The MMA/UFC Thread

[hendrix]

I mean, yeah. The UFC is supposedly a joke that doesn't have the top fighters. But M-1 does, when all of their champions are signed to the UFC and the promotion as a whole serves as a talent farm for the them.

And only Volk, who I like, has had success there, and even then he's losing to guys like Lewis and Blaydes in a thin Heavyweight division.

That's not even going into the amount of events the UFC runs. 46 last year, 27 so far this year (in a pandemic). Like yeah, no **** they are the most popular promotion with MMA fans.

I didn't say M-1 has the top fighters.

I said the UFC doesn't have (all or most of) the top fighters. But it pretends that it does. There are lots of promotional companies around the world that run lots of different MMA competitions and the top fighters come from all of these different organisations.

Dana has managed to convince the world that the premier fighters fight in the UFC. But a) this is simply not true and b) if so why are they not paid anywhere near what the top athletes in other sports are paid? Because it's a facade. There's some good fighters like that 7beeb fellow and the rest are basically journeymen athletes or below journeyman level. The NBA is the premier basketball competition in the world because it has almost all of the best basketball players in the world. The UFC clearly does not have all of the best MMA fighters in the world.

 

[Teja.]

hendrix,

Do you think boxing is more professional with the best fighting the best?

 

[hendrix]

hendrix,

Do you think boxing is more professional with the best fighting the best?

I don't think the best fight the best very often in boxing. But when they do they are much higher quality affairs overall than what we see in the UFC.

I do think there are much better athletes and the quality of the top guys is far, far higher than what it is in the UFC. If you look at a pound for pound list of fighters in boxing you'll see guys like Vasyl Lomachenko, Terence Crawford, Oleksandr Usyk, Canelo Alvarez, Naoya Inoue, Gennadiy Golovkin, Artur Beterbiev etc. And with the guys on their way out there's people like Manny Pacquiao, Sergiy Kovalev, etc.

Compare that to a top 10 UFC list and it's there's no comparison, frankly. No disrespect to guys like Kamaru Usman and Israel Adesanya but if those guys are in top 10 p4p rankings it's just not a high quality tournament. 7bibi and Jon Jones (although he's a notorious drug cheat) are the only ones who to me look like impressive fighters. And I'm all for guys having careers after taking a few losses, but let's be honest Jorge Masvidal is a journeyman, and the idea that he's headlining events is crazy to me.

Maybe if the MMA as a whole involved fights between guys from different promotional agencies we might start to see a higher calibre of athlete.

 

[Mike5181]

I didn't say M-1 has the top fighters.

I said the UFC doesn't have (all or most of) the top fighters. But it pretends that it does. There are lots of promotional companies around the world that run lots of different MMA competitions and the top fighters come from all of these different organisations.

Dana has managed to convince the world that the premier fighters fight in the UFC. But a) this is simply not true and b) if so why are they not paid anywhere near what the top athletes in other sports are paid? Because it's a facade. There's some good fighters like that 7beeb fellow and the rest are basically journeymen athletes or below journeyman level. The NBA is the premier basketball competition in the world because it has almost all of the best basketball players in the world. The UFC clearly does not have all of the best MMA fighters in the world.

I don't care about the NBA. I'm sure there's a few scrubs running around in euroleague or something that would do all right, but it's a much older sport. This is MMA, not boxing, not kickboxing, not basketball. Mixed martial arts. And in that sport the UFC has the highest concentration of talent by far, by far.

And yeah, you don't get pulled into the top promotion before making a bit of a name for yourself, it's an international sport - ***** do it all over the place. It's called recruiting, and the UFC does it all over the place, including raiding every champion M-1 had. No **** some dickheads deep into russia or brazil have top 10 potential or something. You don't spawn into the womb of mother UFC.

I don't care about how good of an 'athlete' x guy is either, I care how good he is at MMA. And Adesanya being a 'second-rate kickboxer' isn't relevant within the context of MMA because striking is much different in this sport. All of those boxers, even Loma, would get absolutely flatlined if they tried to fight any of these supposed 'journeyman' in MMA, that's what makes the best in MMA legitimate top fighters.

