Official MMA discussion thread pt 2: UFC 268 in MSG Usman vs Colby 2, Rose vs Zhang 2

[HarthorneWingo]

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This Irishman MMA aficionado starts reviewing Conor's recent tweets on who the fook should fight who in upcoming LW matches. Humble Conor is done. Just go to the 5:00 mark. The first five minutes he reviews the Tony/Justin fight.

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[HarthorneWingo]

Teddy Atlas on the double weight cut

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[j4remi]

Just a few points:

1. I also began to wonder about Tony's two weight cuts. I don't know much about how they can debilitate one's body. Did the first cut make it easier for Tony to stay close to that weight for the second cut? Hopefully, you can shed some light on that.

2. I also though Waterson one though it was not a easy fight to judge. But 3-0 and 0-3 just make no sense.

3. On Greg Hardy, he says that he was able to hear DC comment that he wasn't checking them and that, for some reason, gave him the heads up to correct it. Why don't they give him Ben Rothwell next? Or Stefan Struve?

1. I’m of two minds on it. First is that it’s entirely self-inflicted just like rushing back from ACL surgery after 6 months and then having knee problems afterward. Tony’s gotten away with the crazy for almost a decade and it was a matter of time before it caught up with him.

Two...yeah a second weight cut in about three weeks definitely sounds like a terrible idea. Cutting weight sucks even in the younger stages so I can’t imagine what these pro’s go through cutting tens of pounds in short order. Their bodies clearly go through it, we’ve seen nightmare videos and a chunk of fighters are finding success moving up rather than down. But again, he didn’t have to do it.

2. Yeah the opposing 3-0’s didn’t add up to me. I don’t see any way to score round 2 for carla. But we’ve seen this same thing happen to Holm. Winkeljohn fighters are sometimes too disciplined for their own good all the way to Jones/Santos.

3. I’ll take a Struve fight in a heartbeat. Rothwell is fighting tn ironically (against OSP who weighed in 241 in his HW debut). I think Struve is susceptible to the two things hardy has which are power and speed. Hardy seems really coachable, just a long way from being technical and experienced enough to mess with guys that flirt with top 10. He’s basically coasting on the fact that it’s a shallow division and they’re still hand picking his fights. People keep naming tai tuivasa...tuivasa would finish Hardy inside of two imo.

Also, on that Cowboy return...I think we’ve hit “what you see is what you get” land for both guys in that fight. They’re absolute top notch gate keepers who know how to prolong a fight and aren’t going to be surprised easily. But they’re victims of longevity, their scouting reports are fully drawn out and a high level fighter with the necessary skills to capitalize on the report will find a way to get it done.

[j4remi]

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You can hear the sigh of relief coming from Conor (and Khabib imo) a mile away. Tony basically took the Diaz blueprint and made it more ground oriented. Conor has a sniper’s chance but he couldn’t have lasted like Gaethje did with a clean 5 round performance.

I do think Conor is intriguing against Gaethje for that same sniper’s chance and bc we’ve seen Dustin and Eddie get technical to give Justin trouble. Conor put on a clinic against Eddie and smoked Dustin too fast to call it a clinic, but MMA math is complicated and I Gaethje’s leg kicks against conor’s bladed stance could be really interesting.

[Manhattan Project]

I never thought Anthony Smith was anything special, but man he just took an absolute beat down from Glover. I'm amazed his corner even let him come out for rounds three and four.

[HarthorneWingo]

I never thought Anthony Smith was anything special, but man he just took an absolute beat down from Glover. I'm amazed his corner even let him come out for rounds three and four.

Oh fook. I forgot. How was the card?

I see that Glover gave the Smith and old man beating.

[GEOLINK]

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You can hear the sigh of relief coming from Conor (and Khabib imo) a mile away. Tony basically took the Diaz blueprint and made it more ground oriented. Conor has a sniper’s chance but he couldn’t have lasted like Gaethje did with a clean 5 round performance.

