UFC thread

[thugler]

I think as a sport it's always been pretty flawed. Prefer it when it's more of a freak show, which is why the pride era was best. The judging/subjectivity of who's 'winning' and random chances of someone suddenly losing from concussion make it a bit silly as a sport. So many fights involve one guy getting beaten up for a long period of time, but not knocked out, then the other guy gets tired and he wins, or just round after round of stalemate and strikes/grappling only intended to score points.

[greenman]

It's not a gap or an era, it's always been a circus. From the nineties until now.

That's a pretty massive generalisation, sporting concerns have never been the sole driver of matchmaking in any MMA org but since the millennium the UFC, Pride(albeit with more active fighters facing some lower level comp inbetween) and Strikeforce have tended to go with title challengers who at least had a decent case.

In the last year or so though we've had McGregor getting a LW title shot rather than defending his BW belt and Bisping facing an aged Henderson and now a returning WW rather than several other more deserving names.

Its especially disappointing as MW is really the only higher weightclass that has actually gotten stronger in recent years yet were seeing those fighters kept away from the top of the division in favour of pushing Bisping in a desperate attempt to win over the UK market further.

[Repeater]

lol Pride was always a freakshow too dude, come on.

[greenman]

I think as a sport it's always been pretty flawed. Prefer it when it's more of a freak show, which is why the pride era was best. The judging/subjectivity of who's 'winning' and random chances of someone suddenly losing from concussion make it a bit silly as a sport. So many fights involve one guy getting beaten up for a long period of time, but not knocked out, then the other guy gets tired and he wins, or just round after round of stalemate and strikes/grappling only intended to score points.

I'd say the advantage of the Pride era(well the second half of it) was that you got the freakshows such as Minowa/Giant Silva acknowledged as such and much less interference of that kind of booking with the higher levels of the sport. You had Crocop destroying pro wrestlers on Bushido shows but those fights didn't take the place of him facing legitimate tests.

You look at the GP structure for example and that pretty much insured more legitimate booking, all a fighter involved needed to do was keep winning.

[Repeater]

To me, to be legitimate, a group needs: transparency, clear rankings, clear rules, a distance between athletes and management, govt. comissions / govt. endorsement. UFC never had these, nor did any MMA organisation.

[Repeater]

You look at the GP structure for example and that pretty much insured more legitimate booking, all a fighter involved needed to do was keep winning.

Hmm, wouldn't say it was legit, look at the Sakura/Gracie mess, the lack of drug testing etc.

[greenman]

To me, to be legitimate, a group needs: transparency, clear rankings, clear rules, a distance between athletes and management, govt. comissions / govt. endorsement. UFC never had these, nor did any MMA organisation.

Some of these elements obviously do exist but really what you are highlighting is the sporting legitimate booking rests in the hands of the organisation itself. For much of the past decade we have had booking that is if not wholly based on achievement has generally paid pretty strong attention to it.

What we've seen happen with Bisping post belt win is pretty unique in the recent history of the organisation. A large number of more deserving challangers passed over in favour of two obviously undeserved title shots. At least with say Jones fighting Sonnen and Vitor you were dealing with a situation where he had previously beaten most of the best fighters in his division.

[thugler]

To me, to be legitimate, a group needs: transparency, clear rankings, clear rules, a distance between athletes and management, govt. comissions / govt. endorsement. UFC never had these, nor did any MMA organisation.

Explain how the rules can be 'clear' when deciding who has won is so subjective. Is it an endurance contest or a 'who can injure /damage the other most' contest?

[greenman]

Hmm, wouldn't say it was legit, look at the Sakura/Gracie mess, the lack of drug testing etc.

Certainly not in terms of drug testing although that's hardly unique, you could point to several massively popular sports with flimsy at best testing.

In terms of match making though I think your looking at two very different eras, Pride during the 90's wasn't very strongly focused on building towards the best fighters in each division but in the period around 2000-02 you obviously saw a shift towards this. You still had freak show fights happening at lower levels and you had big names fighting much more often fitting in lower level opposition between big fights but the big fights still happened.

I actually think having that divide between the legitmate fights and the entertainment fights helped make sure that the former still happened. In the UFC there has always been a tendency to mix up these two a bit and were really seeing that come to the fore over the last year.

Honestly though I do wonder why they seem so attached to Bisping, he's really never built up a mainstream following here in the UK and even as champion is shown little sign of doing so.

[Repeater]

thugler - they post the critera the judges use when decising who wins the rounds at the top of every show. Sometimes the judges fuck up though, as refs in other sports do.

greenman - i dunno, justify Holm's recent title shot, Brock's title shot, Punk having a fight in UFC, James Toney having a fight vs a legend... wouldn't say those were based on merit or achievement (and I'm not against them either). I mean, go further back, Shamrock getting another go at Ortiz after he blew him out a few weeks earlier, Randy getting a HW title shot based on how many HW wins? Let's keep going, Diaz's title shot vs GSP, what a mess that was. BJ jumping division to division for title shots in places where he'd done nothing recently. Dan Hardy getting a pop at Georges... Dangerous Dan getting a pop at Anderson after zero recent UFC wins. I'm in favor of all these by the way but my point is that UFC has always done stuff like this. I suppose you could claim it's more obvious now, looking at some examples above though, I'm not sure it's ever changed.

Pride drug testing was a sham, yep, therefore there's a huge astersk against the organization. You could say other competitions have drug issues (cycling, swimming) but none of them had contracts where they explicitly stated they would NOT be testing for performance enhancers (as Pride did). With shite like that, you can't regard it anything but a complete freakshow. That's before you even consider the Yakuza involvement and worked fights.

I think they like Bisping because he's been a company man, never popped, always plays his role (be it heel or face), takes every fight, has a decent amount of charisma and in a perfect world would be a big UK star. Hasn't happened though obviously but I can see why they'd try.

