TildeGuy~! Posted May 5, 2018 Share Posted May 5, 2018 10 hours ago, Egg Shen said: im going off old memories and havent seen the fight more than once, but i remember Reid/Kong Watson being a bit of a 5 round war back in the day. It was about as big a UK MMA fight could be at the time, and it delivered. Reid was a bit of a laughing stock but he was no doubt tough as fuck. Alex Reid/Jason "Bad Arse" Barrett is best forgotten though. An absolute shit fest, UK only PPV (which i paid for...i think). I remember the Reid/Kong fight as it was kinda Reids first fight after becoming a celebrity so I gave it a watch as it was live on UK TV, I didn’t know much about Watson at the time but just thought he would blast through Reid with ease but I was wrong. Kong turned up in UFC about a year later to my surprise.  He claimed in an interview after the fight that Jordan pumped loads of money into Alex Reid’s training camp, whilst BAMMA paid him to let Alex Reid get his way in the fight. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members wandshogun09 Posted May 5, 2018 Author Paid Members Share Posted May 5, 2018 Tom Watson always came across as a bit of a prick, I thought. One of the few UK fighters I just couldn't take to. Along with James McSweeney, obviously, and now Paddy Pimblett. Kong got built up as some killer by wins over Alex fucking Reid and the shell of Ninja Rua. Then came to the UFC and quickly got lost in the shuffle of Facebook prelim mediocrity. He did have a fantastic fight with Stanislav Nedkov on one of the UK UFCs though, I'll give him that much. Easily the highlight of his run. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members Egg Shen Posted May 5, 2018 Paid Members Share Posted May 5, 2018 I always had time for Kong. One of the early guys who generated a little bit of buzz through the UK scene before making a leap up. I felt UK MMA got a little bit more love back then from the press because it wasnt drowned out by the UFC output. Even though the standard is higher now and promotions like Cage Warriors are doing really well it feels like mainstream MMA press skim over them now because they always fall on the same nights as UFC shows. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jimufctna24 Posted May 5, 2018 Share Posted May 5, 2018 1 hour ago, Egg Shen said: can you remember the fight/build up? Pretty sure Barrett is in prison now. Sorry, im derailing the thread here. How could I forget it One of the first times I sat down to watch Cage Rage and that is what they had on offer. It was the perfect introduction to Dave O'Donnell's brand of MMA. I've never seen the actual fight. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members Egg Shen Posted May 10, 2018 Paid Members Share Posted May 10, 2018 decided to have a bit of a hype day tomorrow to try and get pumped for this. Whats everyone looking forward too? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TildeGuy~! Posted May 10, 2018 Share Posted May 10, 2018 11 minutes ago, Egg Shen said: decided to have a bit of a hype day tomorrow to try and get pumped for this. Whats everyone looking forward too? Only thing really for me is the Belfort/Machida fight as I’m sure it’ll be a decent stand up fight, other then that nothing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members wandshogun09 Posted May 10, 2018 Author Paid Members Share Posted May 10, 2018 It's all about Jacare-Gastelum and Lineker-Kelleher for me. Both of those should be fantastic. The undercard has a couple of points of real interest for me as well though. Like I said in the opening post, Alberto Mina vs Ramazan Emeev is a real darkhorse fight IMO. Two guys that aren't well known but they've both got solid records and have beat some good fighters. And I'm curious to see Warrley Alves back. He won TUF Brazil a few years ago. I remember thinking he showed real potential but he's been inactive recently. He's also responsible for the one loss on Colby Covington's record. He submitted Colby quick. Even the main event, I know and get why people aren't feeling it. There isn't buzz there because Pennington is a massive underdog and most likely about to catch a hiding. There's no intrigue really in the result, and that hurts it, but I think the fight itself is going to be anything but boring. It's either going to be a Nunes demolition job or Pennington hangs in there and if that happens then their styles shouldn't allow for anything dull. It's a fun card. It's not a blockbuster but so what? They're not all going to be. It's not a bad set of fights though and the pill is certainly sweetened by how fucking incredible 225, 226 and 227 are looking. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members ColinBollocks Posted May 10, 2018 Paid Members Share Posted May 10, 2018 The main event being so lacking in interest is exactly what we all foreshadowed when they spent almost no time hyping Nunes during the Rousey fight. Nunes should really be a superstar, but I bet most casuals would struggle to stumble on her name if you asked them who last bested Rousey. There is some good fun to be had on the undercard. Obviously, Jacare v Kelvin is some high level action, but I'm proper roped into Vitor v Machida. Both Vitor and Machida are past their best, obviously, but star power is a wonderful thing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members Egg Shen Posted May 11, 2018 Paid Members Share Posted May 11, 2018 its an odd main event because you can usually get away with the big underdog fights when theres a star of a champion...like Anderson had a couple of weird defences but there was always huge intrigue in just seeing Anderson fight. Dont get that feeling from Nunes at all, id love to see them defy the odds and have a bit of a tear up though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members wandshogun09 Posted May 11, 2018 Author Paid Members Share Posted May 11, 2018 Nunes really should be a bigger deal than she is. I know she's not the most charismatic of personalities but considering the run she's been on, the exciting style she fights with, holding decisive wins over arguably the two biggest stars ever in women's MMA in Ronda Rousey and Miesha Tate, retiring Rousey, besting her nearest rival in Shevchenko and shutting her down 2-0 in their