Paid Members wandshogun09 Posted March 5 Author Paid Members Posted March 5 Oof. Starting to feel real now boys. Quote
Paid Members Egg Shen Posted March 5 Paid Members Posted March 5 Yeah, got into some build-up today, looks forward to this one. Quote
jimufctna24 Posted March 5 Posted March 5 I feel about this fight the same way as I did for the Volk vs Holloway series. In that while I want Holloway to win, I would not take any pleasure in his opponent losing. Quite the opposite. Obviously, it'll be an enjoyable fight to watch. Quote
Dai Posted March 6 Posted March 6 Just read your report to get me in the mood for the fight. The Oliveira one was very interesting: - I don't recall that Felder stoppage at all. Can't believe that happened in 2017. - You missed out he actually got stripped of the title after missing weight. Not many fighters have done that. Makes me worry that he will weigh in at something crazy for this one because he knows Max will still take the fight. - Bizarre when you read your write up and then think about his memorable spell /peak being less than five years in duration . Can't really remember it from the time, but even during his four year prime run, I assume that 2018 wasn't even looked at at the time as something that noteworthy. Whilst both are part of the last generations golden era, Max for me is still miles above Charles in terms of favourates. One of the best ever, so will be enjoying his fights when I still can. Quote
Paid Members wandshogun09 Posted March 6 Author Paid Members Posted March 6 Right then. Doing my usual thing before rematches. But in case you forgot (or didn’t read the opening post), the main event isn’t the only rematch on this card. I’ll get to Holloway and Oliveira later but there’s a battle of Brazilians on the undercard in a rematch three years in the making. Gregory ‘Robocop’ Rodrigues and Brunno ‘The Hulk’ Ferreira crossed paths back in January 2023 on the prelims of a PPV in Brazil. It wasn’t the originally scheduled fight. Rodrigues was supposed to face Brad Tavares that night but Tavares dropped out injured. Ferreira got the call up to make his UFC debut on short notice. I actually went back to the thread for the event on here and I had this as my ‘one to watch’ despite never seeing Ferreira fight before. I was a fan of ‘Robocop’ already though. He’d already had a couple of stupidly fun fights in the UFC by this point. And he was coming fresh off that mad fight against Chidi Njokuani the previous September. If you don’t remember that one, this might refresh your memory… Yes. Enjoying your dinner were you? And the best bit is, Rodrigues ended up winning that fight by TKO in the second round. I vividly remember he was trying to get another fight booked just weeks later. Lunatic. And Ferreira was coming in undefeated at 9-0, all finishes, himself. So I guess that’s why I felt the need to highlight it. Even having never seen Ferreira fight before, it just sounded like pure violence and mayhem. Gregory Rodrigues vs Brunno Ferreira UFC 283: Teixeira vs Hill January 21st 2023 Rio de Janeiro, Brazil OK. Didn’t really need to be reminded of this card. Old Glover Teixeira going out sad losing to Jamahal Hill was a right downer. But we can take some solace in the fact that, just over a year later at UFC 300, Glover was in the corner to see his boy Alex Pereira chin and then turn Hill into a meme. Anyway, PPV commentary squad here of Jon Anik, Daniel Cormier and Paul Felder. Yes, we’re spared Rogan because he loves MMA so much he won’t even travel to Brazil (while being paid!) to call it. Referee is Fernando something or other. Don’t remember him. And we’re off… Round 1: Ferreira coming out southpaw. Rodrigues coming out absolutely fucking yoked to the gills. Gotta be in the convo for best physiques on the roster. Ferreira moving a lot and keeps switching stances. Ferreira lands early. They trade and Rodrigues whacks him with an uppercut in close that backs Ferreira right up. Straight right to the body by Rodrigues. Ferreira bouncing around more than I remember, throwing kicks and missing a lot of strikes. Rodrigues is kind of just stalking him. You can sense he’s just loading up and waiting for his opportunity to let that right hand go. Ferreira sort of half heartedly attempts a single leg from miles out and Greg easily avoids it. Ferreira looking a bit nervous and twitchy here. Guess it’s to be expected given it’s his UFC debut and on short notice. Rodrigues starting to land the jab now but Ferreira answers with a leg kick that gets gets him off balance for a second. They briefly wind up on the mat but it goes nowhere and they’re quickly back up. Ferreira throwing goofy wide punches and hitting air. Rodrigues walking him down now. Ferreira is getting backed up close to the fence and Rodrigues seems to smell blood in the water. He comes at Ferreira and… Boink. All over. It was an ugly KO really. Ferreira was moving around and throwing these shitty punches out there that were way too short to actually connect. Then all of a sudden that left comes out of nowhere and switches the lights out. Winner - Brunno Ferreira by knockout. Round 1 - 4:13. Not a whole lot you can take from that but it was an enjoyable enough one rounder and I expect something watchable in the rematch. Rodrigues has gone 5-1 since then, with the only loss coming against Jared