Review of “UFC Ultimate Fight Collection: 2011 Edition”

The Holiday season is fast approaching, and that means it will soon be time to start hoarding gifts for your friends and family. With that joyous occasion comes the less-than-pleasant act of spending more money. Fret not, dear reader, for The Fight Nerd is here once again to help you decide on what gifts to buy, and what are better left on the clearance rack.

This time, we are taking a look at a huge set of DVDs from Anchor Bay, “The UFC Ultimate Fight Collection: 2011 Edition.” When I say huge, I mean huge. We are talking about 20 discs in this set, which is pictured above, showcasing every UFC event from July 2010 through July 2011, including televised events like UFC Live and Ultimate Fight Night. That’s a lot of fights!

A set this large comes at a price though, one not as heavy as your soul, but it’s pretty close. Is this gargantuan DVD set worth it’s weight in gold, or is this as bad as a lump of coal in a Christmas stocking? Hit the jump to read the review and find out!

“UFC: Ultimate Fight Collection 2011 Edition” is a look back at the last 12-month period in the world’s fastest growing sport. Included in this enormous set are bouts from UFC 116 – UFC 131, UFC Fight Night 22-24 and UFC Live 2-4, taking the timespan of July 2010 to July 2011. This adds up to 170 fights, 50 hours of footage, and 20 discs total. All I can say is – Wow. Even calling it enormous is an understatement, this thing is a behemoth!

Being a set as large as it is, no conventional DVD box could hold this many discs and not look like a concrete brick. Instead of going with the typical boxed set approach, Anchor Bay has opted for a more creative means of holding the discs. Measuring 11 3/4 inches long and 7 3/4 inches wide, the discs are held in a long rectangular book that holds two discs per each side of a page. It comes in a sleeve with the design you see above to keep the book safe, but even without the extra protection, this structure is sturdy and built to last. Anchor Bay has gone out of their way with their past UFC DVD releases to be creative with their packaging, but this one takes the cake. Rather than adding a bulky stack of DVDs to your collection, you instead have a nice centerpiece on your bookshelf, which saves space and just looks cool.

As I mentioned above, this features every event from UFC 116 through UFC 131, which includes fights like Brock Lesnar VS Shane Carwin, Jon Jones VS Mauricio “Shogun” Rua, Anderson Silva VS Chael Sonnen, Georges St Pierre VS Jake Shields, Frankie Edgar VS Gray Maynard 2, Matt Hughes VS BJ Penn, Forrest Griffin VS Rich Franklin, and so many other great fights from the UFC. You also get the UFC Live and Ultimate Fight Night events, which have not been released on their DVDs before, making this a nice addition to the set. Discs 1-19 are events, while disc 20 is the bonus material disc. It should be noted that you are not, in most cases, getting the full event when you buy this set, which might disappoint some fans.

You will get the entire UFC 129 event, which is on two discs, but the rest of the events are missing some of the earlier preliminary fights. For completists, this is a let-down, and I am puzzled as well as to why they excluded these fights off each disc, but I suppose part of it might have been that many of these events are on two-disc sets and not single-disc sets. Therefore, disc two had those missing matches, and in order to keep this set from becoming an even more expensive 40-disc set, they made the tough decision to exclude these prelims. In their defense, this is the “Ultimate Fight Collection,” and not the every single fight in every event from that time period, but I feel like there is some bait-and-switch here since there was little attempt to inform the buyer anywhere on the packaging or promotional materials that this set was not the complete events.

These are not the same discs that you bought if you previously purchased the original event releases. There are no special features in the event discs, just straight-up fights. There are some new graphics and commentary from Mike Goldberg and Joe Rogan, but it’s really superficial footage that will remind viewers of playing UFC Undisputed with the fighters bobbing around in idle poses while stats are on-screen. Beyond that, there are new hype videos before certain fights that are pretty nice and comprehensive and some behind the scenes clips intermittent in the events, and help remind viewers why these matches were so important when they happened. After certain fights you also go backstage with the fighters to get post-fight interviews and see how the winners celebrated and how the loser lamented, but this is not a separate feature and you will have to skip around during the fights to see it.

