UFC 223 is McFucked

[David]

Anyone who actually thinks Khabib fights either Tony or Conor in the same fashion as he did Iaquinta is very naive. It was a glorified sparring session, where it looked like Khabib used the opportunity for some live stand up training.

Joe Rogan was ridiculous in his commentary. You'd have thought the fight was even somewhat competitive the way he was banging on. 

Iaquinta was tough, and he was game, but he was never in that fight. And I hope McG looks at that fight and thinks it represents the way Khabib would fight him, maybe we'll see him get off his arse and actually do some fighting.

[Dead Mike]

Stayed off the internet yesterday & watched the main card last night. Can only echo most of the sentiments on here, Iaquinta is tough as fuck & I was really surprised how good his cardio was. After what must’ve been the craziest week for Khabib (and others obvs) but having to do pretty much all the main event PR, not knowing if/who you’re even fighting & all while cutting weight is just madness at this level. To come out & dominate like that for 5 rounds (even against a much lower ranked opponent) is still super impressive in my book.

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I think it's at the point now where Khabib has been so dominant that if he doesn't look superhuman for every single nanosecond of a fight then those human moments get magnified and some people decide he's actually not that good. I get people looking for the chinks in his armour, it's only natural with a fighter who's been unbeaten and dominant for so long. But it's going to be a lot easier said than done to capitalise on those small openings on the feet. I mean, don't you think the likes of Rafael Dos Anjos and Edson Barboza knew that his weakest area was the striking? Didn't do them much good.

This pretty much sums it up for me. When Rogan was mentioning Khabib keeping his chin up & hands down when moving backwards I knew there’d be people who would immediately think this was the clue to beating him but rangier fighters with much better striking haven’t. The fact that when he chose to stand up he was still schooling Iaquinta (reminded me of GSP jabbing Koscheck).

 

I had Rose beating JJ 3rnds to 2. Rose took the first 2 & the last. I’d happily watch those two fight half a dozen more times, was fantastic.

[Chunk]

Like has been said, Conor must be more confident having seen that. I reckon he gives Khabib real trouble for a round or two.

AKA to lose two titles by the end of the year! Stipe will deal with DC handily and Conor will knock out Khabib. 😏

[David]

11 minutes ago, Chunk said:

Like has been said, Conor must be more confident having seen that. I reckon he gives Khabib real trouble for a round or two.

AKA to lose two titles by the end of the year! Stipe will deal with DC handily and Conor will knock out Khabib. 😏

Honestly mate, if Conor looks at that fight and thinks that it would have any bearing on how Khabib would approach a fight with him then he's sniffing glue as well as snorting the powder.

If anything Conor should be looking at the Barboza fight as more of an indicator as to how Khabib approaches a fight with him.

[Chunk]

44 minutes ago, David said:

Honestly mate, if Conor looks at that fight and thinks that it would have any bearing on how Khabib would approach a fight with him then he's sniffing glue as well as snorting the powder.

If anything Conor should be looking at the Barboza fight as more of an indicator as to how Khabib approaches a fight with him.

Fair points but, regardless of how Khabib approaches a fight with Conor, he's shown defensive weakness in his stand up against both Iaquinta and Barboza. Mcgregor will come into the fight with reach and speed advantages over Khabib. I think he'll use distance far more effectively than Iaquinta did and I think he'll land against Khabib. Mcgregor will gas out by the third round and that'll be the end of it but if he can land in the first couple of rounds than I genuinely think he can beat Khabib and I think there's a good chance of that happening.

I was trying to lookup some numbers around rankings on a run to the title. There's some possible error here because historic rankings are difficult to find, but the numbers I've put together show that Khabib has only actually ever fought 1 top 5 fighter in his UFC run to the belt. Now I know that isn't an unheard of thing but all the same it does sort of highlight how Khabib has actually had quite an easy run to the belt. A couple of fights with Ferguson and Mcgregor and I think we could all be looking at Khabib in a different way. Here are the numbers: 

Iaquinta - 11
Barboza - 4
Johnson - 7
RDA - 6
Pat Healy - 15
Abel Trujillo - N/A
Thiago Tavares - N/A
Gleison Tibau - 13
Kamal Shalorus - N/A

When you compare that to Mcgregor's record and think about how much stick he gets for being given the 'rub' and protected on his way to the belt(s) it makes for interesting reading. He certainly got fast tracked to the top, but it's hard to argue he didn't then earn it with his wins over Aldo and Alvarez. A big shame of the last week is that we didn't really get to see Khabib have the same opportunity:

Alzarez - Champion
Diaz - 4
Aldo - Champion
Mendes - 1
Siver - N/A
Poirier - 6
Brandao - N/A
Holloway - N/A
Brimage - N/A

[David]

1 minute ago, Chunk said:

Fair points but, regardless of how Khabib approaches a fight with Conor, he's shown defensive weakness in his stand up against both Iaquinta and Barboza. Mcgregor will come into the fight with reach and speed advantages over Khabib. I think he'll use distance far more effectively than Iaquinta did and I think he'll land against Khabib. Mcgregor will gas out by the third round and that'll be the end of it but if he can land in the first couple of rounds than I genuinely think he can beat Khabib and I think there's a good chance of that happening.

