I would think Bas is smart enough to realize that if the fight hit the ground, he'd be f*cked. He's bigger and stronger than Rickson, so he'd use his size advantage to keep the fight standing. From there, it'd be lights out for Rickson, imo.
__________________ Poppa's comin home to sling some dick.
Anderson would messed up GSP for two reasons:
1- The reach
2- The weight
Take a look at what happened to Penn agains tGSP: He weighted, for a fight only, and get mauled in his 2nd fight by GSP.
GSP is a natural 170. Silva is a natural 185. At equal skills, the bigger will win.
The difference in reach between the two is negligible. GSP has a 76 inch reach, and I think Anderson's is 77. It's aesthetically misleading because Anderson is taller.
And I'd agree that the weight would make a difference... if only Anderson could stuff GSP's takedown attempts. It's been said by Greg Jackson that during training, GSP is easily able to take down the light heavyweights he spars against, who are more than likely 220+ pounds before the cut. And as we've seen before, Anderson doesn't exactly have the best takedown defense in the world.
As far as GSP's conditioning is concerned at a bigger weight class, I don't think he'd take a fight that he wasn't 100% prepared for. If he took the time to intelligently put on more weight, like Jake Shields did, it shouldn't make a difference.
__________________ Poppa's comin home to sling some dick.
I remember hearing that GSP regularly takes down outright heavyweights during training, and I believe it was Randy Couture who said so; however, don't quote me on that because I can't remember where I heard it.
If it's true, that is downright frightening though.
GSP is a natural 170? My ass. The guy walks around at 205+. He talks about it all the time. Hell, he said it on camera during the AS Sonnen. Fight Mag had an whole spread talking how he does it.. He weighs more than Sonnen. As for Sonn being better at wrestling, that's true when it comes to competition with all the rules and whatnot, but he's not nearly as good at the practical use of it in the cage. And noone is better at mixing striking and takedowns. We know AS is a better striker by far, but check the chael fight, he Totally dominated AS on the feet. AS was worried about the TD. CS beat him on the feet, so can GSP can destroy him.