Best Performance Of The Night: Dennis Siver At UFC 127 "Penn vs. Fitch"

It’s that time once again, fans and friends. Another major MMA event has come and gone, and it’s time for my unofficial “Best Performance of the Night” award. It was pretty difficult to pick a winner for UFC 127: “Penn vs. Fitch”, considering how many unexpected occurrences ended up happening and how close and exciting many of the fights were. But in the end, I chose the man who gave us the unlikeliest outcome of all, the man who stopped a huge hype train dead in its tracks and emerged as a bonafide, breakout Lightweight star: Dennis Siver. Here’s why Siver’s victory over George Sotiropoulos earned him my “Best Performance of the Night” award.

Let’s start off with something a whole lot of people thought was going to happen in this match: as a one-dimensional kickboxer, Siver would be taken down quickly and more than likely submitted by George Sotiropoulos. I myself felt that the fight would more or less play out along those lines. I know that some cynics point out that George Sotiropoulos is pretty one-dimensional too, but I think it was apparent that Sotiropoulos was getting better at his stand-up a lot faster and much sooner than Siver was getting better at his ground game.

Certainly George wasn’t as good of a striker as Siver, certainly Siver wasn’t as good of a ground wizard as Sotiropolous. But it seemed as if George was the fighter closest to covering that gap, at least in this fight. And I honestly and wholeheartedly believed that all George needed in this fight was one takedown, one takedown in fifteen minutes, in order to win.

But he didn’t get it. And what he did get was a constant stream of punches to his face and body, along with leg kicks. He also nearly got stopped for the first time in his career.

And let’s make one thing clear: even as a one-dimensional striker, Dennis Siver proved that he’s a threat to anyone in his division. Siver is pretty muscular for a Lightweight, but that power somehow hasn’t affected his cardio, which is remarkable. Those muscles also haven’t affected his balance: at one point in the fight Siver was hopping around on one leg and still throwing punches. This was a dominating performance by Dennis Siver, and he did it against someone many people felt was only one fight away from being a legitimate championship contender.

With this big win, Siver has now won seven of his last eight fights. After struggling to put together the pieces early on in his UFC career, and after a somewhat deflating loss to Ross Pearson back in March 2010, Siver seems to have finally been able to put it all together and craft a winning formula. He’s now the first man to have ever beaten George Sotiropoulos in the UFC, something that many thought only a UFC Lightweight Champion would possibly be able to do.

Siver simply put on one of the best performances of his entire MMA career at UFC 127, taking apart and nearly finishing the heavily-favored favorite in front of his native crowd. Brian Ebersole’s upset of Chris Lytle may have been more unexpected, but Siver’s upset of Sotiropoulos was more complete. For dramatically ending the very impressive win-streak of George Sotiropoulos, I absolutely believe that Dennis Siver should be given “Best Performance of the Night” for UFC 127: “Penn vs. Fitch”.

And what about you, fans and friends? Who took home your unofficial end-of-night accolades?