Sad to see DC have to go through that, but happy Jones won. I enjoy watching greatness, and Jones is maybe the greatest ever.
I thought Woodley would win by KO going into the fight, I saw it going exactly as it did only with him throwing more. I know he tore his shoulder or something I guess but he did a good job hiding it, because he seemed fine. Feel like he could have gone after it a bit more, there was what? 60 punches thrown in total over the course of the whole fight? Especially annoying cuz when Maia landed the odd time, Woodley would smack his own chin, like wtf man? You're not exactly doing anything either, lol...
Sick takedown defense, though.
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Last edited by Trocity on Aug 1st, 2017 at 06:43 AM
Agreed, though it's arguable that Gus actually beat DC, and would always be a possible threat in a rematch. Though I suppose that you could practically say the same about Gus and Jones, so I guess the point is that Gus is also really good. DC did also tend to get hurt quite a bit more than Jones, but then he also thought Rumble twice whereas Jones never once did.
It was definitely an unfortunate way for the fight to end, not only because I was rooting for DC and how personal it was for him, but we'll never know how the full 5 rounds would have gone had Jones not got the finish, such as who would have emerged the victor in the wrestling (as it was basically even for that duration of the fight), whether DC would have ended up tiring from Jones' volume, how much more DC would be able to tag him etc. At the same time in some ways a finish is really the most perfectly dramatic and definitive way of ending such a legendary story and rivalry. It was nice seeing Jones finally show Daniel some respect in the post-fight interview as well.
Same, I always suspected that Woodley would just be too strong/athletic for Maia's takedowns to work, though I did hope.
My problem with Woodley though, isn't so much that he's started to approach fights by sticking to a smart gameplan that isn't necessarily the most fan friendly. I personally think there's something really compelling about seeing something performed at the most elite level no matter how exciting it might be on the surface, and I've always thought of MMA as a sport first and form of entertainment second, and resent the majority of MMA fans who differ on that. But with Woodley, it almost seems like he goes out of his way to make his fights as boring as possible. I mean, take the Wonderboy fights for instance. Obviously I know that he wasn't exactly trying to get a draw for those fights, but hypothetically if someone were trying to do so, his gameplan was a great way of how you would go about it - win one round by takedown, take three rounds off, and then try and drop him and cause a lot of damage in one round, winning a 10-8. Which is basically what he seemed to do for both fights, and he has this way of counterfighting where he becomes incredible inactive and just sort of puts his back to the cage. Back to the Maia fight, I again fully understand wanting to play it safe, but it seems that he could have definitely been a bit more active than he actually was.
Interestingly, with DC getting finished for the first time, I believe the only remaining elite level fighters (who at some point have been a champion) to have never been finished are Jon Jones, Frankie Edgar and Demetrious Johnson. Really rooting for Frankie to retire without that changing.
I thought Maia would have thrown more kicks and such. He wants to be on the ground so he doesn't need to worry about being taken down off a caught kick or something.
It's weird. LHW is pretty stacked at the top 5 or so. I feel like, on the right day, any of these guys could beat each other. Gustaffson is certainly an amazing fighter and I'm psyched for his rematch with Jones. It seems like Jones, love him or hate him, is simply on another level. The only guy to ever finish DC, and to finish him like that. Part of me feels like Gustaffson missed his window to take Jones out. Styles make fights of course, but Jones is Jones.
Yeah, Woodley complains so much about being disliked and wanting big money fights, but he puts on performances like those. I don't mind his strategy, but I'm not the typical fan. The typical fans like shit talkers or brawlers. If he wants big money, he's got to be a crowd pleaser, either in personality or in fighting style. He is doing neither of those at the moment.
Last edited by StyleTime on Aug 3rd, 2017 at 05:57 PM
Kind of random, but I'd be curious to know what selections people would make, if you could combine the strengths of any two fighters for each weight class, with the aim of making the best possible fighter ever? It's surprisingly fun and makes for some great fantasy matchups.
I would have it as:
HW - Cain Velasquez/Mark Hunt
LHW - Jon Jones/Rumble Johnson
MW - Anderson Silva/Rousimar Palhares
WW - Wonderboy Thompson/Demian Maia
LW - Conor McGregor/Khabib Nurmagomedov
FW - Conor McGregor/Frankie Edgar
BW - TJ Dillashaw/John Lineker
FLW - Demetrious Johnson/John Dodson
Nah, Fedor was totally overrated. Fought weak competition, fought in Pride where they didn't even test for PEDs, and had really wild striking that wasn't very technical.
Prime Cain, Stipe, and possibly JDS and Werdum > Fedor.
WW - I was thinking Wonderboy + GSP would be really good. It speaks to Wonderboy's skill that you could basically pair him with any of the top grapplers and he turns borderline invincible lol.
MW - Prime Anderson with Yoel or Weidman. Anderson's bottom game was already good. I think he needed to be able to stuff takedowns and scramble better. I think a strong wrestler would complement him better than a jiu jutsu guy. Think of what Hendo did to Palhares.
It's so tricky talking Fedor nowadays. He obviously wouldn't have the HW belt today. He's too small, and martial arts has just evolved so much. Going strictly by his era, he was a beast though. He did fight the who's who of MMA for the most part. On the other hand, as you said, Japan doesn't care about PED use, although his opponents got the same benefit. It's hard to compare some of them to their UFC counterparts.
And Japan loves their freakshow fights, so he definitely fought a couple of questionable opponents. Zuluzhino, Khosaka, Yuji Nagata, etc.
