So, I've seen OT threads for other sports but haven't seen one for MMA. Figure I would start one and see if there are any other MMA fans on here that want to discuss the fights. UFC 213 was last night, it's a shame we lost Nunes/Shevchenko 2, but overall I thought it was a pretty good card. Robert Whittaker became the first UFC champ from AUS/NZ, I personally think he's gonna run through Bisping. Jim Miller(former Hokie wrestler)/Anthony Pettis went to war, Rob Font won by a pretty sweet guillotine choke, and there were some good finishes on the prelims. Oh also,if any of you all haven't seen it yet, watch Johnson/Gaethje from the TUF 25 finale, it might've been one of the best fights of the year so far.
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Haven't kept up with the UFC in the past 6 months that much...seems like every card they throw out ends up losing half it's luster before fight night because of either injury, drug testing, etc. That being said, pretty stoked about 214. You know when Dana won't even put Northcutt on the FS1 side of it, it's stacked. Hopefully JBJ can keep himself out of trouble.
This is still a thing? I figured it was over with the two most recognizable fighters quitting, one getting her ass beat in 2 consecutive fights and the other jumping to Boxing?
I don't know if signing up to get your ass beat for a metric shit ton of money is the same as jumping into boxing, I mean I kinda doubt McGregor will ever fight again after he gets paid for this, but yea
I am very intrigued by how much he loses by.
My guess is that not a lot happens in this fight. I feel like it'll be an uneventful sparring match, and when McGregor loses by decision, him and the UFC can still be like "oh look our champ went the distance with the greatest of all time" and use that as hype if McGregor ever fights in the UFC again, which like the rest of you, I highly doubt.
"the greatest of all time"
..are we calling him that?
Came out today that Mayweather paid $0 in taxes since 2015 so the IRS has a hold on his winnings. Pretty good chance that's the only reason he took this fight.
I can see the UFC's popularity declining big time without McGregor and Ronda, even as a hard core fan, my interest has waned over the last year or so. But, there are still some great fighters out there. The guy who won the interim middle weight belt last night, Robert Whittaker is young and a super exciting, creative fighter. You could say the same about the featherweight champ, Max Holloway. On the women's side, Ronda may have gotten a lot of hype, but the strawweight champ Joanna Jdrzejczyk might be one of the most technical strikers in the game. Lot of big name fights coming up in UFC 214, including DC/Jones 2 (barring injury to DC, and JBJ fucking up again).
Joanna is the one I don't get. She is sooo good, very active on social media, and (for my money) is so much more likable than Rousey. You'd think they'd wanna push her to the forefront more than they have, not "try" to build another superstar, but just let her shine.
googled her and the first hit was an article about how she isn't another rousey because she wins by leaving her opponent without a recognizable face.
Yea Joanna's a beast, she was even down to fight Valentina this weekend on a few hours notice.
I disagree, their PPV numbers have still been great. I don't follow it closely, but I know the big fighters and watch the big cards.
Nurmagomedov is the next big time fighter, he just needs to get his dieting sorted out. If he fought McGregor, as much as I love Conor, I'm taking the Russian every time. The dude trained by fighting bears!
Injuries have been his biggest problem. He can't stay healthy.
I hear that can happen when you train by fighting bears...
I was more thinking in terms of mainstream popularity, I think the UFC might've hit its peak when Rousey was champ, everyone knew who she was, even if they didn't know what MMA was. There's a pretty significant PPV numbers spike when either Ronda or Conor fight. I think with hardcore fans the viewership will stay relatively stable. Khabib is a great fighter, but he isn't reliable, he gets injured way too much, he's fought only 3 times in the last three years. He also doesn't really have a fan friendly style, even though I enjoy watching him ragdoll people with his wrestling. I really do hope that Ferguson/Khabib happens this year.
I watch the ultimate fighter regularly. did nt realize Jim Miller Spent a year at VT (disagreements with the coaching staff). Not always watching all the fights though, some of it is getting ridiculous like the hype fights actually end up boring some of the TV cards are actually better. Love the Whitaker fight, he showed how to be calculated.
Disagreement with coaching staff?
Jim Miller is actually a couple of fights away from being the first fighter to reach 30 fights under the UFC banner. He and his brother now own their own gym in Jersey and his brother fought for the UFC for a while. They were the first brothers to both win on the same PPV. Jim holds the record for most submissions attempted in the LW division. He has never had a fight that wasn't exciting and has made many bonuses for his performances. They even brew their own beer and for a while grew their own hops. Follow him on Twitter he has some of the funniest videos too.
Yea Jim Miller is the definition of "Just Bleed"
https://www.mmafighting.com/2017/7/10/15948416/gegard-mousasi-departs-uf...
Looks like Mousasi's gone to Bellator. It's a shame the UFC couldn't keep him around. Bellator's MW division is pretty weak, I can see him winning the belt pretty easily there.
Would have loved to see a legit rematch between Mousasi and Weidman. That fight ended so bizarrely
So UFC 214 is tonight, and the card is LIT. Unless JBJ fucks up or Cormier gets hurt somehow in the next 9 hours, this may be one of the best cards the UFC has put together, Three title fights, tons of other great fights like Knight/Lamas and Sterling/Barao. As a BJJ practitioner, I'm really hoping Maia becomes WW champion, but realistically I think Tyron Woodley is a terrible match up for him.
