(OMDQ is practicing writing about things he doesn't know a lot about)

There was a lot of talk in the days and weeks leading up to tonight's Chuck Liddell-Quinton Jackson title fight about the perceived competition between mixed martial arts and boxing, with most commenters seemingly of the opinion that the latter was practically dead and the former would soon take its place.

If by "take its place," they meant "showcase their biggest stars in pay-per-view events that are overpriced and almost always fail to deliver any excitement whatsoever," well, then MMA is on its way.

A few more thoughts and the fight video (thanks to Larry Brown Sports for leaving a trail of breadcumbs to the vid) after the jump.


I didn't watch the fight live (you'd have to threaten some pretty serious torture to get me to order a PPV of anything these days) but figured out pretty quickly from the live-blog at The FanHouse that things might not have gone as planned for Liddell and the UFC powers that be. You know it's bad when you can reprint a live-blog in its entirety:

Round 1: The fight has begun. Liddell is cautious early and in the first minute neither man has done anything significant. Jackson lands a big right hand. Liddell goes down. IT'S OVER!! LIDDELL IS KNOCKED OUT!

(On a side note, I need to say that this fight might have given me an irrational hatred of Michael David Smith - a very good writer - simply because he had the good fortune to do the live-blog. The only sports I ever live-blog - football and basketball - don't generally end early via knockout, unless Ron Artest is involved. I'm unbelievably jealous.)

These things happen, of course. But I fail to see how anyone who shelled out their hard earned dollars for this event could possibly come away satisfied. It lasted less than two minutes! That was it! And you could read about and watch it on the Internet right after it happened (although the "watch it" part probably won't last long on YouTube)! And the one guy most casual fans have heard of got his ass kicked! Why am I using so many exclamation points!?

Anyway, here's the video. (Thanks again to Larry Brown Sports for showing me that it existed.) Not really sure what strategy Liddell was using here, unless "get punched in the face and fall down" is in the playbook. Enjoy it while you can.