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wandshogun09

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11 minutes ago, jimufctna24 said:

I fail to see why Fedor wasn't all he's cracked up to be.

I've went over my reasoning in great detail to be fair.

12 minutes ago, jimufctna24 said:

He was an absolute force from 2002-2006. Would you really be confident of Miocic beating peak versions of Cro Cop and Nog in Japan? Because I certainly wouldn't. 

Yes, because prime Miocic in Japan during that era would be able to enjoy the lax drug restrictions that those guys did. 

Look at the difference between on the juice Belfort, and off the juice Belfort. Night & day. Same with the likes of Cro Cop, Wanderlei etc. 

Left the land of no drug testing and fell off a cliff. Coincidence? Maybe. I don't think so though.

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Just now, David said:

Yes, because prime Miocic in Japan during that era would be able to enjoy the lax drug restrictions that those guys did. 

Look at the difference between on the juice Belfort, and off the juice Belfort. Night & day. Same with the likes of Cro Cop, Wanderlei etc. 

Again, opening up the lax drug restrictions that Pride offered to UFC fighters was not a guarantee that they would turn into beasts.  

If it were, then Belfort would have cleaned up in Pride. Instead, he was subbed by Overeem (mid-tier Pride talent), and beaten soundly by Sakuraba. He also got beat by Hendo pretty easily on one of Pride's USA shows. He mixed with both groups of fighters and their respective testing procedures. Yet, his record in Japan was no better than his record in the US during that timeframe.

It's more likely that Wanderlei slowly declined than got exposed by the stricter testing procedures. By the time he jumped to the UFC he had been fighting for over a decade and had over 40 fights under his belt. Not to mention the numerous gym wars he had at Chute Boxe. As I already mentioned, the signs that he was on the decline were there before he switched to the UFC. Besides, while he did lose convincingly to Chuck and Franklin, he managed to beat UFC mainstays in Bisping and Jardine. So it's not like he had zero success in the UFC. 

He also got blitzed by Rampage in late 2008, a fighter who he had previously beaten twice in Pride. Clearly something had changed between Rampage and Wanderlei from 2004 and 2008. And it wasn't anything to do with PED use as they always competed on equal terms in that regard. 

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The fact that many Pride fighters were probably just past their peak, had been fighting a long time and got stricter drug testing all contributed to some poor UFC performances. 

I do vividly remember being shocked to begin with, i thought the Pride guys would clean up, but they struggled...none more than Shogun when he fought Forrest Griffin, everyone was under the impression that Shogun was gonna walk through Griffin, it was a shocking moment.

As for Crocop. I think what everyone fails to mention here is that one of Crocop's key attributes was instilling fear into his opponents, he was Tyson-esque during that Pride run, especially before he lost. He was the first elite K-1 fighter to cross over and have success, the MMA guys were bricking it. That disappeared later on, especially during his UFC run, dont think that didnt hinder his record.

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9 minutes ago, Egg Shen said:

I do vividly remember being shocked to begin with, i thought the Pride guys would clean up, but they struggled...none more than Shogun when he fought Forrest Griffin, everyone was under the impression that Shogun was gonna walk through Griffin, it was a shocking moment.

Indeed.

However, it should be remembered that Shogun injured his ACL while training for that bout. He had to have surgery to repair it post-fight, and completely blew it out while rehabbing it. It was these injuries that reduced Shogun to a shell of his former self from 2007-2009.

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You're right Jim. But David's still going to claim injuries didn't come into it and that's just an excuse because it's really a case of Pride being shit/PEDs. Can't be injury related...oh wait;

4 hours ago, David said:

If we're discussing the fight, you have to discuss all of the relevant factors, Ebenezer.  Like it or not, the injuries played a part in Cejudo winning.

Unless it's Demetrious Johnson, that is. 

:p 

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41 minutes ago, Egg Shen said:

I do vividly remember being shocked to begin with, i thought the Pride guys would clean up, but they struggled...none more than Shogun when he fought Forrest Griffin, everyone was under the impression that Shogun was gonna walk through Griffin, it was a shocking moment.

So much of a blinded fanboy was I, that I attributed it all to PROID guys not being able to adjust from the ring to the cage.

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:laugh: Now now Keith, I didn't say it was ALL down to going from the ring to the cage. Just saying it was one of a bunch of factors.