Going by today's standards, I think he's probably below the likes of GSP/Silva/Jones/DJ though.
Last edited by StyleTime on Aug 15th, 2017 at 02:42 AM
I'm playing a bit of a devil's advocate here, but I do think Prime Fedor would be in for hell, at the least, in today's landscape.
The larger guys didn't have the talent they have now though. Zhulu zhino was huge but had zero skills. Mark Hunt had no ground game, being submitted by a smaller Overeem. (Overeem only had 4 days notice iirc too)
But that didn't happen. He lost. Regardless, Overeem is an entirely different beast nowadays with his horsemeat powerup. If Prime Fedor fought him today? We'd have one hell of matchup.
And Stipe 1st RD KO'd Werdum and Maldonado, unlike Fedor.
Last edited by StyleTime on Aug 16th, 2017 at 06:28 PM
I again only have to point to his level of competition. Fedor fought a tonne of cans/people with basically no skill/terrible records throughout his career. Some of his better wins were against the likes of Mark Coleman and Kevin Randleman who were utterly one-dimensional grapplers with mediocre striking, or people like Matt Lindland and Ricardo Arona who were a lot smaller than him (incidentally, he clearly lost the Arona fight as well). His toughest opponent during his run was Big Nog, who was basically a pretty good but limited boxer with BJJ that was, certainly good, but hardly world class (if you want to compare him to the likes of Werdum). Cro Cop was himself overrated and performed terribly outside of Pride. His third and fourth greatest opponents were probably Tim Sylvia and Andrei Arlovski, who were basically last generation HWs with respect to the more evolved and well rounded current generation. His win over Mark Hunt might have been great, if it was the Mark Hunt we saw in the UFC as opposed to the relatively green one in Pride that went on a 6 fight losing streak, and even in that fight Fedor was controlled on the ground for a fair bit of time by someone who wasn't even a grappler. His competition does not hold up by today's standards, and that's even true for the HW division which is one of the worst male divisions in MMA at the moment.
We don't know the exact extent to which everyone physically benefitted from PEDs, or even if everyone used them however, so it kind of confuses things a little bit. What we can say is that Fedor's style probably benefitted from them more than others, considering his defining characteristic was how explosive he was and how he generally found success with his striking by overwhelming his opponents with wild flurries, or how he would neutralise one-dimensional strikers by throwing them on their heads at lightning speed. A technical boxer and BJJ guy like Nog, for example, wouldn't have benefitted from them to the same degree, and I believe that had Fedor not fought for an event that allowed them, we would have seen his lack of good technique exposed a lot more.
Indeed, and really, Overeem is probably the best offensive striker we've ever seen in MMA at HW, so it's not like it's a huge mark against Stipe that he was hurt in his fight against him. Overeem suffers from his poor defence, which means that he can potentially lose to a lot of guys who aren't that great, and yet still be a tough fight for pretty much any HW on the planet.
This would probably be a better combo now that I think about it, as on top of GSP's grappling, you have his cardio and his boxing which might make Wonderboy's overall striking game even more incredible, as if he has any weakness at all it's his boxing. I figured Maia initially just because of how dangerous he can be once you're on the ground with him, and the intimidation factor of being within grappling range. A little like how Jon Jones is such a good striker at range with his reach and varied kicking game, and how most fighters don't even want to try and get on the inside due to fear of getting taken down and savaged on the ground. Sure people don't want to get taken down by GSP but it's certainly nowhere near as dangerous as being on the ground with Maia.
There are definitely better grapplers than Palhares you could pair Anderson with (I would choose Yoel or Jacare over Weidman personally), the reason I was thinking Palhares though is that Anderson in his prime had the absolute scariest aura about him when you were standing with him that seemed to just paralyse other fighters, in fact his greatest attribute may not even have been his striking but rather that aura he possessed, and I figured that if you added Palhares' ability and seeming willingness to break his opponents limbs in two, you now have someone who's generally just terrifying no matter where you're fighting him.
I'm going to disagree a little, Coleman had bags of skill and was on enough PED's to win the Derby. Fedor got thrown around like a doll by him and won.
Gender: Male Location: The Throne Of The House Of El
LIES!!!
1. Cain- Too high. JDS is the biggest scalp and that is it. Brock was literally on the verge of being critically ill when facing Cain. I could tell something was wrong with Brock on the Ultimate Fighter when he was Paler than Casper.
2. Stipe- Stipe outside of arguably JDS( Who I think is shot) and Ubereem who is very hard to gauge has no great victories.
3. JDS- He KO'd Cain when he appeared invincible. Outside of that there is nothing that puts him above Fedor.
4. Werdum- Werdum had a great run. I think Werdum is maybe one notch down.
5. Fedor- HERETIC!!! Fedor is KING!!! The record until Werdum stopped him speaks for itself. What speaks even louder is where his peers rank him. Werdum genuflected in front of King Fedor after he beat him.
6. Big Nog- I think this is about right. His Pride and UFC career were great and he beat great fighters in 2 different eras.
7. Overeem- Sadly appropriate. HOWEVER!!!! If Ubereem can win the Belt, especially by beating Stipe he goes up at least 2.
8. Brock Lesnar- What could've been. If not for illness I have no doubt Brock at worst would've been number 3 all time.
9. Mark Hunt- Too high. Hunt is solidly outside of the top 10.
10. CroCop- Too low Cro Cop has the victories and performances to place him anywhere from 6-8.
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