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UFC Fight Night on ESPN 1: Ngannou vs. Velasquez (2/17/2019) - Phoenix, AZ (Talking Stick Resort Arena)


Elsalvajeloco

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Holy mother of fuck Luque/Barberena was awesome.

You know how yesterday MVP/Dalley fought the most boring first round I've ever seen? These two fought one of the best rounds I've ever seen... And then fought two more great rounds.

I'm really digging this dive into MMA I've been doing this year.

 

Edit: Also I'm still cursing main events. Rest of the main card was pretty fun. I'm obviously a novice, but I really thought Casey won her fight. Can't believe one judge had it 30-27.

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Sucks to see Cain out there looking like that. His body just looks too broken down. Who knows though, maybe he has a Frank Mir like comeback in him, but Mir's was fueled by TRT in part.

I'm not sure where Cain goes from here.

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30 minutes ago, Craig H said:

Sucks to see Cain out there looking like that. His body just looks too broken down. Who knows though, maybe he has a Frank Mir like comeback in him, but Mir's was fueled by TRT in part.

I'm not sure where Cain goes from here.

Apparently, he wants to go to WWE at some point.

He signed a new UFC deal not too long ago so I believe he will take it fight by fight.

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21 minutes ago, John E. Dynamite said:

No Cain in WWE, please. I feel bad for the guy but he's a charisma vacuum.

He actually has shown something here and there (I thought the Ford Escort thing was funny just as a recent example but that's just my opinion), but he chose to be reserved for a majority of his career. I would compare him to Mighty Mouse in a sense that DJ actively chose not to trash talk people or criticize potential opponents (he had a lot of smoke for Ronda when she left though), but folks in the MMA media would enjoy what he said off the record. 

When he beat Brock back in 2010, he told folks at AKA he was kinda surprised how easy it was to beat Brock and how Brock's striking sucked. Granted I heard this from sprewell rimz who got it from King Mo who was training at AKA at the time (going back and forth between SoCal, San Jose, and the early incarnation of the Blackzilians). Cain would have never told anyone in the MMA media because he wasn't that type of guy. I think he would do so now (as opposed to when I heard how he felt about Brock's performance in 2011 not too long removed from winning the belt) just because he doesn't have to worry about that stuff anymore.

Now his body on the other hand...yeah, he is some years removed physically from where he would be useful to WWE. At one point, it was ridiculous how he would clown everyone at the gym at AKA (specifically Rockhold and Mike Kyle). I don't think that's the case anymore.

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Sad to see Cain exposed like that. When half of a 6 man PPV main event consists of middle aged men and a TNA X Division roster of almost a decade ago however, I think anything other than his warmed up corpse would probably be useful to WWE.

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Apparently, Paul Felder suffered a collapsed lung during the Vick fight and is at a Phoenix hospital an extra day for observation. This man cut a good, intelligible promo with a collapsed lung. Get this man to the Performance Center (after his injury is treated obv.)

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I can't get behind Andrea Lee what with her neo Nazi ex. Life choices.

That Felder story is insane. Between being my favourite commentator (seriously, what has happened to Cruz? He's always been a weirdo but now he's out there shitting on guys who aren't doing whatever he thinks is the best/only strategy), putting on rad fights, and now this, guy is a cult hero.

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2 minutes ago, Oyaji said:

I can't get behind Andrea Lee what with her neo Nazi ex. Life choices.

That Felder story is insane. Between being my favourite commentator (seriously, what has happened to Cruz? He's always been a weirdo but now he's out there shitting on guys who aren't doing whatever he thinks is the best/only strategy), putting on rad fights, and now this, guy is a cult hero.

I don't mind Cruz lately. I think it was the previous show he was a little off, but I thought he was fine last night.

I think with Trevor Wittman being the "third party guy who gives advice",  some of what Cruz has to do as the color guy is a bit diluted. PBC on Saturday had Joe Goossen and Lennox Lewis doing color with Larry Hazzard Sr. doing the Trevor Wittman role. The thing is Larry doesn't have much to contribute and Lennox isn't good (he wasn't good when he did it briefly with HBO either) so Goossen has to carry the weight. Goossen is giving sound advice as a guy who has trained top tier fighters for three decades and he has to convince Lennox Lewis his eyes didn't deceive him and that John Molina got jobbed on the scorecards since Lennox is too scared to give his take after the scores are read. So Cruz may be more comfortable not going back and forth between 2 and 3 man teams. On ESPN shows, he has to wait for Wittman to put his two cents in on whether or not the corners are any good. The problem there is most of the time we don't even see what happens between rounds due to commercial breaks. So we can't even tell if Wittman is on point and if Dom has the right to agree or disagree with that assessment. Combat sports commentary has reached a point where less is more is no longer a thing and adding as many dynamics as possible is the key to keep viewers engaged.

