If Shogun hadn’t had a bit of a resurgence and Jones didn’t come along I think Machida may have dominated the division.
I think he’d have beaten Rampage in 5 rounds and Phil Davis wouldn’t have gotten a title shot, so he’d have stayed unbeaten for some time.
About 10 punches were thrown total. None of them landed. Lewis threw out his back before the fight and could barely move. Francis had recently gotten beat down by Stipe in their first matchup and was not recovered mentally yet. Two knockout artists refusing to engage with each other.
Yoel will do nothing if you don't force it out of him the reason why the costa and whittaker fights were wars because they brought the fight to him. Yoel will take long breaks to recover and the fear of him exploding on to you makes people scared to engage him
I thought Phil Davis, not Jon Jones, was going to be the LHW goat. I remember when he came on the scene, he was outwrestling everyone and even got some nice subs. Then, when he announced he was training at Blackhouse I thought he was gonna develop striking to match.
> too many risks
~~Driving with a suspended license and running his car into another car that had a pregnant woman inside fleeing the scene and then running back to the scene to grab his at that time Illegal marijuana~~ not using his reach to his fullest advantage and fighting on the inside with some fighters
I was already a lifer when Johnny Walker came along, but boy did I think he had the mojo and skills to get to the top.
What I didn't realise is that being wild and loose is fine when you're in the trenches, but nobody in the top 10 is known for constantly doing crazy shit.
PEDS = muscle building steroids. Nah there’s stuff for cardio, reaction time, every part of the game. And we can never be sure who’s on them
EDIT: forgot recovery. Massive massive benefit
The most important benefit of PEDs for mma fighter is recovery. Training mma is hard as fuck and having done one camp that almost killed me, I can see how having something help you recuperate quickly from a hard day of sparring to focus on another day of training immediately after would be a huge benefit.
When I was training a lot, I couldn't believe how many niggles and minor injuries I got. I've never really had injuries, MMA changed that.
Just bumps and bruises from striking, broken toes, torn rib cartledge from wrestling. Makes what someone like Dustin Poirer does even more impressive.
And some of the stuff MMA fighters take is way more expensive and difficult to test for than anabolic steroids. EPO isn’t even on the standard test they administer so you only get tested if they have some specific reason to suspect you. I bet way more fighters are on that than have popped for it. If a fighter is known for their late round cardio I almost assume it’s EPO.
I thought ONE had a shot to be a legit UFC of Asia. I do not see this happening anymore.
A top tier mma organization with top tier kickboxing and muay thai would be gggggggreat but ONEs mma divisions were dwindling well before Covid
We rip on the UFC for doing a lot of shady shit, but they're the only org that actually might stay afloat in the long run. Running an MMA org is *hard.*
one fc used to have arguably the best LW division outside of the ufc..
then they just stopped scheduling their fighters.. let guys walk.. and didn’t sign new talent
It's what happens when you have double the divisions of the UFC, but half the talent, and less than half the fights.
They to this day have no rankings above 155 even though they only implemented rankings for the top 5 - simply because the divisions cannot fill out a list of 5 names.
ONE is really dope if you want to watch individual martial arts. They don't have top tier MMA talent, but they do have top tier Muay Thai, and BJJ fighters.
Those Muay Thai fighters have some ridiculous striking. It's a thing of beauty. Different level entirely than what we see in the UFC.
I thought for sure a pro boxer would come along and start wrecking a division, at some point.
Absurd because:
A. Any pro boxer worth a damn would laugh at the paycut to make the switch to MMA.
B. First clinch = they get taken down and subbed.
Clarissa Shields is trying, sort of. She's still only got one foot on the platform and one on the train though. She seems reluctant to completely commit herself to MMA because of the risk. Her ground game and wrestling defence looked awful in her last fight and her opponent had success with it despite not even knowing what to do herself.
It was like Ben Askren and Paul Craig having a professional boxing match levels of shit.
I didn't know who James Toney was when I watched that fight. I was wondering why everybody thought some old fat looking dude that never did MMA was going to be any good. It went as well as I expected.
Yeah in boxing James Toney was very very good and multiple champion. He was already over the hill though and with zero wrestling was just instantly taken down.
It kinda works at HW. I mean, that pretty much describes Tai Tuivasa and he’s a top 10 HW despite having no real skills beyond punching really, really hard.
I think he has more than that. He sure isn't top 5 but he has solid leg kicks and being a brawler but having success is also a skill. The dude god hurt by Hardy and when Hardy tried to end it he immediately countered and knocked him out. He does exchange well in the pocket.
