UFC 196: McGregor vs Diaz

[wandshogun09]

Ha! I love that Ariel has made that public just to expose what a desperate delusional nobody GAD is. We'd never have known about that, Ariel obviously thinks GAD's a cunt as well to be putting that story out there like that. There's been a bit of needle between Helwani and GAD for a while, hasn't there? At least it seems that way. And it's always seemed to stem from GAD being jealous that Helwani is the daddy of MMA journalism. There was GAD having a pop at Helwani on some podcast years ago with the "I'm a proper bloke" bollocks. And that time when they were both trying to interview Daniel Cormier at the same time (before the Hendo fight at UFC 173, I think) and GAD got all arsey saying something to Helwani like 'Do you wanna move your microphone out of my way? Or I'm really gonna knock you out in a minute'. He seriously said that. It reads like he's joking but if you watch the interview, I don't think he is. He really seemed agitated that Ariel was there while he was shitting up an interview with DC.

 

Can't find the video on YouTube now

 

Edit - yeah, appears it's gone for good. Just went back to the UFC 173 thread, I linked to the interview in that thread but the link is dead now. Bastard.

[seanz25]

Someone on here needs to grab a selfie with the GAD.

I'm meant to start a journalism degree come September. GADs the type of bloke that will invite himself along to any form of journalism event ever, chances are I'm likely to end up on a trip to one of these. So if I see him I'll grab one.

 

Fuck I just realised 50 grand course I'm doing is gonna likely entail multiple meetings with GAD.

[d-d-d-dAz]

You'll be lucky if you meet your tutor multiple times. Trust me.

 

I did journalism alongside politics at undergraduate level and a few weeks shadowing local radio journalists was as glamorous as it ever got.

[wandshogun09]

Love these fan made posters...

 

 

 

Obviously they couldn't have had either of these as the official event poster with the middle fingers and weed leaf etc, but they piss all over those standard cookie cutter posters we've had over the last year or so.

[jimufctna24]

The "number 1 MMA journalist in the UK" line doesn't really say much. There is no number 2. GAD is the only MMA pundit who gets a mainstream platform. He has no real competition.  If nothing else, the guy must be a cracking salesman and have serious connections. Either that, or he has pictures of someone with farm animals.

[seanz25]

GADs covered boxing for years though right? Guy seems fairly well respected in-terms of journalism for that sport. Probably an easy branch over with a list of pre built contacts.

[jimufctna24]

GADs covered boxing for years though right? Guy seems fairly well respected in-terms of journalism for that sport. Probably an easy branch over with a list of pre built contacts.

I'd never heard of him before 2009. My first exposure to him was in a MMA context. He used to present a UFC talk show on the now defunct Setanta Sport, and he was fucking terrible on it. 

 

Despite the kind words of Johnny Nelson and Elliot Worsell, I don't think he's that well respected in boxing circles. It's rare that he's cited as a source, and from what I've read, he's rarely mentioned on boxing forums either. There are several journalists and reporters who are seemingly respected over him. Including, Kugan Cassius, who is the Helwani of British boxing. Colin Hart, who's been around for years. There's also that guy who used to write for Boxing weekly, who recently wrote a book on Floyd (I'm not going to cheat and look up his name). 

[Egg Shen]

Tris Dixon?

 

I don't deny the fact that GAD may be a good journalist, his written articles may be great, it's just the persona that people have an issue with. He appears regular on Boxnation as a pundit on their talk-show type things, he clearly pissed off Colin Hart on there one time, i can't remember the circumstances but you could tell they didn't like each other.

 

Kugan Cassius is great though, i watch all of his IFL stuff on youtube. He's got that everyman approach and he's consistently putting out the best boxing content in the UK. He interviewed Michael Bisping this week and knows a little about MMA, i'd love to see him and the team cover the UK MMA scene a little more, could shine a spotlight on the scene over here.

 

here's the Bisping interview

[jimufctna24]

That's the one Ebb. 

 

I've never read GAD's articles, other than the one about Bisping's fight with Cung Le. If I recall rightly, Bisping took great exception to GAD's words.

 

That IFL interview with Bisping was really good. 

[Egg Shen]

[wandshogun09]

Kugan Cassius is great. Love the IFL stuff. Calling him the 'British Ariel Helwani for boxing' is spot on.

