Reasons for Cowboy's downfall

[fightfan84]

he doesn't look at film of his opponent or formulate a gameplan, basically goes in there and wings it.

He personally doesn't but states how he leaves that to his coaches and they come up with the game plan. He's doesn't just wing it. He goes off thebgame plan his coaches put together based of the film they watch

 

[MEAN357]

to small for ww to big for lw. has shitty hands and mentally wilts under pressure. great fighter when he's on tho. dudes got a TON of mileage on em and he's hitting that other side of the fence pretty quickly

 

[aichokyu]

age, mileage, small for his weightclass.

 

[orca]

He has weakness to guys who have a really good hands

 

[Roman_23]

He personally doesn't but states how he leaves that to his coaches and they come up with the game plan. He's doesn't just wing it. He goes off thebgame plan his coaches put together based of the film they watch

Yes, but still though would make sense to see with your own eyes what the other guy can do. Be mentally prepared.
Also I just remembered that Cerrone doesnt spar. Maybe he should get back to some reasonable sparring.

Edit
For example invite Nate fookin Diaz . Not like hes very busy nowadays anyway. I know that they had beef, but aparrently no more.

 

[Rav1nHunter]

He reaches to much with his punches it leaves him open to counters over the top

 

[99escobar]

Fighting really good competition at a higher weight class than he should be fighting.

 

[eseseses681]

I, personally, think he's up there with BJ Penn as far as archetypal bully-fighters go. If you don't know what I mean by that, it's guys who fight like the cliche bully in school; they're the most terrifying person in the world when they have their way, but the second they actually start to face some adversity they crumble. How many fights in BJ's career has he actually rebounded from serious adversity to do well and even win? Siver was probably the closest example just because he made a comeback in the final round.
Compare that to fights where BJ started to struggle and his chances of victory just got lower and lower with each passing minute (like against St-Pierre, Hughes, Edgar, Diaz, Macdonald, Rodriguez, even the Uno rematch once Caol started to outstrike BJ with his kicks, stuffed BJ's shots and started to get his own takedowns... that's why the fight was a draw.)
Cerrone's like that. Looking at his record, as far as adversity-filled matches go (not just fights that had a competitive round, like against Miller) that he either won or didn't get crushed in, there's Guillard (who's kind of another bully fighter, by the way), the first Henderson fight kind of, maybe the first dos Anjos fight (like, technically, since he won the third round), and Alvarez, who was the best example and where Cerrone uncharacteristically didn't have a bully mentality after Eddie rocked him pretty bad in the first round.
Then compare that to the first Varner fight (before Varner became a drug addict), Nate, Pettis, dos Anjos II, Masvidal, Till... Till was probably the most significant example. It started out competitive, but then Till's basic southpaw-orthodox strategy of focusing on his right-hook and left-straight started working and he landed a lot of them, and Cerrone started to wilt really fast, and you could see the progression within one round.
There's not too much you can do about that. If it's somebody's style, you can't do much to change it (you'd end up making them worse in the end for doing it), and struggling with adversity is the big downside to the bully fighter (but, like BJ Penn at his peak, it has its upsides.)

I also don't buy the whole "he eats too many shots cuz' he doesn't have good boxing" bullshit. As though Muay Thai fighters know nothing about striking defense and eat punches constantly from anyone with good boxing. It's like just shitty striking advise that kinda sounds like you know what you're talking about, even though when you actually break down every aspect of someone's style (which you have to do to actually give someone effective striking advise-- that's why good striking coaches hit the pads with their fighters for a long time before they even try to change anything about their style) it's shitty advise.
It's like when Arlovski made his 2014-15 comeback and he focused on landing his right hand in his fights, and people were like, "Arlovski really needs to work on his boxing. He's just begging to get hit when he throws his right hand; he really needs to jab more." As though he didn't do exactly that against Fedor, Rogers, Bigfoot, and Kharitonov over the course of two years...

 

[TheBulletwithWings]

Didn't he lose to RDA and Pettis, had very close fights with Bendo?