Cannonier in their Apex headliner last February. Good scrap from what I remember and, even in defeat, Rodrigues was looking like a problem early. He bounced back from that loss with a brutal knockout win over Jack Hermansson in June and then a decision over Roman Kopylov on the MSG card in November. And Ferreira’s gone 5-2 since walloping Rodrigues. He’s coming into this fight on a three fight winning streak and took a decision off Marvin Vettori last time out in December. Think we pretty much know what we’re getting here. There’s always the chance one of them tries to go the grappling route this time and that doesn’t mean it’ll be a bad fight either. But I think this one is most likely ending with one of them looking at the lights. Just not sure which. As always, I’m pulling for Rodrigues though. Revenge for ‘Robocop’! Quote
Dai Posted March 7 Posted March 7 Both weighed in fine, thankfully, so barring a disaster then the fight is going ahead smoothly. Max is a 1/2 favourate for this one, which seems fair. Can't see many people picking Charles to win this one. Max to win in either R4, R5 or a decision at nearly 2/1 seems like a nice bet to me. Quote
Paid Members wandshogun09 Posted March 7 Author Paid Members Posted March 7 (edited) Almost feels pointless doing this for what turned out to be such an anti-climactic non-fight but sod it. In the second instalment of the Rematch Rewatch, it’s main event time. Going all the way back to the Summer of 2015 for this one… Ha, look at them. Just a couple of young, fresh faced Featherweights trying to make a name for themselves. At the time of this fight, Holloway was just 23 years old, Oliveira was 25. Holloway’s record was 13-3 with 7 finishes and he was coming off what was the biggest win of his career at that point, a submission over Cub Swanson. The three blemishes on his record were the submission loss to Poirier in their first fight, the decision loss to Conor McGregor when they were both still relatively green and what I remember being a very debatable split decision loss to Dennis Bermudez. But at this time he’d managed to string together a six fight win streak. Oliveira was 20-4-0-1 with 18 of his wins being finished inside the distance. I went into his ups and downs in the opening post but by this point he was on a nice four fight streak himself, although typically of the time, he’d missed weight in one of them. So yeah, as that old tweet I dug up earlier in the thread showed, I already wanted to see these two fight as early as 2014. By the time the fight got made here, it seemed like the ideal time for it. Both still young, both coming in off wins and both with momentum. I couldn’t wait. What could possibly go wrong? Max Holloway vs Charles Oliveira UFC Fight Night: Holloway vs Oliveira August 23rd 2015 Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada This was actually a rare Sunday Fight Night! Man, people moan about the lack of effort put in for some of today’s event posters but look at that shit. Proper basic, bare minimum stuff. Some blasts from the past on there. Although the co-main was actually Neil Magny (yes, he was around back then) against Erick Silva. Rick Story dropped out. Crazy really that Max vs Charles was just a Fight Night headliner back then. I know they weren’t the established names in 2015 that they’d become later, but it’s funny looking back. But this was at a seriously hot period in the UFC. That 2013-15 spell when you had both Conor McGregor and Ronda Rousey on the rise was something else. Those two coming along at the same time was nuts. The closest the UFC got to an equivalent to the WWF having Stone Cold Steve Austin and The Rock at the same time in the late 90s. Guess they could afford to give fights like this away free back then. Anyway… Forgot Brian Stann was doing colour back then. Always rated him. And look at young Jon Anik! With the hair and slightly chubby face. Had to go back and check when he actually started with the UFC. Turns out the first card he worked was a Fight Night on FX in January 2012! I didn’t recall him being around quite that long but of course he was. He came in when Mike Goldberg left didn’t he? Referee for this one is Herb Dean. Charles is rocking his natural black hair, didn’t bother with the bleach. Doesn’t look right. Oh and we’re in the worst phase of the Reebok fight kit era. When every fucker was wearing either black shorts with a white stripe or white shorts with a black stripe. What were they thinking? Abysmal. Buffer does his thing and we’re good to go. Round 1: There’s no real feeling out process here. Within the first 30 seconds or so Charles has tried a headkick and Max has thrown a spinning kick to the body. Holloway looking pretty good with the hands early but Oliveira nearly makes him pay for getting too close by going for the Thai clinch and firing off a knee. Holloway mixing his punches up to the head and body. He looks to be going for volume, which has always been his bread and butter despite the knockouts he’s scored in more recent years, and Oliveira appears to be looking to land something big. Oliveira with a spinning kick that’s about as slow as a Monday at work and misses badly. Max looking sharp with a lead uppercut and a straight left to the body. Then it happens. Charles shoots in for a takedown. It’s not the best attempt, they kind of bounce