 

GAD's just awful. He benefited from being the fat greasy fish in a very small pond of MMA journalists when the sport was taking off over here in 2007/08. If you were unfamiliar with his work and looked at his CV in MMA you'd think 'Well this guy has been paid to cover MMA by Setanta, ESPN and BT. He's appeared on Sky Sports for boxing (Ringside), FOX and one or two UFC Countdown shows. He can't be THAT bad'. But he is. He got those gigs mostly because he was the first to get his sweaty foot in the door as the British voice of MMA, plus he came with built-in coverage because he wrote for the Daily Telegraph. That's more than the rest of the fight magazine writers offered at the time. And I guess because MMA still isn't that big here compared to America, they never felt the need to look for anyone better. They only run a show here once a year at best these days, so he'll do if you're the UFC. We're stuck with the floppy haired fuck forever it seems because I don't think MMA is ever getting much bigger here.

 

BT don't seem to know a good MMA journalist from a bad one either, which doesn't help. Not only do they continue to employ GAD, they add to the problem by pairing him with the equally inept Caroline Pearce (seems a nice enough woman but she knows as much about MMA as I know about TOWIE). They even hired Christian O'Connell, who was fucking abysmal by the way, for a few months as well to work alongside GAD in a terrible combo of MMA covering incompetence. All this while they had access to Dan Hardy, John Gooden, OJ Borg and Scroobius Pip. All of which were a breath of fresh air on the short-lived 'Fighting Talk' roundtable show, which BT axed after about three episodes. Yet 'Beyond The Octagon' lives. You can watch GAD News Brown talking wet every week.

 

I know we go overboard sometimes with the GAD hate. He's a buffoon but he's a buffoon it's fun to take the piss out of. The 'proper bloke' who carries a green handbag etc. But the crux of it for me is, he's had ages to improve and still hasn't bothered. Setanta hired him for their 'Ultimate Talk' show back in 2008. I get that he came from a background of boxing journalism so he was new to MMA back then, fine (he still should've known that it's pronounced 'Hoyce Gracie' not 'Rice Gracie' though, day one shit there). But he's had EIGHT YEARS covering MMA now. And he's still as shit now as the first day I clapped eyes on him, flicking his greasy hair about and talking about 'Chuck Ly-dell being known for having an excellent submission game' or something equally odd. There's no excuse for why he's still so terrible at his job. It's even worse when you consider he's been at the very pinnacle of the sport, doing some stuff for the UFC and he's been around the main man Ariel Helwani enough to where he should've learned something by osmosis. But nothing. I remember years ago Forrest Griffin was talking about getting his BJJ black-belt and he said something like 'I learned that if you just keep showing up every day, you get decent enough and they reward you with something'. Obviously that mustn't apply to being an MMA journalist because GAD hasn't improved one bit in nearly a decade.

 

I think the reason he hasn't got any better at covering MMA is because he doesn't really want to even be covering MMA at all. He wants to cover boxing (I know he does already to an extent but he probably wants Johnny Nelson's or Kugan Cassius' spot) but there are less openings in that more established field for him than there are in MMA. You can see when he's talking about boxing, he's still talking bollocks but he's at least passionate about it. With MMA there's no passion, just the boring monotonous shit he's read on Wikipedia five minutes before and the smugness he's not entitled to. He's fucking crap. I still think there has to be someone better that could fill his place over here. I know MMA is much more established in America but they've got Ariel Helwani, Luke Thomas, Chuck Mindenhall, Mike Chiappetta, Ben Fowlkes, Josh Gross, Marc Raimondi, Jeff Wagenheim etc etc and so on. We've got...GAD.

 

 

This can't be it for the UK, can it? It can't be.

[JNLister]

Irish voter disappointed:

 

[wandshogun09]

Where did you find that?

 

This is a nothing video really but sod it;

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&persist_app=1&v=Rd6eWEUjir4

 

Nick Diaz kind of talking about fighting McGregor. But 90% of the video is just him looking awkward as people take pictures with him. Look at the big fucker with the 70s perm at the end. Jesus wept.

 

Conor McGregor vs Nick Diaz has to happen down the line, doesn't it? I mean, Conor vs Nate is going to be incredible but everyone knows Nick is the one. Can you even imagine the scenes of a Conor McGregor-Nick Diaz press conference AFTER Conor has smashed Nate?! Imagine the shit McGregor would be saying to Nick? Of course, you'd have to get Nick to show up first, getting him to any press conference is a challenge in itself. But fuck me, McGregor vs Nick Diaz would be gold. Build up and fight.

 

There's so many options for McGregor right now it's crazy. I remember when we all used to talk about how Chael Sonnen was smart to talk shit on a bunch of guys to line up a series of fights for himself. Well McGregor has took that and ran with it. He's in a position now where he's not just got three or four fighters calling him out like Chael would have, McGregor is going to have three DIVISIONS calling him out.

