Dai

Looking foward to that! Should be a belter. I can see the build up being awful, but theres no denying its a huge fight.

UFC have posted a great Conor fight comp. That initial run from the prelims to mega star within five or six fights was insane, looking back at it. He really caught lightning in a bottle.

Funny that the 200 thread was started on March 17th, FOUR months before the show. It was just a different time back then. Full of big characters (good and bad), matches and fighters you REALLY wanted to see, and a knowledge that the UFC really did give a shit about putting on a big, memorable show (their income depended on it). All of that is now gone, for me at least. There was also 199 on June 4th, then a two week gap to a fight night, then another three week gap until the 200 fight weekend. Plenty of time for people to get hyped for the show.

This is a fantastic show, from bottom to top, but with the exception of one or two (ie, Max, Gaethje, etc), its just a bunch of really good fighters that I have no investment in at all. Theyre just there. The UFC plan of making the brand the selling point, not the fighter, is complete, and this show is a big indicator of that for me.

Surely its just a case of 20% just not being that much of a deterent? Just like the guy in the co main; hes essentially spending probably $10k to have a weight advantage and not have to cut the really hard last couple of pounds. By doing so he drastically increases his chance of winning and getting his win bonus. You know for a fact that these lower level fighters are terrified of pulling out of a fight and pissing off Dana. Seems like a very good risk/reward.

Cheers lads. Will definately be watching some MVC over the next few days, and Ill give those Alrbright matches a gander in a bit!

3 minutes ago, wandshogun09 said:

Not to mention he was related to the Anoa’i family through marriage.

Never seen any of his All Japan stuff but I’m in the mood to give some of it a watch now. 

Is there a paid for service which streams the 90s AJPW stuff? Id be more than happy to pay a monthly subscription for that, rather than dig around my external hard drives for a pixelated .wmv file of the matches.

After a somewhat underwhleming last series, I think the new batch on Taskmaster all seem like they will be great value. Some great stuff on the first episode. A looking foward to what Steve Pemberton will do for this one.

The Gentleman is about as Guy Ritchie as you can get. Its also a perfect fit for a binge watching Netflix show too, so its a great fit for both. A very fun, switch your brain off show that you can enjoy half asleep just before you go to bed.

What was the deal with Alrbight then? Everyone only seems to talk about his UWF run, and in all these years Ive never heard anything about his AJPW run, which suggests it wasnt up to much. Looking at his Cagematch, he was wrestling the main men in AJPW in the mid to late 90s, which surely should have produced some great stuff, yet its never really talked about. You'd think wrestling people like Kawada in 95 would produce something memorable, but seemingly not.

Speaking of alternative realities, Ive just seen that in 1995, Albright and Hansen's third tag partner was RVD. Something extremely surreal about that visual.

Wasn't Bushido on Bravo too? I think I watched it on there, but it may have been Eurosport. What a killer he was though. Amazing suplexes! 

Just like last week, this was a fun show, and an easy watch for a Sunday. The first four fights were really good, and worth going out of your way to watch. Talbotts performance and Shahbayan's come from behind win were the highlights of the card. The first two fights were real solid too.

Zoned out of the Ribas/Rose match fairly quickly. I did see that they popped up some persons twitter post that had it 3-0 for Ribas going into R4, which was mental. Dont know how anyone on earth could of scored it 3-0 in this one. As I said, I was skipping ahead frequently in this one from around R3 onwards. Just didnt grip me.

Skipped through the Tafa fight whenever it got to the ground too, as it was clear early on that Tafa had nothing on the ground.

Despite your preview posts, I just think there's so many UFC shows these days that it's almost impossible to look foward to or highly anticipate a Fight Night card. When they happen, I watch and enjoy, but there's rarely anything memorable on them and I don't really look foward to them. Maybe that's the perfect business model for the UFC though. 

On a related note though, its come out that Conor is the most drug tested UFC fighter in 2024. He's been tested 5 times already, and presumably passing. 

