Sunday, September 13, 2015

Invicta FC14 falls flat after main event fighters miss weight

Last night's Invicta show may have been the worst they have produced to date. At least there weren't any technical problems with the broadcast. As I said when the show was announced, the number one problem is they have to stop doing shows in Kansas City because the empty seats are visible on TV. I guess they don't understand that this makes them look bush league. And the problems mounted when main event fighters Tonya Evinger and Pannie Kianzad both missed weight and it wasn't a title match anymore. That's a good way to kill last minute ticket sales. Unfortunately, Invicta only scheduled one title match for this show so there was no backup plan. Maybe then it could have been cancelled. Pannie looked like a shadow of herself and Tonya beat the crap out of her for two rounds before the fight was stopped. Back to the drawing board for Pannie. My guess is Invicta will sacrifice Tonya to Cris Cyborg when Cris drops to 135. But Tonya isn't going to the UFC. She's butthurt because when the UFC needed an injury replacement, Sean Shelby didn't call her first because he wasn't impressed with her performance in the TUF 18 qualifier match. He's right. She wasn't very good in that situation. So now she won't talk to them. Do you think this is the first promoter to have a problem with Tonya's bad attitude? In the co-main event, DeAnna Bennett missed weight again but still won over Katja Kankaanpaa by unanimous decision. I scored it 29-28 for Katja. We have seen the Kansas City judges read fights wrong before. In this case, I thought they gave DeAnna too much credit for ineffective guillotine choke attempts. Even DeAnna was shocked in her post match interview. And now it looks like she will have to return to 125lb. She can't seem to make 115 and I think she's a better fighter at 125. When Roxanne Modafferi vs Mariana Morais was announced, it seemed funny to me that they would have Roxy fight a greenhorn. Now this appears to have been a deliberate mismatch to set up Roxy for a 125lb title shot vs Barb Honchak. Obviously they think that will sell tickets. Roxy won easily with a third round stoppage. But Mariana did nothing for three rounds but lie down and take Roxy's pitty pat punches. If Roxy had any punching power, the fight would have been stopped much sooner. Remember it's not the first time Invicta has done a deliberate mismatch like Michelle Waterson vs Yasuko Tamada. They need to stop doing that. Andrea Lee got back on the winning track with a dominant win over Rachel Ostovich by armbar with two seconds left in the fight. This wasn't as competitive as a lot of fans thought. Andrea was a lot quicker than Rachel. Cindy Dandois won by a round two triangle choke over Megan Anderson. Like a lot of the Aussie female fighters, Megan is way behind in her development. The way to beat Cindy is to punch her in the face and Megan didn't do that. It almost seemed like another deliberate mismatch. Sharon Jacobson won a pretty good match over Jamie Moyle by unanimous decision. Some thought this was an upset. I did not. It was a step up in competition for Jamie. Sometimes a loss can make a fighter better. Jinh Yu Frey won by unanimous decision over Liz McCarthy. It was competitive but I wasn't surprised. JJ Alrdrich late replacement Rosa Acevedo by first round TKO. Aspen Ladd was again very impressive with a dominant win by a second round armbar over Amanda Bobby Cooper. Time to move Aspen up the card. And in the opener, Felicia Spencer beat Rachel Wiley by first round TKO. This did not convince me that 155lb will be a thing. To me, the main event fighters missing weight and the deliberate mismatches really hurt this show. Deliberate mismatches have been an ongoing Invicta problem that needs to stop.

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