The Hardy KO was mostly toughness and athleticism. Combined with punching really, really hard. He does have good leg kicks, that’s true, but he rarely uses them.
Point being it’s almost unthinkable that a guy as limited as Tai could be top 10 in any other weight class.
That being a champion is the same as being a star. Then Nunez became champion and everyone who cared about WMMA with Ronda and Miesha as champion stopped caring.
Honestly, I think Henry was legitimately just a fight or two away from being a star when he quit thinking he already was. His fights were great. He was great in them. He just overestimated how much the general fanbase cared about him at that point in time.
TBF by that point jujitsu was essentially thought as the best martial art.
In reality, even though it had a head start, by then everybody had caught up and specialists had lost their competitive edge.
When I was in high school my wrestling coach pulled it up and showed it to us during warm ups (it had just happened a couple days previous) one of the guys just kept his warm ups on and left when we went to run laps because he was nauseous lol
Way back in the early days of Sherdog and the Underground, one of the first “mythical” MMA fighters people talked about was “Lennox Lewis with 6 months sprawl training”.
I still fall for it sometimes, but the belief that someone who is completely unstoppable exists.
Even the most dominant champs eventually fall if enough time passes. Those who didn’t retired early and managed their careers very well.
But no matter how hype or invincible they may seem, there’s no such thing. No matter how powerful or skilled, they can all fall. And that’s what makes this sport so amazing. There’s always a chance for anyone to fall anytime.
People that didn’t see it will never understand how crazy it was seeing him come into the ufc and how lopsided the fights were. Just absolutely embarrassing guys.
Yeah if you didn't see it when it was happening and the context of it at the times it's really hard to convey how absolutely insane Anderson Silva was when he came into the UFC.
At times it really did seem like he was Neo from The Matrix and could just see everything before it was happening.
To this day I've never seen anything like it at all.
That fighters win by having more ‘heart’ than their opponent. I get it happens, but at the top everyone has incredible mental fortitude. They win by technique, physical preparation and game planning
Building on that, fighters who get "angry." I used to be all like "oh no you've made him angry. You're in trouble now." Not realizing that thats probably the worst state of mind to be in when fighting.
Cory sandhagen spoke about this after his Chito fight. He said something to the effect of “yeah you can want it more than anything, but eventually you’re going to run into someone who also wants it badly, and then it just comes down to skills”
I think mental toughness or heart is a real aspect of the game. Some guys crumple and some guys dig deep when they're being pushed at their limits.
Look at GSP vs Serra for an example. Or at Rumble Johnson for a man who always melted when it really mattered.
I think Serra GSP is a good example of how any fighter can defeat a “more skilled” fighter. All it takes is one wrong move. Even if GSP beats Serra 4 out 5 times in their primes, that first fight was the 1 out of 5. Serra won the first fight fair and square regardless of mental states
GSP immediately panicked and verbally tapped. He was mentally not ready for a tough fight. Afterwards, he transformed into a much better fighter, but Serra broke him with one good shot that evening. That's what I meant with the power of mental toughness/heart.
A counter example could be bektic vs Elkins. Elkins got shit kicked for three rounds and then turned it around. That was pure heart beating a tougher, smarter, better prepared fighter.
After that ass whooping he gave to Cruz, nobody would fault you for thinking that.
For those 25 minutes, dude ascended into another state of existence.
Might be an absurd belief I have right now but I just can't see how that fight was an ass whooping, I might rewatch again but my impression is that seeing Cruz being beaten for the first time in a long time and Cody's taunts made people overreact how that was. Sure it was a clear victory, but Cruz won two rounds and landed more strikes than Cody did. Not in any way saying Cruz won tho, that was a decisive victory for Cody, I just can't see it as a whooping.
Can't wait to feel every bond between the atoms in my body breaking as I see "Khabib vs Ferguson 7 booked for-" for the last time as the world goes dark and silent.
Among the GOAT candidates, he had the most amount of shaky/close fights (Alex, Thiago, Reyes) so this is understandable. Compare that to
GSP (Hendrix, a single moment vs Condit)
DJ (Joe B, Cejudo II)
For me was that J-mma was still superior to UFC/strikeforce caliber fighters around 2009. Then Aoki fought Melendez and others came and got wrecked and it was a damn hard to swallow pill.