I do think Conor is intriguing against Gaethje for that same sniper’s chance and bc we’ve seen Dustin and Eddie get technical to give Justin trouble. Conor put on a clinic against Eddie and smoked Dustin too fast to call it a clinic, but MMA math is complicated and I Gaethje’s leg kicks against conor’s bladed stance could be really interesting.

I don't think Conor's dumb enough to not change his fighting stance to combat leg kicks.

He even adjusted it during the Alvarez fight when he got caught by Alvarez's leg kicks in the first few minutes of the fight.

[HarthorneWingo]

I wonder if Gaethje could consider using his wrestling to try to take Conor to the ground and go for the “Smesh and Tap”?

[j4remi]

I never thought Anthony Smith was anything special, but man he just took an absolute beat down from Glover. I'm amazed his corner even let him come out for rounds three and four.

Oh fook. I forgot. How was the card?

I see that Glover gave the Smith and old man beating.

A resounding meh but with some stand outs.

Gaethje's training partner Drew Dober completely overwhelmed a damned good wrestler and 15th ranked LW Alexander Hernandez. Three straight KO's for Dober and the last two were really strong prospects.

Ricky Simon and Ray Borg had an entertaining grappling heavy match, lots of wrestling and scrambles.

OSP vs Rothwell was a tired HW chasing a tired LHW around trying to corner him for most of the fight time. OSP was literally running around the cage at points to reset. Most frustrating of all is that when OSP sat down on his punches, he was visibly hurting Ben (a notoriously tough HW) and even knocked him down.

Then Glover vs Smith...I've said for damn near all of Smith's run that it was being gassed. His LHW run was more about good timing than anything, catching fighters on the verge of retiring outside of the Oezdemir win. I've railed against his showing vs Jones consistently since it happened, terrible performance. But I didn't expect or want to see Glover take years off of the guy's career.

Smith's corner failed him badly and honestly, the first time Smith went down Herzog should have just stopped it imo. It would have been argued as an early stoppage, but I look at it like the Cruz one. You watch a guy get pummeled for 10 or more unanswered, clean and heavy shots to head...you stop the fight. There are fights where someone survives getting hurt but you can see they're on autopilot through a fog. After the fourth, Smith tells his corner that his teeth are falling out. The last thing a cornerman says to him is "we've been through so many fights, you're not gonna quit now." That's right, he shouldn't have to worry about quitting, YOU should throw in the goddamn towel.

Anyway, the prelims had some good fights. Benitez vs Morales was my favorite of the night. Neither guy was great on defensive responsibility or countering, but that meant that the first to pull the trigger would win most exchanges...so it became, throw a combo and take a combo, throw a combo and take a combo. Fun to watch, Benitez' gash on his shin from getting a kick checked was gross though...I'm pretty sure you could see to the bone.

Kelleher toughed through Azure's best strikes and got a beauty of a KO then called out O'Malley. Kelleher is insanely durable and has a ton of experience. I don't like the O'Malley match-up but Kelleher would absolutely be a respectable test.

Then Chase Sherman had a feel good moment too. Sherman was in the UFC and kinda popular for a fun social media presence. He was up and down, got released and wound up becoming the BareKnuckle FC champion. He got called back on short notice for this one, went in there and put on a clinic. Ironically he came from Bareknuckle boxing but did his damage building combo's to leg kicks. Regardless, I'm happy for the guy. Good comeback.

[Manhattan Project]

One thing that's still funny to me, is that how you can hear the exchanges between fighters now in both punches and words.
Borg to Simon: Come on hit me kid, Simon responds I'm older than you.

[j4remi]

One thing that's still funny to me, is that how you can hear the exchanges between fighters now in both punches and words.
Borg to Simon: Come on hit me kid, Simon responds I'm older than you.

At one point, Borg was like “dude you look just like me” and Simon jawed back with something. Spann vs Alvey was funny too because Spann was straight up talking to his corner.

