1. Miguel Torres was overrated

After being decisively beaten in consecutive fights, it's time to admit that we were wrong about Torres.

Anderson Silva, Fedor Emelianenko, Georges St. Pierre and B.J. Penn he is not, but just short six months ago, every publication worth their salt had the former longtime bantamweight champion lumped in with those aforementioned legends. 

Torres is a great fighter to be sure, but to listen to UFC heavyweight stalwart and WEC commentator Frank Mir tell it, the guy walked on water and put his pants on both legs at the same time.

The fact is that Torres is now, at best, the forth best fighter in his division, and doesn't belong anywhere near the top of a pound-for-pound list. He holds only three quality wins (see Chase Bebee, Yoshiro Maeda and Takeya Mizugaki) in his 40-fight career and has looked less then stellar in his past two outings against superior competition.

While Torres certainly deserves to be mentioned among the best in his division, it's clear that folks in the media jumped the gun a bit on anointing Torres among the top-5 fighters in the world.

2. Dominick Cruz is for real

For those on the fence with Cruz, and I count myself in that camp, it's safe to jump on down and officially get excited about this young fighter's prospects. Cruz may be every bit as good as people thought Torres was.

The 24-year-old Arizona native is lightning fast with high-level unorthodox boxing skills, and excellent wrestling. His ground game could be his achilles heal, but if The Human Tasmanian Devil (Joseph Benevidez - we'll get to him in a second) couldn't keep him on his back, it would be difficult for any bantamweight in the world to do so.

Cruz dominated the highly regarded Brian Bowles by switching levels, throwing faints, and utilizing his speed and wrestling advantage to completely overwhelm his powerful opponent. He even caught Bowles and appeared to hurt him a couple of times.

Cruz seems to have the "Nick Diaz" pitter-pat, punches-in-bunches strategy down to a tee, but don't be surprised to see him start knocking people out. As Brian Bowles could attest to, there's some power in those hands.

3. Joseph Benevidez deserves a rematch against Dominick Cruz

Though WEC matchmaker Sean Shelby has indicated otherwise, Joseph Benevidez clearly deserves a title shot/rematch against Dominick Cruz after making minced meat of highly regarded Miguel Torres.

Benevidez more than held his own against Torres in the stand up before deciding to take the fight to the ground in the second round where he utilized his superior strength to control Torres, eventually cutting him with an elbow before slapping on an impressive guillotine choke to end the fight decisively.

Rumors have Damacio Page, Charlie Valencia, Antonio Banuelos, Scott Jorgensen, and Frank Gomez in the running to face Cruz for the title next, but none deserves that shot more than Benevidez, who surely would have been next in line had Bowles won instead of Cruz (who beat Benevidez in his last outing).

Either way, Benevidez is clearly among the top 3 fighters in the bantamweight division and will get a shot sometime this year.

4. Brian Bowles has to develop more than that big right hand

Yes, he broke his right hand on the first punch of his loss to Cruz. No, that isn't his only...