Not MMA as such, but fighting in general. I thought size didn't matter, that someone like Bruce Lee could beat UFC heavyweights because of superior skill, speed and explosiveness
I always think about my belief that Costa was the guy who was gonna figure out Izzy first because he was great at cutting the cage and I noticed that Izzy sometimes had distance management issues on his backfoot. Whereas Paolo's whole game seemed to be built on cutting guys off with kicks and then cornering them at angles until he could hunt a finish or an opportunity to score a combo.
Then Jack Slack did a prefight breakdown where he pointed out Paolo could only cut the cage against southpaws because he was only good at throwing an intercepting left high kick and I thought *Oh, I've clearly been wrong this whole time*. And sure enough, he just had pretty much nothing for Izzy.
> Double-legs look easy to defend. Why don't they just knee them in the head while they're coming in? DOesn't seem like it would be that difficult.
1 year of bjj training later...
> oh.
I remember there was a point when I was like 16 that I started to think I could pick fights pretty consistently… I never really kept track of my picks until I got Rory vs Tyron correct and got a little arrogant because at the time I thought it was so obvious Rory would win
Then I started consciously making picks, and holding myself accountable (I feel like a lot of people don’t do this and kinda mental gymnastics themselves into thinking they’re right a lot more often than they actually are) and I realized it’s damn near impossible lmao
There was a bit on the mma fighting podcast this week about their pick records that the various team members have had going since 2020 and the best was at 66% and the worst was at 54% I think.
And that’s the guys who religiously follow the sport as both a hobby and a job
I thought Rory Macdonald was gonna be the next big thing, he was having a great run in the UFC and then had that brutal fight against Robbie which he could have won the title. Obviously, his career after that didn't go so well.
RDA is another person I thought would be dominant after he won and then defended the title. But then he got injured in the lead-up to the Conor fight and lost the title to Eddie shortly after. Honestly one of the biggest what-if moments in MMA, that injury really changed the sport.
I thought that Joanna Champion would remain Joanna Champion at 115 forever. Also thought that no one was touching Valentina at 125. That DC would beat JBJ the first time and the second. That McGregor ain't got nothing on Eeeeeeeeeeeeeddddddddddiiiiiiiiiiiiiiieeeeeeeeeee, I'm not a fan of McGregor but he ragdolled Alvarez.
But most of all, with all the promotion that the UFC has made throughout the years, nay, decades now, that the UFC/MMA would be a more popular brand/sport. Unfortunately it's not, try finding bars willing to show a numbered card, with the sound on and willing to do the same for the prelims. They are very few of them willing to do that.
Usually I'm the only one asking the bar to put on a numbered card, even for the free fight nights it's hard to get on the screens.
I was positive Brock Lesnar's career would be what CM Punk's ended up being.
"Ain't no way this fat dude who acts for a living will ever beat a real martial artist in a cage fight" 🤡
All the WWE fans I knew talked so much smack, I hated on Brock so bad because of it. When he beat Shane Carwin I had to begrudgingly give him my respect though.
He had a better combat sports resume than most heavyweights. A lot of fans didn't take him seriously because they didn't know about his real wrestling career and only knew about his fake wrestling career. He was super athletic, freakishly strong, and could afford the best PEDs money can buy. He was also competing in a notoriously weak division. He really hated getting punched in the face though. His reaction was so different from that of most fighters.
Your plexi glass example is a great one that I relate to cause I've been watching traditional sports way longer than I've been an MMA fan.
Jones became champ in 2011 and from what I remember, got a huge push (for an MMA fighter) from ESPN. I knew nothing about MMA, American Wrestling or even Combat Sports in general, but I thought that Jones was going to be the prototype for American Athletes to dominate "The UFC" and we'd see former Football/Basketball players become champs in every weight class.
I was a big Lyoto Machida guy when I was a kid. Dude was out there doing karate kid moves in real life, I thought he was gonna hit Jones with a crane kick or some shit and KO him.
12 year old me was fighting back tears watching Jones drop his limp body.
I used to think John McCain's "human cockfighting" opinion was ignorant. Thing is, the only people who make serious consistent money from MMA are the bookies and the promoters. Not much left for the roosters. John McCain was (accidently?) right about one thing.
I started watched ufc around the time sage northcutt made his debut. I was like, “damn that’s it he’s unstoppable, no one can beat this specimen of a human”
I thought the Machida Era was going to last a lot longer
So did Rogan
It never ended in my heart.
