Big Bad Blog Video Theater-Joanne Calderwood vs Valerie Letourneau

Here's the match video of Joanne Calderwood vs Valerie Letourneau from last night's UFC show in Ottawa. This aired on Fox Sports 1 in the US and TSN in Canada. This was the first UFC women's fight at 125lb. This is a weight class the UFC plans to start probably in 2017. Joanne says she asked matchmaker Sean Shelby if she could fight at 125 and the UFC agreed to it. And Valerie should never have to drop to 115 again. After much personal turmoil, Joanne moved from her home in Scotland to train at Tristar in Montreal. This was her first fight since that move. Valerie is a native of Montreal and she used to train at Tristar. She now trains at ATT in Florida. Plenty of folks praised her toughness in her title fight against Joanna Jedrzejczyk. But the only reason Joanna didn't finish Valerie is that Joanna broke her hand early in the fight. The story of this fight was the terrible performance by ref Jerin Velal. In round one, Joanne dropped Valerie with a spinning back elbow. I thought the fight should have been stopped right there as Valerie seemed to be out cold. Velal must have been out for a coffee because he missed it completely and the fight continued. His job is to protect the fighters and he failed. Even if Valerie was only out for a second, to allow the fight to continue is asking for brain damage. And for the rest of the fight, Valerie seemed to be in a fog. Velal even messed up in round three before he finally stopped the fight. If he had done his job, this fight never would have gone past the first knockdown. I know that Velal was trained by Big John McCarthy so I hope John goes over the fight with him. We can't have reffing like that. I was asked on Twitter last night about Valerie's top. If you watch the fight, you'll notice she adjusted it several times. And for the record, I noticed it at the time. And if you watch the other women's fight, Jocelyn Jones-Lybarger also had trouble with her top. This has been an ongoing problem with the Reebok tops. I guess they don't fit properly. For that reason, Julianna Pena and Michelle Waterson were allowed to wear non-Reebok tops. I know there have been complaints about ill fitting tops. You guys should know by now that I hear about everything that goes on. Obviously this is something that the UFC and Reebok need to rectify as it's a known issue. Congratulations to Joanne for the big win. It's too bad that the poor reffing and wardrobe problems overshadowed it. Enjoy the video!