The card was stacked but most of the main card fights underwhelmed for me. Jones/Cormier was the real deal. Great fight. Woodley/Maia was terribly boring. Maia had no game plan other than shoot shoot shoot and Woodley's takedown defense was impressive - but he never pressed the issue. I get that it makes sense to not lose a championship fight, but that was the fewest landed strikes of any by-decision winner in any championship match ever. Throw a punch, buddy, come on. Cyborg toyed with Evinger for two and a half rounds before she decided she had enough and ended it. Oezdemir exposed Manuwa (verrrrry quickly). Cerrone/Lawler was a good fight and pretty even. I was surprised it made it to a decision.
The prelims were all pretty good fights too. Jon Jones could've killed Cormier if he connected with that flying knee.
Yeah that knee would have been brutal. Sad I missed the prelims, but I ended up watching it out and hardly even have the patience for 3 hours in a bar/pub setting, let alone 5.
Who do you train under?
Kurt Osiander in San Francisco
Thats awesome, is he as cool as he in his videos? How long have you been training?
I've been training about 2 years, but on and off, need to start training more consistently lol. Yea, what you see in the videos is pretty much what you get in real life with Kurt. He will call you out during drilling if he sees you're not doing the move of the day right, and he cracks a lot of the same jokes that you hear in the videos.
I would like to go to a seminar with him. I found that when committed days to training I made it a point to go. When I would pick random days it would become easy to skip training. Been going on 8.5 years and that schedule works much better for me.
where do you train at?
I train and teach at a Pedro Sauer affiliate in Bluffton SC
If either of you are ever back in Blacksburg, you should come train. We have a solid academy right next to campus.
Username checks out. I'll keep that in mind next time I'm in town.
Whoa! I trained under Kurt in SF for 3 years but recently moved to NYC for work and now train under Marcelo Garcia. Chances are we know eachother if you trained there before 2016. Didn't realize there was another Hokie out there. I'm still close with Kurt. Tell him Navy Matt from NYC says hello
no way! So I actually took my first class there in late 2015, but didn't actually start training there regularly till early 2016, so maybe we did run into each other. I'll definitely tell him you say hi! Training under Marcelo must be awesome too!
UFC 214 was great.
The Woodley fight was boring but I can appreciate what he had to do to win that fight. You can't get careless against the best BJJ fighter in the UFC.
Jones and Cormier was great. I was surprised how good Cormier was doing until that kick. He won the first two rounds.
On another note, I watched some of the Eddie Bravo women's BJJ invitational last night. Some really good fights on there and my youngest daughter says she wants to do BJJ now.
What city are you in? There are a ton of good gyms around these days and BJJ is a really good martial art for kids.
Woodley/Maia was boring to most, I really enjoyed though. It was a chess match and proved that BJJ is still to be respected.
It was definitely a fascinating technical/strategic matchup and much less a "fight". Obviously takedown defense is important. But watching incredibly effective takedown defense and one punch to the eye (shockingly thrown while defending a takedown attempt /s) win a five round championship match just doesn't move the needle for me. It's pretty telling that Dana White said it was a horrible fight and that it was good news for Bisping rather than Woodley for who will get to fight GSP.
EDIT: turns out Woodley tore his labrum in the first round and couldn't really throw punches. and still defended 24/24 takedowns. that's reaaaaallllly impressive.
Mad props to Woodley for that, also he's not helping his future out by demanding an apology from Dana either.
Wow, not sure how I missed the existence of this thread for so long.
I thought 214 was great. So many of those "best card of the year" events turn out to be duds. I thought 3 of the 5 on the main card were very good (Jones/DC, Lawler/Cerrone, and Oezdemir/Manuwa), one was alright (Cyborg/Evinger), and one was underwhelming (Woodley/Maia).
- Really sad to see DC lose, but I respect that we're "witnessing greatness" in Jones and his comeback.
- Love Lawler. I'm glad he took some time off to recover and rest, he had a brutal stretch leading up to his knockout by Woodley. Not sure if he's quite ready to dive back in the ring with Woodley, but I also don't know who else at WW makes sense for him right now.
- Tough loss for Cerrone, it was a very close fight. I think he's unfortunately a perennial right-outside-the-top-5'er (both at LW and WW), but he's fun to watch so he'll be fine.
- Didn't really like the Woodley fight during, but I see now that he fought with a torn labrum for most of the fight. I still feel like he's just been fighting not to lose the belt, and am not sure I'd pay for a PPV card with him headlining, but I'm willing to give him a few more chances before I say he's a horrible/boring champ.
- Oezdemir is savage. Looking forward to watching him fight more in the top 5.
- Jones-Lesner? Meh. I mean, I'll pay for it, ha, but it doesn't excite me like some of the other recent "megafights" have. Then again, other than Oezdemir, LHW is running out of contenders that JBJ hasn't beat, so whatever.
- Glad Cyborg got the belt.... now who else is there at women's feather for her to fight?
Most of you have probably seen the news, Jon Jones got popped again: https://www.mmafighting.com/2017/8/23/16189188/with-a-stunning-second-pe... . I guess the LHW title will go back to Cormier? Or maybe they have Cormier fight Gustaffson again for the vacant title?
DC should not have to fight for it again. UFC will wait as long as possible to pull the belt from Jones. Part of me hopes the test is tainted but history doesn't look good for it to be wrong. I have lost respect for the UFC the last couple of years anyway.
DC should get the title back and he's next fight should be against The Swedish Goofball Alexander Gustafsson