there were next to no clinches during the whole fight, no inadvertent low-blows, nothing that caused the ref to stop the action even for the moment.

Attendance and ratings have been slipping more and more the last few years with the Sakuraba/Funaki headlined NYE show last year doing only 25,000 for the around 50,000-seat Osaka Dome and a 14.7 rating compared to the 19.9 for the 2006 version of the show, which also featured Sakuraba in the main-event. This year was a make or brake year as boxing on NYE has become a better option for TBS (Tokyo Broadcasting Systems) on NYE over the past few years and could in fact be a replacement based on the events that took place December 31.

In a sport whose parity is on par with any of the big four sports’ the stories are not always about title changes and upsets. The end of January saw Affliction: Day of Reckoning and UFC 94 prove my point. At the top of both cards stood matches that did beg for something wild and unpredictable to happen, but for the most part everything went according to plan.