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I respect his achievements, I recognise that he has been something we are not accustomed to, which is a consistent Heavyweight. That said, I don't think he's some unstoppable force with skills for days.
I think he has some semblance of boxing skill and understands the fundamentals of defense and head movement, unlike Werdum, Overeem and dos Santos. I remember a time where Junior dos Santos' boxing looked incredible for an MMA fighter, but when you see him back up with his hands down and his chin in the sky time and time again, you start to smell the coffee.
Stipe also has some solid wrestling. Enough to beat on big guys with no floor skills like Hunt and Ngannou, as well as good enough to stop Overeem or Werdum from submitting him. That said, he's not faced one elite wrestler, actually, not even a half decent one.
I just want to see a challenge, that's all.
You can't judge HWs the same way you judge smaller fighters. No he isn't some hyper skilled DJ type fighter. What he is, is the unquestioned best HW of the current era. He's 35 years old himself, it's not like this is some young cat coming up and catching all these out of prime fighters.
The Werdum he beat was fresh off the best performance of his entire storied career. The Overeem he fought had just crane kicked Arlovski's head off and KO'd JDS. Francis was on an incredible KO streak. I'll give you JDS wasn't at his best but Stipe also fought JDS at his best before Stipe was at his best and almost beat him then too. Hunt and Arlovski are still pretty good fighters and Stipe absolutely destroyed both of them, neither guy got in even a bit of offence against him
You can't just write the guy off because the guys he's beating has holes, because they always had these holes and yet there wasn't anyone else running through all of them
You can only beat the fighters in front of you and Stipe is beating them all and doing it by either first round KO, or 5 round destruction. What more are you looking for here?
What wrestler should he have fought? Brock is suspended, Cain is hurt, Blaydes got smashed by Ngannou and DC dropped because he loves Cain. And he's about to fight one now and probably another in his next fight if he wins (Blaydes or Brock). And yet, if he does, all we'll probably hear about is how he beat a LHW and a washed up (Brock) or green (Blaydes) fighter