Everyday when I’m in work I think to myself “Why am I here? What exactly is the point of me doing this?” Which is just what it must have felt like to be a judge at the incredibly awesome Invicta 15 last night as fights in six out of the seven matches ended with the fighters pretty much saying “Stick your 10-9’s up your arse we’re going to sort this out ourselves.”
I resent been woken up by an alarm clock, there’s just something so smug and judgemental about that perky “time to start the day” tone. The exception is when it’s 2am and there is fighting to be watched, especially when it’s an Invicta card.
Sadly as the very snazzy dressed Laura Sanko reminded us (with a little croak in her voice which gave her an even sexier husky delivery), we’d lost a few fights to injury and illness. So tonight we wouldn’t be getting any crazy spinning back kicks from Christine Stanley or Amanda Bell storming the cage like Godzilla rampaging towards Tokyo.
Fortunately the seven fights we were left with all delivered some top notch entertainment and “good violence.”
In my preview for this show I stated I was excited for the opener between Megan Anderson and Amber LeIbrock and these ladies obviously read that and did not want to disappoint me. After a stare down at the weigh ins that was so incredibly intense it looked like the fight was going to kick off twenty four hours early these two were ready to knock the absolute hell out of each other which is exactly what they did.
The first round had some really heavy strikes and kicks and both women were rocked during some wild exchanges. Megan (who set the bar for awesome entrance music coming out to the Australian national anthem AC/DC’s Back in Black) seemed to be slowly edging ahead, pressing the action and rocking Amber as the fight went on, though the heavy hands of Amber kept her in the battle. Finally a worn down Amber succumbed to a flurry of kicks and knees to the head in the third round.
This was a great fight (actually getting fight of the night bonus) and while Megan is facing a big step up in opponents she has a crowd pleasing exciting style that could make her a favourite in Invicta.
While it’s nice to see young talent like Megan and Amber learning their craft in Invicta it’s also great that women fighters have a platform to rebuild or restart their careers. Like in the case of Ultimate Fighter 20’s Angela Hill who came into Invicta after two consecutive defeats saw her cut from the UFC. Hill has an exciting striking style, a winning, smiling personality and came to the weigh ins in what I’m told was an outfit from Fallout which is a video game the kids of today spend three months at a time playing on one of those X-Station 5 thingys.
Anyway Angela showed she’s going to be a real asset to Invicta cards and with the thought “fuck you you Reebok wearing fuckwits” motivating her she absolutely cut through her opponent Alida Gray with some fast striking and finishing her off with some brutal knees in the first round. Angela looked overjoyed with the win and fans should also be happy that the already excitement stacked Straw weight division has another potential contender.
If you enjoyed the fight between Lacey Schuckman and Mizuki Inoue you should go to tip Lacey as she’s the one that put this together by respectfully calling out her opponent at the last show (Lacey also had some really cool entrance music which I need to track down at some point). Just like the opener was a stand up war, this was a great ground battle although I’d be a totally fraud if I tried to pretend I understood the nuances of what was going on in this hard fought tussle.
For a fan like me it was great to watch as Mizuki (she prefers to be called that instead of Inoue and after this fight no one should argue with her) controlled much of the action, switching from submission attempts to thunderous ground and pound on and then back again to trying get that armbar in. Schuckman was game throughout though, defending the submissions and reversing into attempts of her own many times.
Mizuki though was superior this night and finally managed to lock in the armbar in the third round and with another exciting fight under her belt (check out her match with Alexa Grasso from last year which was an absolute stormer) I’d love to see her get a title shot down the line. In the delightful comedy moment of the night Schuckman and Mizuki respectfully bowed to each other after the fight and accidentally bonked heads.
In the next fight late replacement Shino Vanhoose came to the ring in pigtails, making her look all young and innocent which was quite apt when fighting someone nicknamed “The Bully” like Amber Brown. All credit to the twenty year old for having the guts to take the fight on less than a week’s notice (apparently said yes to the fight before even knowing who her opponent was) and tried to make a fight of it with knees in the clinch and a sweep, but Amber had her in a guillotine and got the tap. Hopefully Invicta will get Vanhoose another fight she can be prepared properly for while giving Amber a title shot she’s demanding next time out.
