(George Galanis is an MMA fan, freelance journalist and BPL contributor.)

A few months ago, when UFC 130 was scheduled, it seemed like a great fight card. Frankie Edgar would tackle Gray Maynard in an epic re-match for the lightweight title, while Rampage Jackson would take on Thiago Silva in what promised to be an enthralling and hard-hitting co-main event. 

What was presented at UFC 130 was a lot different. Edgar and Maynard both dropped out of with injuries, Silva got caught cheating on a drug test, and that left Rampage vs Matt Hamill as a main event. 

Rampage vs Hamill looked like a bad fight on paper, and it turned out to be a worse fight in the Octagon. 

Hamill is a well-liked and respected fighter, but he's not in the same class as Rampage. It was a one-sided fight from start to finish, and a disappointment. The first Edgar vs Maynard fight was the UFC's best main event so far this year. Rampage vs Hamill was the worst. 

As bad as losing the Edgar-Maynard fight was, losing Silva from what had been scheduled as a co-main event fight with Rampage was also big loss. A Silva-Rampage fight would have guaranteed plenty of fireworks. It's not that Hamill isn't as good as Silva, it's that he has a different fighting style to Silva, and a Rampage-Hamill fight is just not as compelling as Rampage-Silva would have been. 

The first three fights on the card were all entertaining, so it's not like the fans didn't get any value. But they didn't get the value they were hoping for. This was a fight card that once looked great and instead turned into a disappointment. 

Hamill said he planned on breaking the will of Jackson, but instead Jackson turned the tables on him. 

Jackson warded off all Hamill's takedown attempts — despite coming into the fight with a fractured hand, he revealed at the post-fight press conference — and cruised to a unanimous decision victory. The win is likely to put Jackson in line as top contender for Jon Jones' light heavyweight title, provided his hand heals in time. 

But the boos of the crowd echoed several times during the night, including most notably during the main and co-main events. After the fight, Jackson said he was disappointed he wasn't able to score a knockout, which the fans seemed to want even more than he did, but said he wasn't about to blame it on his hand injury - which he said came from a drunken mishap with a friend in Japan. 

"I was okay with my performance, [but] I wanted to do a little more," Jackson said. "I knew I could stay on my feet. He had a great game plan, and I could tell he was setting me up to take me down. He had some great low leg kicks, and it made me not do what I wanted to do. I'm a little bit disappointed. I wanted a knock-out, Matt's never been knocked out before, and I took it as a personal challenge." 

Jackson said he fractured his hand last December in Japan, "drunken fooling around fighting my friend in the hallway," and during training he aggravated the injury. But even without the fracture, he didn't believe he would have been able to knockout Hamill. 

"That guy's got a hard head," Jackson said. "I think Matt's got a long future in this sport. I take nothing away from Matt - fractured hand or not, I still wouldn't have knocked him out tonight. I think I needed a hammer". 

Hamill, who's five-fight winning streak was broken, said he thought he would be able to use his superior wrestling to take Jackson down. 

"I was very surprised," Hamill said. "My takedowns could have been better, but it was a good fight. I wasn't really happy with my performance. I'll go back and try to learn from my mistakes. I gave 100 percent, and did all I could. But Rampage is a pretty good fighter."           

However, UFC president Dana White said in the post-fight press conference he didn't have any problems with the card in general. 

"Was I thrilled with the main event and co-main? No," White said. "But everything can't be a knockout or submission. I think considering the time off Rampage has had, he looked good. I think people's expectations are unreasonable sometimes. Guys will be fighting a great fight and you'll hear people booing — it's like they expect guys to get in a football stance and run across at each other. There's skill, technique, game plans, there's a lot of things involved." 

Given the light heavyweight landscape and the timing of Jon Jones' return from a hand injury, Rampage Jackson is probably the best choice available for a light heavyweight title shot - if he is healthy. But as dominant as Jackson was against Hamill, he didn't do anything to indicate he'd have much of a chance of actually getting his hands on that light heavy title.