jimufctna24

Good point about Sterling. Would Sterling's win over Yan in their rematch be their 3rd biggest triumph? After watching a few peak Silva bouts recently, and drawing from memory of his other UFC fights, my appreciation actually grew for what Weidman and co were able to achieve. The likes of Griffin and Leben led aggressive on the feet and were countered and finished with ease. Whereas the likes Leites were cautious on the feet, so not to offer Silva the chance to counter, but got little offence going and were picked off in tediously dull fights. Meanwhile, Okami, a quite cautious clinch wrestler, also mounted very little offence against Anderson in their UFC bout, and was finished pretty quickly after failing to take down Silva while pressing him against the fence. Sonnen came closer than all of those fighters by plowing forward aggressively with strikes and initiating takedowns, but that strategy was high-risk. Not just because charging forward aggressively with strikes/takedowns opened up counter opportunities for Silva, but also because Silva was a submission threat off his back, which was what denied Sonnen in their first bout. What Weidman and company realised was that the answer to Silva was indeed a good grappling/takedown game, but also feinting to throw off his counter radar, specific strikes that he could throw without much risk of being countered, and doubling up on punches with the same hand to break Silva's head movement (the latter is how Weidman was able to knock Silva out in their first bout). In other words, it took a very specific gameplan to give Anderson fits, and Weidman with the help of Serra/Longo executed it wonderfully. Breen and Wand made some of these arguments at the time if I recall correctly, and others such as Slack have made them at length since. Bisping later took some of the Weidman's gameplan, specifically the feints to confuse Silva's counter radar, and was able to beat Silva also, albeit barely and at a time when Anderson had already turned 40. It's impressive that Serra/Longo/Weidman were able to render the game of one of the best heavier weight fighters in MMA history so ineffective. I will add that it's not like Weidman, even in his pomp, was a superior fighter to Silva, rather he was just a stylistic nightmare for Silva. I would pick Anderson against some of the fighters who later beat Weidman. Romero, for example, I believe would lose a decision against Silva in what would probably be an uneventful bout to say the least.

The Lawler vs Dundee bouts from the mid 1980s are some of my favourite wrestling matches ever. I'm a sucker for Memphis style wrestling.

On the subject of Serra. What do we think was his and Longo's greatest achievement? Serra stopping GSP in one of the biggest upsets in UFC history. Or Training a fighter (Weidman) that was stylistic nightmare for Anderson Silva and helping him beat Silva twice. It's probably the former, but after watching some peak Silva bouts lately, it's closer than I first thought.

I recall Barnett was a talking head on the Decade of Pride documentary, and popped up in a section of the documentary dedicated to Sapp's brief run in Pride. Barnett claimed that Sapp was at his best when he was left to improvise during fights and wasn't informed about his opponents' skill level. Apparently Sapp knew very little about Tamura prior to fighting him. Sapp was gobsmacked he'd been able to beat Tamura after viewing the Japanese fighter's record after their fight.

Aye, the Mir fight was one of his best showings. As I posted above, striking wasn't Barnett's strongest area, but he was very good at in-fighting (striking in clinches, dirty boxing). One of the very few bits of meaningful offence Barnett mounted against Cro Cop in their second meeting in Pride was a period late in the fight when he worked Cro Cop over in the clinch. The rest of Barnett's game (clinch takedowns, striking, etc), simply didn't work against Cro Cop. In-fighting was also how Barnett battered Mir all those years later. I only found out recently that Barnett actually trained Freeman when he beat Mir too.

Ahhh, the dude who fights similarly to Cro Cop. Hope he does well.

The Big Nog fights in Pride are still fun to watch. Barnett actually drops Nog with a punch in their first bout, which was surprising. But it's mostly the awesome grappling that makes those fights fun to re-watch.

To state the obvious, it's all tedious as fuck. I'm not going to pretend I will not watch if they do fight, but I will not lose any sleep if it never happens at this stage. Neither do I really care who is ducking who. It's just all very played out. Even Mayweather and Pacquaio's camps were able to come to a deal quicker than this lot.

I'll give that a listen at some point. Cheers for sharing. I plan on watching the Barnett vs Couture bout back at some point. If you watch Barnett's fights from Pride, he's an excellent on the ground, incredibly durable, and has decent stamina, but he isn't much of a striker. So he often looked lost if he couldn't clinch and take the fight to the ground (see his bouts with Cro Cop and Aleks until he fatigued). It's why I think Fedor would have always beaten him. Fedor was excellent in the clinch, a fantastic stiker, and had great stamina. Fedor's team also had Barnett well-scouted. Until he fatigued, Aleks gave Barnett fits by framing to stop clinches and boxing with him. I've read that Barnett was beaten up by Couture until the latter gassed. So I'm expecting Barnett's durability/stamina to have won him fight when I get round to watching it.

