Elsalvajeloco

The young man Dak is ice cold.

From what I've heard, they're pretty satisfied with Fight Pass. I doubt that gets touched.

Yeah, this is a new level of cheating.

Man, I'm so looking forward to Weidman vs. Romero out of all the non-title bouts. A few news notes: - Some lunatic or lunatics set fire to three of Anthony Pettis' vehicles while they were in his driveway. Luckily, no one was injured or harmed. - It appears Rafael dos Anjos has left Kings MMA and is training in and around Southern California with Babalu and Eduardo Pachu (basically anyone connected with Gracie Barra) in preparation for next week's fight. - While Bisping vs. GSP seems to be off the table, GSP might be trying to hammer out a new deal with the UFC. Also, Bisping has called out Nick Diaz as expected.

Apparently, they are suppose to have more cards on Spike, ESPN, FS1/Fox, Bounce, and NBC next year. Showtime usually announces their end of year/early next year slate around this time anyway. Just no fights announced yet for the other ones.

I think the Barboza fight is a bad example because people underrate how easy it is to look bad against Barboza. Paul Felder is someone who has never really had a problem pulling the trigger, and he was always a step behind Barboza. Felder would land one good strike and then Barboza would come back w/ 3 to 4 good ones. And Felder is way more of a volume striker than Pettis. Compared to who Pettis faced in his career, he had never seen anything like that. Cerrone would probably be the closest but Pettis wasn't even in the cage with Cerrone long enough to determine that. What I would compare it to is Holm vs. Shevchenko. There was no question in my mind that Shevchenko was a better striker than Holm. The thing I would interchange size with is the fact that Pettis does have that ability to stun his opponent and follow up or grab a quick submission. However, unless it's a Canelo/Khan type thing, consistent skill will most likely always win out over just one attribute or some random intangible thing. With Holm/Shevchenko, that one flash knockdown Holm got early on paled in comparison to the fact Valentina was skilled enough to land the same one or two combos over and over again. That's the way I saw Barboza's bout with Pettis turning out. Pettis probably could dinged Barboza early on, but that fight was going to get progressively tougher to win as Barboza got more into his groove. You could just watch the first 6-8 minutes and say, "Yeah, Anthony ain't winning this one short of Barboza's closing his eyes as a Pettis counter is coming." If someone like Barboza is standing out of range, what was Pettis going to do exactly? He tried to bring him in range and got absolutely tattooed. That's a fight I could've saw Pettis losing at any point of his career because there ain't many solutions to winning that kinda fight except for a bunch of Hail Mary strategies.

If you look at what I said in the Vancouver thread, you'll see you're preaching to the choir on this one. People look at Pettis' run to the title and what happened in the Melendez fight and think that should happen in every fight. Also, people were expecting him to Dim Mak death touch RdA. When that didn't happen and based on how he looked in the Alvarez fight, people were already putting the coffin nails in as far as the end of his career. I mean I called Barboza giving him a really tough time because the change of camps helped Barboza greatly (specifically Mark Henry) and his striking is just otherworldly when he's on. I am not saying people shouldn't be skeptical because he has had a ton of inconsistent moments in his career and the injuries did pile up for quite awhile. However, the dude is still only 29. That may be a little old for the lower weight divisions, but that's still ample time to put together some good wins. Plus, I think he is talented enough to still do that. He's also competing in a more top heavy division. Is he going to beat Jose Aldo? Probably not, but other than a straight left hand right to the chinpiece, what is? Also, you have a lot less dudes playing spoiler at featherweight. Someone like Bektic and obviously Holloway are coming up fast, but there isn't too many dudes like that yet. The ones who might be are still at least 1-2 years away. I mean someone like Yair Rodriguez has gotten really good really fast, but he still needs a ton of seasoning. However, down the line, Pettis-Rodriguez could be some straight up Mortal Kombat shit if it ever got booked. Pettis-Ortega would be as well. Shit, I'll take Pettis trying to avenge his brother's loss to Caceres. Just because you can't win the title doesn't mean you can't break into the upper crust of the division, especially if it's less deeper than the division you just came from. So I am all for another name joining that division and being available for a bunch of compelling matchups.

