CBS Saturday Night Fights “Unfinished Business” Results

Not a bad night of fights at all. I took a lot of heat for saying the first Saturday Night Fights event was good, but now that the cheerleaders, rap music, and all of the Bill Goldbergs are gone, there really wasn’t much to complain about during tonight’s two hour long live event on CBS. And before you go off on me, I am aware of the strange ending during the Baszler vs. Santos fight, but when you have a fighter who doesn’t speak English, you can experience some miscommunication before, during, and after the fight. No big deal, right?

Main CBS Card
Robbie Lawler def. Scott Smith via TKO in R2
Nick Diaz def. Thomas Denny via TKO in R2
Nick Shields def. Nick Thompson via submission in R1
Christiane Santos def. Shayna Baszler via TKO in R2

I was surprised to see Shayna Baszler go down so quickly and try to hard to hold a submission for too long. Christiane “Cyborg” Santos has some wicked hands and I think a showdown between her and Gina Carano should decide a 140-145 pound champ.

Nick Shields made Nick Thompson look bad on the ground, but I can only imagine that Thompson had a lot of more important things on his mind during the fight. These more important things would include passing the bar exam on Monday, passing the bar exam on Monday, and passing the bar exam on Monday.

I’ve never been a big fan of the Diaz brothers and tonight’s performance didn’t help. Nick Diaz looked much better on his feet than he did on the ground, but I can only imagine that the extra inches in his reach gave him much more of an advantage than he realized coming into this fight. Thomas “Wildman” Denny does not give up and deserves a lot of credit for taking on someone like Diaz in his hometown. Like John said in his article, I was hoping to see KJ Noons come into the ring to steal some of Diaz’s thunder, but we saw nothing of the sort.

From what I’ve been reading and hearing, a lot of people were looking to see Robbie Lawler end his rematch with Scott Smith quickly, but the fight went into the second round before we saw a definitive end. Unlike the first fight between Lawler and Smith, which ended in a no-contest due an accidentally eye gouge delivered to Smith, Lawler made sure to finish the fight tonight. It was another great fight between the middleweights and I can only expect to see more good things from both Smith and Lawler in the future in EliteXC.

Overall, I’m expecting the show to do pretty well as far as ratings goes, but since we didn’t see Kimbo in the cage, we may have lost a few viewers. I’m going to predict a 2.0 rating average with a 2.5 peak with the Smith vs. Lawler fight around 10:30PM ET.

Showtime Undercard
Antonio Silva def. Justin Eilers via TKO in R2
Wilson Reis def. Brian Caraway via decision
Rafael Feijao Cavalcante def. Travis Galbraith via TKO in R1