November 14, 2005 Observer Newsletter: UFC Ultimate Fight Night, Hustlemania recaps
There have been many candidates for the best MMA show in recent years, usually big scale productions with the top name fighters clicking equals best show of the year nominations.
The 11/5 Ultimate Fight night special from Las Vegas on Spike TV hardly looked like anything more than a routine show. The main event, Diego Sanchez vs. Nick Diaz, looked good on paper, but the rest of the show, built around the finals of Ultimate Fighter season 2, looked like a show similar to the last Spike special on 10/3, where the fights may have been okay, but nobody really cared much about them when it was over.
Instead, after a good opener with TUF 1 semifinalists Kenny Florian and Muay Thai champion Kit Cope, viewers were treated to the murderer’s row of fights, making this the Canadian Stampede of MMA shows (Canadian Stampede was a 1997 WWE PPV show from Calgary that was only four matches and didn’t look like anything but a “B” show on paper and turned out to be one of the best PPV’s in WWF history).
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Dave Meltzer is the founder and lead writer on the Wrestling Observer Newsletter, the weekly constant when it comes to news and reviews in pro wrestling and mixed martial arts for more than 40 years. Dave also co-hosts Wrestling Observer Radio with Bryan Alvarez and had had bylines for The National, Yahoo Sports, MMA Fighting and others.