Last night's super-middleweight world super series semifinal (more concise name not available) was pretty fun. I can't decide whether it lived up to the hype. It wasn't particularly close in the end - I gave groves nine rounds and 117 points to Eubanks' three and 111 - but it was pretty entertaining. It was also unbelievably wild. I've seen cleaner technique in the stands at football games than the final quarter of this world championship boxing match. Nonetheless, it kept things compelling in an otherwise fairly impressive but unspectacular contest. George Groves is clearly the better fighter, but junior was always willing to get in and have a scrap with him. Groves himself endangered his hard earned lead indulging him in a twelfth round bar brawl to close out the fight. The arena was electric and the last two rounds were all action. Had it been a closer fight it could have been proper heart-in-mouth stuff.
On another note, there was a good example of a strange and rare phenomenon at Bellator 194 in Connecticut on Friday night. In mixed martial arts, fighters coming from a specialised discipline will often become very reliant on it, looking very uncomfortable when it's denied.
An odd thing that happens sometimes, though, is a couple of specialised fighters pitted against each other deliberately walling off the best facet of their game because it's also the best facet of their opponent's game. Usually this happens with grapplers. Put a BJJ blackbelt up against a kickboxer, and he will shoot for takedowns like there's no tomorrow. Put him in with another legit BJJ blackbelt and suddenly he's throwing stiff, awkward punches and wobbly low kicks. See, Cindy Dandois vs Alexis Davis. Two legit grapplers having the worst kickboxing match in sporting history.
Trigger warning for awfulness
Friday's event saw a much rarer inverse blackbelt boxing match. Two accomplished strikers - former professional boxers Heather Hardy (20-0-1nc in boxing, WBC super-bantamweight and featherweight IC) and Ana Julaton (14-4-1 in boxing, WBO, IBA super-bantamweight WC) were matched up for a fight in their burgeoning mma careers. Both are very green as mixed martial artists, Hardy going in at 1-1 and Julaton at 2-3 and as a consequence both rely almost solely on their boxing in the cage. They ended up having an incredibly sloppy wrestling match with extended periods of ground time in which Hardy just about managed to look less useless than Julaton to win the decision. I don't have any footage to show, but I assure you it was the grappling equivalent of Ronda Rousey shadowboxing.
Trigger warning again