series...they have something to work with there. I know a lot of it gets blamed on the fighter not promoting themselves enough and I see that. But some of it has to fall on the company as well. I mean Dana White is the promoter. His job is to promote. Yet when has he ever really promoted Amanda Nunes? In fact, wasn't he doing the complete opposite and slagging her off to the media a year or so ago over something or other? Nunes definitely lacks a buzz and whenever that's the case the fighter themself has to take a chunk of the blame. But there's no denying the UFC have dropped the ball with Nunes promotion-wise. Joe Rogan himself even confirmed that the company actively decided against promoting her in the buildup to the Rousey fight because they fully expected her to be, and I quote, "cannon fodder" for Ronda. Which is why half the poster was a massive SHE'S BACK! Nunes was their champion but she was treated like a complete afterthought. I'd love to have seen the suits faces when Nunes smashed Ronda to bits in a minute. And I'm about as big a Rousey fan as there is on here. But I felt happy for Nunes, knowing that she'd scuppered plans and flipped the script. You could tell in her post-fight interviews that she was a bit pissed off about it as well. And understandably so. The language barrier doesn't help. She's not terrible at speaking English but it's not the best, so I think a lot of her talk gets lost in translation. But it's not like Cyborg has the gift of gab either but she feels like much more of a bigger deals than Nunes. And Nunes has beat better opposition than Cyborg has in the UFC. With the exception of Holly Holm, it's been Mismatch City where Cyborg's concerned. While Nunes has beat almost all the top fighters in her division. But they've promoted Cyborg as what she is, a fucking animal. She doesn't need to speak. Just feed her a body every 4 months. It hasn't helped that Nunes has been inactive lately but even when she was active, I don't remember them really pushing her the way you'd think they'd push a dominant and exciting champion. I know it sounds sad and really cynical but you just know that if she looked like Michelle Waterson and had exactly the same résumé she has now, Nunes would be a massive star. Image means a lot more when it comes to the women's side of the sport. There'll always be that barrier. It seems like to be a big star as a female MMA fighter you have to either be hot or terrifying looking. Plain Jane can go 100-0 and she'll only go so far in terms of how the powers that be are willing to promote them and how a large section of the fans see them. And Nunes is not what you'd call hot but she's not quite got that intimidating look like Cyborg either. She just looks like an average athletic woman. But she's arguably the best woman fighter in the game right now, and pretty high up the list of the best fighters in the sport regardless of gender. I'd love to see her catch on somehow. It's doable even with the broken English, as Joanna Jedrzejczyk has shown. But Nunes just seems to lack a certain connection to draw people to her and that's only amplified by the company seeming to give no fucks about getting behind her either. Oh well. Not everyone can be a star. She's one of them that I think people will appreciate more after the fact when she's retired. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TildeGuy~! Posted May 11, 2018 Share Posted May 11, 2018 Mackenzie Dern has weighed in at 123lbs for her 115lb fight. Debateable win in her first fight and missed weight in her second, does the hype train stop here? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members wandshogun09 Posted May 11, 2018 Author Paid Members Share Posted May 11, 2018 She's missed weight twice before even coming to the UFC as well. She's like a slightly sexier John Lineker. Except Lineker's Brazilian accent is real. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members Egg Shen Posted May 11, 2018 Paid Members Share Posted May 11, 2018 the hype train could stop here. A lot of the week's fight hype does seem to center around Dern, she grabs a lot of headlines and attention. 7lb is shocking though. I'm quite fancying Cooper for the upset here anyways, scrappy fighter and if Dern hasn't upped her game (i missed the debut so can't really judge) she could find herself in a spot of bother. Speaking of Cooper, she has to be the most underrated looking chick in the game, alot of females (including Dern) get the media attention for their looks but Cooper flies under the radar, Cooper's right up there for me. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members wandshogun09 Posted May 11, 2018 Author Paid Members Share Posted May 11, 2018 Dern looked very average in her debut. Egg. She was up against Ashley Yoder, who was 5-3 and coming in off back-to-back losses. On top of that, Yoder is also a grappler but nowhere near as accomplished a grappler as Dern. So on paper it was a good stylistic matchup for Dern to really shine in. But she made hard work of it and went to a fairly dull and uneventful split decision. I could see Cooper scoring the upset as well. I seem to recall her looking decent on the TUF she was on, didn't she? Unless I'm confusing her with someone else. And she's got some striking, I've seen very little to suggest Dern is any good on the feet so you never know. Cooper is only 3-3 as well. If she upsets Dern here, the hype train doesn't just stop it crashes. Losing to a 3-3 fighter after missing weight would be a disaster for any fighter, let alone someone who's meant to be a prospect. And I'll say it again, Dern really needs to knock that bullshit Brazilian accent on the head. It's embarrassing. We've all seen the interviews when she was talking with the full on American accent. Her actual accent. Then in her post-fight interview after her UFC debut, she's got Jorge Gurgel in there to translate and acting like she not sure with her English. What's that shit? It's cringeworthy and makes her come off fake as fuck. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members Carbomb Posted May 11, 2018 Paid Members Share Posted May 11, 2018 Plus "Mackenzie" is a typical stupid Yank name. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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