[molson]

Watching Aleksei Oleinik very slowly drag people down to hell to murder them has been one my favorite things in MMA the last few years. Too bad he's 42. Anybody can knock him out at this point with one punch but when he gets his hands on you he's still terrifying. 46 submission wins at heavyweight. Preposterous - even though many of them were against Russian no-names, balanced by the fact that many of those occurred on multi-fight nights.

Maurice Greene is probably the top of what he's able to deal with striking wise now though, and that's not a very high bar. I'd like to see him strangle Greg Hardy, but, I think Hardy would knock him out, and I don't want to see that.

Vintage Conner performance in Vegas was fun too.

I don't know of Cerone is completely done or not, but he's never been close to Conner's league, this would have been the outcome years ago too. Cerone always had a ceiling and he's been fighting guys above it lately. But he beat Iaquinta and flavor-of-the-month-prospect Alexander Hernandez (who came back and won since) in the last year, so, maybe he can still carry those Fight Night Shows in North Dakota against non-top 10 guys.

I know UFC Rankings don't mean anything, but, just as a guideline - Cerone has 12 losses in the last 10 years, and every single one of them was against a guy who is currently ranked in the top 10 of a division in UFC (though Pettis is about to fall out). Before that, there's two losses to Benson Henderson who might still be ranked if he was in the UFC, and then the only other loss of his career against a guy who's now retired. He's been incredibly active, durable, and a guy who only loses to clearly better guys.

Conner just had questions coming into this fight about his inactivity and mental health. But it was nice to see him drop the full-heel act for one show and build-up and just be a star.