The Heat and the Shine

WHEN WORLDS COLLIDE By Ben Miller Email: benjamiller@icloud.com Twitter: @benjamiller UFC 155 is in the books and it showed once again that Raven was right.  About a decade ago the former ECW champion appeared on an audio show with Dave Meltzer and Bryan Alvarez saying that all that matters is the finish.  On a night where three of the five pay-per-view fights were one-sided and uninspiring, nobody is talking about anything except the final fight because it was that damn good. The second Cain Velasquez vs. Junior Dos Santos fight was fantastic to a neutral observer and dramatic as hell to anyone with a rooting interest.  Yours truly was rooting for the Brazillian (blame an overreaching pre-show essay for that) and from the opening bell it was a riveting tale of survival.  Cain was a monster in a perpetual state of attack and Junior kept fighting and fighting to survive the beast.  For supporters of Velasquez some of the drama may have been lacking (drama fund

The Cost of Abandoning Fair Play: Why UFC 155 Won’t Draw By Ben Miller Email: benjamiller@icloud.com Twitter:  @benjamiller   The temptation is to blame the mismatch.  A year ago, the striker knocked out the wrestler in a minute.  What has changed?  The wrestler still wants everyone on the ground.  The striker still seems to always be able to stay off the ground.  The striker isn’t getting any shorter and the wrestler isn’t getting any younger. And so maybe the mismatch is the reason that Junior Dos Santos vs. Cain Velasquez for the heavyweight championship at UFC 155 has tepid interest.  No front page headline on ESPN.com a day out.  The sports section of the Los Angeles Times (the newspaper from the nearest major media market to Las Vegas, the site of the fight) has nary a mention.  Deadspin.com has a feature, but even that is a feature about the  bumbled promotion of the challenger . The problem with blaming the mismatch is that the sporting public seems fine with