off the fence and Max manages to use his momentum and sloppiness against him and winds up in top position. Max obviously doesn’t fancy playing around down there in Oliveira’s guard, especially when they’re both fresh, and immediately creates space and stands back up. The gameplan is crystal clear already. Holloway wants to keep this on the feet as much as possible. And based on the first minute and a bit of the fight, he’s doing well for himself on the feet so why fix something that isn’t broken? He backs off and waves Oliveira to get back up. And this is when it gets weird. Charles slowly stands up, backs up against the cage and is holding the left side of his neck. Max comes forward thinking the fight is continuing and tries to throw a couple of punches but Charles just slowly slumps down to the canvas clutching his neck. He clearly can’t continue and Herb Dean steps in and waves the fight off. It looked quite scary and I remember in real time there was a lot of concern initially. At that point you don’t know what it is. I think my first thought at the time was that maybe his collarbone popped or something on the takedown attempt. He’s grabbing around that area. But the way he slid down the fence and looked almost like he was passing out, there was a fear that it might be something more serious. The commentators are as confused as anyone, the replays don’t really clear anything up and the crowd is massively deflated as you’d expect. Max celebrates a bit but does go over to check on Charles and show respect to his corner. Proper downer. Fight’s a wrap before it even properly got going. They have no choice but to declare it a TKO. Stann’s already calling for the rematch to be booked ASAP when Charles is healthy. Of course I couldn’t have agreed more but they weren’t exactly in a hurry were they. Eleven bastard years! Winner - Max Holloway by TKO. Round 1 - 1:39. Not the way Max would’ve wanted to win but, like I said, it’s the only call you can make. Whenever something like this happens you get people calling for a ‘No Contest’ and, while that seems fairer than a loss, it’s not some freak accident. Much like Tom Aspinall having that ‘loss’ to Curtis Blaydes when he blew out his knee seconds into the fight. Or more recently, Josh Van winning the title off Alexandre Pantoja because of an arm injury. It’s not ideal but the injury happened in the middle of battle. There wasn’t a foul committed or anything like that. It’s unfortunate but sometimes shit happens in sports. Especially combat sports. The hope is that everyone heals up and you get the rematch in timely fashion. Eleven years is taking the piss, like, but better late than never, I suppose. Max is classy in the post-fight interview… “Everybody send your prayers to Charles. It’s a part of the game, it’s kind of sad to see that happen. This is how we make a living, you know, so all my prayers to Charles. I hope he can have a full recovery.” - Max Holloway Over time, something changed, speculation started up that Oliveira was ‘faking’ the injury and he ‘quit’. Sounds familiar, eh, Mr Aspinall? Just bollocks. As flaky and inconsistent as Oliveira could be back then, I don’t buy that he’d just fake an injury to get out of a fight he’d trained for and made weight for. Not to mention it was less than two minutes into the fight. Wasn’t like he’d been taking some horrible beating or even had time to become mega frustrated or anything. But oddly, as I touched on in the opening post, Max seems to have doubts on the injury himself. Obviously in the cage in the immediate aftermath of the fight he was concerned. But he’s said a few times whenever the subject has came up in the years since that there was no official injury report or reason given for why Charles couldn’t fight on. Fuck knows? He said this last year when rumblings of the rematch started to pick up steam… “If you believe the first one was because of an injury, if you guys did your research, nothing was ever found for an injury when he was released by the doctor. Me and him have history. He’s blaming it on some kind of injury. I guess we get to figure it out now.” - Max Holloway I still don’t know 100% what the injury actually was. It looked like possibly the collarbone but then there were reports it was a “micro-tear in his oesophagus”, which doesn’t sound fun at all. I think Charles himself has said it was something to do with his neck though. Stemming from aggravating it in training. Whatever. Water under the bridge now and, despite Max calling it into question, they do seem to have a lot of respect for each other. They’ve been cool with each other from the interactions I’ve seen during fight week. The whole ‘controversy’ of the first fight is really something of nothing. I’m just happy that they’re actually tying up that loose end and giving us this fight after all these years. And in fairness, it’s probably better now than if they’d done the rematch in 2016 or whatever. Now there’s a backstory, both have reached the top of the game, both huge fan favourites, both former champions, both fully cemented as future Hall Of Famers and legends. And it’s at Lightweight now, which is obviously better for them than boiling down to Featherweight like they were back in 2015. By now you’ve probably kind of picked up on the fact that I can’t fucking wait for this fight tonight. I thought by now