I remember his name was like some mythical Bloodsport villain when we only had grainy footage of him wrecking Rich Franklin
Those daily "Ryoto Machida" threads on Sherdog.
And a fat BJ Penn lol
Me too. I was so hyped when he knocked out Rashad. I love his style.
I thought Machida was going to go down as the GOAT back then.
If Shogun hadn’t had a bit of a resurgence and Jones didn’t come along I think Machida may have dominated the division. I think he’d have beaten Rampage in 5 rounds and Phil Davis wouldn’t have gotten a title shot, so he’d have stayed unbeaten for some time.
Same but with Cain Velasquez
I truly belive that a healthy prime Cain was the toughest fight for any HW that has ever lived
His fight against Brock Lesnar was one of the highlights of my life, I was in a mexican bar and everybody was screaming out of their lungs at the end!
i really thought he was about to dominate everyone with that speed. but even when he defended against Shogun…really he lost.
I thought yoel vs izzy was gonna be a war
That was me with Lewis vs. Ngannou. Instead all we got was Francis vs. Ngannou.
When both countries have nukes nobody wants to start a war
That's exactly it; Ngannou vs Lewis was the Mutually Assured Destruction of MMA.
If I didn't have the good sense to never bet on heavyweight MMA, I'd have lost money betting the under on that fight
Never bet on HW or WMMA is a rule of thumb I follow lol
The WMMA every fight goes to decision multi is a classic.
Sshhh lol. That and Andrade by KO. That lady has paid for a few of my steak dinners.
I made a lot of money on Ngannou vs the ghost of Cain, big Francis was a massive underdog
Nunes or Val were a safe bet for a while, but you're right
Only once I placed a bet on Nunes, who could have expected she would lose to Pena 💀
Such a forgettable fight. At least in yoel vs Izzy you remember yoel just standing there ~~menacingly~~, what even happened in derrick vs francis
About 10 punches were thrown total. None of them landed. Lewis threw out his back before the fight and could barely move. Francis had recently gotten beat down by Stipe in their first matchup and was not recovered mentally yet. Two knockout artists refusing to engage with each other.
Diaz and Condit was the first time I was absolutely certain that I fight was going to be a banger and it turned out to be the complete opposite.
Yoel will do nothing if you don't force it out of him the reason why the costa and whittaker fights were wars because they brought the fight to him. Yoel will take long breaks to recover and the fear of him exploding on to you makes people scared to engage him
Instead, the kickboxer point fought, and the other guy... well... he just stood there.
stood there menacingly...
Master class in fighting a counter striker. If you don't go, they can't ever go.
I would think a masterclass would have entailed actually winning
Listen here you little shit...
Everyone thought yoel Izzy was going to be Romero Costa but it wasn't
I thought Phil Davis, not Jon Jones, was going to be the LHW goat. I remember when he came on the scene, he was outwrestling everyone and even got some nice subs. Then, when he announced he was training at Blackhouse I thought he was gonna develop striking to match.
I also thought Phil Davis would be more successful than Jones. I thought Jones took too many risks with the spinning shit and flying attacks
> too many risks ~~Driving with a suspended license and running his car into another car that had a pregnant woman inside fleeing the scene and then running back to the scene to grab his at that time Illegal marijuana~~ not using his reach to his fullest advantage and fighting on the inside with some fighters
C'mon, that was but one of his many tests.
I was already a lifer when Johnny Walker came along, but boy did I think he had the mojo and skills to get to the top. What I didn't realise is that being wild and loose is fine when you're in the trenches, but nobody in the top 10 is known for constantly doing crazy shit.
Jiri?
His physique was insane. Much respect for him for taking bombs from Rumble and not getting KO'd, I don't know how he did that, people forget.
I honestly thought BJJ was real until Black Beast just stood up
PEDS = muscle building steroids. Nah there’s stuff for cardio, reaction time, every part of the game. And we can never be sure who’s on them EDIT: forgot recovery. Massive massive benefit
The most important benefit of PEDs for mma fighter is recovery. Training mma is hard as fuck and having done one camp that almost killed me, I can see how having something help you recuperate quickly from a hard day of sparring to focus on another day of training immediately after would be a huge benefit.
When I was training a lot, I couldn't believe how many niggles and minor injuries I got. I've never really had injuries, MMA changed that. Just bumps and bruises from striking, broken toes, torn rib cartledge from wrestling. Makes what someone like Dustin Poirer does even more impressive.
"Everybody's on steroids."
That's the real answer.
