This past Saturday was UFC 135, headlined by Light Heavyweight phenom Jon Jones defending his newly won Championship against perennial contender and dangerous puncher Quinton “Rampage” Jackson.

Jones won in dominant fashion. More on that later, but first I need to vent about my frustration over the fact that I missed this whole card.

Obviously, I love MMA. I do what I can to watch every UFC, but I have a few hurdles in front of me. My roommate and I got rid of cable several months ago when we realized, hey, we literally never watch it. That’s no exaggeration, either, as at one point I went a full three weeks without so much as turning the television on. It’d be silly to pay for something I don’t utilize, then on top of that fork over the $45 or $55 for the occasional pay-per-view. I also don’t have a car. If I was in New York City (hopefully my eventual destination) it wouldn’t be a problem, but in the greater Capital Region (the area in and around Albany, NY) it’s a killer.

Which is why I was excited when I learned that Broadway Brew, a downtown bar in my hometown of Troy, NY, was showing and advertising UFC pay-per-views. I was even able to convince friends of mine to come down to Troy for the last few fight cards. For someone like me who’s a local booster, it’s a win-win: I get a convenient place to watch the fights and help out a new business in Troy. It’s also been a great atmosphere every time out, with the crowd a mix of mostly enthusiastic fans and some amateur fighters and local BJJ guys. It’s definitely a more educated and attentive crowd than you’ll find at, say, Wolf’s 1-11 or Buffalo Wild Wings, both of which are situated in areas of monstrous commercial sprawl and chain restaurants.

We got there on Saturday and got a table. At 9:00pm, I had to ask the waitress there to have them turn on the fight. Several others, I had heard, had to make the same request. When they put it on, we only saw the pay-per-view channel screen with ordering information. Ten minutes passed and we were told that two people were on the phone with Time Warner trying to figure out what the problem was. We were served out food and finished it. Forty minutes later, I asked again and was told they were still on hold. I asked her to come back in ten minutes, at which point we’d decide whether or not we wanted to stick around or just pay the check. Ten minutes later, she said nothing, put the check on our table and said “have a good night.”

…alright then!

With that and the lack of explanation on their Facebook page, I assume their days of showing pay-per-view are done, which is a damn shame. The only other two places I mentioned are always packed. You have to get there at just the right time after the dinner rush and before the event begins to get a table. Wolf’s 1-11, for example, had upwards of 400 to 450 people there for last Saturday’s fight card.

Unfortunately, looks like I’ll be a part of that crowd from now on. It’s a trip to a crowded chain restaurants or nothing for me. C’est la vie.

As far as the fight card itself goes, I can only go on what I read, which seems unreal. My thoughts on the results:

• Jon Jones is unreal, but that fight is still more or less exactly how I expected it to go. Jackson is a powerful counter-puncher without much reach to speak of who throws more hooks than anything else. How on Earth was he going to overcome Jones’s freakish reach, never mind the fact that Jones has already proven himself to have an amazing skillset?
• After a quick knockout at the hands of Josh Koscheck, Matt Hughes still won’t commit to the word “retirement.” There’s a lot of speculation as to why that’s the case, among them that he wants someone else (ie Dana White) to make the decision for him vis a vis an office position or that it’s a negotiation ploy. Personally, I just think that Hughes is smart enough to know that he can take a year off and then come back for one big payday, and he’s seen the folly of so many fighters who have cried retirement only to come back months later.
• Nate Diaz beat Takanori Gomi and everyone’s touting him as a contender now. Let’s back that bus up, though. His previous wins at 155 need to be put into context. Nate beat Melvin Guillard before his rebirth and resurgence and there’s no way he’d be able to hang with the Clay Guida of 2011. Also, the story isn’t Nate’s ascent so much as Gomi’s decline over the last several years, which is due in equal parts to an overinflated value put on him by fanboys who bought the hype behind him in Pride and the fact that in six years he hasn’t evolved one iota as a fighter. In such a young sport that’s changing at the rate that it is, the inability to change and adapt is a death sentence for a fighter’s career.
• Mark Hunt is not only in the midst of a storybook comeback, he also apparently knows how to wrestle and executed takedowns against Ben Rothwell. Color me intrigued, and I’m curious to see where we’ll see Hunt end up in 2012.