The dudleys only just turning 50, and combining that with the earlier post about their nasty boys fued brings them nicely into this thread, as it means they were only mid 30s for the One Night Stand shows, when they were considered past it

This turned out to be a very fun card. The first half of the main card were all good, watchable matches. I zoned out of the OSP fight, but even the third round of that was pretty good. Battle/Loosa end was bizarre. In terms of how it looked and how he reacted, then it was the weakest eye poke stop I think Ive ever seen. There was the smallest reaction after it happened from Loosa, no pain at all by the looks of it. Just bizarre. Ugly scenes at the end too, and I somewhat agree with Battle. You cant end the fight like he did and then 2 minutes later square up to him and threaten to kill him.

Main was good, as no one wanted to see this go five rounds. A shame Tuivasa couldnt get it done, but his ground game still seems awful after all these years in the UFC. Was an entertaining 1 round scrap though.

Surely you've missed the biggest point as to why they do them? They get paid a shit tonne of money to show it on TV, and pay next to nothing for production costs and payouts. If the TV Network is happy with the ratings/content, which they clearly are, then it will never stop.

The top 2 scraps on the Gamebred show were worth a watch. Skipped through the rest, so dont know if any of it is any good. The whole thing is on Youtube too, if you can stomach Brendan Schuab for 4 hours straight.

Outstanding post! I think Loki's point about the same sort of thing happening in professional sports is a huge factor. Something like this could probably be done for football, where in the 90s it seemed like you were washed up by the time you hit your early thirties.

The gimmick battle royal ages are insane, as is the fact Foley was only 34 when he retired for the first time. Animal only being 37 for their Mania 14 redebut shocked me too.

I think Richard Lewis is only behind Leon as the best character ever on Curb. Up until about Season 5, he was easily the best thing on the show. He would steal every scene. There was a cracking YouTube comp of all of his scenes, and it's all gold. Where Larry hasn't aged at all, Richard looked like he aged 20 years in the space of 3 or 4 in the last few seasons, so it's not all that surprising to read unfortunately. 

Didnt think much of the main. I swicthed off going into Round 4. Like you said Wand, it was an odd performance by Moreno, and just seemed like a bad set of tactics.

The Ortega and Zellhuber fights were good though, and worth checking out. Ortega did well to survive that first round onslaught,

Watched all the main card, and nothing there made me want to watch the PFL shows going foward. It certainly didnt help that this 'Supershow' was being held in a Wrestlemania 9 style car park, and was less than half full.

With the exception of the main event, Bellator showed that they were hundreds of levels above the PFL, which considering the PFL is going to be the brand from now on, Im not sure what good (from a marketing point) could come from this show. Some of the matches were pretty much squash matches, and was very embarassing for the PFL.

With the exception of the Yoel match being your typical Yoel stinker, I enjoyed it, despite the Bellator guys clearly being a level above. Ferreira had the perfect result to build the hype for his Francis match.

1 hour ago, wandshogun09 said:

Imagine making Ryan Bader look like a child? 

Jesus christ, he's enormous. He's surely up there with Stuve and Schilt as the biggest guy ever. Surely he's cutting to get to 65 too. 

As this is getting closer, are people still hyped with for this show? I stopped following Bellator a long time ago, and have never watched the PFL, so it has no interest for me, but just wondering if theres still a 'supershow' feeling about it. 

£19 for a show headlined by Ryan Bader in 2024? Surely they'll only get a few dozen buys with a price like that. 

With the Saudi money and the way they've handled Big Francis, surely Conor is dribbling at the money he will be able to make if he signs for the PFL and does a handful of super fights over there. 

Like Carbomb says, loads of money doesn't affect the eye of the tiger. However Dana is still right though. Going from boxing money back to shitty UFC money probably would get him to lose some focus. When he leaves UFC and gets back to that mega money then he will be 100% focused again I'd think. 

Isn't he one of the judges on Americas Got Talent, and has been for years? Think he was the host of Deal or no Deal as well. 

With a pro wrestling hat on, this seems rather pre planned does it not? 

Looks like they are going with the PFL commentary team for this, so I assume Goldbergs days as an MMA commentator are over. That'd assuming he's still been doing the Bellator shows recently? Big John is an analyst now for this show so he's off the commentary gig too. 

Dan Hardy, Randy and Chael as colour commentators sounds pretty good. 

12 minutes ago, wandshogun09 said:

I forgot all about this 🤣

 

Haha thats great. Never seen it before!