Big Bad Blog Video Theatre-Zoila Gurgel vs Casey Noland

Here is the fight video of Zoila Gurgel vs Casey Noland from Friday's Bellator show. The match was streamed live on the Spike TV website and was geo blocked so fans outside North America didn't get to see it. The big deal here was Zoila is returning from a year off after blowing out her knee. She's been yakking about how she has been working on her jiu jitsu. In previous fights, she was a glorified kickboxer terrified of takedowns. I've seen Casey before and she lacks quickness and is probably at her best in the clinch. The big controversy about this fight was that after featuring Zoila in the poster and on commercials, the match was placed on the undercard. Of course many fans were outraged and that included Strikeforce fighter Miesha Tate who is in Brazil right now. It got a lot of media coverage and some came around to my position for the last year and a half. Bellator president Bjorn Rebney isn't as supportive of women's MMA as he would like you to believe. In the last two years, there have been exactly two women's matches on the main card. Forget what he says. That's what he's done. So Zoila got it into her head to take Casey down and showcase her BJJ skills. The problem is she doesn't know what to do once she gets Casey down and Casey reverses it. Casey isn't effective either but she scores with some knees in the clinch at the end of the round. I scored it 10-9 for Casey. It was very close. Between rounds, husband and trainer Jorge Gurgel yells at Zoila. Casey lands some more knees at the beginning of round two but Zoila comes back and attempts a kimura late in the round. She didn't apply it properly so she had to let it go. But she gets the round 10-9. Again Jorge yells at her. She finally gets her act together in round three but it appears that two punches that hurt Casey may have been to the back of the head. The ref did not call it. It was very close. An elbow cuts Casey over the left eye. Zoila clearly won the fight but she admitted afterwards she wasn't very good. Her problem was in trying to showcase BJJ skills she doesn't have. It should always be secondary to her kickboxing. She needs to be comfortable enough on the ground so she can defend or even reverse the position. She ain't there yet. Enjoy the video.