Again, Invicta show ruined by terrible main event

So the big news at last night's Invicta show wasn't the show itself which was ruined by a terrible main event. The big news is that Cris Cyborg suffered a ruptured ligament in her ankle and will be out for a long time. An injury like this is worse than a break because of uncertain rehab. For now, she is trying to forego surgery but if it doesn't heal properly, surgery may be required. If that happens, she'll be out for at least a year. Obviously she's not on the Dec. 5 Invicta show. They announced that the main event will have Michelle Waterson defending her Invicta Atomweight Championship against Brazilian Herica Tiburcio. Wait a minute. Isn't this the same girl who pulled out of a fight scheduled for last night's show? I didn't know that fighters with "visa problems" got rewarded with title shots. They announced a couple more fights but I plan to analyze the full card when it is announced. But I don't believe that any unproven fighter deserves a title shot. It's lame. In last night's main event, Barb Honchak successfully defended her Invicta Flyweight Championship against Takayo Hashi. It was terrible. And Hashi is to blame. As she did against Sarah Kaufman and Tara Larosa, she didn't fight to win. She fought to survive five rounds. There was way too much clinching on the fence. And with Hashi's back to the fence, the judges perceive Honchak as winning though most of the time nobody was really winning. I know fans want the fight to play out naturally. But this kind of stalling can be stopped by the ref stepping in and warning them to knock it off or he'll take off points. That's at the ref's discretion. It's funny. Hashi doesn't fight like this in Japan. But she's done this before and that's why I predicted she would do it again. And because this fiasco was predictable, ultimately Invicta is to blame for booking it in the first place. The co-main event made up for it with Karolina Kowalkiewicz beating MIZUKI by split decision. I scored it 29-28 for MIZUKI but it was close enough that I have no problem with the decision. Karolina threw a lot of punches but a lot of them didn't land. And judges can be fooled by quantity over quality. In the second round, MIZUKI nullified this with a takedown. I think MIZUKI needed to be more aggressive and not respect her so much. That respect cost her the fight. It was the fight of the night and I think a lot of fans wanted it to go five rounds. Late replacement Raquel Pa'aluhi beat Kaitlin Young by unanimous decision. Kaitlin battered Raquel in round one. But she ran out of gas as she tends to do and Raquel easily won the other two rounds. And her lack of any ground game was completely exposed. Kaitlin had potential at one time but she has never progressed past being a kickboxer. And I know she's popular with fans but I don't care. she has to be embarrassed by this. Jodie Esquibel won an easy decision over Nicdali Rivera-Calanoc and Nicdali retired afterwards. I had heard that was her plan anyway. Nicdali was ineffective. She did nothing. I liked her early in her career. But I don't think she was the same after MIKU knocked her out in Japan a few years ago. Amber Brown won by split decision over Liz McCarthy. I scored it 29-28 for Amber. The key to this fight was Liz was ineffective from top position. Amber landed more from the bottom. But sometimes judges mess that up and it could have gone the other way. Amanda Bell clobbered Maria Hougaard- Djursaa with ground and pound before the ref stopped the fight at the end of round one. Maria missed weight and I had seen her before so I knew she wasn't very good. Andrea Lee beat Shannon Sinn by unanimous decision. I had never seen either fighter but when I saw Andrea is much younger, I thought she would win and she looked good. She also has a marketable look. Same thing with Jamie Moyle beating Jenny Liou Shriver by unanimous decision. I wasn't familiar with them but when I saw the age difference, I thought Jamie would win. She was much more energetic and Jamie won a performance bonus. Jenny just looked lethargic to me. The opener had Kelly McGill over Maegan Goodwin by unanimous decision. Maegan missed weight which is usually a bad sign. Kelly was much quicker and busted Maegan open on the ground. I didn't mention it but there was a lot of blood in this show. So Stitch Duran was busy. The only time I thought maybe the fight should have been stopped was when Liz McCarthy was cut over the eye. It was bad but it made Liz more difficult to hold on to so the blood may have helped her. This show is not for the squeamish.