And I loved PROID but I'm far from a blinded fanboy. If I was then that changed when I started that Pride Reviews thread and sat through a load of ball achingly long and dull fights in the early shows. There was plenty of shite on those shows. I'd rather actually be blinded than sit through the fortnight long Renzo Gracie vs Sanae Kikuta fight again. 

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Pride had very little shite in their final few years. You would get the odd bit of shite involving the likes of Eldar Kurtanidze, Zulu, Butterbean, Tank Abbott, Kimo, Henry Miller, Sean O'Haire, Giant Silva, etc. But most of those lot were harmless freakshow fodder. You could live with them in very small doses. As stated, it was more the early shows where there was plenty of shite.

 

 

 

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I was on about myself, Wand! That's how I genuinely thought at the time.

Given how we've had threads about well produced things, I think the whole production of PROID made it seem like such a big deal and leagues ahead, even now, in presentation, we forgave the freak shows and the dull ones because every show seemed to be so important.

 

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10 hours ago, wandshogun09 said:

You're right Jim. But David's still going to claim injuries didn't come into it and that's just an excuse because it's really a case of Pride being shit/PEDs.

Wait, are we claiming that a bunch of guys coming from a company where there was no drug testing going on suddenly started getting injured when the restrictions were a bit tougher?

Former PED users getting injured more after use is curtailed....that's highly unusual, isn't it? 😉

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No, not a "bunch of guys". Jim was just talking about the Shogun example there. You know that, you're just doing what you always do and twisting things to fit your agenda because you've suddenly decided you didn't like PROID, years after the fact, and all the fighters were crap. OK. 

The horse is dead man. Put the whip away. 

Nobody is disagreeing that most of the Pride guys were juicing. Where people disagree is that it was the sole reason why some of them didn't do well in the UFC. That's all. 

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5 minutes ago, wandshogun09 said:

No, not a "bunch of guys". Jim was just talking about the Shogun example there. You know that, you're just doing what you always do and twisting things to fit your agenda because you've suddenly decided you didn't like PROID, years after the fact, and all the fighters were crap. OK. 

The horse is dead man. Put the whip away. 

Nobody is disagreeing that most of the Pride guys were juicing. Where people disagree is that it was the sole reason why some of them didn't do well in the UFC. That's all. 

See, that's where you're wrong. I did like PRIDE. I enjoyed it at the time, immensely. Still do.

I'm just capable of looking past the hype and seeing that while those guys may have looked great for the most part in that organisation, there's a good chance that they weren't all they were cracked up to be when it comes to the bigger picture.

Hey, it happens. Dudes look great against lesser talent elsewhere and get found out in the UFC all the time. It's not a big deal, and it certainly doesn't mean PRIDE was suddenly rubbish.

I refuse to believe that "losing a step" and "injuries building up" all just so happened to come into play when they made the jump to the US, primarily when it comes to Fedor and Cro Cop.

My main point was that there's no way Fedor is the greatest heavyweight of all time. He's not even top three for me. A prime Fedor, fighting under the conditions laid out by the US athletic commissions isn't beating the likes of Stipe, Cain, or DC.

The guy couldn't even beat a fucking middleweight in Dan Henderson, which says it all.

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34 minutes ago, Egg Shen said:

Lets make a list of the top guys who came over, were there that many busts? Genuine question without looking too much into it...

Based on their initial runs in UFC

Mild success

Hendo (beat three UFC stalwarts, only losing to fellow Pride stalwarts Anderson and Rampage)

Shogun (overcame injury woes to become champion)

Rampage (knocked out UFC's long-standing champion, lost to Griffin in a close contest, but beat Jardine)

Big Nog (got blitzed by Mir, but beat both Sylvia and Couture)

Mixed

Wanderlei (lost to Liddell and Franklin, but beat Bisping and Jardine)

Werdum (beat Vera and Gonzaga, but lost to Arlovski and JDS)

Lil Nog (went 4-0 stateside before losing to Davis and Bader)

Fedor (blitzed Sylvia, Rogers and Arlovski before going on his losing streak)

Busts

Cro Cop

Sokoudjou

Dennis Kang

Gomi (although he did switch some 3 years after Pride folded)

 

31 minutes ago, David said:

The guy couldn't even beat a fucking middleweight in Dan Henderson, which says it all.

Miocic couldn't even beat Struve 

Cain got dropped 3 times by Kongo 

If you think that the Fedor of 2011 was the same Fedor as 2004, then fine. But I sincerely doubt that was the case. 

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