And in 2020 if you think these guys, with the exception of one or two are 'journeymen' you legitimately have no idea what you are talking about. This isn't some Royce Gracie one glove wearing landscape ****, with the exception of some of the juiced up OG Pride fighters back in the day the sport has evolved massively in the last 10-20 years.

 

[Teja.]

I think it's somewhere in the middle tbh. I think heavyweight is a shithouse division skillwise and you won't convince me that there aren't 3-4 open weight fighters across the world who are not better than Derrick Lewis (lmao). If you buy into the UFC mythology, you have to believe that there's only 2 or 3 fighters in the entire world occupying the vast skill gap between Daniel Cormier and Derrick Lewis which is a complete farce obviously. The standard of WMMA is pretty poor as well and it's pretty accessible for women from other specialised combat sports to just come in and do really well IMO.

I think lightweight/welterweight is super competitive and good in the UFC though.

 

[Flem274*]

didn't adesanya have a ridiculously good kickboxing record pre-ufc? the guy is no joke.

it's also pretty dumb to compare boxers to muay thai. boxers just aren't trained to expect to get kicked in the head for a start.

this 'athlete' carry on...how are you comparing athleticism? sounds like ****.

 

[Mike5181]

I think it's somewhere in the middle tbh. I think heavyweight is a ****house division skillwise and you won't convince me that there aren't 3-4 open weight fighters across the world who are not better than Derrick Lewis (lmao). If you buy into the UFC mythology, you have to believe that there's only 2 or 3 fighters in the entire world occupying the vast skill gap between Daniel Cormier and Derrick Lewis which is a complete farce obviously. The standard of WMMA is pretty poor as well and it's pretty accessible for women from other specialised combat sports to just come in and do really well IMO.

I think lightweight/welterweight is super competitive and good in the UFC though.

Women's strawweight division is pretty great with Weili, Rose, Joanna, and rising talents like Dern. Actually probably one of my favourite divisions. Nunes and Shevchenko are obviously two of the best ever but not much competition for them. Everything is relative though, the women are further behind than the men but compared to even 5 years ago the progress is there. Less and less soccer moms.


,

 

[Teja.]

I don't think the best fight the best very often in boxing. But when they do they are much higher quality affairs overall than what we see in the UFC.

I do think there are much better athletes and the quality of the top guys is far, far higher than what it is in the UFC. If you look at a pound for pound list of fighters in boxing you'll see guys like Vasyl Lomachenko, Terence Crawford, Oleksandr Usyk, Canelo Alvarez, Naoya Inoue, Gennadiy Golovkin, Artur Beterbiev etc. And with the guys on their way out there's people like Manny Pacquiao, Sergiy Kovalev, etc.

Compare that to a top 10 UFC list and it's there's no comparison, frankly. No disrespect to guys like Kamaru Usman and Israel Adesanya but if those guys are in top 10 p4p rankings it's just not a high quality tournament. 7bibi and Jon Jones (although he's a notorious drug cheat) are the only ones who to me look like impressive fighters. And I'm all for guys having careers after taking a few losses, but let's be honest Jorge Masvidal is a journeyman, and the idea that he's headlining events is crazy to me.

Maybe if the MMA as a whole involved fights between guys from different promotional agencies we might start to see a higher calibre of athlete.

Fair enough. I think you're understating just how carny a sport Boxing is though. Things like the fixtures and the judging are total prank quality at the highest levels of the sport.

 

[hendrix]

I don't care about the NBA. I'm sure there's a few scrubs running around in euroleague or something that would do all right, but it's a much older sport. This is MMA, not boxing, not kickboxing, not basketball. Mixed martial arts. And in that sport the UFC has the highest concentration of talent by far, by far.

And yeah, you don't get pulled into the top promotion before making a bit of a name for yourself, it's an international sport - ****s do it all over the place. It's called recruiting, and the UFC does it all over the place, including raiding every champion M-1 had. No **** some dickheads deep into russia or brazil have top 10 potential or something. You don't spawn into the womb of mother UFC.

