Joe Daddy gets his big UFC win over Nate Diaz
Published by Zach Arnold on June 21st, 2009 in Current Events

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Joe Daddy Stevenson faced a must-win situation on Saturday night against Nate Diaz, the brother of Nick Diaz. For the most part, a lot of insiders and people in the MMA world wondered if Stevenson would be able to make a comeback as a top contender at 155 pounds.

“I don’t think you can count anyone out after someone like Randy Couture has shown us all that it’s the heart.”

In the case of Stevenson, his heart along with a change in his training schedule made all the difference in the world.

Stevenson pulled out a unanimous decision victory over Diaz (29-28 across the board) in a fight that was largely dominated by the former Ultimate Fighter star. He put Diaz in several bad positions, including an awkward crucifix hold, choke sleeper holds, and a couple of guillotines. Nate showed great patience and a calmness in fighting his way out of adversity. Nonetheless, Nate showed that a good wrestler can beat him in a fight and put him a position where he doesn’t show a lot of offense.

Despite having a very big height and reach advantage, Diaz is very skinny and can be outmuscled. Stevenson looked like a tank compared to Nate. Diaz was pushed against the cage several times thoroughout the fight. Even though he got a few submission attempts on Stevenson, Joe managed to plow his way to a relatively easy victory.

The big storyline for Stevenson coming into this fight was the switch he made in training, as he is now training with Greg Jackson’s camp in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

“I’m with Greg Jackson now. I’ve been there for two months training my butt off trying to reinvent myself and make myself a whole new, different Joe Stevenson.

The whole team over there at Jackson’s is awesome. Everyone’s very supportive, they’ve helped me push me harder than I’ve ever pushed, I’ve thrown up more at this camp than any other camp prior so… and I think the whole game plan and strategy that we have formatted for this is great.”

Stevenson showed a smart tactical game plan in the fight and never really deviated from what he needed to do. He pounded out a decision and avoided trouble from someone who had the tools to submit him. Jackson being in Joe Daddy’s corner also helped.

“Mentally, it’s like having Chuck Norris in your corner, it’s just unfair.”

Chris Lytle absolutely Burns his opponent

It might be time to give Marcus Davis some credit for that so-called ’sloppy c-level kickboxing match’ he had with veteran Chris Lytle. What kind of credit? Credit for not getting his ass kicked.

Kevin Burns wasn’t so lucky.

Lytle administered a beating on the MMA newcomer Saturday night in a violent slugfest. He didn’t just tag Burns with his punches — he connected and you could hear the thud of the shots. Both men traded blows in round one and Burns showed that he had some power to his shots. However, Lytle methodically and carefully picked his spots. He backed Burns around the cage for most of the fight. Just as it looked like Lytle was about to turn the switch on, Burns caught him with a heavy shot and then threw two knees to the body to close the round.

This didn’t come as a surprise to Lytle, as he stated in a UFC media interview.

“The fight with Burns was pretty tough to prepare for because you know the first time I saw him I thought, OK, this is a ground guy, he’s real good he submitted a black belt and then the next two fights he stands up and bangs the whole time so you never know where the fight’s going to go so you have to train in all aspects and that’s kind of what I did, I try to spend an equal amount of time on my feet and on the ground just doing different things, a little bit of everything so it really separated my training but it made it good to do every aspect of fighting.”

Lytle perked up quickly in round two and didn’t just hit Burns with body shots — he pounded him with blows. Hard body shots again and again. Burns got a takedown, but Lytle countered with a guillotine and then administered more punishment to wear out Burns. Burns, who has a controversial history of questionable incidents in fights, added to that reputation by managing to kick Lytle in the balls on numerous occasions. The crowd got really pissed off about this. Unfortunately for Kevin, that didn’t stop Lytle from dishing out more pain.

At the beginning stages of round three, Lytle caused a cut on the side of Burns’ left temple and it started juicing heavy. This was a real bloody cut. The crowd heated up big time as the blood flowed. Lytle continued his patient attacked and almost had his way in inflicting whatever kind of punishment he wanted to. One-two combinations, body shots, you name it and Chris Lytle was throwing amazing blows. By the end of the fight, it was unbelievable how much juice the cut was producing.

“I’m looking to go out there and I like the way this guy fights because I don’t think he’s trying to win a decision against me,” Lytle recently pontificated. “Anybody’s who not going to try to win a decision against me, they’re going to try to come out there and hurt me. I’m going to do the same, and so it’s going to be a good fight.”

Lytle ended up winning a unanimous decision on the scorecards (29-28). Kevin Burns is headed back to the drawing board after consecutive losses to both Anthony “Rumble” Johnson and now Chris Lytle.