Fighters Who Achieved A Lot, But Didn't Maximise All Potential?

[ChosenMMA]

Thoughts? BJ is a prime example which will be mentioned. For me in today's sport, Velasquez is regarded as one of the best heavyweights of all time, despite having low activity and having long stint of injuries which hindered his title runs and just general big opportunities, nobody can deny his ability but he has lost a lot of time.

JDS was an animal from a young age who put together a resume of destroying guys like Werdum, Velasquez, Cro Cop, Mir and more in no time, suffered brutal rematch loses to Cain and since then has gone below the radar and people have touted him as a declined fighter when he is one of the younger vets of the heavyweight division at 32 because of the damage he took.

 

[bambammccoy]

JDS with lateral movement would have been HW GOAT.

 

[TourIsOverBoyo]

The top answer to this type of question will always be BJ Penn

 

[MikeHolmes]

Rory MacDonald came into the UFC as a young prospect who could take the torch from GSP. Instead, despite a very successful UFC career, he never was able to touch gold.

 

[illegalnature]

Anthony Pettis.

He was on a tear and so was Benson decisioning everyone and Pettis just subbed him like nothing with that nice armbar for the belt.

After that just kind of fell off and is almost irrelevant. Id love to see him in his prime vs Conor instead of Eddie.

 

[charalsias]

Fedor.He is so close to being the undisputed GOAT.But he had his worst perfomances(past his prime) on the biggest stage.

Even the ways he lost those three matches.Stupidly going into werdum's guard,knocked out from the weirdest position by an H-bomb and doctor stoppage from TRT bigfoot...

 

[Rav7n]

Thoughts? BJ is a prime example which will be mentioned. For me in today's sport, Velasquez is regarded as one of the best heavyweights of all time, despite having low activity and having long stint of injuries which hindered his title runs and just general big opportunities, nobody can deny his ability but he has lost a lot of time.

Jones over the last few years would have cleaned out the entire light heavyweight division if he beat Rumble and didn't mess up his own personal life.

JDS was an animal from a young age who put together a resume of destroying guys like Werdum, Velasquez, Cro Cop, Mir and more in no time, suffered brutal rematch loses to Cain and since then has gone below the radar and people have touted him as a declined fighter when he is one of the younger vets of the heavyweight division at 32 because of the damage he took.

Bj was a two weight champion and a legit mma pioneer.
I would Dare to say he fulfilled his potential to a degree.

 

[Chivas GDL]

Any guy that won a belt but trains at AKA

 

[Willek]

Alan Belcher.

 

[hot carl]

cain was overappreciated from day 1.

i didnt understand the hype and i dont understand it now.

 

[Enigma87]

David Terrell comes to mind

Also Nick Diaz sitting out most of his prime

 

[all caps]

Shogun

 

[JAGDPANZER209]

Diaz bros with wrestling and wrestling defense.

 

[Mga223]

Fedor.He is so close to being the undisputed GOAT.But he had his worst perfomances(past his prime) on the biggest stage.

Even the ways he lost those three matches.Stupidly going into werdum's guard,knocked out from the weirdest position by an H-bomb and doctor stoppage from TRT bigfoot...

As weird as this sounds it's sort of true, this was to continually bring him into the American public and everyone that didn't know who he was started to think he was a fraud.

 

[gunlok]

Conor McGregor (no joke)

 

[Psychedelic]

Lyoto.