Then came one of the performances of the night as Julie Kedzie, Tj De Santis and guest Tonya Evinger had to fill time during a delay in the show caused by the ambulance required to be on standby during the fights. With the fighters in the cage all ready to go, for fifteen minutes Kedzie and Evinger had to chat about the upcoming fight, Tonya’s thoughts on fighting the winner, the rest of card, whether Evinger had ever tried sumo and anything else they could think of. Any longer and I expected the chat to cover which MMA women Tonya wanted to go to bed with, which she in fact did go through on this week’s MMA Roasted podcast in one of the most hilariously entertaining MMA interviews you will hear and should definitely check out (never mind Conor Mcgregor being the best interview, do you ever hear him threatening to use a strapon on CM Punk?)
Personally I think the team of De Santis and Kedzie are a great fit for Invicta and certainly not an embarrassment like the pillock on Fox at the UFC weigh ins who claimed to not understand why an accused wife beater was getting booed.
Finally with the ambulance in place Colleen Schneider (winning the award for least clothed fighter of the night) and Raquel Pa’aluhi were finally allowed to do battle for a shot at Tonya’s bantamweight title, but you had to feel for them being out there and cooling down all that time.
The bout was an interesting clash of styles with Colleen trying to keep it at long range with her striking while Raquel attempted to close her down and go for the takedowns. Raquel had to once again draw on her giant warrior spirit after Colleen busted up her eye in the first round (speaking of which good to see Rocky star Stitch Duran was tending to the fighters tonight) and dogged the striker with takedown attempts but the fight for the most part remained standing.
The judges scribbling on their scorecards finally amounted to something as this was the only fight to go the distance and that dreaded spilt decision went to Schneider. Just don’t ask me to give any scoring as I’m bad at that shit, I actually thought Robbie Lawler won that third round against Condit (which makes me and two of the judges in the whole world).
Gold was on the line next for Denna Bennett challenging Livia Renata Souza (who’s name always makes me want to sing a Ricky Martin song) for the championship of the exciting straw weight division. Bennett who’s had issues around her change in weight class looked healthy and fresh, however in a surprise the submission specialist Souza seemed comfortable to strike with her and caught the challenger early with a well time kick to the body that took the wind right out of her and unable to defend against the resulting ground and pound the ref called a stop to the match.
Souza cut a great post fight interview even pulling out a Heath Ledger joker impersonation and frankly she should be happy with herself as her great performances have so far justified the faith Invicta showed by giving her a title shot on her debut for the promotion. Souza has eyes on the UFC although as an Invicta fan I’m hoping she has at least a couple more title defences before she makes that leap.
Main event time and you can’t help but feel nervous for any opponent of Cris Cyborg, I mean Ronda Rousey dominates (usually) her opponents but Cyborg brutalises them. So in front of a crowd of around 1,500 of which 600 were part of Cyborg’s fight team Daria Ibragimova set out to cause the biggest upset in Invicta history. To her credit the submission specialist looked calm and confident, dancing her way to the cage, probably because she thought she had the best game plan since Greg Jackson wrote on a chalkboard “Keep hitting the bitch and don’t let her armbar you.”
Part one of the game plan was to grab Cyborg’s leg which she managed to do perfectly in the opening seconds. Unfortunately part two of the plan never materialised as Cyborg used her balance to elbow the Russian while standing on one leg.
Ibragimova was unable to take Cyborg off her feet and the fight inevitably went to a stand up and the brutality commenced with knees and kicks but the Russian managed to survive by running the fuck away and once again grabbing her opponents leg. For a moment it looked as those Ibragimova was going to do the unthinkable and actually last the round but with seconds to go Cyborg absolutely blasted her with a punch that knocked her into Russian dreamland.
After the fight Cyborg pretty much announced that it’s no one’s damn business what a lady’s weight is and she’s not dieting specially to fight any bitch which probably will get MMA commentators outraged because SHE’SNOTDOINGWHATDANAWHITEANDUFCWANTHERTODO.
And with great sadness Invicta 15 came to a close. However the good news is that Invicta 16 is only 54 days away. Will I be doing another total shill piece for the show and being massively less funny and clever than I think I’m being, you bet your arse I will.
Dazza
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