RealGM

He also canceled his boxing debut.


http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/blog/index?name=mma

Affliction is probably done with everyone.

Someone be sure to let him know once regains consciousness.

I'd like to see him have another go around in UFC.

Yeah....the division looks a lot different since he left.

Potential new fights against:

Lesnar
Mir
Noguiera
Couture
Velasquez
Kongo
Carwin
Dos Santos
Herring
Gonzaga

No rematches to be found, and I think I'd still get legitimately excited about all of those fights, save maybe one or two.

Now, he would just need to lower his pricetag substantially (I mean we're talking like 10% of that 1.5 million payday, if the UFC would even give him $150,000 a fight now), and he'd probably have to make a quiet return at this point. The UFC would look kinda weak if they hyped up the return of a guy coming off 2 losses in a total of about 2 minutes.

Best thing for everyone involved is to either stick it out in Strikeforce for a bit (still at a much reduced salary), or see if there are any fights for him in Japan. The UFC would probably want him to get at least one decent win before coming back, and it would help him as well, as a win would help his value, not to mention his confidence.

Most of all, I think he's gotta give up on the boxing stuff. He can still train in it and make it his strength, but he needs to remember what made him so good a few years ago, mostly kickboxing and sambo. Or he could just try not getting hit in the face.

After the Strikeforce fight, he actually acknowledged that there are flaws in using boxing too dogmatically in MMA...

But, damn, he was smoking Fedor. I still think he's a premier fighter.

He actually looked really good for the most part of the fight. I didn't expect him to go down that way at all.

He's definitely still up there skill-wise, but I do think his chin is an issue.

I don't really think he was doing all that well against Fedor either. It looked good, but not many of his shots were landing cleanly. Maybe if he stuck with it, they would have started to, but he didn't have Fedor hurt at all, and he still lost in like 2 minutes or whatever it was.

He'll come back to the UFC.
They'll use him as a resume builder for Brock.

Hilltop wrote:He actually looked really good for the most part of the fight. I didn't expect him to go down that way at all.

He looked good? He had his hands down and was moving straight back. Those are simple mistakes he should not be making.

CPT wrote:Affliction is probably done with everyone.

I think Affliction is done period.

I'm not sure why he incorporated boxing into MMA. He was being trained by Freddie Roach for an MMA fight. Very odd.