jimufctna24 Posted April 28 Posted April 28 5 hours ago, Egg Shen said: Well, he did have a crack at him. I know Holloway was a baby at that point, but that's a fan McGregor fans will cling too as a defining win. Holloway had yet to develop a grappling game when they fought in 2013, and was not the striker he would later become. I would therefore suggest the chances that McGregor would exactly replicate that 2013 win in say 2017 would be very low. If Holloway opted to fight southpaw, McGregor would especially be in trouble. As we saw in the Poirier bouts at 155lbs, a lot of McGregor's game doesn't work too well against southpaws. Quote
Paid Members wandshogun09 Posted June 12 Paid Members Posted June 12 Look at the absolute state of the UFC 329 poster… Quote
Paid Members Egg Shen Posted June 14 Author Paid Members Posted June 14 All popped at the RAF show last night. Was always gonna happen. Quote
Paid Members wandshogun09 Posted June 24 Paid Members Posted June 24 Jamahal Hill’s looking well. Hasn’t fought for a whole year and it appears he’s spent most of that time at the McDonald’s drive through rather than the gym. I did see a quote from him recently saying he was thinking of moving to Heavyweight. Looks like he doesn’t have a choice now. Quote
jimufctna24 Posted August 22 Posted August 22 @wandshogun09 Regarding the above, I don't recall a Lawler vs Penn fight ever being proposed, although I might be able to dig up my copy of his book to check. However, it's true that Penn wanted to fight Arlovski. Iirc, Penn petitioned to fight Arlovski in 2005 (perhaps early 2006) when Arlovski was UFC Heavyweight Champion. Penn was insane when it came to taking fights even back then. Btw, Meltzer has a case of reverse rose-tinted glasses when it comes to combat sport (probably pro wrestling too). He claimed in 2020 that Fury would beat Ali, for example. Quote
Paid Members Egg Shen Posted August 22 Author Paid Members Posted August 22 I've got a copy of his book somewhere, never read it though. I'll dig it out. Quote
Paid Members wandshogun09 Posted August 22 Paid Members Posted August 22 (edited) 4 hours ago, jimufctna24 said: Regarding the above, I don't recall a Lawler vs Penn fight ever being proposed, although I might be able to dig up my copy of his book to check. Found the bit about Lawler from Penn’s book. Didn’t go any further than a conversation with Dana but it was talked about briefly. For context, this would be just after Penn went to a draw against Uno in Feb 2003, when the Lightweight division got scrapped. Edited August 22 by wandshogun09 Quote
jimufctna24 Posted August 23 Posted August 23 (edited) 20 hours ago, wandshogun09 said: Found the bit about Lawler from Penn’s book. Didn’t go any further than a conversation with Dana but it was talked about briefly. For context, this would be just after Penn went to a draw against Uno in Feb 2003, when the Lightweight division got scrapped. Great find. Lawler's first loss came in April of 2003 at UFC 42, so given what's written on the quoted pages, I assume the Penn vs Lawler fight was discussed in the Summer of 2003. Perhaps it was considered to spice up the UFC 45 card in September; the 10th anniversary show, which Lawler fought Chris Lytle on. From what I remember reading, that show was poorly received, partially because of the absence of a big main event (hardcore fans considered Hughes vs Trigg to be an interesting fight, but it had little appeal to casual fans). Lawler was heavily hyped around that period. He was featured on the main card of the UFC 40 card (the UFC's biggest show in years), and his fight with Steve Berger was chosen to be the first MMA fight to be aired on cable. That said, I actually think that Lawler was one of the tamer challenges that Penn entertained during the mid-2000s. Penn was able to beat the much larger Hughes with relative ease only a year later in January of 2004. Granted, Lawler was probably bigger than Hughes (Lawler campaigned at middleweight and welterweight) and a completely different style match up than Hughes, but Lawler was quite flawed back then despite his obvious potential. Pete Spratt stopped him with leg kicks in April of 2003, and Nick Diaz stopped him with punches only a year later. Evan Tanner was also able to submit Lawler pretty quickly at middleweight in late 2004. It's therefore not unthinkable that Penn would have found a way to beat Lawler, especially if the fight went to the ground. In fact, I would probably favour him to do so. I think it was far dafter for Penn to fight Machida in K1 while giving away over 30lbs and while being a fat fuck. Heck, it was probably dafter for Penn to fight GSP in early 2006 at welterweight, at a time when GSP was entering his prime and a far more complete fighter than Lawler. The Arlovski fight is probably the daftest that Penn entertained. I'm not sure it could have even have happened given Penn could only "bulk" up to 191lbs for his bout with Machida, and the minimum weight for a heavyweight in the UFC was/is 206lbs. Edited August 23 by jimufctna24 Quote
Paid Members wandshogun09 Posted August 24 Paid Members Posted August 24 Yeah I don’t think ‘Heavyweight Penn’ would’ve happened anywhere other than the bizarro world of Japanese MMA. Quote
jimufctna24 Posted August 30 Posted August 30 Fedor trained with Tyrone Sprong too if I recall correctly. Quote
Paid Members wandshogun09 Posted September 1 Paid Members Posted September 1 Remember this banger? 14 years ago now. Quote
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