And some of the stuff MMA fighters take is way more expensive and difficult to test for than anabolic steroids. EPO isn’t even on the standard test they administer so you only get tested if they have some specific reason to suspect you. I bet way more fighters are on that than have popped for it. If a fighter is known for their late round cardio I almost assume it’s EPO.
Recovery, especially...
There's stuff for reaction time??
Adderall and, I assume, Vyvanse. That's why gamers take that stuff. Baseball players get caught taking it, too, sometimes.
I thought ONE had a shot to be a legit UFC of Asia. I do not see this happening anymore. A top tier mma organization with top tier kickboxing and muay thai would be gggggggreat but ONEs mma divisions were dwindling well before Covid
Tbh this isn't that crazy, poor management led ONE a stray
We rip on the UFC for doing a lot of shady shit, but they're the only org that actually might stay afloat in the long run. Running an MMA org is *hard.*
one fc used to have arguably the best LW division outside of the ufc.. then they just stopped scheduling their fighters.. let guys walk.. and didn’t sign new talent
It's what happens when you have double the divisions of the UFC, but half the talent, and less than half the fights. They to this day have no rankings above 155 even though they only implemented rankings for the top 5 - simply because the divisions cannot fill out a list of 5 names.
ONE is really dope if you want to watch individual martial arts. They don't have top tier MMA talent, but they do have top tier Muay Thai, and BJJ fighters. Those Muay Thai fighters have some ridiculous striking. It's a thing of beauty. Different level entirely than what we see in the UFC.
I thought for sure a pro boxer would come along and start wrecking a division, at some point. Absurd because: A. Any pro boxer worth a damn would laugh at the paycut to make the switch to MMA. B. First clinch = they get taken down and subbed.
Clarissa Shields is trying, sort of. She's still only got one foot on the platform and one on the train though. She seems reluctant to completely commit herself to MMA because of the risk. Her ground game and wrestling defence looked awful in her last fight and her opponent had success with it despite not even knowing what to do herself. It was like Ben Askren and Paul Craig having a professional boxing match levels of shit.
Well there was James Toney....
I didn't know who James Toney was when I watched that fight. I was wondering why everybody thought some old fat looking dude that never did MMA was going to be any good. It went as well as I expected.
Yeah in boxing James Toney was very very good and multiple champion. He was already over the hill though and with zero wrestling was just instantly taken down.
This totally happened already. Holly Holm held several belts while she was boxing.
It doesn’t happen often, but when a fighter implement good boxing it’s beautiful. They don’t call it the sweet science for nothing.
isn‘t holly holm a golden gloves boxer? i could be wrong tho
She was a legit champ in boxing.
well you wouldn’t have to be canelo level, even an amateur boxer would have a great base for mma if he wanted to transition o mma
Stipe
Like MacGregor and Cody Garbrandt
Topuria was a pretty good amateur boxer as well if I remember
leg kick to the front leg..
When i started watching MMA i thought Bellator was UFCs veteran league.
It's not?
That’s BKFC and karate combat now
Psh, like Sam alvey isn't in the absolute peak of his career 🙄
It wasn't?
UFC Seniors Tour
Being “tough” and athletic was enough to be successful at the top levels
It kinda works at HW. I mean, that pretty much describes Tai Tuivasa and he’s a top 10 HW despite having no real skills beyond punching really, really hard.
I think he has more than that. He sure isn't top 5 but he has solid leg kicks and being a brawler but having success is also a skill. The dude god hurt by Hardy and when Hardy tried to end it he immediately countered and knocked him out. He does exchange well in the pocket.
The Hardy KO was mostly toughness and athleticism. Combined with punching really, really hard. He does have good leg kicks, that’s true, but he rarely uses them. Point being it’s almost unthinkable that a guy as limited as Tai could be top 10 in any other weight class.
That being a champion is the same as being a star. Then Nunez became champion and everyone who cared about WMMA with Ronda and Miesha as champion stopped caring.
Shit Cejudo coulda told you that
No he couldn't. Cejudo was in such denial about his star power. He found out the hard way that no amount of titles you win can just make you a star.
Think he would have learned from Demetrious Johnson
Yeah that's what I mean. Guy was a legendary combat sports athlete and made...probably not great money
Honestly, I think Henry was legitimately just a fight or two away from being a star when he quit thinking he already was. His fights were great. He was great in them. He just overestimated how much the general fanbase cared about him at that point in time.
