UFC 85 took place amidst chaos, with a total of eight fighters originally scheduled pulling out due to injuries and other reasons.

UFC 85 was held in front of a sellout, 15,000 strong crowd at the O2 arena in London, England, with the main event ending up as UFC legend, Matt Hughes, taking on Thiago Alves.

In the prelims, Antoni Hardonk defeated Eddie Sanchez with a flurry of shots in round 2. UK fighter Paul Taylor won his fight against Jess Liaudin via a split decision. Ref Herb Dean stopped the Luiz Cane vs. Jason Lambert fight in round 1 after Lambert was knocked silly by the impressive looking Cane.

In the final two prelim bouts, Matt Wiman defeated Thiago Tevares with a huge right hand in round 2, and Martin Kampmann beat Jorge Rivera with a guillotine.

Now onto the main portion of the show, which saw, now I guess, former heavyweight hopeful, Brandon Vera, lose in a very controversial stoppage to Fabricio Wedrum. Wedrum had Vera in the mount and hit 15 plus shots, to which Vera just tried blocking. Sensing Vera was done, Dan Miragliotta ended the fight. The crowd booed, and well, I agree with them.

Thales Leitis beat Nathan Marquardt via split decision. Herb Dean took two points from Marquardt during the fight which ultimately cost him the fight. It was a real fun fight too, so there is hope for a rematch.

Marcus Davis and Mike Swick had one of the more boring fights I’ve seen since watching MMA. The crowd seemed to agree with me and booed this fight whenever it went to the ground. There was ole chants and even the Mexican wave made an appearance, Joe Rogan was confused by all of this. Swick won the fight via unanimous decision on straight scores of 29-27 (Swick was deducted one point for holding the fence).

“One of the most popular athletes in the UK”, Michael Bisping, looked real good in his first round mulling of Jason Day. I can’t wait for the day Anderson Silva destroys Bisping.

In the main event, Matt Hughes showed huge signs of being closer to retirement than one would hope. Alves, who looked more powerful than Hughes, landed a flying knee in the second round which ended the fight. Hughes landed funny which caused him to injure his knee.

A huge mistake I made was going into this DVD and watching disk number one first. Admittedly, it is only logic to do that, but on Disk 2, there was the nearly always great Countdown show. The show consisted of showing the lifestyle differences of both Hughes and Alves. One thing I did laugh at was Alves admitting he used to be a rent-a-dancer for the old grannies. Gotta pay them bills I guess.

There was also the weigh-ins, but if you’re not interested in spending 20 minutes watching dudes walk to the scales and strip to their underwear, I’d advise you to skip this.

The behind the scenes feature followed Marcus Davis and Mike Swick around; both were pretty uncharismatic and uninteresting.

As far as purchasing this DVD, if you’re a huge Michael Bisping fan, then sure, get this. If you’re looking for great fights with action, drama, etc, then I’d advise you to skip past UFC 85: BEDLAM. However, if you do purchase this DVD, then make sure to watch the Countdown special before the actual show, it’ll make you ten times more interested in the main event.

If you’re in the UK you pick up a copy on DVD via Fight DVD by clicking here.

Steve McLaren
steve@ifight365.com