I never thought I would say it, but as of last night, I am officially a fan of Diego Sanchez.
I have been his biggest critic since day one as I just did not like the way he conducted himself during interviews and outside of the octagon, but inside, WOW.
I truely believe he is ready to take on Georges or Matt, but I doubt he will be able to beat either of them. What I do know is that he will give them a run for the money. No doubt in my mind.
Sanchez proved to me that he is a warrior, and the one characteristic quality that I really like about his fight game is that he does not stop thinking. He is always working in combinations, whether striking, scrambling or grappling.
And for the record, Karo's judo for MMA is INCREDIBLE. I cannot believe he did not KO Sanchez with some of those throws...WOW.
I still think he's an obnoxious overconfident dork, but he's also a very talented fighter who can fight with the best fighters at 170 and honestly have a chance to win.
TUF has produced it's first champion level fighter...
I think more will come.
I suggested Koscheck because when they fought in TUF 1, it was a close fight. They've both improved their games in leaps and bounds since then. Koscheck's stand up and cardio have improved compared to when he was on TUF. Their styles match up fairly well to make it an interesting rematch. That all said, a fight with Penn would be awesome too.
See, I liked Koschek's footwork and overall stand up posture. He was more on point this time as a striker (elbows in, chin down) as opposed to dropping his lead hand (wrestler's trait) and simply looking for the shoot.
To do what he did to Goulet is not an easy task. Goulet is a strong guy, and is generally pushed around in training by strong guys (aka St.Pierre if they trained together for this fight).
Now, based on last night, Koschek would not have done much to Sanchez, but on any other given night, I see where Subryan is going with his matchmaking...;)
I'm also not surprised that Karo didn't knock out Diego when he Judo tossed him on his head because I don't think Diego has anything up there to knock out anyway. Impressive fighter though so I hope Dana & Joe Silva don't toss him to the lions just yet. A fight with Koshcheck and BJ would benefit him more instead of just throwing him to the top 2 studs of the welterweight division, Hughes and GSP.