UFC 246: McGregor vs. Cowboy (1/18/2020) - Las Vegas, NV (T-Mobile Arena)

[Elsalvajeloco]

1 hour ago, hammerva said:

In terms of business this was the perfect outcome for the UFC.  if we are going to use wrestling logic,  Cerrone was Samoa Joe in basically all of his title matches in the last 2 or 3 years.  A very credible opponent that fans respect that if the champ (or the mega star returning back in this case) wins it makes the next matches look good.   

Now in terms of financial business I guess we will see.  I haven't gone to as many UFC PPV's at Hooters as I used to but this had the best attendance in many years.  I think this is the PPV where we see how beneficial going to ESPN+ was?

IMO I would put that more on UFC 244 with Masvidal and Diaz more than this show. With 244, they did plenty of promotion but it's two guys who have never really drawn on their own so to say. This one was a "too big to fail" situation. McGregor is a big draw. Cerrone is a very consistent draw on television at worst. Disney did the full court press on ALL of its platforms. You got some stuff on this year's BCS National Championship game between Clemson and LSU which was a ratings behemoth (BTW Wilder vs. Fury II got some help there too). Every sports talk and debate show on Fox and ESPN is talking about it plus all the pieces on Sportscenter. They did day of pre-fight build on BOTH ESPN and ABC, which is kinda absurd and unheard of in the history of MMA. As I said last night, they showed stuff during the Lakers/Rockets game on ABC which was one of the few big NBA games approaching the midway point of the season and All Star Break. You had a bunch of big time celebs tweeting about it. The results showed because everyone on Twitter was talking about it, McGregor had 10 million Google searches, and just about everyone else on the card (from Oleksiy Olynyk to Maycee Barber who wasn't even on the PPV main card) had a bunch of Google searches as well. It was going to be a huge hit because it had too much working in its favor. The one and only thing that might have affected it was if someone major would have put the sexual assault saga out into the open, it caught fire, and everyone responded as a result, but UFC was there early this week to control the narrative.

[John from Cincinnati]

@piranesi

 

[piranesi]

19 minutes ago, West Newbury Bad Boy said:

@piranesi

 

 

Guy who quit doing his Billy Ray Gyrates act at Dudes-A-Poppin' on artistic principal because straight women kept requesting Old Town Road.

He's now rebranding as Cowboy Throb Orton.

[jaedmc]

During that main event I kept hearing Kevin Hart's Shoulder Shrug bit.

Bummer about Pettis getting submitted. I was hoping after the Chiesa fight he was really coming back , but it's been pretty 50-50.

I really wanted Maurice Greene to come back after that ridiculous first round, but Oliynik was a goddamn Zombie-conda.

Most of the fights were pretty exciting in some way or another but nothing I'll probably remember later.

Those shoulder strikes from hell. What the fuck.

[Elsalvajeloco]

I don't even know anymore.

[Jiji]

Hahaha, I really don't need to see her fight ever again.

[J.T.]

Let's give credit where it's due.  Conor fought a masterful fight for as long as it lasted.  I had to allow a smile to pass my lips when I saw those shoulder strikes.  Brilliant.  Yet another facet added to an already unconventional and unorthodox fighter. 

When Colby Covington's jaw is all better, I'd love to see the heel vs. heel brawl where Conor breaks Colby's jaw a second time and then we can talk about Usman vs. McGregor.

13 hours ago, Elsalvajeloco said:

I don't even know anymore.

Neither do I, man.  You'd think that combatants would appreciate sportsmanship, but you might be wrong.

Edited January 21, 2020 by J.T.

[TheVileOne]

Not sure what Pennington expected. She's fought Holm to a decision before. If you don't want to get hugged or clinched, it's up to you to figure a way out of it.

[OSJ]

On 1/18/2020 at 10:17 PM, supremebve said:

We need some Youtuber to make a video with Dave Bautista shopping.  Just where does he shop, the reason he decided to pick a particular outfit, everything.  I just want to know how and why he makes these decisions.  

