Last night’s UFC card should have been something special.

It was good but not great – the end result leaving me only partially satisfied and hardly thrilled. Basically, I was left wanting for more.

I couldn’t have been more impressed on a number of levels. Mark Hominick was amazing (albeit I missed most of that fight but saw the best parts) and he should be among the next wave of the UFC’s rising stars. Mike Swick looked smooth and is now entering the level of elite fighters who have legit shots at world titles. His opponent, Steve Vigneault, wasn’t the greatest test, but Swick passed by him with little problem – exactly how it should have been done.

As a fan, my dream matchup was Georges St. Pierre against B.J. Penn. Against anybody else, I would have been cheering for Penn, but as a Canadian, I had to put my support behind St. Pierre.

The St. Pierre/Penn clash was really the show’s main event but it nearly turned into a disaster when Penn accidentally poked St. Pierre in the eye with an errant punch. That, followed by a shot to the nose, left St. Pierre an absolute mess by the time three minutes was up.

Cue the comeback. St. Pierre dominated the next two rounds, landing a few blows but doing most of the damage in the clinch and scoring with big slams. Clearly Penn was PO’d by the judges’ decision (although the biggest joke was hearing Matt Lindland in the background yelling about St. Pierre’s face. Note to Mr. Lindland – you are the most boring fighter in the UFC. I thought you were bad to watch, but hearing you carrying on like a goof was worse.)

St. Pierre will get his title shot against Matt Hughes, who very sportingly agreed with the judges’ call on the decision. My gut tells, though, that there will be a rematch in the coming months or years, perhaps a couple.

My predictions are:

• After Hughes demolishes Royce Gracie, he’ll give St. Pierre a title shot and then lose the welterweight belt.
• The UFC will then stage a grudge match between Hughes and Penn. The winner of that showdown will get a rematch with St. Pierre – either an epic trilogy with Hughes or another toe-to-toe throwdown with the Prodigy.

The actual main event was an odd tale. I actually thought David Loiseau was going to win – I’d been smelling an upset of champion Rich Franklin for a week.

What the odor turned out to be was the stink of the Crow’s effort. It was amazing to me how lost Loiseau seemed. He even admitted in the corner that was thrown off by Franklin’s approach. Did he not train with any lefties in preparation for this fight? Had he not figured out that Franklin was going to come right him, just the same as he did against Ken Shamrock, Evan Tanner and Nate Quarry?

I’ll give the Crow credit for mounting a bit of a surge in the third round and scoring a knockdown with a super left hook. But by the time he did that, the beatdown he had absorbed had taken too much of an effect. Frankly, I was shocked that the ringside doctors let the fight continue with the damage Loiseau had taken around his eyes.

Sadly the final minutes of the fight were awful to watch. Loiseau had zero left in the tank and Franklin, who was running on fumes too, was merely beating away on a dead horse.

I had expected more out of Loiseau. I had also hoped the St. Pierre vs. Penn match would be off the chart. It was solid but not spectacular.

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This is fight week in Edmonton as the Maximum Fighting Championship’s MFC 9 is ready to rumble Friday night. During the week, I’ll be posting news updates on the website with reactions from the fighters following the press conference on Wednesday, details from the weigh-in and results and post-fight comments from the show.

If you haven’t seen it yet, the MFC’s first title belt is stunning – a first-class, original production. Jason MacDonald or Patrick Cote will look sharp with this belt around their waist after the main-event battle.

It’s funny to see the reaction from some mainstream media people about Mike Maurer’s venture into MMA. A few think it’s cool but a good number view the decision of the Grey Cup game’s most outstanding Canadian with a high level of disdain.

I wish they’d come see the training and effort that top-level fighters have to put in to be considered world class. I think the prejudices of “barroom brawling” and “no-holds barred” still exist to a certain extent. If they’d give it a chance, I think they’d find they enjoyed watching MMA a whole lot more than boxing which still gets the headlines.

Stay tuned to www.maximumfighting.com all week for details on MFC 9.

Until next week’s Z-Files … see you at the show!