I don't care about how good of an 'athlete' x guy is either, I care how good he is at MMA. And Adesanya being a 'second-rate kickboxer' isn't relevant within the context of MMA because striking is much different in this sport. All of those boxers, even Loma, would get absolutely flatlined if they tried to fight any of these supposed 'journeyman' in MMA, that's what makes the best in MMA legitimate top fighters.

And in 2020 if you think these guys, with the exception of one or two are 'journeymen' you legitimately have no idea what you are talking about. This isn't some Royce Gracie one glove wearing landscape ****, with the exception of some of the juiced up OG Pride fighters back in the day the sport has evolved massively in the last 10-20 years.

You really think Conor McGregor "worked his way up" to get to the UFC? That's not how this is working mate. Dana is plucking these guys out pretty much based on who he thinks he can market. These dudes have a few club level fights and then if they get lucky Dana will see something in their personality he can market.

There's a select pool of guys with very little evidence that many of them deserve to be there or still deserve to be there. Guys with 14 losses haven't been replaced by younger, hungrier fighters? Again I'm not one to say that a career is over after a few losses but in a true competition those guys get beaten then leapfrogged by fresher fighters it's just life.

 

[hendrix]

Fair enough. I think you're understating just how carny a sport Boxing is though. Things like the fixtures and the judging are total prank quality at the highest levels of the sport.

Oh, I have no illusions that boxing is anything close to being fair and clean. It's as corrupt as they come and a complete joke half the time.

Still, there's much more talent and more to my point, that talent isn't managed by one man deciding who and how he wants to market someone. It's this weird little cult of the UFC that's what bugs me.

Take this Paulo Costa guy for example. To me he looks like a scrub with an inflated record.

Those types of people exist in boxing for sure - e.g. Tom Schwartz before he fought Tyson Fury, Dominick Breazeale etc - but the difference is that they're promoted by a bunch of different organisations and so if there's a paper champion or someone in the division with an inflated record they're going to get called out and then the illusion will end. In the UFC it's all just one big illusion apart from a couple of decent dudes. They're all just kinda average fighters not particularly different from club level but they're in the nice little circle jerk because Dana saw something in them he could market.

 

[Mike5181]

You really think Conor McGregor "worked his way up" to get to the UFC? That's not how this is working mate. Dana is plucking these guys out pretty much based on who he thinks he can market. These dudes have a few club level fights and then if they get lucky Dana will see something in their personality he can market.

There's a select pool of guys with very little evidence that many of them deserve to be there or still deserve to be there. Guys with 14 losses haven't been replaced by younger, hungrier fighters? Again I'm not one to say that a career is over after a few losses but in a true competition those guys get beaten then leapfrogged by fresher fighters it's just life.

I really don't think 5 years fighting in Ireland (14 fights) with multiple TKO round 1 finishes is insignificant on a resume, and then he got his opportunity on two prelim cards in the UFC and ****ing performed, that's literally every job ever. Perform and you're probably in. And honestly, even if they are plucked like that, which I have no problems with (it's ****ing entertainment), they are either good enough or not. There's **** all hiding in the UFC

Paige Van Zant and Sage Northcutt looked good on posters but at the end of the day they weren't good enough.

 

[hendrix]

I really don't think 5 years fighting in Ireland (14 fights) with multiple TKO round 1 finishes is insignificant on a resume, and then he got his opportunity on two prelim cards in the UFC and ****ing performed, that's literally every job ever. Perform and you're probably in. And honestly, even if they are plucked like that, which I have no problems with (it's ****ing entertainment), they are either good enough or not. There's **** all hiding in the UFC

Paige Van Zant and Sage Northcutt looked good on posters but at the end of the day they weren't good enough.

He had a few losses prior to the UFC, he's had a few losses within the UFC. reckon the level of competition is not significantly different (notwithstanding that fighters can improve of course). I just don't think he or many of the guys he's fought have been that good. And I'd say the same for pretty much everyone in the entire UFC.

 

[Himannv]

You really think Conor McGregor "worked his way up" to get to the UFC? That's not how this is working mate. Dana is plucking these guys out pretty much based on who he thinks he can market. These dudes have a few club level fights and then if they get lucky Dana will see something in their personality he can market.