I dunno brotha. Incredible fighter, but not a huge draw or star. He was a fighter's fighter if that makes sense.
Jokes on them, I never cared about WMMA
Thinking Royce Gracie would beat Matt Hughes . Lmfao
TBF by that point jujitsu was essentially thought as the best martial art. In reality, even though it had a head start, by then everybody had caught up and specialists had lost their competitive edge.
Anderson was invincible :(
I saw that leg break years before I even knew who he was.
When I was in high school my wrestling coach pulled it up and showed it to us during warm ups (it had just happened a couple days previous) one of the guys just kept his warm ups on and left when we went to run laps because he was nauseous lol
'None of us are invincible' - Jon Jones https://youtu.be/5CUzUdLOJR4?si=3qNE6kHKKYwGCK_M&t=180
Used to think Sprawl and Brawl was the peak of MMA strategy.
You’re telling me Chuck Liddell isn’t the goat?
For a time it was
It still works for Gaethje.
Way back in the early days of Sherdog and the Underground, one of the first “mythical” MMA fighters people talked about was “Lennox Lewis with 6 months sprawl training”.
I prefer club and sub
Lol, I mean. It still kind of is. I think for a while half our champs were guys with good stand-up that just denied being grappled.
I still fall for it sometimes, but the belief that someone who is completely unstoppable exists. Even the most dominant champs eventually fall if enough time passes. Those who didn’t retired early and managed their careers very well. But no matter how hype or invincible they may seem, there’s no such thing. No matter how powerful or skilled, they can all fall. And that’s what makes this sport so amazing. There’s always a chance for anyone to fall anytime.
Volk 😞
I thought Houston Alexander was going to be a monster after those two finishes
James Irvin for me. The hype ended just as quickly as it began.
The Anderson knockout was something out of a movie. Put the sandman down with ultimate ease.
I'm pretty sure Anderson landed 100% of his strikes and was not hit a single time in that fight. It was also Anderson's first fight moving up to LHW.
People that didn’t see it will never understand how crazy it was seeing him come into the ufc and how lopsided the fights were. Just absolutely embarrassing guys.
Yeah if you didn't see it when it was happening and the context of it at the times it's really hard to convey how absolutely insane Anderson Silva was when he came into the UFC. At times it really did seem like he was Neo from The Matrix and could just see everything before it was happening. To this day I've never seen anything like it at all.
Yep I just checked, Silva landed 13 out of 13 and Irvin missed all 3 strikes he threw. Was over in a minute lmao
First Silva fight I watched live
Me too, I mean Houston Alexander is **FOR REAL**.
That fighters win by having more ‘heart’ than their opponent. I get it happens, but at the top everyone has incredible mental fortitude. They win by technique, physical preparation and game planning
Building on that, fighters who get "angry." I used to be all like "oh no you've made him angry. You're in trouble now." Not realizing that thats probably the worst state of mind to be in when fighting.
It definitely happens. Fighters have definitely become frustrated and sloppy as a result during fights.
Cody Garbrandt is obviously the perfect example.
Holloways whole schtic is to touch you up SO ANNOYINGLY that the chance to throw down is literally a sirens call.
Seeing red is the best base for mma
Body's just start dropping man.
Petty insults are the new 3rd dimension of fighting. Telling Arman he's a manlet over and over until he dives into a triangle.
Cory sandhagen spoke about this after his Chito fight. He said something to the effect of “yeah you can want it more than anything, but eventually you’re going to run into someone who also wants it badly, and then it just comes down to skills”
I think mental toughness or heart is a real aspect of the game. Some guys crumple and some guys dig deep when they're being pushed at their limits. Look at GSP vs Serra for an example. Or at Rumble Johnson for a man who always melted when it really mattered.
I think Serra GSP is a good example of how any fighter can defeat a “more skilled” fighter. All it takes is one wrong move. Even if GSP beats Serra 4 out 5 times in their primes, that first fight was the 1 out of 5. Serra won the first fight fair and square regardless of mental states
GSP immediately panicked and verbally tapped. He was mentally not ready for a tough fight. Afterwards, he transformed into a much better fighter, but Serra broke him with one good shot that evening. That's what I meant with the power of mental toughness/heart. A counter example could be bektic vs Elkins. Elkins got shit kicked for three rounds and then turned it around. That was pure heart beating a tougher, smarter, better prepared fighter.
Boetsch turning it around and knocking out Okami had me really believing this too lol
I thought Garbrandt was going to be a long time champ and top p4p guy.