[greenman]

The UFC has always included a good amount of questionable stuff although over the last decade or so this has tended to be confined to undercard matches and preference for one legitimate challenger over another perhaps somewhat more legitimate challenger, something like say Lesnar's original HW title shot was a rarity. In the last year though I think things have clearly gotten worse, I wouldn't be supprised if a big factor is the new owners looking to get a short term return on investment although I think the signs were there before that.

Again I think the disappointing thing is MW is actually in something of a golden era here with Romero, Jacare, Rockhold, Weidman, Mousasi, etc around yet the top of the sport has been sidetracked over a likely unsuccessful attempt to play to the UK market. Most of those names aren't getting any younger and I wouldn't be surprised to seem them on the declining within the next couple of years and the division follow LHW and HW in dropping off due to lack of investment.

[Repeater]

Aye, I would say WME-IMG care much less about legitimacy and need, very quickly, to pay off interest on their loans - hence the Mayweather stuff.

[thugler]

they post the critera the judges use when decising who wins the rounds at the top of every show. Sometimes the judges fuck up though, as refs in other sports do.

Yeah I know but they're vague as fuck and it often makes the fights pretty unsatisfying. The rounds system works fine for boxing, but seems out of place. I'd argue for more draws unless it's really clear. Most of my problems come from the fact no holds barred bare knuckle fighting doesn't really make sense as a sport at all. It's a bit of a mess

[Repeater]

Yup, agreed on pretty much all of that.

[greenman]

Honestly my view is that whilst some aspects such as garneted payouts and fighter medicals are obviously a good thing in a lot of respects the more "official" aspects of the UFC have tended to be a bit of a smokescreen of legitimacy. Again looking back to Pride(well again latter 00's Pride) I think you had fewer questionable calls back then and a large part of that was that the buck stopped with them, every decision was looked at for potential bias. With the UFC though I think the supposed separation between the officals(although actually outside the US there directly employed by them a lot of the time) and the org provides quite a nice cover for any criticism although historically I think theres been a clear pattern of questionable calls favouring fighters they want to win.

The same with criteria for judging, Pride was a lot easier because it highlighted how aspects were to be weighed against each other. Effective aggression for example would trump everything else so one fighter laying on another for 14 mins and almost koed or subbed in the 15th min should lose the fight. In the UFC this is much more subjective and the standard is actually not on the page but rather just having to look back to previous decisions.

Whole fight judging is I think more suited to MMA as well as it puts more weight on near finishes that may often differ considerably from control given that fighters have strengths in different aspects of the sport. It would likely cut down on the shear amount of stalling we see in the sport today as well knowing one knockdown or near submission could win a fight.

[Bacon]

Khabib vs Tony cancelled, khabib taken to hospital during weight cut

genuinely gutted, was excited about that fight

[greenman]

His camp is getting a terrible rep for cancelling fights at the last minute, hopefully it gets shifted to the next event.

[Repeater]

Conor was right, Conor is howling. He said after the Alvarez obliteration that Khabib needs to show up for some fights before getting the McGregor fight... well, I doubt he'll get that opportunity now. He should stop running his mouth until he can make the walk consistently. Compare his fights in the last 30 months (Horcher, Johnson) and Conor's (fuck, Eddie, Nate, Nate, Aldo, Mendez etc.)

[greenman]

Very close to the same fight again in the title match, personally I had it at a draw but I don't really begrudge Woodley the win having come much closer to the finish.

Overeem I think actually got a little lucky Hunt messed his leg up as he was looking the more dangerous kicker early on, nice finish in the end but he had a few iffy moments there that I think a younger/faster Hunt would have exploited better.

Again my guess is that the LW fight will get shifted to a coming card, UFC 210 is actually pretty light on big names outside of the main and co main.

[up_the_hampipe]

Well, Conor McGregor vs. Floyd Mayweather is finally happening on August 26.

I guess Conor got tired of winning fights for money, so now he wants to get knocked out for even more money.

[Repeater]

He'll beat the brakes off him

[greenman]

They probably figure he can take a loss better than say Anderson Silva would have vs Roy Jones when that was being talked up, not like he's undefeated in MMA anyway and is obviously fighting someone at the very top of his sport.

[Mr Brightside]

What is the best MMA move to perturb my adversaries?

[Repeater]

rear naked choke

[rjd2]

I don't like zombie threads,,,but Tony Ferguson just got destroyed, what a time to be alive.

[Marner and Me]

What is the best MMA move to perturb my adversaries?

Boston Crab

[wooders1978]

I don't like zombie threads,,,but Tony Ferguson just got destroyed, what a time to be alive.

Got a chin on him to be fair but yes, great to see

[cliggg]

A good night of fights all the same though Tony's stupid and pointless weight cut from two weeks ago was probably a factor in his performance last night Justin was great too, made the necessary adjustments and dominated from then on. I'll be interested to see if and how many people involved last night test positive for COVID-19 as they have another show on Wednesday and another one on Saturday.

I also thought it was odd how Joe Rogan made an effort to shake the hand of all the fighters he interviewed, even when some were hesitant he insisted it was fine. And then Dana sitting there all night without a face mask talking away to people sitting beside him also without face masks. Very odd to see these days! 

[confettiinmyhair]

Rogan will probably just sweat it out in a sauna.

[rjd2]

Really fun PPV just concluded.

Nunes dominated Spencer and it was a farce it was allowed to go the distance. Thankfully Nunes eased up in the final round but Spencer will take a while to recover from that.

Two savage knockouts from Cody and O'Malley also.

https://twitter.com/_jrickz/status/1269476357123330053

https://twitter.com/brentsehxti/status/1269456058113650689