That was my point, plus lost 2x to Bendo

 

[MMonk]

Lost to Masvidal, a very solid boxer, crafty vet and clearly very improved to the point he may be a legit top 5. Lost to former champ Lawler, who defended quite a few times, very powerful and skilled striker and long time vet. Lost to Till, young prospect with good striking, speed, power, accuracy, etc, who also had a big size advantage in every way and has all the potential in the world.

Hardly a ‘downfall’. He’s fighting great opponents, not bums. Masvidal and Till were truly just bad match ups for him and he was very competitive with Lawler, many believe he actually won that’s fight. Not saying he isn’t going on the decline now (we don’t really know yet), just that losing to this level of competition is not a very good way to come to that conclusion.

By downfall i mean three losses in a row, with two of them being finishes.
Nothing like that happenned to him before.

 

[mjfan23]

Downfall? He was overrated all along

 

[Drain Bamage]

MILEAGE

Between the training and the fights... he's not the guy thats gonna be able to put long winning streaks together anymore

Body is rekt

That being said I dont think he is DONE, I think he just needs a more measured schedule and approach to training

 

[machidafan99]

Just some bad match-ups and perhaps not evolving and fixing the holes in his game.

He did very well against Lawler after the first half of round one, for example.

He should have left Jackson's long ago.

 

[datfnguy]

1-Is taking too many fight too often.

If we look at his career, he's figthing very often, a lot of times only 2-3 months between fights,
which is absolutely not enough to recover fully after wars.

F.E. after being KTFO by Jorge he took 6 months and came back to put a great performance against Robbie.

But after such a war, he took less than 3 months to recover and go through camp, which is very little.
He should have taken 1-2 months completely off to heal. And then time to adjust and camp.

He needs to fight 3 times a yeat max and take recoery seriously.

2- Lack of boxing.

Yes he improved in that area, but still eats too many shots, FE against Jorge and Robbie,
which , in addition to taking fights too often leads to brain damage and being chinny,
which Till well exploited.

He needs to focus on boxing fundamentals and defence.

3- Weight class?

Cerrone is a small WW, but cutting down to 155 again, would make his weak liver and chin even weaker.

He could benefit from 165 LB weight class and stricter weight cutting policy, where Huge WW
would have to go up to 175 ir even 185.

P.S. Still a Cowboy fan.

Discuss

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I think you can stop it #1. It's the same as Melvin Guillard, they are older in fight years than they are in actual age due to all the training and fighting.

 

[Aegon Spengler]

He should not have gone to WW. Joe Rogan was wrong to convince him to stay there.

 

[cevo]

How about RDA, Pettis and Bendo?

?

Cerrone has 2 losses against RDA (1 via finish), 1 loss against Pettis (finish) and 1 extremely controversial "win" against Bendo (as well as 2 old losses).

And neither have great hands.

 

[DOMMA]

Reflexes diminishing - age and # of fights

 

[machidafan99]

He was TKO'd twice by Masvidal, the bell saved him.
They catch his kick and then punch the hell out if head.

Cerrone has no surprises or plan B or C which works well now only against other planless fighters like Alvarez.

 

[snugglecakes]

is this really a downfall or is he just being the same gamekeeper he always was and just happened to face better opponents 3 times in a row? Was it a downfall when bendo made it apparent that cowboy will never ever get his hands on the WEC title? Was it a downfall when nate diaz made him look like garbage? Was it a downfall when a blown up featherweight who himself was about to go on a slump destroyed him in less than half a round? Was it a downfall when RDA didn't break a sweat destroying him in barely over a minute? Or maybe he was always a gatekeeper who just happened to get favorable match ups between all his losses up till now, when they finally gave him 3 high level opponents in a row?

Maybe he needs to join the ranks of UFCers who thought they can just waltz on over to bellator and nonchalantly win a title there... and then lose there.

 

[Roman_23]

Downfall? He was overrated all along

Classic sherdog answer. Of course he always was a can.
Really?