UFC BEST OF 2012: THE YEAR IN REVIEW (FSM 94; June 2013)

Information - DVD Region: Region Two - Distributor: FightDVD - Price: £17.99 - Other info: 331 mins - Release: Out now - Weblink: www.FightDVD.co.uk

You might think you know what to expect from UFC "Best Of" DVDs by now: a few hours of fight highlights from Zuffa's top tussles of any given year, with a handful of bouts in full appearing in the bonus features. But for 2012, the company has added the "Year in Review" suffix to the release, marking a definite change for the series.

Rather than being an arbitrary selection of scraps from whatever cards they happened to occur on, Best Of 2012: The Year In Review features fights from all 31 events last year - all, that is, with the exception of UFC On FX: Maynard vs. Guida (aka one of the worst fight cards and main events in the history of mankind).

The result is good or bad, depending on what you expect from these compilations. It's good in the sense that it now provides a true year in review, showing the top tilts from (almost) every card. The downside is that it's now slave to featuring one fight from every show, regardless of whether or not that show actually had any great fights.

Thus, we've got stuff like Rashad Evans' mind-numbing matches against Jon Jones and Phil Davis taking up space that could have gone to any number of other great encounters, if only the format allowed for two scraps from the same event - not that we're complaining at the likes of "The Korean Zombie" versus Dustin Poirier, Diego Sanchez versus Jake Ellenberger, or Georges St-Pierre versus Carlos Condit.

We get 10 full fights as bonuses this year, including a few greats that didn't make the main feature - namely Joe Lauzon's epic rumbles against Jamie Varner and Jim Miller. Sadly the DVD comes up very short against the Blu-ray edition of this release, as it features 25 full contests, and includes such smashes as Lavar Johnson versus Joey Beltran and mat classics like Paul Sass versus Matt Wiman.

There are also some odd omissions among these, however. Bizarrely, Zuffa felt it more important to include all 25 minutes of Cain Velasquez' one-sided domination of Junior dos Santos, at the expense of less than five minutes to show Anderson Silva's masterful performance against Stephan Bonnar. Some of the choices really are head-scratchers.
Still, it's hard to argue with what remains a pretty comprehensive recap of every UFC show from 2012 - especially with 10 complete scraps as added bonuses.

This is a great set for both hardcores and newcomers alike.