Never let it be said that I'm unwilling to confess when I'm wrong.Polakowski let me down. Contrary to what some of the other fighters said, I really don't think the match between Polakowski and Roop was all that good. As far as I'm concerned Roop won both rounds. So, the judges got it right. There was no need for a third round.
Let's face it, even though Polakowski got in a couple good shots before Roop was able to take him down again in the second round, he wasn't able to do anything with it. That's not really saying much about Roop who really couldn't do anything with his right hand or his kicks. But in the end, it doesn't really matter because Roop won't be going past the finals. Based on what I saw Polakowski wouldn't have gone there either. So in the end, the fight wasn't really anything of any significance anyway.
Of course my predictions for the semi-finals got all screwed up as well.
The light-heavyweights ended up looking like this:
The ligtweights look like this:
With that in mind I think the lightweights are a lot easier to predict. Roop showed a bit of a weak chin in his fight with Polakowski. Knowing that Nover packs a pretty good punch, I'm going to pick Nover as the winner of that match. Browning, in my opinion, isn't really much more than a brawler with weak cardio. After Browning burns himself out, Escudero will win that match leaving us with a pretty good lightweight fight in the final against Nover.
The light heavy-weights . . . that's a tough one. Bader's a fantastic wrestler, but I'm going to go with Eliot. I think Eliot's a well rounded fighter that will have the advantage over Bader's wrestling. Magalhaes has already demonstrated what his ground skills are like, but can he take Soszynski's stand-up skills? I'm going out on a limb and saying yes. Magalhaes definitely has better jui-jitsu than Soszynski. And Soszynski's arm bar was a bit weak, even though he managed to get it. That should leave a fantastic bout in the final between Marshall and Magalhaes.
Thaink I've got it all wrong? Tell me about it . . .