Too much money and too little mind and nothing constructive to do with either?

[OSJ]

On 1/18/2020 at 10:37 PM, Casey said:

I look forward to the upcoming @OSJ rant about how McGregor is a disgrace to Ireland or whatever.

Ah, you know what I'm going to say anyway... He's a fooking disgrace.

[supremebve]

This is a random observation, but is Anthony Pettis the fighter who has the shortest amount of time between him feeling like the future and him feeling like the past?  Between the end of his WEC run and the beginning of his UFC run, he seemed like we were watching the next evolution of the sport.  He was a super athletic, varied striker, who was also a hell of a grappler.  He honestly seemed like he was going to be near the top of the lightweight division for years, but it just never happened.  It isn't even that people caught up with him, they've lapped him.  I honestly think his game was based on being great at everything, except the fundamental building blocks of fighting.  He has knockout power, he has a great submission game, but if you understand how to move around a cage or how to defend submissions, you probably at least have a chance against him.  As long as you don't just stand there and let him tee off on you, or you don't let him work his submissions, he doesn't have the technique to make you fight his fight.  His career is just strange.

[Elsalvajeloco]

2 hours ago, supremebve said:

This is a random observation, but is Anthony Pettis the fighter who has the shortest amount of time between him feeling like the future and him feeling like the past?  Between the end of his WEC run and the beginning of his UFC run, he seemed like we were watching the next evolution of the sport.  He was a super athletic, varied striker, who was also a hell of a grappler.  He honestly seemed like he was going to be near the top of the lightweight division for years, but it just never happened.  It isn't even that people caught up with him, they've lapped him.  I honestly think his game was based on being great at everything, except the fundamental building blocks of fighting.  He has knockout power, he has a great submission game, but if you understand how to move around a cage or how to defend submissions, you probably at least have a chance against him.  As long as you don't just stand there and let him tee off on you, or you don't let him work his submissions, he doesn't have the technique to make you fight his fight.  His career is just strange.

Well, he was the future of the sport....five or six years ago when he was champion. Based on the WEC run, Pettis is the equivalent of a guy who won a Heisman, didn't play his senior year to go to the draft, and managed to have a somewhat successful pro career full ups and downs. Now he's on the back end of that. Hence, Pettis changing divisions frequently. What you're talking about probably is longevity and being the future at 155 if you go all the way back to JZ Calvan winning that HERO's tournament in 2007 doesn't exactly give you hope that there will be any one long reigning king at lightweight. Gesias Cavalcante won a tournament looking like a destroyer, was the talk of the MMA online community, and then proceeded to drop off the face of planet seemingly. Pettis, to his credit, fought through every big era of the lightweight division post-PRIDE in either WEC or UFC. I think about a Michael Chandler (who I would probably pick over Anthony depending on how I'm feeling fwiw) and what he could've accomplished if he was in the same pool of fighters. He could have had a run as a legit UFC title contender. His legacy is somewhat hurt by that. Anthony Pettis could have looked otherworldly and hidden his flaws if you put him in WSOF and sent Gaethje to the UFC. Instead, we got Anthony Pettis against a vast majority of the best and the brightest.

To me, Anthony Pettis is emblematic of his gym Roufusport. Duke Roufus and Scott Cushman take in guys who are specialists and make that specialty stand out even more. Look at the guys past and present: Anthony Pettis, Eric Schafer, Pat Barry, Ben Askren, Gerald Meerschaert, and both Tyron Woodley and Paul Felder who eventually made Roufusport home. Those are specialists. They aren't trying to train people and then "Voila, you are now well-rounded." Keep in mind, Rose Namajunas wasn't the Rose that won the belt until she went down to Colorado with Pat Barry and was under the tutelage of Trevor Wittman. Roufusport is an evolved version of what Mark DellaGrotte was doing in Massachusetts with Marcus Davis and other New England fighters and what the late Shawn Tompkins was doing with his proteges Sam Stout, Mark Hominick, and Chris Horodecki along with the Xtreme Couture fighters. Anthony Pettis is a Roufusport fighter through and through. It's hard for a leopard to change his spots. When he briefly went to JacksonWink, it was mixed results at best. Therefore, I don't really see Anthony Pettis as having a strange career if you put it in context. Fighters (meaning Anthony's contemporaries) in a division don't become worse over time. It may not be this neverending evolution that Mike Goldberg was talking about for several years, but the competition level if you stay in the UFC long enough is going to either stay relatively high or at the very least make people (fans and the fighters themselves) question their (own) abilities.