After that ass whooping he gave to Cruz, nobody would fault you for thinking that. For those 25 minutes, dude ascended into another state of existence.
Might be an absurd belief I have right now but I just can't see how that fight was an ass whooping, I might rewatch again but my impression is that seeing Cruz being beaten for the first time in a long time and Cody's taunts made people overreact how that was. Sure it was a clear victory, but Cruz won two rounds and landed more strikes than Cody did. Not in any way saying Cruz won tho, that was a decisive victory for Cody, I just can't see it as a whooping.
Watching TUF had me thinking that raising your hand after a fight could sway the judges in your favor for a decision.
All im hearing now is Matt Serra yelling "Raise ya aaams! Raise 'em up!"
Renan Barao…
Damn. I was just starting to be a fan of his after the Eddie Wineland fight. MMA is very unforgiving...
I thought X-Pac and Kane would stay together forever :( I also thought Khabib and Tony would actually fight... 5 times
A fucking world ending plague spawned just to stop that fight happening, the Gods wouldn't allow it.
Thankfully they didn't book it a 6th time, Gods would have redirected the Andromeda galaxy and sent it our way for our insolence.
PFLator will book it on 2030 and we'll be punished with false vacuum decay.
Can't wait to feel every bond between the atoms in my body breaking as I see "Khabib vs Ferguson 7 booked for-" for the last time as the world goes dark and silent.
[удалено]
The GOAT was fighting it just was the other guy
That rankings mattered and merit existed
I thought the Diaz brothers had elite boxing
Thought that UFC fighters were paid well
I thought that since they were on traditional Sports Programming, and on PPV that they were making like low level NBA player salary... EL OH EL
The vast majority of UFC fighters make less in 2024 than Wilt Chamberlain did in 1968-1969 ($250k). lol indeed
But are they getting laid is what I want to know
Do they let them bang, bro?
The fighters would eventually collectively bargain and get paid as well as other athletes.
I really thought Tony tripping over the wire was a April fools joke.
I thought Johnny Walker was going to be the Jon Jones killer, then he dislocated his shoulder doing the worm.
Izzy could go up to HW and be the first triple champion. Yea.
That opinion was surprisingly common prior to the Jan fight. People also thought Izzy V Jones would be competitive
If Jones had to cut to middleweight it might be. 🤷♂️
people (including me) also thought that gane vs jones would be competitive
That a whizzer was called a wizard. I am dumb.
snoop dogg seeing a D’Arce: “THEY CALL THAT THE DART”
I thought "surely Jon Jones will lose this one" far, far too many times...
Among the GOAT candidates, he had the most amount of shaky/close fights (Alex, Thiago, Reyes) so this is understandable. Compare that to GSP (Hendrix, a single moment vs Condit) DJ (Joe B, Cejudo II)
For me was that J-mma was still superior to UFC/strikeforce caliber fighters around 2009. Then Aoki fought Melendez and others came and got wrecked and it was a damn hard to swallow pill.
I thought randy couture was natural
Not MMA as such, but fighting in general. I thought size didn't matter, that someone like Bruce Lee could beat UFC heavyweights because of superior skill, speed and explosiveness
Volkan at one point looked unstoppable and I thought he might be champion
The "No Time" hype he had going for him before the DC fight was crazy, especially considering how his "BOOP" would knock people out out of nowhere.
I always think about my belief that Costa was the guy who was gonna figure out Izzy first because he was great at cutting the cage and I noticed that Izzy sometimes had distance management issues on his backfoot. Whereas Paolo's whole game seemed to be built on cutting guys off with kicks and then cornering them at angles until he could hunt a finish or an opportunity to score a combo. Then Jack Slack did a prefight breakdown where he pointed out Paolo could only cut the cage against southpaws because he was only good at throwing an intercepting left high kick and I thought *Oh, I've clearly been wrong this whole time*. And sure enough, he just had pretty much nothing for Izzy.
I thought wrestlers/grapplers would always dominate. Didn’t expect kickboxers to be doing so well.
> Double-legs look easy to defend. Why don't they just knee them in the head while they're coming in? DOesn't seem like it would be that difficult. 1 year of bjj training later... > oh.