There's a select pool of guys with very little evidence that many of them deserve to be there or still deserve to be there. Guys with 14 losses haven't been replaced by younger, hungrier fighters? Again I'm not one to say that a career is over after a few losses but in a true competition those guys get beaten then leapfrogged by fresher fighters it's just life.

I agree with the general point you're making regarding Dana, although I don't think McGregor is a particularly good example (when is he ever!?). I think Dana definitely picks the fights he thinks will make the most money and what is best for ratings. A fair ranking system is not something that's particularly important to him and the UFC at this point and I think that's one of the major problems with the promotion along with the third-party reffing, which is just plain messed up.

 

[hendrix]

All of those boxers, even Loma, would get absolutely flatlined if they tried to fight any of these supposed 'journeyman' in MMA, that's what makes the best in MMA legitimate top fighters.

You're missing my point. I'll put it this way.

Put Loma (or any top fighter in any division) against a good club level boxer and it's a complete mismatch. Even a top 30 boxer against a club level fighter is going to end in round 1.

Put a "top" UFC guy in against a good club level MMA fighter and I think you will see a competitive fight. That's what I'm saying here.

 

[hendrix]

I think it's somewhere in the middle tbh. I think heavyweight is a ****house division skillwise and you won't convince me that there aren't 3-4 open weight fighters across the world who are not better than Derrick Lewis (lmao). If you buy into the UFC mythology, you have to believe that there's only 2 or 3 fighters in the entire world occupying the vast skill gap between Daniel Cormier and Derrick Lewis which is a complete farce obviously. The standard of WMMA is pretty poor as well and it's pretty accessible for women from other specialised combat sports to just come in and do really well IMO.

I think lightweight/welterweight is super competitive and good in the UFC though.

that's probably a fair take, some divisions are certainly more competitive than others.

 

[Mike5181]

He had a few losses prior to the UFC, he's had a few losses within the UFC. reckon the level of competition is not significantly different (notwithstanding that fighters can improve of course). I just don't think he or many of the guys he's fought have been that good. And I'd say the same for pretty much everyone in the entire UFC.

'A few' meaning 2? And in 2008 and 2010? No ****, he was green as **** learning the sport. MMA losses aren't the same as in boxing dude. I hope you never google Sakuraba, you'd have a heart attack. probably try to build a delorean to cut him from the sport. losing to Artemij insertnamehere in 2008 and then losing to ****ing Khabib in 2015 doesn't mean the opponents are "not significantly different" skill-wise. Khabib could literally put a wig on Mr. 15-17 and take him out for a nice seafood dinner and he couldn't do **** about it.

And I don't even think Conor is that great. He's very good, great even, but not elite.

 

[hendrix]

'A few' meaning 2? And in 2008 and 2010? No ****, he was green as **** learning the sport. MMA losses aren't the same as in boxing dude. I hope you never google Sakuraba, you'd have a heart attack. probably try to build a delorean to cut him from the sport. losing to Artemij insertnamehere in 2008 and then losing to ****ing Khabib in 2015 doesn't mean the opponents are "not significantly different" skill-wise. Khabib could literally put a wig on Mr. 15-17 and take him out for a nice seafood dinner and he couldn't do **** about it.

And I don't even think Conor is that great. He's very good, great even, but not elite.

I don't get your points here? It's not making much sense to me.

We're talking about the guy who's had two losses in the UFC - one to Nate Diaz and one to 7beeb. 7beeb is probably the best fighter in the sport right? I'm just not seeing where these massive levels are. Sure I can allow for a fighter to improved but I'm really not seeing much qualitatively different between the results and the eye test from what one sees in the UFC and a good club level fight.

 

[Mike5181]

15-17 is the record of the fighter Conor lost to in 2008. If your eye test hasn't seen significant improvement in him from losing to that caliber of opponent to beating the likes of Aldo, Poirier, etc. then... yeah.

 

[hendrix]

Agree to disagree mate.

 

[Teja.]

Have thrown in a little double on Viera and Reyes winning at 2/1 haha. Let's gooo.

Pretty fun fight between Tdowadoo and Zubaira to start off. Khabib was fuming at the corner.