Thanks for sharing Ebb. There were a few slight issues with the timeline in that episode. The narration makes out that Mayhem went from villain to hero in Hawaii before his UFC fight with GSP. However, a quick look at Mayhem's MMA record reveals that the majority of his MMA fights in Hawaii occurred after the GSP bout. Also, Mayhem's infamous bout with Egan Inoue, which the documentary covers and where Mayhem supposedly became despised by the Hawaii crowd, took place little over a year before Mayhem's bout with GSP. After the Inoue bout, Mayhem only fought in Hawaii once more before the GSP bout. Did he really go from hated to beloved in Hawaii in the space of one fight? There are a few other errors too. The episode also described GSP as being the man when Mayhem fought him in April of 2005. In truth, GSP was seemingly still quite green going into that bout. In his previous UFC bout in October of 2004, a very young GSP had given Matt Hughes all he could handle, but had then made a error which led to him losing via armbar. This error was a clear result of inexperience, and was acknowledged as such at the time by many. GSP was all wrong for Hughes, and once GSP logged enough experience, that became very evident in their following two meetings which GSP won easily. Also, I question how much the Nashville brawl in 2010, which Mayhem instigated, really contributed to Strikeforce's cancellation from CBS. I have little doubt the incident upset CBS executives, but I can imagine the poor ratings that show drew, which had nothing to do with Mayhem rather poor matchmaking by Coker/Chou, was at least partially responsible for the cancellation. Yet the poor ratings were not mentioned. All in all, the episode is still a really good watch. I never really watched Bully Beatdown and was actually quite oblivious to its popularity. However, I remember well the GSP vs Mayhem bout (the first fight Bravo showed as part of their deal to show UFC events on 18 hour delay) Mayhem fighting Shields in Strikeforce and almost winning via submission, the Nashville brawl the following year, and the incident on Helwani's show which prompted GAD's "proper bloke" comment we had a laugh about on this forum. It was also nice that the episode had a somewhat happy ending.

Your last sentence sums it up for me. Someone involved underestimated Hrgovic's durability imo. Whether that was the trainer or Itauma not commiting to cardio training as NeverYield's post above indicates could have been the case, or one of the two parties resisting slowing down/steering Itauma's work during the fight, it proved to be the wrong choice. As Hrgovic's durability held up. Heck, I don't entirely blame them from expecting Itauma to blow through Hrgovic. I knew Hrgovic could take a decent dig, but I was shocked that he took some of the shots Itauma landed on him. But this was a fight that I feel the Itauma/Davison team could have won had they made better decisions.

Fedor trained with Tyrone Sprong too if I recall correctly.

I don't know what to make of Davison. He has Wylie in him, who is clearly a boxing savant. Yet, I often can't tell how accountable Davison and Co are for his fighters' losses. For example, Joshua and Davison was touted as a good fit on the grounds that Joshua follows instructions well. At first, it did look to be a good fit, with Joshua battering Wallin and looking great while doing so. Then came the Dubois fight where Joshua completely capitulated. How much of that was Joshua cracking under pressure? (some long suspected Joshua would fall apart if taken outside of his comfort zone), and how much of it was Davison's guidance? It's a similar case for last night. I haven't heard all the instructions given to Itauma in the corner, but was Davison trying to slow Itauma down, if at all? As I posted above, I have read that Wylie was at one point, but should they have done so earlier?

I think Itauama could have done 12 rounds fairly comfortably last night. Punch stats can be misleading, but they show that in terms of power punches thrown, his workrate was insane. I've seen someone cite Usyk's power punches against Joshua in their rematch, and note that Itauma threw far more power punches in the opening 6 rounds last night than Usyk managed in that fight. Even after round 6, Itauma was still throwing plenty of power punches, in fact he didn't really ease off in that regard. Apparently at one point, Wylie was trying to slow Itauma down, yet he tried to force the stoppage at the end of the 8th, which appears to have tired him out altogether (and perhaps led to the leg injury). I'm not claiming Itauma's conditioning doesn't need improvement, but for now, I think pacing and too much gusto are his key weaknesses.

I don't think Itauma's chin is much of an issue after tonight. He took a peach of a right hand from Hrgovic in the middle rounds and it bounced off him. It's indeed his conditioning that's the issue, or perhaps rather, how he paces himself.

Also Hrgovic has a chin of iron. Few other heavyweights would have taken those shots from Itauma imo.

That makes sense given Itauma's body language. You could well be right. Edit: Warren apparently is claiming it was a leg injury.

Oh bollocks.

It's just nice to be genuinely giddy about a boxing match again. I haven't felt this excited about a boxing bout since Crawford vs Canelo last year.

This fight was announced a month ago and somehow escaped my attention, but it's a cracker of a fight. Roll on September 10th! - RIZIN AND PFL MAKE MMA HISTORY WITH FEATHERWEIGHT DOUBLE TITLE FIGHT AT SUPER RIZIN.5 | Professional Fighters League News (pflmma.com)