UFC 78: Validation - November 17, 2007 at the Prudential Center in Newark, New Jersey. Validation is the first UFC event to be held in New Jersey since June 4, 2005's UFC 53: Heavy Hitters in Atlantic City.
The main event features The Ultimate Fighter 2 heavyweight winner Rashad Evans against season three's light heavyweight winner Michael Bisping. Additionally, PRIDE veterans Ryo Chonan and Akihiro Gono made their UFC debuts. Both fighters fought at 183 pounds in Japan, but with the UFC's inclusion of the 170 pound division each fighter moved down to fight at welterweight.
Main Card · Light heavyweight bout: Rashad Evans vs. Michael Bisping · Welterweight bout: Karo Parisyan vs. Ryo Chonan · Light heavyweight bout: Houston Alexander vs. Thiago Silva · Lightweight bout: Spencer Fisher vs. Frank Edgar · Middleweight bout: Ed Herman vs. David Terrell
Preliminary Card · Welterweight bout: Akihiro Gono vs. Tamdan McCrory · Welterweight bout: Chris Lytle vs. Thiago Alves · Lightweight bout: Joe Lauzon vs. Jason Reinhardt · Lightweight bout: Marcus Aurelio vs. Luke Caudillo
Customer Reviews:
Avg. Customer Rating: 4.0 / 5.0
Lytle vs Alves!:
Chris "lights out" Lytle and Thiago Alves had a great controversial fight that won the fight of the night.The main event of Bisping vs Evans lived up to the hype as well.The co-main event of Alexander vs Silva was "surprising" in the way it went down!
Good Night of Fights:
After seeing Fight Night 13, which features 5 fighters from this event(Alexander, Alves, Parisyan, Lauzon, Edgar), which 4/5 of them lost their fights at FN 13, I decided to re-watch this event. Even though the main event wasn't anything special to look forward too, that didnt mean the fights had to be bad. Still, some of them turned out really disappointing. Akihiro Gono vs. Tamdan McCrory
-Akihiro Gono, a Pride veteran with a record of 27-12 makes his UFC debut with Tamdan McCory (10-1). The... more info
TUF 2 & TUF 3 Winners Square off!:
This has been criticized, and probably for good reason. One thing for me was the referees. Who the heck are Dan Miragliotta and Kevin Mulhall? They're certainly not refs that I want to see in the UFC again! But this event is in Newark, New Jersey, so they don't want Big John or Herb Dean, they want these Bozos! Let 'em have the night, they won't get another chance to be on pay-per-view! They weren't that great, but there's nothing to be done about it now. When you think of main events, as well as... more info
VALIDATION:
This event got a lot of crap, but in the end it was a decent card. If I had the option of giving it 3 1/2 stars I would, I don't think it deserves to be as low as 3 or as high as 4. This event took place in November of 2007, which was an odd month for the UFC. A lot of the big fighters were either saved for the December card, already fought within the past couple cards, or were injured. This created probably one of the weakest main events as far as "big" fighters goes. That is really the only problem with... more info
