Check out Sherdog’s play-by-play if you didn’t catch the fights.

UFC 64 was one of the better cards since the Canada vs USA card earlier this year. We had the return of Franklin to defend his title against Anderson Silva.

Somehow Anderson Silva got a free pass for a title fight simply by beating Chris Leben. I know the argument was that Silva’s record outside of the UFC pushed him to the top, but that is not all that encouraging for guys like Swick who has been on a tear for a while and still hasn’t gotten the call up. I was nervous for Franklin as he came out to the ring. He just didn’t look right. Most of the fighters have 6-pack abs but in Franklin’s case, his stomach didn’t look right. I was commenting to others that it “looked pudgy”. If you don’t know the result, let’s just say that you don’t want to clinch with Anderson Silva.

Silva is definitely a force to be reckoned with. Whoever wins TUF4 gets to fight Silva and from what I have seen of the new/old recruits Silva will probably remain the champ for a while.

Sean Sherk vs Kenny Florian was a real battle. I was rooting for “Ken-Flo” because Florian made me a believer with his wins over Sam Stout, Kit Cope and Alex Karalexis. It was a good fight but the Shark was just too much for Florian on the ground. Florian was able to open a nice gash on top of Sherk’s head with an elbow, but the gushing blood was not enough for them to stop the fight. It was very reminiscent of the Edwin Dewees vs Gideon Ray fight where the blood was going everywhere. At one point, Florian was complaining about getting Sherk’s blood in his eyes and mouth. I am not sure what Florian can do when he goes back to the drawing board, hopefully he might be able to find a good wrestling team and just keep learning to defend the takedown. His boxing is fine, but his jiujitsu just isn’t strong enough to get the Shark off of him.

Last fight of the pay-per-view was an earlier fight between Clay Guida and Justin James. This was a very action packed fight. I had heard about Guida’s fights at the Strikeforce events in San Jose and his aggressive style of fighting but this was beyond anything I expected. Guida tooks some good knees and hits into the first round and was able to do a pretty sweet counter to an armbar that James was able to sink in, but Guida was able to twist out of. The second round was all Guida as he came out like a wild animal and got the takedown and started to pound on James gorrilla-style while in James’ guard. James turned over to try avoid the barrage of punches and Guida was able to sink in the rear naked choke. Guida will definitely have a huge following after that performance. I am honestly looking forward to see who they throw at him and see him as a serious threat to all the 155 pounders… Sherk included.