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2017 Non-Event General MMA Talk Thread


Elsalvajeloco

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9 minutes ago, Elsalvajeloco said:

That's my point. The status and credibility that a lot of these early heavyweights enjoyed come from the early UFC tournaments, these vale tudo/NHB tournaments in Russia and Brazil, and the fragmented ruleset in Japan like in Pancrase and RINGS. It would be the same as saying Jeff Curran or somebody from HookNShoot was the best featherweight fighter before Jose Aldo. Well, okay... I guess. But that doesn't change the fact that any top FW now would soul snatch those dudes. What does the RINGS King of Kings tournament mean in 2017? What does the HW Pride tournament in 2004 mean now exactly? I mean once you get past the historic bits here and there and the novelty, they don't shape what the heavyweight division looks like now.

We're talking about GOAT in a historical perspective, no?

Would we say Diego Maradona, for example, shouldn't be in the GOAT for football because he played in an era where the game was more physical, but less tactical, opposite Lionel Messi plays in an era where the game is less physical and more tactical?

You have to bring history into GOAT talks imo.

Sure it's all subjective, but Fedor beat the majority of the best back then. Same thing with Demetrious Johnson now. He's beat the best there is available at the moment.

Would a lot of the current top HW's smash Fedor? Yes. Would they have smashed him back then? We don't know and there's really no point in fantasy booking it as we really can't prove anything.

8 minutes ago, supremebve said:

Fedor is in the conversation, but I don't think he belongs with the 5 I named.  At this point, all of those dudes are inarguably the greatest fighter in the history of their weight class.  I don't think Fedor is still the greatest heavyweight ever.

Who would you consider the GOAT HW then if it's not Fedor? I'm curious to read this...

Cain? Lost to JDS and Werdum.

Werdum? Has a ton of losses in different periods of his career.

Reem? No...

JDS? Got steamrolled by Cain x 2.

Stipe? Got put to sleep by Struve and dominated by JDS the first time around.

Again, sure some of Fedor's opponent were questionable, but he fought and beat the best around at the time. He also created a mystical aura around him. Has any other HW been able to replicate this aura with a crazy streak similar to his? No...

13 minutes ago, supremebve said:

He's probably the hardest person to rate properly, because all of the dudes he was dominating in Pride got to the UFC and turned into gatekeepers.

The UFC's HW division at the time when Fedor was on a roll was way slimer than PRIDE's. Do you think honestly think Gan McGee, Brandon Vera and Wesley Correira, for example were better than say Mirko Cro Cop, Big Nog and Josh Barnett?

Fedor dominated Big Nog twice... And Big Nog became the interim UFC HW champ in his first UFC fight...

Fedor also steamrolled the former UFC HW champ Tim Sylvia in his first post UFC fight...

18 minutes ago, supremebve said:

If he would have gone to the UFC and continued his dominance I'd gladly rate him higher, but he decided to fight guys who were either already cut by the UFC or guys who'd never make it.  As soon as he started fighting UFC quality fighters he went on a 3 fight losing streak.

He chose the guaranteed money from Affliction over the UFC's. Can't say I blame him...

Also he had never fought in a cage before. Fighting in a cage and fighting in a rage is an entire different animal...

I already mentioned he beat UFC caliber opponent... If you think the UFC has always had superior fighters to all the other organizations, then yeah, I don't know what to you tell you then...

He also fought in the Strikeforce HW GP which had a ton of UFC HW champ caliber guys -- Werdum, Reem, Cormier, Barnett, Arlovski, etc.

25 minutes ago, supremebve said:

I'd say the current level of talent in the Flyweight division is higher than the Pride Heavyweight division then.  Don't get me wrong, I don't think any of Mighty Mouse's opponents have been world beaters, but they've all been really skilled MMA fighters.

The reason Mighty Mouse's opponents can be seen as more skilled than that of Fedor's opponent is because the game has evolved entirely.

It's not Fedor's fault he dominated when the game was still developing.

Heck, 20 years from now people will still be having the same argument and will say "Yeah, well the level fighter X is fighting is better than the level of fighters Mighty Mouse beat."

It's all a contextual perspective.

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First, I love Fedor and was on his GOAT bandwagon for a good long while.  

The difference between him GSP, Anderson SIlva, Jon Jones, etc.  is that we know that those guys were fighting the best of the best every single fight, and we have legitimate questions about most of the fighters on Fedor's hit list.  I believe that the Pride heavyweights were better than the UFC heavyweights.  I also saw what happened when those guys got to the UFC.  Big Nog and Cro Cop are the guys who I'd say were the two guys who were Fedor's best opponents, but there isn't another person on that list who could have won the UFC championship at that time.  Fedor beat Sylvia and Arlovsky after they were already cut from the UFC.  They were no longer the cream of the crop.  