I’d have a clearer idea of how the fight is gonna go but I don’t really. Leaning towards Max but I can’t say I’m confident in it. I just think he’s a bit more consistent and he’s got a little bit more left in the tank. He looks refreshed at 155 and seems to have more sting in his punches to me than he did at 145 as well. And I just think he’s the better boxer of the two, and in a fight like this where a lot of it is probably gonna be decided on the feet, that’s gonna matter more. But…I don’t know. For all his shortcomings and hot and cold results in recent years, Charles Oliveira is still dangerous. Still a threat on the feet and definitely on the mat. And the fact is, as great as Holloway is, how many really strong grapplers has he actually faced in his career, much less beat? Seriously. Go back through his record. He’s fought a ‘who’s who’ of names, beat a lot of them, but he really hasn’t fought many grapplers. There was Frankie Edgar but he was past his peak by then and a wrestler more than a submission threat. There was Brian Ortega but from what I recall he mostly just stood and got his face beat in for 25 minutes. I don’t know. I don’t doubt Max’s skills but Oliveira is lethal on the ground. It might not matter, Charles also loves a good ruck on the feet so there’s a chance he completely neglects his grappling here. But I wouldn’t be surprised if Charles catches him in a sub either. And while I don’t think he’s as good a striker technically as Max, he’s got power in his hands too. Feels like anything can happen in this one but I’m slightly leaning towards Holloway on points, possibly a stoppage in the mid to late rounds. Edited March 7 by wandshogun09 Quote
jimufctna24 Posted March 7 Posted March 7 (edited) 30 minutes ago, wandshogun09 said: Forgot Brian Stann was doing colour back then. Always rated him. And look at young Jon Anik! With the hair and slightly chubby face. Had to go back and check when he actually started with the UFC. Turns out the first card he worked was a Fight Night on FX in January 2012! I didn’t recall him being around quite that long but of course he was. He came in when Mike Goldberg left didn’t he? That is my recollection, yes. I recall Goldberg randomly appeared in the crowd for a UFC show immediately following his departure. For some strange reason I didn't like Anik at first. I have no idea why because he's clearly very good at his job. He's a contender for GOAT MMA commentator certainly. My memory is a bit hazy, but I recall Stann being a decent commentator also. Edited March 7 by jimufctna24 Quote
Paid Members wandshogun09 Posted March 7 Author Paid Members Posted March 7 (edited) 1 hour ago, jimufctna24 said: For some strange reason I didn't like Anik at first. I have no idea why because he's clearly very good at his job. He's a contender for GOAT MMA commentator certainly. Same really. I remember comparing him to a QVC presenter at the time. Took a while for him to grow on me but he’s as close to perfect as you’re probably getting in the role he’s in. Shame he’s usually saddled with idiots doing colour these days like a checked out Rogan and/or Cormier who just rolls in having seemingly done zero prep. Edited March 7 by wandshogun09 Quote
Dai Posted March 7 Posted March 7 Kenny Florian wasn't bad either, I didn't think. A shame him and Stann got ditched but Cruz somehow surrived. Quote
Paid Members wandshogun09 Posted March 7 Author Paid Members Posted March 7 Nearly there. Here’s the fight card, start times and main card weigh in face-offs… Going with Holloway, Borralho, Font, Johnson and Robocop for my main card picks. Few of them are almost 50/50 toss-ups to me though. Definitely not the strongest overall card for a numbered show but there isn’t a fight out of that five there that I’m not interested in and all should be at least decent to watch, if not better. Quote
Dai Posted March 7 Posted March 7 A card, even a numbered one these days, where all the main card fights have at least one decent, known 'name' is a win in 2026. Max, RDR, Font, Dover and Robo for me. Quote
Paid Members Carbomb Posted March 7 Paid Members Posted March 7 I'm rubbish at predictions; I'm just going to say whom I want to see win. Holloway - nothing against Oliveira, but I feel like Max has a bit more shelf life left. RDR - again, nothing against Borralho, but I feel like De Ridder has more momentum, having been more active, and I'd like him to be able to wash away the bad taste of that kind of defeat. Rosas Jr. - he's a young prospect, and particularly young at that, so I'd like to see him build up some steam. Robocop - then we have a trilogy. It also goes without saying that I want to see all three Codys lose. Quote
Paid Members wandshogun09 Posted March 8 Author Paid Members Posted March 8 Only watched the main event so far, actually set the alarm for it, first time I’ve done that in ages. I’ll post more later but for now… Sorry lads. Not the fight I expected at all. Feel like I sold you all a bunch of ‘wolf tickets’ (Nick Diaz™️) over the last few years and in this thread especially. Didn’t hate the fight personally but definitely not what anyone expected. Quote
Cousin Jim Bob Posted March 8 Posted March 8 On the plus side, Dana must be absolutely fuming, and it made the daft BMF title look even more stupid. Quote
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