[j4remi]

https://anchor.fm/TFP%20/episodes/TFP-special-edition-with-Joe-Cantrell-ee3osk

My guy Joe expresses that gaethje was bad news for tony and that Cruz didn’t deserve the title shot last time we had him on. After the fights on saturday, he was eager to come chop it up with us again and go in on some of the performances. This was fairly impromptu so we kind of freestyled but it wound up being a great discussion.

We look back on the most memorable fights from UFC 249 while watching Wednesday night’s fights; reminisce on fights in the past and later on we discuss some of the fights that will go on tonight.

I haven’t had time to time stamp it but some of my favorite topics are:
- Cruz vs cejudo and the idea of a tournament to decide the next champion

- gaethje vs khabib after watching the Tony fight

- Los and Joe talk about their seminar with Josh Barnett’s catch wrestling coach.

- We discuss the origins of UFC’s and Donald Trump’s friendship. That bleeds into our times going to old school UFC events in AC and how we got to see a bunch of legends for cheap back in the day.

- Joe, a striking coach, goes in on how terrible Ronda Rousey’s striking always was and we talk about the significance of the rousey/miesha rivalry.

[HarthorneWingo]

Time for Matt Brown to retire. Baeza looks good.

[HarthorneWingo]

I thought Vera beat Song with that 3rd round.

[HarthorneWingo]

Love the respect btw Ige and Barboza but Edson won that fight. Are the judges on hydroxychloriquine?

[HarthorneWingo]

I found a new way for the UFC to expand and grow its business. This cat has some SERIOUS skills. Is there such a thing as a "Cat strike" in Kung Fu? I know there's a Tiger strike. Anyhow, check this out.

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[j4remi]

I've been hella distracted between busy time at work, pandemic issues and political distractions too...but man did UFC 250 have a glow up in the zero hour. The weakest fight on the main card is the main event and we still have a bit of interest in the hardest puncher meeting the toughest chin in WMMA. The prelims got a couple of stand outs too. I'm almost off the clock, so I'll hop back on with a nice Moscow Mule and the fight card so I can write up some thoughts.

I found a new way for the UFC to expand and grow its business. This cat has some SERIOUS skills. Is there such a thing as a "Cat strike" in Kung Fu? I know there's a Tiger strike. Anyhow, check this out.

Watch on YouTube

Paws hitting louder than a lot of people sound hitting pads

[HarthorneWingo]

I've been hella distracted between busy time at work, pandemic issues and political distractions too...but man did UFC 250 have a glow up in the zero hour. The weakest fight on the main card is the main event and we still have a bit of interest in the hardest puncher meeting the toughest chin in WMMA. The prelims got a couple of stand outs too. I'm almost off the clock, so I'll hop back on with a nice Moscow Mule and the fight card so I can write up some thoughts.

I found a new way for the UFC to expand and grow its business. This cat has some SERIOUS skills. Is there such a thing as a "Cat strike" in Kung Fu? I know there's a Tiger strike. Anyhow, check this out.

Watch on YouTube

Paws hitting louder than a lot of people sound hitting pads

I just posted it on one of Colby’s Twitter threads and copied Masvidal on it. I told him the cat hits harder than him.

[j4remi]

I was off by a week, so plenty of time to preview 250. Tonight we have Woodley vs Burns which is a really cool fight, but not much hype beyond that. Weaver vs Roberts could be a sleeper, Weaver is tough as hell and Roberts has promise. Chookagian vs Antonina should be a good striking match for the women. Kenney on the prelims is promising and Tim Elliott doesn't have boring fights. So there's a few good ones to take in.

Oh and Dern is back. Her hypetrain got derailed by bad weight cuts and serious striking weakness but she's an absolute stud grappler. Her opponent is a bit undersized and not particularly tough to take down so maybe we get a nice BJJ showcase from a world class grappler.

[HarthorneWingo]

So no point taken away for holding the fence by Sakai?