Do you have any questions about the level of competition that GSP faced?  Anderson Silva reigned over a weak middleweight division, but Rich Franklin, Dan Henderson, Demian Maia, and Vitor Belfort are pretty much undeniable.  Jose Aldo's record if littered with a lot of really good fighters.  Cub Swanson, Mike Thomas Brown, Urijah Faber, Chad Mendes, and Frankie Edgar all got those beats.  Jon Jones beat everyone in his path including Vitor Belfort, Rampage Jackson, Shogun Rua, and Daniel Cormier.  Demetrious Johnson has pretty much beat every flyweight any of us have ever heard of.  We don't really have many questions about any of that competition.

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37 minutes ago, Edwin said:

We're talking about GOAT in a historical perspective, no?

Would we say Diego Maradona, for example, shouldn't be in the GOAT for football because he played in an era where the game was more physical, but less tactical, opposite Lionel Messi plays in an era where the game is less physical and more tactical?

You have to bring history into GOAT talks imo.

Sure it's all subjective, but Fedor beat the majority of the best back then. Same thing with Demetrious Johnson now. He's beat the best there is available at the moment.

Would a lot of the current top HW's smash Fedor? Yes. Would they have smashed him back then? We don't know and there's really no point in fantasy booking it as we really can't prove anything.

No, I am not saying discount everything because this or that guy sucks. Otherwise, I wouldn't have said in hindsight he has a very good resume. However, we're talking about an historically weak division where you can go as high as the latter half of the top ten and find the fighters who weren't that good.  I'm not a big soccer guy, but I know damn sure there is quite a big of a gap between the primes of Maradona and Messi plus the sport has been around for way longer. Fedor stopped being Fedor only what? Seven years ago roughly? The people who were and are competing for the same crown as best HW were competing then as well. Couture was still around. When the sport is extremely young and most of the best fighters historically are contemporaries, you have to factor in the maturation of the sport. Those things matter especially when we're reaching a point where the best heavyweight in the world in a couple months might be from Cameroon and after that trained in a place where MMA isn't even really legal yet. Imagine if Babe Ruth and Ty Cobb were competing and then 4-5 years later, Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton are coming around. That's what is happening on a much lesser scale with MMA.  

If you have new, pertinent knowledge of something, the best thing would be not to stand on something you know is no longer to be true.

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34 minutes ago, supremebve said:

  Fedor beat Sylvia and Arlovsky after they were already cut from the UFC.  They were no longer the cream of the crop.  .

I would argue that they still were because Arlovski was pretty much a contract issue. Same w/ Sylvia and him being disillusioned he could make high level boxing money. However, beating those guys circa 2003-2007 would certainly mean more because the UFC only had three or four decent HWs.

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4 hours ago, Edwin said:

Would we say Diego Maradona, for example, shouldn't be in the GOAT for football because he played in an era where the game was more physical, but less tactical, opposite Lionel Messi plays in an era where the game is less physical and more tactical?

Funny you bring him up just after everyone was talking about crazy recreational drug users. But he's not the GOAT, because Maradona good, Pele better, George Best.

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4 hours ago, supremebve said:

Big Nog and Cro Cop are the guys who I'd say were the two guys who were Fedor's best opponents, but there isn't another person on that list who could have won the UFC championship at that time.

Do you honestly believe guys like Gan McGee, Brandon Vera, Ricco Rodriguez, Tim Sylvia, Justin Eilers, Paul Buentello and Jeff Monson were better than a lot of the PRIDE HW's?

4 hours ago, supremebve said:

Fedor beat Sylvia and Arlovsky after they were already cut from the UFC.  They were no longer the cream of the crop.  

@Elsalvajelocoalready covered this...

As for the topic at hand, I'm done as I don't really care about GOAT talk.

If anything, GSP imo is the GOAT at the moment and that will most likely change within a few years.

14 minutes ago, AxB said:

Funny you bring him up just after everyone was talking about crazy recreational drug users. But he's not the GOAT, because Maradona good, Pele better, George Best.

I've never followed English football, but how many World Cups did he lift?

Did he get to carry a side by himself to a league title like Maradona did with Napoli?

Edit: And yeah, I'm done with the GOAT talk.

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12 minutes ago, AxB said:

Best never played in a World Cup, he was from Northern Ireland. Whereas Maradona blatantly handballed and got away with it.

For some reason thought he was English. Maybe because he played for United. He was before my time anyway...