Edited January 23, 2020 by Elsalvajeloco

[supremebve]

I honestly think Pettis should have left Roufusport and went to JacksonWink or even to Tristar after he won the WEC title.  His game lacks foundation.  He is all big strikes, and flashy submissions, but he's missing all the things that a fighting style should be built upon.  He may have the worst footwork of any striker in the UFC.  It is probably the thing that kills him the most.  When an opponent pressures him, he doesn't really have the fundamental footwork to maintain his distance and reset.  He kind of just gets backed up and either held against the cage or taken down.  Once on the ground, he doesn't really use his guard well to get back to his feet, he just gives up his back so he can try to create a scramble.  He's at his best when people fight like he does.  If you put  him against Cowboy Cerrone, who is all offense and no defense, his firepower tends to win out.  Cowboy just isn't durable enough to deal with Pettis' strikes, and doesn't move well defensively.  If he gets into a grappling match with Charles Olivera, who does crazy shit he learned in a garage, Pettis is just plain better at taking advantage of the randomness of a scramble than him.  It is why he will lose to RDS or Poirier 100% of the time, because their styles are based on rock solid foundations that allow them to fall back on technique when a fight gets crazy.  Pettis is about as talented as any fighter we've ever seen, but he just filled his tool box with powertools, but never learned how to hammer nails.  

[Jiji]

Great conversation and I don't have much of anything to add other than JDS has the worst stand-up of the good-to-great fighters I've seen. If only he could back up and move sideways at the same time he could have been one of the best heavyweights ever. Instead, he gets in trouble, he's backing up in a straight line against the cage. You can't do that against guys with the power of heavyweights. 

Pettis is at least agile and mobile enough that he can escape getting put up against the cage the odd time when he's in trouble. What would his career have looked like had he improved his wrestling abilities to the point he could control where the fight goes? I think he's also too confident in his ability to snatch submissions from his back that he doesn't fear getting taken down enough. But how many submissions from his guard does he have?

[supremebve]

13 hours ago, Oyaji said:

Great conversation and I don't have much of anything to add other than JDS has the worst stand-up of the good-to-great fighters I've seen. If only he could back up and move sideways at the same time he could have been one of the best heavyweights ever. Instead, he gets in trouble, he's backing up in a straight line against the cage. You can't do that against guys with the power of heavyweights. 

Pettis is at least agile and mobile enough that he can escape getting put up against the cage the odd time when he's in trouble. What would his career have looked like had he improved his wrestling abilities to the point he could control where the fight goes? I think he's also too confident in his ability to snatch submissions from his back that he doesn't fear getting taken down enough. But how many submissions from his guard does he have?

JDS is definitely on the list for good fighters with terrible fundamentals.  I think the biggest common denominator among all of these people is how often they just brained people as prospects.  If you can make Fabricio Verdum's ears flap like wings with an uppercut, why do you need to learn how to pivot, take L steps, or just move laterally?  I honestly think the thing that Jose Aldo an all-time great is that he spent his formative years as a fighter smashing people, but also developed all of the fundamental tools to win if he isn't finishing his opponents.  I think his fights against Frankie Edgar should be studied by anyone who wants to learn how to strike.  The economy of movement is insane.  Aldo never takes an extra step, but he's always moving.  His footwork and head movement work in concert, and his feet are always under him so he's always in a position to counter.  That's just his movement, that doesn't even account for his best ever takedown defense...but the footwork helps with that too.

Edited January 24, 2020 by supremebve