McG will have pretty much the same chance that any good striker with extremely shit wrestling would have against someone like Khabib, which isn't a very good one. It's been said many times by people much more knowledgable than you or me that styles make fights, and it just so happens that Khabib's style is a fucking nightmare for 99% of the division.

It's no secret that Khabib isn't the best when it comes to stand-up, but he doesn't have to be. By virtue of his immense ground game he immediately sets anyone he faces on edge about being taken down. Conor isn't going to approach a fight with Khabib in the same manner as he did the fight with Alvarez or Aldo, for example. He can talk in the build up to the fight about how he cares not a jot about the takedown and so on, but he'll know that he basically has around 20 seconds early doors to make a punch count against a man who hasn't been dropped, rocked or really troubled much at all. The very fact that some fans look at one time where Michael Johnson kinda managed to almost rock him a little as some sort of major talking point speaks volumes.

If Khabib comes in with his chin up as he did against Iaquinta then he'll face problems, but he obviously isn't going to do that. He's not a fucking moron, he's going to come in and attempt to do to McG what he did to Barboza, which is take him to the floor and fuck him right up.

Another thing to needs to be asked is, what Conor will we get in any possible fight with Khabib? Are we getting 2014/15 McG who beat Aldo and Poirier? Or are we getting a guy who won't have stepped foot inside a cage for two years by the time any fight happens? Are we getting the mentally tough and on-point, focused Conor from back in 2014/15, or are we getting the all over the place, seemingly disturbed Conor who's due in criminal court in a few months?

I'll be honest, I don't even know if he'd make it to fight night if there was any kind of prolonged fight build up. Who would bet against him doing something ridiculous and the fight getting cancelled?

Bottom line is, he's not the same guy he was when he was chasing the title and playing mind games with Aldo. It's night & day, and why anyone would expect that he can come back from two years out and just click back into the mindset he had three or so years ago, and overcome any cage rust before facing possibly the most dominant fighter on the planet is beyond me.

[Chunk]

4 minutes ago, David said:

I'll be honest, I don't even know if he'd make it to fight night if there was any kind of prolonged fight build up. Who would bet against him doing something ridiculous and the fight getting cancelled?

Bottom line is, he's not the same guy he was when he was chasing the title and playing mind games with Aldo. It's night & day, and why anyone would expect that he can come back from two years out and just click back into the mindset he had three or so years ago, and overcome any cage rust before facing possibly the most dominant fighter on the planet is beyond me.

Well Khabib took 2 years off after RDA and then over a year after Johnson ... so there's an example of how it can be done.

But, yeah, fair points about Mcgregor being a different fighter mentally now than when he fought Aldo.

[David]

1 minute ago, Chunk said:

Well Khabib took 2 years off after RDA and then over a year after Johnson ... so there's an example of how it can be done.

But, yeah, fair points about Mcgregor being a different fighter mentally now than when he fought Aldo.

Yeah, there's taking two years off then there's taking two years off and doing what Conor has done.

Personally, I think Ferguson poses more problems for Khabib than Conor does. Ferguson is excellent on the feet, but is also no bum on the ground.

[Carbomb]

I agree with David for the most part. The only thing I would say that should be taken into account regarding McGregor is that he won't be completely rusty - he did train quite intensively for the boxing match, and I daresay his boxing striking, which would be the kind he would need to rely on against Nurmagomedov, will be vastly improved in comparison to what it was before.

That said, I don't think that gives him all that much of a chance against Nurmagomedov's style. It gives him a better puncher's chance than most, but I don't rate that much at all.

EDIT: Also meant to include that I think that the mental factor is probably his biggest obstacle right now. He's clearly not right in the head for regular life, let alone combat sports, at the moment.

[David]

Yeah, don't get me wrong, I'm not downplaying the ability Conor has, I just think that Khabib is a terrible match up for him. I think that Ferguson is a tougher fight for Khabib, but in turn I think Ferguson is a more winnable fight for Conor.

[Guy Bifkin]

Raging Al did a great job but Khabib went into cruise control for the last few rounds and jabbed his way to an easy win. I'm still of the opinion that Khabib v Ferguson is a super close fight and I give Conor a puncher's chance for as long as he can keep the fight standing. 

Rose v JJ was an excellent fight. I had it 3-2 to Rose but felt the rounds she won were closer than those JJ won. Another fantastic performance from Rose though and arguably better than the first fight.

What can I say about Zabit apart from his surname? He looks like a Dagestani Jon Jones. What a fight that was! 