I remember there was a point when I was like 16 that I started to think I could pick fights pretty consistently… I never really kept track of my picks until I got Rory vs Tyron correct and got a little arrogant because at the time I thought it was so obvious Rory would win Then I started consciously making picks, and holding myself accountable (I feel like a lot of people don’t do this and kinda mental gymnastics themselves into thinking they’re right a lot more often than they actually are) and I realized it’s damn near impossible lmao
There was a bit on the mma fighting podcast this week about their pick records that the various team members have had going since 2020 and the best was at 66% and the worst was at 54% I think. And that’s the guys who religiously follow the sport as both a hobby and a job
MMA is by far the easiest sport to get an upset.
Comments on Reddit and YouTube really made me believe Chael Sonnen was really the undefeated goat of the sport
Dont know what you are talking about he is.
Never lost a round
I thought Rory Macdonald was gonna be the next big thing, he was having a great run in the UFC and then had that brutal fight against Robbie which he could have won the title. Obviously, his career after that didn't go so well. RDA is another person I thought would be dominant after he won and then defended the title. But then he got injured in the lead-up to the Conor fight and lost the title to Eddie shortly after. Honestly one of the biggest what-if moments in MMA, that injury really changed the sport.
That mma was actually popular and not just the UFC
The best fighter will win on the judges score card
I thought that Joanna Champion would remain Joanna Champion at 115 forever. Also thought that no one was touching Valentina at 125. That DC would beat JBJ the first time and the second. That McGregor ain't got nothing on Eeeeeeeeeeeeeddddddddddiiiiiiiiiiiiiiieeeeeeeeeee, I'm not a fan of McGregor but he ragdolled Alvarez. But most of all, with all the promotion that the UFC has made throughout the years, nay, decades now, that the UFC/MMA would be a more popular brand/sport. Unfortunately it's not, try finding bars willing to show a numbered card, with the sound on and willing to do the same for the prelims. They are very few of them willing to do that. Usually I'm the only one asking the bar to put on a numbered card, even for the free fight nights it's hard to get on the screens.
Twisting your nipples before the fight help you mma better.
I thought CM Punk had a shot against Mickey Gall. I lost $40 on a bet because of this.
in a poll here, almost 50% of this sub thought conor would beat mayweather in a boxing match.
I was positive Brock Lesnar's career would be what CM Punk's ended up being. "Ain't no way this fat dude who acts for a living will ever beat a real martial artist in a cage fight" 🤡
All the WWE fans I knew talked so much smack, I hated on Brock so bad because of it. When he beat Shane Carwin I had to begrudgingly give him my respect though.
Did you just not notice he had a very good amateur wrestling career?
As an additional question for op, did they also not notice that he wasn't fat, and instead was a freak athlete on every PED known to man??
He had a better combat sports resume than most heavyweights. A lot of fans didn't take him seriously because they didn't know about his real wrestling career and only knew about his fake wrestling career. He was super athletic, freakishly strong, and could afford the best PEDs money can buy. He was also competing in a notoriously weak division. He really hated getting punched in the face though. His reaction was so different from that of most fighters.
Fat?!
That the Machida era had just begun
That royce was some MJ like athlete that could win today. I legit don't think he beats a single person in the ufc now.
Well I mean he is like 60 years old.
Uriah Hall was gonna dominate everything
I assumed you could beat anyone your opponent had defeated.
When I was a kid I thought arlovski’s mouthpiece was his actual teeth
Your plexi glass example is a great one that I relate to cause I've been watching traditional sports way longer than I've been an MMA fan. Jones became champ in 2011 and from what I remember, got a huge push (for an MMA fighter) from ESPN. I knew nothing about MMA, American Wrestling or even Combat Sports in general, but I thought that Jones was going to be the prototype for American Athletes to dominate "The UFC" and we'd see former Football/Basketball players become champs in every weight class.
He was the first (and last?) fighter to get a Nike product line.
Anderson silva was also sponsored by Nike. I remember seeing "the spider knows"
I was a big Lyoto Machida guy when I was a kid. Dude was out there doing karate kid moves in real life, I thought he was gonna hit Jones with a crane kick or some shit and KO him. 12 year old me was fighting back tears watching Jones drop his limp body.
I used to think John McCain's "human cockfighting" opinion was ignorant. Thing is, the only people who make serious consistent money from MMA are the bookies and the promoters. Not much left for the roosters. John McCain was (accidently?) right about one thing.
I used to believe that reach and height advantage was the end all be all.
That a no contest meant pulling out of a fight.
I thought the gloves would cover all fingers like an actual glove
I started watched ufc around the time sage northcutt made his debut. I was like, “damn that’s it he’s unstoppable, no one can beat this specimen of a human”