Star-studded UFC 200 fails to deliver despite big billing

LAS VEGAS – UFC 200 was an epic card on paper, hailed far and wide as the greatest card in the sport’s history, but at its conclusion, though a title changed hands, there was no truly memorable bout.

Fights that were expected to produce fireworks were as often as not desultory affairs.

It might have been significantly different if it had been Jon Jones and Daniel Cormier going at it for the undisputed light heavyweight belt in the main event.

Instead, Jones was nowhere to be found, yanked from the card late Wednesday after failing a drug test. UFC officials appeared to make a statement just before Cormier walked out to fight Anderson Silva, Jones’ 41-year-old replacement. They played a video in the arena chronicling Jones’ drug test issues and the numerous other problems that have dogged an otherwise brilliant career.

It was a strange night, during which the massive crowd at T-Mobile Arena lustily booed Cormier, one of the sport’s true good guys, when he opted to take Silva down and tried to finish him on the ground.

At one point during the bout, the fans chanted “Stand them up,” as Cormier had pinned Silva on his back and was dropping elbows on him.

Cormier, who called Silva his idol, said he couldn’t concern himself with the crowd’s reaction. He had to fight the best way he could in order to win.

“I would say to you, you stand in front of Anderson Silva for 15 minutes if you have the ability to take him down,” Cormier said. “I stood in there a little bit at times. We traded some shots. A couple of times I almost went back to the way I fought against [Alexander] Gustafsson, where he’d hit me and I wanted to hit him back.

“I have to fight smarter than that. The circumstances under which this fight came together, it was really a tough situation for me to go into. How do I win? You don’t just knock Anderson Silva out in one minute, two minutes. He’s too good for that.”

Amanda Nunes was too good for Miesha Tate in the night’s biggest upset, perhaps. She choked out Tate in the reconstituted main event to win the women’s bantamweight title.

It seemed anti-climactic after all that had gone on, and is probably most noteworthy because Nunes became the UFC’s first openly gay champion.

Her partner, Nina Ansaroff, is also a UFC fighter who competes at strawweight.

“She is so amazing, the most amazing person,” Nunes said. “I love her so much.”

There were plenty of interesting little storylines, but the biggest show ever lacked that mind-blowing bout.

Former heavyweight champion Cain Velasquez looked as good as he has since he defeated Junior dos Santos, thrashing Travis Browne throughout and stopping him in the first round.

He is looking to fight the winner of the upcoming Stipe Miocic-Alistair Overeem heavyweight title bout that will be held in Cleveland in September, but he has another guy who has an eye on him.

Former UFC champion Brock Lesnar, who last fought in the promotion in 2011, made a triumphant return. He avoided Mark Hunt’s mind-numbing power and ground out a unanimous decision win.

He agreed to fight on the show in early June, giving him barely a month to prepare after five years away to fight the eighth-ranked guy in the division.

Lesnar walked away from the sport after being ravaged by diverticulitis.

“The whole training camp was different,” Lesnar said. “I mean, my training camps five years ago were pretty depressing camps. I’d train for a couple of days and take five days off; train for three days and take a week off. Come on, I had 12 inches of my colon removed, [and] jumped back into the Octagon three months later. Who does that [expletive]? I’ve been gone five years. I stepped into the Octagon tonight against a guy ranked No. 8 in the world. Write what you want to write, but I think I’m the toughest [expletive] out there. I’m right in the game. I’ve got some work to do, but don’t we all?”

Lesnar’s not certain of his future, but he said Saturday’s win convinced him he could regain the belt if he wanted to try that.

He’s nearly 40, though, and that may be unlikely. He praised Velasquez for his effort against Browne and said he felt he’d do better than he did when he lost the title to Velasquez in 2010.

“Sure, absolutely,” he said when asked if he’d like a rematch with Velasquez. “I trained specifically for Mark Hunt. I trained six weeks for Mark Hunt, but if I decide I’m going to do this a little further, I’d have to sharpen my skills, but yeah.”

The best fight of the main card was Jose Aldo’s win over Frankie Edgar for the interim featherweight title. Aldo won a unanimous decision in a bout in which he was everything he was not against Conor McGregor at UFC 194 in December.

He was knocked out in 13 seconds in that fight. He was angry and fought out of control.

This time, he had a brilliant game plan against Edgar and essentially took the air out of the ball. He blunted nearly all of Edgar’s offense and cruised to a wide decision in what was a good but hardly sensational bout.

He is ready for a rematch with McGregor, who first will fight Nate Diaz at UFC 202 in August before he gets around to defending his belt against Aldo.

“I’m prepared and we could fight right now, if he wanted to,” Aldo said, defiantly.

There wasn’t a lot of that fire in the cage, though. There were plenty of decisions and never that explosive fight that fans will be talking about for years.

One of the things that is lost on a lot of people is that the fights are fought in the ring by human beings who have emotions and issues in their personal lives.

The great cards on paper don’t always pan out to be great.

And that’s how a show in which the guy in the prime of his career, the 28-year-old MMA superstar, disqualified himself from competition and was hundreds of miles away as a 41-year-old who had gall bladder surgery seven weeks ago took his place.

And Silva, who has had many epic wins and heard cheers from fans around the world, was perhaps the real winner of UFC 200.

He was dominated and never really in the fight, but the fans didn’t care. He showed up, did his part to try to save the show, and went the distance against one of the best fighters alive who just so happened to be in a division above him.

It was a loss in the record books but a win everywhere else, it seemed.

“I’ve been through so much in this sport that tonight was just a challenge for myself,” said Silva, who admitted he hadn’t trained for the fight but took it anyway. “I wanted to show young athletes that you can really do whatever you want. There are ups and downs in this sport but I just wanted to come here and do what I love to do.”

At the end of the day, after all the hype and the thousands of interviews and the millions of words written about this card, a man who wasn’t talked about once in the build-up until 48 hours before fight time is the guy who may well have saved the show.