 

I was watching Helwani's latest interview with Dana White earlier and Dana was talking about all the options they had to face McGregor when Dos Anjos dropped out. He named Jose Aldo, Frankie Edgar, Urijah Faber, Anthony Pettis, BJ Penn*, Nate Diaz and Donald Cerrone. All those guys were either offered the fight or were asking for the fight. Mental. Apparently the Faber fight was the closest of that lot to actually happening before the Nate thing took on a life of its own.

 

Dana also briefly mentioned McGregor possibly challenging Robbie Lawler at 170. I think Helwani mustn't have picked up on it or you know he'd have been all over that. Dana said something like 'Once titles were off the table we thought 'what would be a fun fight?'. So if he wasn't going to challenge Dos Anjos at 155 or Lawler at 170, the Diaz fight made sense'. I'm paraphrasing but it was along those lines. Nothing too big but it was a little tell sign that they've at least thought about or discussed Lawler vs McGregor at some point.

 

I'm thinking now that UFC 200 is going to end up headlined by Lawler vs McGregor for the welterweight title. Providing McGregor gets by Nate, of course. He can always go back to 155 afterwards, and I think lightweight is where he'll ultimately settle in the end. But if he's going to go for the '3 titles' thing, he's probably best to go for 170 now while there's a striker holding the strap. If he focuses on 155 now then by the time he tries for 170 you could have a Woodley or Lombard with the title or something, which would be a nightmare from a style and size POV for Conor. Plus 200 needs something BIG. And McGregor going to two divisions and challenging a killer like Robbie Lawler is the type of crazy shit that you want on one of the biggest shows ever.

 

* Yes, BJ Penn wanted the McGregor fight. In 2016. He must have a fucking death wish.

[David]

I actually think that Nick would be too big for McGregor at 170lbs. 

 

It goes back to my point that I'm sure I made on here, that there's a physical limit as to how far a guy can go with a certain body type before he starts to lose the attributes that make him successful.

 

At 145lbs we've seen that McGregor is fast, accurate and hits hard for the weight.

 

He would likely retain that speed and power at 155lbs, even though he was looking to make the jump from fighting guys like Mendes who walks around at 155lbs and Aldo 162lbs, to someone like RDA who walks around at 190lbs when he's not in camp.

 

There's a huge difference between stepping into the cage against smaller guys who weigh 160lbs normally and guys who are much heavier, especially when you're looking to knock them out. McGregor at 155lbs would basically be fighting against guys his own size now.

 

At 170lbs? You have to take into account that McGregor will be heavier at the weight, and at 5'9 how much muscle can he pack on before he loses some speed and agility? It's easy to say "man, he looks huge", but when you're using a karate style you're relying on speed a lot of the time.

 

If you're talking about those guys who hover between lightweight and the lower end of welterweight, like a Nate Diaz, then fair enough, as that's where McGregor most likely fits into that division as well.

 

Move up that food chain though and you start to encounter bigger dudes, and dudes who both hit hard and have been taking punches from opponents who enter the cage at closer to 200lbs than anything we've seen Conor at.

 

I think a lot of people are buying into his hypnotic chat to be honest. We've not even seen McGregor against a bona fide lightweight fighter yet and we're talking about him facing a heavy-hitting guy in Robbie Lawler? Come on.

 

I tend to think Joe Rogan has it bang on when he talks about weight classes;

 

When you're fighting the elite fighters -- when you're fighting the best in the world -- you should be fighting at your optimum weight class. Which is one of the reasons why I think Lyoto Machida is so impressive."

 

"He did so well at 205 (light heavyweight). Lyoto Machida is a natural middleweight. He used to weigh in at 203, 204, 202 and he wasn't cutting any weight. He was just a 203 pound guy. Now, he's cutting weight and you're going to see some spectacular fights from Lyoto Machida.

 

 

Can McGregor compete with guys who are on the lighter scale or outside the top level of welter? Probably, yeah. The top lightweights can do that, such as Cowboy and Benson have.

 

At the top level though? We're talking about taking McGregor from knocking out 145lbs fighters who he towered over for the most part to fighting dudes who look like this come fight night?

 

 

Jesus wept. 

[lambyUK]

Only 5 days to go till this thing. I have to admit, I'm pumped for the fight, but I can't seem to shift the disappointment of RDA pulling out. The historical element of the fight is what really was hyping me up, along with the sheer quality of the fight.

 

I know once we get into the swing of things the build up this week will be amazing, and the fight will still be a spectacle. I just wish we were seeing the original fight.

 

On another note, Diaz's coach has really pushed the steroid card this week doubting how Mcgregor has packed on muscle in order to fight at 170. I have to admit, despite me not believing for one second Mcgregor is on steroids, Nate throwing the accusations was the only time he looked bothered during the press conference. 

 

Embedded ep 1