To be fair to VileOne, I did see similar things on my Twitter timeline and other discussion forums following the Vancouver show. People are expecting Anthony Pettis who gets people out of there in the first round, and that's basically unrealistic.

I think if the performance Pettis had against Do Bronx was more dominant, I think that probably could be the case. I think some people have already given Pettis failing marks at FW, and he hasn't even had two fights yet. However, I do think a win over Pettis does at least alleviate that built in excuse of folks not having to fight Holloway. Personally, I think Aldo is waiting for UFC 205 to be done with and then pick who he wants to fight. It sounds like he is already about to back off the retirement thing. On the off chance Conor wants to come back down, we most likely do get the McGregor-Aldo rematch. If Edgar beats Stephens as expected, we can get Holloway-Edgar. That's the scenario I want to see because I feel Holloway beating Edgar, whose only white whale is Jose Aldo, does more for him in terms of resume than this form of Anthony Pettis. He would have to do a demolition job on Pettis for it to mean as much as winning a convincing decision over Edgar. Now if Pettis beats Holloway, then it becomes really interesting.

Anthony Pettis vs. Max Holloway has been added to UFC 206.

Stevie Ray is replacing James Krause on the Belfast card against Ross Pearson.

Showtime's current slate for December 2016/early 2017

According to MMA Fighting, Sean Shelby will be the matchmaker for both the women's divisions as well as male bantamweight to welterweight. Mick Maynard is responsible for flyweight and middleweight to heavyweight.

Vicente Luque is replacing Lyman Good against Belal Muhammad at UFC 205.

Some news notes: Urijah Faber is retiring after his fight with Brad Pickett in Sacramento on the UFC on Fox card. Marc Diakiese gets a quick turnaround against the returning Frankie Perez on the Albany card. That's a quality matchup. Ray Borg vs. Louis Smolka has been added to the UFC 207 card.

Lightweight is so deep that it's always going to depend on the matchups he gets. You can basically fight a set of fighters and be on a completely different planet from other top lightweights. However, if he is making somewhat decent money, I would expect him to be fighting dudes close to his level. I mean Brooks went from fighting a former featherweight in his first bout to a dude who is essentially moving up to 170 less than three months later. That's a rough look for someone who is still trying to improve to fight to fight. But hey, a lot of these dudes want to move up fast and they got several people to climb past in the division. In regards to the defense, I think he can beat a number of lightweights on toughness. Ferguson/Vannata proved on several levels how far a chin can get you in both cases. The inherent problem is you never know when a chin is going to let out. Moreover, the type of fighters Gaethje could potentially face have more stamina than the dudes he has already fought and could fight in WSOF. That gives me more pause than just his chin because it's still lightweight. There are plenty of fighters with good power at LW, but it's still not 170 and above where it gets more make or break as you move up in weight. I just don't know how many times you can summon that up and against dudes who can dish out punishment for longer periods of time. You can't wait for dudes to get tired of whooping your ass, especially in three rounders. In five rounders, it gets really interesting and even more interesting if it's two clear, quality lightweights. However, it's for certain he has to make critical adjustments and use his wrestling/grappling game more if he wants to contend immediately.

Brock's case, on the other hand, is not going so well as his supplements came back from testing and were all negative for any banned substances. I believe Lesnar's team is holding on to the possibility that he tested positive for some contaminated product he "forgot" to disclose on his prefight questionnaire. I don't see that one getting through.

Branch is so much better than his UFC run. He could be a serviceable fighter at either middleweight and light heavyweight in the UFC now. Moraes, if I'm not mistaken, just a signed a new deal with WSOF. He may be with them until they finally close shop one day. Hopefully, Gaethje still has something left if he ever decides to go to the UFC. He leaves everything on the table fighting these dudes he's clearly better than.