UFC: Best of 2012: Year in Review Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		3.5
Audio		2.5
Extras		3.5
Overall		3.0

UFC: Best of 2012: Year in Review Blu-ray Movie Review

Highlight express.

Reviewed by Martin Liebman April 14, 2013

Big blows, blazing boots to the body, bellicose battlers, and buckets of blood define that best of the year that was in UFC. UFC: Best of 2012 is a rapid-fire compilation piece that picks apart 2012 in quick fashion by assembling what amounts to a narrated highlight reel with snippets of the year's best fights serving as the main attraction. Considering that, it's too bad UFC didn't release more thorough titles throughout the past year to fill in the gaps and tell a more complete story on home video; it seems MMA discs from Anchor Bay and Zuffa have come to a screeching halt on high definition, the last release just about a year ago to the day with UFC: Best of 2011. The disappearance is puzzling after some very successful standalone MMA releases throughout 2011, including Ultimate Royce Gracie and Ultimate Matt Hughes (in collective DigiBooks at that). But fans who want more have probably never looked to Blu-ray for an answer. UFC never has released as regularly as WWE, for example; events-turned Blu-ray are hard to come by in the world of UFC, but even the compilation discs seemed to have dried up beyond these year-end reviews. That's a shame; where WWE Home Video fans can piece together the year that was with a fairly thorough collection of RAW and SmackDown and various Pay-Per-View events, UFC fans are left with scraps, tasty scraps to be sure but ultimately incomplete little nuggets that whet the appetite but hardly allow viewers to truly relive the year's best moments beyond a sound byte and a video clip.

Opponents.

UFC: Best of 2012 takes audiences on a whirlwind tour around the UFC's year-that-was, beginning with an international flavor as the sport traveled to Brazil for UFC 142, recognizing that nation's rich heritage in the world of Mixed Martial Arts. It's also home to the athlete who personifies the sport, Royce Gracie. The program follows UFC's worldwide 2012 tour with stops elsewhere around the globe, demonstrating the broad appeal of Ultimate Fighting Championship beyond the Western world. Indeed, the highlight reel is packed with athletes from around the world, all participating in some of the best combat the sport has seen from the arms and legs of octagonal heroes like Junior dos Santos, Georges St-Pierre, Jose Aldo, Anderson Silva, Benson Henderson, Cain Velsaquez, and Jon Jones. The program includes a look at the many fighters who put on incredible displays of brute force and technical skill both in the Octagon. It highlights the new flyweight weight class, the year's most anticipated fights, and the sport's foray onto FOX and FX. From UFC 142 to UFC 155, this is the best in hard-hitting action from the year that was, 2012, with the world's best mixed martial artists at the center of it all.

UFC: Best of 2012 crams in an unbelievable amount of content over its two-plus hour runtime. That's both the production's blessing and its curse. It provides fans with a collection of nearly every major moment from the year that was, but it does so at the sacrifice of thoroughness. It moves at such a breakneck pace that casual UFC fans will find it difficult to follow. The material never has a chance to settle in; relative newcomers will find it difficult to absorb the names and details when the film is zipping from place to place, fight to fight, and combatant to combatant with little regard for the complete picture. Even thirty minute sports highlight shows -- those shows that even cover the entire world of sports rather than one -- do a bit better job of creating a more thorough picture of what's happening. Of course, they're working on a day, two or three at most, of highlights, whereas this is a year's worth of material, but nevertheless it remains a bit difficult to capture the real, working essence of 2012 in what is one of the most rapid-fire compilation pieces ever released.

UFC: Best of 2012 also suffers from the biggest problem that all highlight compilation endure, and that's the loss of event subtlety. It's true in all sports, and especially so in UFC, that it's often the event preceding the highlight that's the real story. UFC: Best of 2012 excludes almost all of the maneuvering in favor of the sexy grappling, the big blows, the heavy kicks, and the knockout punches. Maybe that's the most visually exciting part of a fight, but many fans understand that it's the technique, the movement, even the unseen but understood and deeply felt psychological warfare that truly defines a UFC fight. And all of that is lost here. Granted, the very nature of the highlight reel program necessarily excludes most, if not all, of that, but it becomes very evident very fast here. Nevertheless, fans will see and enjoy plenty of big fights, intense grapples, huge comebacks, potent knockdowns, and lots of blood (check out the Nelson-Werdum match from the UFC 143 highlights). Technically, the program is fine, with enthusiastic and balanced voiceover narration. It's just a shame there's not significantly more to it to better give real definition to 2012 beyond just the hits and falls and KOs that might sell tickets but that don't tell the whole story of the year's best moments.