[wandshogun09]

6 hours ago, Carbomb said:

The only thing I would say that should be taken into account regarding McGregor is that he won't be completely rusty - he did train quite intensively for the boxing match, and I daresay his boxing striking, which would be the kind he would need to rely on against Nurmagomedov, will be vastly improved in comparison to what it was before.

I've seen this mentioned a few times on here and from MMA media and on podcasts and stuff. I really don't think McGregor's boxing will have improved in any significant way just because he trained to fight Mayweather. He had one boxing training camp and it seemed like a complete clusterfuck. And aside from a couple of spars with an out of shape and retired Paulie Malignaggi, he was mostly still training with the same SBG crew he does for MMA. I said it somewhere on here before but sparring Artem Lobov in boxing gloves and a ring isn't going to be much different to sparring Artem Lobov in MMA gloves and a cage. It wasn't like he was bringing in an Adam Booth or Dominic Ingle. He still had John Kavanagh and Owen Roddy. They've been great for his MMA game but what were they going to teach him about pro boxing really? Boxing is something that you'd have to really put time in to make real gains. And I'm not even sure he got a proper look at what a boxing training camp is like because he brought in mostly his MMA team and he was calling all the shots anyway. His team seemed more concerned with deciding which carefully selected picture from sparring would make Paulie Malignaggi angriest if they tweeted it, rather than teaching him anything about boxing. McGregor's MMA boxing is excellent and has been hugely effective. In MMA, of course. If/when he comes back, I wouldn't expect any more than that. I think anyone expecting him to come back to MMA with the skills and technique of a pro boxer are setting themselves up for disappointment.

[Carbomb]

3 minutes ago, wandshogun09 said:

I've seen this mentioned a few times on here and from MMA media and on podcasts and stuff. I really don't think McGregor's boxing will have improved in any significant way just because he trained to fight Mayweather. He had one boxing training camp and it seemed like a complete clusterfuck. And aside from a couple of spars with an out of shape and retired Paulie Malignaggi, he was mostly still training with the same SBG crew he does for MMA. I said it somewhere on here before but sparring Artem Lobov in boxing gloves and a ring isn't going to be much different to sparring Artem Lobov in MMA gloves and a cage. It wasn't like he was bringing in an Adam Booth or Dominic Ingle. He still had John Kavanagh and Owen Roddy. They've been great for his MMA game but what were they going to teach him about pro boxing really? Boxing is something that you'd have to really put time in to make real gains. And I'm not even sure he got a proper look at what a boxing training camp is like because he brought in mostly his MMA team and he was calling all the shots anyway. His team seemed more concerned with deciding which carefully selected picture from sparring would make Paulie Malignaggi angriest if they tweeted it, rather than teaching him anything about boxing. McGregor's MMA boxing is excellent and has been hugely effective. In MMA, of course. If/when he comes back, I wouldn't expect any more than that. I think anyone expecting him to come back to MMA with the skills and technique of a pro boxer are setting themselves up for disappointment.

Oh, I wasn't saying he'd be pro boxer level in his striking - just that his MMA boxing must have been better than it was before he went into boxing camp. That said, I honestly didn't know he'd half-arsed his boxing camp that much. 

[BigJag]

How can Connor enter a UFC dressing room now or in the future? There have to be plenty of people who will want to either give him a good hiding or want nothing to do with him. bringing him into a UFC locker room will surely create a toxic atmosphere. Time heals all wounds and that, but people like Chiesa and Pat Barry must want to have at least words with Connor and his crew. Will he get Goldberg level security? Escorted to and from the dressing rooms.

[wandshogun09]

@Carbomb Yeah, I don't know if he completely half-arsed it either. I don't doubt that he trained hard. But everything we saw and heard coming out of that training camp, it just didn't seem like ideal preparation. I know Malignaggi had an axe to grind but the way he described how McGregor was fucking his sparring partners around, the camp sounded disjointed as fuck. He was saying they'd be sat there waiting on a call to say they'd be sparring that day and they wouldn't know one day to the next what was happening. Sometimes the call never came, other times they'd be called to the gym to spar only to get there and find it was a waste of time because Conor had decided just to hit the bag and do padwork that day. McGregor probably wasn't actively trying to dick them around but I just think in his MMA training camps he does what he wants when he wants and he carried that into his boxing camp.

Then there was just the whole Malignaggi thing in general. Whichever side of the fence you were on in that bollocks, I think we can all agree that McGregor could've benefited from Paulie being in camp if they could've got past all the petty bullshit. Not only as a sparring partner but as a guy who can analyse fighters and fights, Paulie could've been an asset and they decided to fuck around and make him an adversary. The whole focus of Team McGregor seemed to be more on winding up Paulie than anything to do with Mayweather. And I think that's largely because deep down they knew they weren't going to win, it was a cash grab and they were just banking on maybe, maybe, landing a Hail Mary KO.