Dude, if it were battle of the bands, Megadeth totally would’ve won. Totally. Instead, here’s what we learned over the weekend from the dueling shows put on by the UFC and Affliction.

1.  Fedor and Anderson Silva are awful damned good.

We know, we’re definitely in the running for “obvious statement of the week,” with this one, but even we didn’t expect the carnage to be that total or that fast. These two dudes made James Irvin and Tim Sylvia look like mediocre talents at best. OK, fine, maybe Irvin is mediocre at best, but we kind of thought Sylvia would make a fight out of it. I guess we forgot about the big fella’s susceptibility to getting punched in the face by smaller, quicker heavies. 

2.  Now more than ever, we feel bad for Tim Sylvia.

Once we met him in the lobby of a Vegas casino (he was wearing parachute pants) and we introduced ourselves – feeble, wanna-be journalists and all – and he was extremely nice. Even gave us his home number. We promptly lost it during an alcohol-fueled night that ended with us talking to a guy named “Ice,” who was either a pimp or a drug dealer or both, at the Boardwalk until 3 a.m., but that didn’t take away from the fact that Sylvia seemed pretty excited we might call him. Man, you couldn’t beat those awful one dollar margaritas. Too bad they tore that old fire hazard down. The Boardwalk, not Tim Sylvia.

Anyway, this was back in the days before MMA started showing up on ESPN, before Tapout had a deal with Hot Topic or whatever. We liked Sylvia then and we like him now. We hope he’s not sitting in a dark room somewhere, drowning his sorrows in ice cream bars and soda pop. No shame in losing to Fedor, after all. That $800,000 should help, too.

3.  Josh Barnett should be way more famous. 

It’s too bad the “Baby-Faced Assassin,” has spent most of his relevant career fighting in Japan. He’s smart, funny and is one of the few elite heavyweights who actually speaks English like an educated adult. Not to mention he’s good-looking and photogenic in a weird, comic-book hero kind of way. In short, he seems like exactly the kind of guy an MMA promoter would want to make a big star. Yet, your average American – even that guy at your work who just learned who Fedor was a month ago and now won’t shut up about him – has no clue who Barnett is. That’s a shame, but hopefully one that will change, if Affliction can keep the ball rolling.

4.  Just once, we’d like to see a show where the promoter doesn’t jump in the ring after a big fight to act like he did something. 

It’s getting really tiresome. Dana White. Joe Silva. Frank and Lorenzo. Gary Shaw. Now Affliction’s Tom Atencio and Donald Trump. Smiling, slapping backs, giving daps and hugs. We get it, you own the company. Enough already. By hopping in the ring and glad-handing the fighters you look at best like an attention whore and, at worst, like a total jock-sniffer. Do you think it looks cool when Mark Cuban goes down on the floor to hi-five the players before, during and after Dallas Mavericks games? We didn’t think so.

5.   We want to see more Affliction. 

We’d never be caught dead in one of their shirts -- winged skulls and dragons aren't really our scene -- but the Affliction PPV broadcast was just good enough to make us want to see the next one. Without Megadeth. We’re all in a titter about the possibility of Fedor vs. Couture (provided the law comes down on the side of good, not evil) and with Barnett, Andrei Arlovski, Matt Lindland, Babalu, Paul Buentello, Vitor Belfort and others on board, we can see our interest lasting for a little while. Keep it up, Affliction. Somehow promoting fights seems like a better gig for you than swindling 15 year-old kids out of their college tuition money for shirts that probably fall apart the second time you wash them.