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55 minutes ago, TheVileOne said:

That fight couldn't have gone more perfectly for Francis Ngannou. Good thing he has better knockout power than Cheick Kongo. 

Not taking anything away from Francis, but Kongo was also facing a younger, in his prime Cain though. That was like 15 injuries and 3 extended layoffs ago. If Cheick Kongo hit him now, I doubt he recovers in the insane way he did ten years ago.

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I think he did scout Cain well on a good place to catch him that other fighters have been able to tag him with before. 

I'm willing to give Cain another shot here, but his career can't afford another long layoff like that if he wants to continue fighting.

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I never want to see Cain Velasquez fight another MMA fight.  He was the best heavyweight I ever...but his body betrayed him.  If he goes to WWE, he should be Andrade Cein Almas' henchman so he doesn't have to do anything but stand there and look intimidating.  I don't think his body will hold up to much more than that.  He's up there with Thiago Alves on the outrageous number of surgeries scale.  His body is held together with chewing gum and baling wire, and going on the road and taking bumps ain't going to do anything to help that.

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1 hour ago, supremebve said:

I never want to see Cain Velasquez fight another MMA fight.  He was the best heavyweight I ever...but his body betrayed him.  If he goes to WWE, he should be Andrade Cein Almas' henchman so he doesn't have to do anything but stand there and look intimidating.  I don't think his body will hold up to much more than that.  He's up there with Thiago Alves on the outrageous number of surgeries scale.  His body is held together with chewing gum and baling wire, and going on the road and taking bumps ain't going to do anything to help that.

They're gonna put him in the ring because they don't know any better.

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3 minutes ago, Elsalvajeloco said:

They're gonna put him in the ring because they don't know any better.

I know, but a dude with 2 shot knees, bad shoulders, and multiple back injuries, shouldn't be flying around the country taking bumps every night.  He's one of the few people who an athletic commission has looked at and said, "Nope, we can't let you fight," without a drug violation.  The same commission let Kevin Lee fight with an obvious staph infection.

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1 hour ago, supremebve said:

I know, but a dude with 2 shot knees, bad shoulders, and multiple back injuries, shouldn't be flying around the country taking bumps every night.  He's one of the few people who an athletic commission has looked at and said, "Nope, we can't let you fight," without a drug violation.  The same commission let Kevin Lee fight with an obvious staph infection.

I would amend that to "I mean we could let you fight...but really?". 

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15 minutes ago, Elsalvajeloco said:

I would amend that to "I mean we could let you fight...but really?". 

Are you trying to say that it is unreasonable to have back surgery on your schedule when you get your medical tests done?  Who's career turned out worse based on injury, Cain Velasquez or Dominick Cruz?  I'm going to say Cain, because I think he'd still be heavyweight champ without the injuries, but bantamweight has surpassed Cruz, even though he's still a contender.

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15 minutes ago, supremebve said:

Are you trying to say that it is unreasonable to have back surgery on your schedule when you get your medical tests done?  Who's career turned out worse based on injury, Cain Velasquez or Dominick Cruz?  I'm going to say Cain, because I think he'd still be heavyweight champ without the injuries, but bantamweight has surpassed Cruz, even though he's still a contender.

I dunno if still champ would be accurate because Stipe would still be a tough matchup and if Ngannou hits anyone, that's a problem. I think it's a tossup because I don't see Cain avoiding injury due to the fact his style is much more rugged. I think both would have had the chance to hold their respective titles multiple times though with the right matchups. Bantamweight in particularly would be like the Terry Norris-Simon Brown-Donald Curry-Mike McCallum-Julian Jackson-Gerald McClellan-Michael Nunn-James Toney thread at junior middleweight and middleweight in the late 80s and early 90s where at least one guy beat or lost his belt to one of the other guys on the list. I don't think there is one guy in particular that is just so far ahead of the pack especially with Cejudo already holding a win over the current BW champ and having to move up to 135 just based on the current circumstances.

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8 minutes ago, Elsalvajeloco said:

I dunno if still champ would be accurate because Stipe would still be a tough matchup and if Ngannou hits anyone, that's a problem. I think it's a tossup because I don't see Cain avoiding injury due to the fact his style is much more rugged. I think both would have had the chance to hold their respective titles multiple times though with the right matchups. Bantamweight in particularly would be like the Terry Norris-Simon Brown-Donald Curry-Mike McCallum-Julian Jackson-Gerald McClellan-Michael Nunn-James Toney thread at junior middleweight and middleweight in the late 80s and early 90s where at least one guy beat or lost his belt to one of the other guys on the list. I don't think there is one guy in particular that is just so far ahead of the pack especially with Cejudo already holding a win over the current BW champ and having to move up to 135 just based on the current circumstances.

This is the third time Donald Curry has come up in conversation in the last week.  I don't think I had thought about him since the mid-90s and he's come up 3 different times.  He was a badass at his peak though.

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