An interesting side note, fans will get the joy of seeing more of the fighters entrances, except not with their original walk-out music. Rather, they have re-dubbed the fights with music that Zuffa as licensed for these sets, and with that means they have added new sounds from the audience. A nitpick that I will let the viewers decide how they feel about that one, since it is pretty insignificant, and on the plus side it allows us to see their entrances for a change- something that is often left out on other DVDs.

The bonus disc features “The Best of Unguarded,” “Best of Rogan 1-on-1,” “Best of Fight School,” and a bunch of those missing preliminary fights I mentioned before from certain events. “The Best of Rogan 1-on-1″ features snippets of interviews with Joe Rogan speaking to Lyoto Machida, Georges St. Pierre, Jake Shields, Freddie Roach, and Quinton Jackson. “Fight School” was part of the “UFC Ultimate Insider” show, and has many members of their roster demonstrating techniques, including Ryan Bader’s double leg takedown, Greg Jackson’s hip-bump reversal for that takedown, a submission into sweep combination from Jon Fitch, a counter-punch from Cain Velasquez, and several coaches talking about their favorite tools for training. Finally, “The Best of Unguarded,” which is basically more interviews with fighters like Dan Hardy, Randy Couture, Josh Koscheck, Frank Mir, and others talking about random things that are often unrelated to fighting and are more about their lives and what they do outside of the cage.

Rogan’s segment lasts around 17 minutes long, “The Best of Fight School” feature is under eight minutes long, and the “Unguarded” segment with the fighters is around 12 minutes, adding up to a total of just under 40 minutes of bonus behind-the-scenes things. Rounding out the disc are those aforementioned bonus fights from various events, many of which are from the UFN events. This begs the question – why not include those fights on their respective event discs? This is even more baffling when all of the fights on this disc are from events that did not have many fights on them to begin with, as in four or five on each!

I really had to break this one down in order to give a final verdict on this set. It comes down to how much you really want the full event as opposed to what this set offers. At the end of the day, this is an extremely comprehensive compilation set, but not a boxed-set of everything. Can I live without a few missing prelims on each event? I suppose I can live without them, since I do get lots of never before seen footage, even if it does take some scrounging around to locate. The set delivers, just perhaps not in the more organized way I expected, and while the missing fights are a bummer, at least this set gives you those UFN and UFC Live events on an official DVD, which otherwise would be impossible to have at all. The bonus disc has some nice features with the many interviews, although I could have lived without the extremely short “Fight School” segment to squeeze another fight in there.

Let’s break this down according to price- a normal two-disc UFC DVD set will cost you around $15 on Amazon (give or take), with a retail price in stores of $20-25. If you wanted to get all of the events represented here, it would cost you $300 on Amazon, and between $400-500 in stores. This set gives you all of these events plus the bonus disc and new footage for less than half of the price of Amazon, even if you are missing a few preliminary fights. That’s a pretty great deal when you take that into consideration.

I would say this is an absolutely great gift for a fan of the UFC, especially one that is not super hardcore since they will probably not miss those excluded fights at all. For a hardcore fan, it is still a great set, since we know how to find those prelim matches anyway if we really want to see them. My biggest gripe really is those missing prelim fights, but it’s not like they are attempting to rewrite history and forget about them, it just came down to a space issue. Remember, this is the “Ultimate Fight Collection,” not “Complete July 2010- July 2011 Collection,” and is meant to be a comprehensive best-of set. If you are okay with a few prelims missing, then this is the set for you since you will save a ton of money, as well as space in your DVD shelf.

This DVD set will be available for sale everywhere on December 8, but if you can not wait that long, you can pick it up from your local “Best Buy” store now. It usually retails for $134.95, but you can order UFC: Ultimate Fight Collection 2011 20 disc DVD set from Amazon.com for around $120, a bargain with all of the content you will get with this.