Unbelievable: Evans a big winner at UFC 88

Wow.

That’s about the best word I can think of to describe Rashad Evans’ brutal second round knockout of former UFC light-heavyweight champion Chuck Liddell at Saturday’s UFC 88: Breakthrough in Atlanta.

Many “pundits”, myself included, didn’t fell Evans had much of a shot to win this fight. Speaking for myself, I didn’t write him off, it was just a real bad style matchup for him.

Quite simply, Rashad Evans played with fire and didn’t get burned.

He came in with what turned out to be a great game plan — he decided to stand and trade with Liddell. After an evasive first round, Evans landed one of the single biggest blows of the year in the second round with a huge right that sent Liddell crashing face-first to the canvas and led me to exclaim, without thinking, “Oh my God, he’s dead!”

Now, I’ve watched a lot of fights and I’ve never seen anyone fall quite like Liddell did. I’ve had a lot of crazy reactions, as well, and the only time I can remember being as shocked as I was Saturday was when Gabriel Gonzaga knocked out Mirko CroCop with a high kick at UFC 70 last year.

It was literally one of those moment you will never forget. I know the image of Liddell falling to the canvas will be etched in my brain for days to come.

As for the crow Evans served up to everyone (I wrote in this blog last week that “(Evans) hasn’t shown enough power standing to this point to make me think he has a chance of knocking Liddell out.”), I will gladly eat it, as it appears Evans has earned a title shot against champion Forrest Griffin. Maybe at a UFC at The Palace of Auburn Hills? We shall see.

What’s crazy is that Evans did not attempt a single takedown. And MSU wrestling coach Tom Minkel had it right — Evans’ boxing background did serve him well, only nobody could’ve seen it serving him as well as it did.

As for the rest of the card, every fighter turned in a solid, if not spectacular performance. Especially impressive was Nathan Marquardt, who knocked out Martin Kampmann in the first round with a huge flurry of strikes.

Marquardt was handed his lunch by middleweight champion Anderson Silva when they met at UFC 73. Sometimes when a fighter is beaten soundly like that, they never recover (see Loiseau, David). Marquardt has been a new fighter since, but in a good way. His aggressiveness is his last three fights has been nothing short of awesome.

The big fight to make now is Marquardt against Dan Henderson, who returned to the winner’s circle with a hard-fought unanimous decision win over Rousimar Palhares. This would be a great fight to determine who gets the chance to get destroyed by Silva again — although I’d like to see “the new” Nate Marquardt get that chance. He certainly seems like a man on a mission.

In other fights, Rich Franklin delivered the Bas Rutten Special, a liver kick to send Matt Hamill to the floor early in the third round while Dong Hyun Kim was a split decision winner over a very tough Matt Brown.

As for my predictions, I went 6-for-9. Not a bad effort, especially considering the competitiveness of the card.

Not a bad night at all.