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Cyborg vs Holly UFC 219


Baigg

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Aye, if McGregor can't take Khabib out inside 2 rounds, I would fancy Khabib to take over quite easily. 

Don't get me wrong, McGregor has the potential to blitz any lightweight past or present. He's a special talent. But if the stars don't align for him on fight night, Khabib is a nightmare match-up for him. 

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3 hours ago, jimufctna24 said:

Aye, if McGregor can't take Khabib out inside 2 rounds, I would fancy Khabib to take over quite easily. 

Don't get me wrong, McGregor has the potential to blitz any lightweight past or present. He's a special talent. But if the stars don't align for him on fight night, Khabib is a nightmare match-up for him. 

Where Mcgregor is going to have to change is his willingness to go to ground after the possible knockdown. It certainly wasn't an issue early in his career, in particular against Holloway and Siver, but if there's any opportunity for the kill against Khabib, he's going to have to take it.

Mcgregor is a precision striker, and certainly does possess one punch KO power, but the majority of his UFC finishes outside of Aldo have come from strikes on a downed opponent. 

It seemed after his loss to Diaz, he became more hesitant in going to the floor, and even against Alvarez there was a couple moments of hesitation in prior knockdowns. You don't get the impression Khabib has any sort of glass jaw either, so if there's a sniff of being to finish the fight, Mcgregor must take it. He can't bide his time like he did with Diaz in the first fight and in parts the Alvarez fight. 

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Anyone catch the comments after the fight by a Jackson-Wink photographer? He posted on Instagram and kept referring to Cyborg as a 'he' and 'dude' and stuff like that. His comments have rightly been shat on by everyone from Michael Bisping to Jackson-Wink's own Donald Cerrone. 

Brendan Schaub went on a right rant on his podcast about it as well blasting the guy. He was right with what he said but he's a massive hypocrite considering it wasn't that long ago that him and Rogan were making similarly dickish comments on Rogan's podcast. 

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22 minutes ago, lambyUK said:

Where Mcgregor is going to have to change is his willingness to go to ground after the possible knockdown. It certainly wasn't an issue early in his career, in particular against Holloway and Siver, but if there's any opportunity for the kill against Khabib, he's going to have to take it.

 

That's the difference. There's certain fights where a fighter will almost not fight the takedown because they know the guy who ends up on top will pretty much stall and do minimal damage, they know they can defend themselves off their back so they'll wait for the standup or try and work their way back up. You simply can't afford to do that against Khabib, he does so much damage within a couple of minutes you are pretty much fucked for the rest of the fight. He's a lightweight Cain Velasquez.

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It should also be remembered that Barboza did everything correctly against Khabib off his back; yet still could not subdue him. I really don't like Conor chances if Khabib lands just one takedown on Conor. As Ebb said, Khabib can suck the life out of a fighter very quickly. It only takes one takedown and the resulting barrage. 

Khabib vs GSP is a wacky match-up. I hadn't even considered that one. I did consider how Khabib would measure up against past lightweights on my daily run the other day (I have to pass the time somehow). I concluded that he would measure up very well against Penn (I think he could make Penn fold), Edgar (size advantage), and Pettis (it would look like the Barboza fight). However, while my projections for Khabib are very high, he still has to do the business against Ferguson or McGregor, who are both elite level lightweights. It wasn't too long ago that I thought that Pettis was going to be a P4P kingpin. MMA can change quite quickly, especially in the lighter divisions. However, I am very excited about Khabib. 

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