Saturday Morning MMA Recap

It is currently a little after 8AM Eastern time Saturday morning and three MMA cards have happened this weekend already. With DREAM 17 just wrapping up, here's a quick rundown on what went down last night and this morning.

Strikeforce Challengers 19:
Nick Rossborough, a late replacement for the injured Virgil Zwicker, fought Lorenz Larkin in the main event last night. Larkin weathered through a game Rossborough and landed a huge knee in the third round that allowed him to ride out a unanimous decision. He remains undefeated at 12-0.

Ryan Couture got back into the win column in a closely fought majority decision win. The many years he's spent grappling with dad and company showed as he and Maka Watson went back and forth on the ground. As in the main event, it took a 3rd round momentum-shifting change that sealed the win. Not a knee this time, however, but a great sweep into top control.

The only other "name" on the card was wrestler Jason High, and he used and abused Todd Moore in that manner. Moore has pretty much no answer for the wrestling and High was able to dominate in the unanimous decision win.

Titan FC 20:
The only thing most people care about on this card is the return of accused/alleged wife-beater Brett "Grim" Rogers to the sport. Fortunately for those who believe in karma, Eddie Sanchez leg kicked the stuffing out of Rogers. Channeling the spirit of Pedro Rizzo, Sanchez chopped at Rogers all night, beat him up in the clinch and made the one-time high-flier look like a chump. It's been a huge fall after rising to 10-0 and blitzing Andrei Arlovski like Andrei blitzes a vodka buffet. He's since lost 4 of 5 and the one win was against Ruben "Warpath" Villareal that many think Ruben won. Oh, and he "allegedly" beat his wife and kids and got canned by Zuffa.

The actual highlight of the evening as far as MMA goes (compared to schadenfreude) goes to Dakota Cochrane, who surprised pretty much everyone with a lopsided win over former WEC champion Jamie Varner. Part of it seemed like Varner underestimated his opponent - he looked a little heavy and somewhat sluggish, but Cochrane did a fantastic job of displaying his striking skills, takedown defense and scrambling ability once Varner finally did land a double-leg in the 3rd. Keep that name in mind, folks, he should make some waves in the future.

DREAM 17:
The big deal here was to see if Rob McCullough could touch Shinya Aoki's chin before he got octopus'd to the ground and lost some extremity off his torso. It was not to be. Rob actually did a fairly good job, getting out from under Aoki once without much damage taken. The second time was the killer. Aoki ducked under a punch (Razor landed zero standing strikes), went for a double, transitioned to a single and proceeded to head/neck crank out McCullough with seconds left in the first round.

Tatsuya "Crusher" Kawajiri and Joachim Hansen had one of the better fights of the evening in a closely contested bout that saw Crusher win his featherweight debut via arm triangle. Hansen did a good job all night of defending in Kawajiri's guard, but finally succumbed late in the 3rd.

In the bantamweight grand prix, Bibiano Fernandes easily passed the chin check and choked out Takafumi Otsuka early, Antonio Banuelos got a controversial split-decision win over Hideo Tokoro (non-Japanese guy winning a close split decision in Japan? Bizarro!), Masakazu Imanari nearly ripped off Abel Cullum's arm and Rodolfo Marques easily decisioned Yusup Saadulaev.

Other notable matchups saw kind of what we expect out of JMMA these days. The corpse of Kazushi Sakuraba took a beating from mildly-heralded Yan Cabral. Seriously, whatever debt that Saku owes the Yakuza has to be paid off by now. He lost an ear. Please stop having him fight. Minowaman beat some random moobed heavyweight named Baru Harn, Gerald Harris took a close fight from Kazuhiro Makamura (again with foreigners winning in Japan) and Lion Inoue blasted "Carl" Uno with a picture-perfect headkick early.

Full results and gifs under the cut.

Jamie Varner getting teeped into the cage:

Brett Rogers getting Brandon Vera'd:

Caol Uno having flashbacks to the BJ Penn fight:

Rob McCullough's spine bending in ways it shouldn't:

Dream 17 results:
Aoki defeated McCullough via submission (neck crank) at 4:57 of round 1.
Kawajiri defeated Hansen via submission (arm triangle choke) at 2:30 of round 3.
Inoue defeated Uno via KO (head kick) at 4:17 of round 1.
Cabral defeated Sakuraba via submission (arm triangle choke) at 2:42 of round 2.
Kitaoka defeated Freire via split decision.
Harris defeated Nakamura via split decision.
Banuelos defeated Tokoro via split decision.
Fernandes defeated Otsuka via technical submission (rear naked choke) at 0:41 of round 1.
Imanari defeated Cullum via submission (armbar) at 0:46 of round 3.
Marques defeated Saadulaev via unanimous decision.
Minowa defeated Harn via submission (scarf hold) at 4:29 of round 1.

Titan FC 20 results:
Cochrane defeated Varner via unanimous decision (30-27, 30-27, 30-27)
Sanchez defeated Rogers via split decision (30-27, 28-29, 30-27).
Gutierrez defeated Hutchinson via submission at 1:04 of Round 1.
Krause defeated Wilson via submission at 2:39 of Round 1.
Riley defeated Huddleston via TKO (referee stoppage) in round 2.
Whitney defeated Shaffer via KO (flying knee) at 0:42 of Round 3.

SF Challengers 19 results:
Larkin defeated Rossborough via unanimous decision (30-27, 29-28, 30-27).
Jordan defeated Johnson via submission (keylock) at 3:08 of round 2.
Couture defeated Watson via majority decision (28-28, 29-28, 29-28).
High defeated Moore via unanimous decision (30-27, 30-27, 30-27).
Melancon defeated Portela via unanimous decision (29-29, 29-28, 30-27)
Terry defeated Almeida via KO (punches) at 3:21 of round 1.
Green defeated Spain via submission (arm triangle choke) at 2:54 of round 2.
Spång defeated Ray via unanimous decision (29-28, 29-28, 29-28).
Mulhern defeated Davis via submission (arm triangle choke) at 4:08 of round 3.

Results copied from Wikipedia, gifs are all from IronForgesIron.com