Back to MMA:

 

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1 hour ago, username said:

 

One of these things is not like the others >_>

The three names because Mike Brown put together a solid run on the way to winning the WEC belt. The problem was he was already long in the tooth by the time the organization was about to close. I think he saw the writing on the wall and knew he would be better served being groomed for a head trainer position. If he was 2-3 years younger by the time the merger happened, I have no doubt he would have been a top 10 featherweight for a decent while and provided a solid transition to the next group of top featherweight fighters.

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My top four was made up with Anderson Silva, GSP, Jon Jones and Fedor in that order with Silva/GSP/Jones fighting it out for top spot. I can't give that to Silva and Jones any longer with both pissing hot twice. GSP it is with his wins, most consecutive defenses of the UFC Welterweight Championship and comes back after four years in a higher weight class and wins the UFC Middleweight Championship. I'd include Jose Aldo in that top bracket. Fighters can only beat who they go up against but it weakens their case, I'm thinking divisions which aren't as deep.

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13 hours ago, username said:

 

One of these things is not like the others >_>

Mike Brown beat the hell out of Uraijah Faber twice, including a complete and utter beatdown that ended in a knockout. 

Urijah Faber is pretty much the epitome of the problem with the narrative when we discuss fighters.  Faber was good, I'm not disputing that, but he's the worst of the big names that Jose Aldo beat.  Cub Swanson, Mike Thomas Brown, Frankie Edgar, and Chad Mendes are all better than him, but if you ask the average MMA fan who is the best of that group most would say Faber is the best.  

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Brown, Faber, Cub, Edgar, Mendes, etc. were/are good/great FW's and Aldo smashed them all.

Can we please move on or should I namedrop Miguel Torres and how he was one of the best fighters in the world in the WEC days ala Frank Mir?

Not trying to be that dude, but this GOAT talk is meaningless and gets boring. Every time I browse onto Sherdog, this is the unfortunate discussion ongoing there. At least here we have a place to discuss other things and hopefully we can move on from that and continue to discuss other things.

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12 minutes ago, Edwin said:

Brown, Faber, Cub, Edgar, Mendes, etc. were/are good/great FW's and Aldo smashed them all.

Can we please move on or should I namedrop Miguel Torres and how he was one of the best fighters in the world in the WEC days ala Frank Mir?

Not trying to be that dude, but this GOAT talk is meaningless and gets boring. Every time I browse onto Sherdog, this is the unfortunate discussion ongoing there. At least here we have a place to discuss other things and hopefully we can move on from that and continue to discuss other things.

You do realize that you don't have to participate in discussions you don't want to participate in, right?  

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...

OKAY?

Anyway...

Colby going back and forth with Kenny Florian on Twitter:

And this one is by far the best one even though it's not with Florian:

 

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50 minutes ago, AxB said:

Does the Disney/ Fox merger affect UFC's hopes for a big new TV deal at all? Are ESPN and Fox Sports uniting?

Ariel Helwani tweeted earlier that it should not.

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40 minutes ago, Edwin said:

Ariel Helwani tweeted earlier that it should not.

I believe Disney has the local Fox sports channels but FS1 and FS2 are still with Fox. I dunno why Disney would want those channels when they can barely keep ESPN afloat.

I mean if this happened six or seven months ago, then it would probably affect negotiations somewhat. However, ESPN has Top Rank Boxing and that's doing good for right now. They have too much programming right now to jam UFC in there unless it was possibly 4 or 5 main ESPN specials and then everything else on ESPN2. However, I believe a lot of that would conflict with college football in the late summer and fall.

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Mike Brown was about as long in the tooth when he fought Aldo as he was when WEC closed, he was getting whacked by Manvel only six months later.  Also if we are being honest he benefited mightily in the second Faber fight as Faber managed to break all of his hands during it.  The first fight was clearly his though.

Brown was good during the time right before the talent level raised dramatically (his non-Faber/Aldo WEC title defense was against Leonard Garcia to give one an idea of what a title contender looked like then), and when it did rise he was basically going 50-50 with the equivalent of UFC journeymen.  I will allow that age was also a contributing factor.

I actually like Mike Brown FWIW, but he's basically the same kind of earlier-era good fighter that Fedor faced and bested and is not getting credit for.  His opponents also got older, moved into talent-heavier groups and started to lose much more regularly as well.  That is why I had to point him out, it feels dishonest to give Aldo credit for this one while knocking Fedor for all the similar fighters he beat.

Also the Cub Swanson Aldo beat wasn't really the Cub Swanson we all think highly of, that fighter was still a few years away from emerging.  What I've gotten from all this is that Aldo just doesn't really have a GOAT-level resume.

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