UFC: Best of 2012: Year in Review Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

UFC: Best of 2012 is no technical showstopper, but it offers a fine baseline visual experience that mostly replicates broadcast quality, if not slightly improves upon it. Generally, the quality seems a tick below the average new release WWE title. This is a bit noisier, particularly across black backgrounds, and it has a slight artificially sharpened look to it. Light blocking is visible around darker backdrops, and very minor aliasing is evident across some surfaces. Generally, however, the image looks good, with the actual fight segments faring the best. There, details are crisp and well defined, from fighter tattoos to lines in the mat. Colors are bold and accurate, whether multicolored combatant trunks or the sometimes blood-stained advertisements on the ground. Much of the manufactured backstory video takes on a deliberately rough, spiky appearance with drab colors in support. On the whole, it's about of the same quality as most previous UFC blu-ray releases.

UFC: Best of 2012: Year in Review Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

UFC: Best of 2012 offers a very basic, no-frills-added Dolby Digital 2.0 soundtrack. It's a straight-up simple track with little range and less positive accuracy and immersion. There's a slight uneven feel to it, largely because it jumps around so frequently during the fights that any little steam the track gains in replicating the atmosphere inside the arena is lost when the scene shifts and the tone changes. In general, though, background crowd noise sounds stilted and never fully natural, not at all immersive or partially authentic. Various hits and slams come through with adequate power and presence. Narration is delivered with a slight booming sensation but is generally otherwise balanced. Octagon-side commentary is never difficult to hear but it does suffer from a slightly underwhelming presence. All in all, this track gets the job done but does so with little dynamic flair.

UFC: Best of 2012: Year in Review Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

UFC: Best of 2012 contains numerous fights across both included discs.

Disc One:

• Pat Barry vs. Christian Morecraft (HD, 5:13).
• Joey Beltran vs. LaVar Johnson (HD, 6:11).
• Dan Stittgen vs. Stephen Thompson (HD, 5:52).
• Diego Sanchez vs. Jake Ellenberger (18:06).
• Yushin Okami vs. Tim Boetsch (HD, 15:27).
• Thiago Alves vs. Martin Kampmann (HD, 16:25).
• Brad Pickett vs. Damacio Page (HD, 11:14).
• Brendan Schaub vs. Ben Rothwell (HD, 3:12).
• Pat Barry vs. LaVar Johnson (HD, 6:06).
• Chan Sung Jung vs. Dustin Poirier (HD, 19:58).

Disc Two:

• Jacob Volkmann vs. Paul Sass (HD, 3:35).
• Mike Pyle vs. Josh Neer (HD, 6:22).
• Mark Munoz vs. Chris Weidman (HD, 9:48).
• Joe Lauzon vs. Jamie Varner (HD, 14:27).
• Mauricio "Shogun" Rua vs. Brandon Vera (HD, 21:47).
• Cub Swanson vs Charles Oliveira (HD, 4:34).
• Joseph Benavidez vs. Demetrious Johnson (HD, 32:55).
• Jon Jones vs. Vito Belfort (HD, 23:13).
• Paul Sass vs. Matt Wiman (HD, 5:32).
• Jon Fitch vs. Erick Silva (HD, 19:37).
• Glover Teixeira vs. Fabio Maldonado (HD, 15:02).
• Georges St-Pierre vs. Carlos Condit (HD, 32:55).
• Benson Henderson vs. Nate Diaz (HD, 29:15).
• Jim Miller vs. Joe Lauzon (HD, 21:04).
• Junior Dos Santos vs. Cain Velasquez (HD, 32:15).

UFC: Best of 2012: Year in Review Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

UFC: Best of 2012 delivers a steady stream of action-packed highlights from 2012. And thats pretty much all it does. It moves very fast and spends precious little time on detail, instead covering quick, to-the-point major moments through its narrative overlay and showing only quick and dirty seconds-long highlights from inside the octagon. The production loses the subtly that makes UFC fighting so much fun to watch in favor of cramming in as many highlights as possible. Viewers will have to decide if that is what they want, but considering UFC-on-Blu-ray has all but vanished outside of these highlight releases, there's not much of a choice out there. Anchor Bay's Blu-ray offers plenty of bonus fights across two discs. Video and audio qualities are acceptable for this sort of release. Recommended to diehard UFC fans.