Tai Tuivasa was never that good

[Phisher]

His signature win was Derrick Lewis.

That tells you everything that you need to know about the HW division.

 

[moreorless87]

He was no. 3 at one point, top 5 for a while and headlined many cards even comained PPVs shows how horrific this era of HW is

People were comparing him to Mark Hunt LMAOOOOOO he was Hunto whipping boy thats like comparing Mokaev to Khabib

Past it heart defect Struve
Harry Hunsucker <Lmaoo>
Greg Hardy <Lmaoo><Lmaoo>
Sakai <Lmaoo><Lmaoo><Lmaoo>
Lewis <Lmaoo><Lmaoo><Lmaoo><Lmaoo>

One of most blatant matchmaking runs ever

Gane was his most winnable matchup in the upper level since Gane cant grapple and even tho he gave Gane problems (LMAOOOO) and almost KOd him he lost

Hunt really I think you see the difference, both big tough aussies but Mark actually had pretty strong technical chops as a kickboxer, he didnt just look to get people up against the cage/ropes and brawl.

Really with modern HW you can go a LONG way without ever really being tested that much, the division is full of non technical brawlers with very limited grappling. Actual fights between gquine elite fighters in their prime happen very rarely and as a result even big names have aspects of their game which are very untested.

The equivlent to me back in the day would be someone like say Gary Goodridge or Roman Zentsov and honestly I think they were arguably better grapplers with better cardio and Tai.

 

[Iroh]

Which one is the better bowler?

Go to a bowling forum, bud.

 

[sanguinius]

Go to a bowling forum, bud.

You're the one that brought up other sports in an mma forum, bud.

 

[GOATtalks]

Age does not define state of fighter. It is only a factor.

Look at Jan who entered his prime at 37 years old.
I am pretty sure there are young guys who are so wasted that are already past it at young age.

Lol. You’re going by the Shertard logic- you win= prime, you lose= not prime.

Tai is 31 with 22 pro fights. He may not have even hit his peak. It’s just that last four guys he fought ( Gane, Pavlovich, Volkov, Tybura) are all way more skilled than Tai

 

[Iroh]

You're the one that brought up other sports in an mma forum, bud.

You know how retarded it is to insinuate that kickboxing skills from a kickboxing career aren't relevant to a striker in MMA? I guess guys like Mirko, Izzy and Poatan just completely lucked out that they even won one fight ever, considering they didn't have any prior experience that could help them win a MMA fight. They just magically knew how to fight in MMA.

Guess that Sambo background wasn't relevant to Khabib, or BJJ background wasn't relevant to Maia. How long have you been watching combat sports, bu,d? Started yesterday I assume.

 

[blaseblase]

Yea, he kinda does. Exciting doesn't mean skilled.

They're both fighting in the HW division where most if not all the fighters there have the ability KO one another. But when it comes to actual skills in MMA Tuivasa and Lewis both lack them, more so Tuivasa, Lewis actually has some takedown defense and sub defense skills, Tuivasa not so much.

You're the one saying all fighters are not skilled, I'm specifically targeting Tuivasa.

It was an odd scenario where Black Beast has more knockout power and better defensive grappling skills but Tai came in at the right time and laid him out. So we spent 2 years pretending Tai was a top 10 fighter. Derrick Lewis beats a lot of the guys Tai would lose to via grappling and I don't think Tai would beat the top 10 guys Lewis has KO'd. Tai vs Lewis is probably close to a 50/50 matchup based on stylistic matchup and Tai just happened to win.

 

[sanguinius]

You know how retarded it is to insinuate that kickboxing skills from a kickboxing career aren't relevant to a striker in MMA? I guess guys like Mirko, Izzy and Poatan just completely lucked out that they even won one fight ever, considering they didn't have any prior experience that could help them win a MMA fight. They just magically knew how to fight in MMA.

Guess that Sambo background wasn't relevant to Khabib, or BJJ background wasn't relevant to Maia. How long have you been watching combat sports, bu,d? Started yesterday I assume.

How many fighters play soccer, bud? What sports do you find relevant to bring up for no reason, bud? Is it just for fighters that you are defending for no reason, bud? Thanks for being a buddy, bud.

 

[Iroh]

How many fighters play soccer, bud? What sports do you find relevant to bring up for no reason, bud? Is it just for fighters that you are defending for no reason, bud? Thanks for being a buddy, bud.

Lol I am not defending a fighter. I am just defending my opinion. But seeing as you have no clue what my conversation was about and still want to argue for some reason, it's clear that you are just a Hunt hater or just troll in general. Certainly not a serious MMA fan though. Going by your join date, you really are a noob to the sport or you're just a return ban and going by this likely troll attempt, I see another ban coming in your future.

 

[WillyWill]

TO the people who've mentioned Nog, Pride HW's the golden age of HW's, this pains me to say as a lover of BJJ and a competitive grappler myself, but Tai Tuivasa destroy any version of Nog or Barnett. We know that in MMA< and in fact all sports, that as the sport grows older it advances more, todays best guys are better than a decade ago's best guys, a lot better than 2 decades ago. ANd it's not even a matter of technique (which is proboly the variable that changes the least over time) but nutrition, modern sports medicine (PED's, rehydration) periodization of training, specialty, a more narrowd focus, larger athlete pool. The barrier to entry now is just much higher.

And while it's impossable to quantify or judge if modern athletes out perform previous eras, there are some things that can and have been recorded properly;
Most discuss throwing records for the greatest mark.
the Golf longest drives in history (granted that the majority of record holder here are from decades ago),
NBA career free throw record holders
NBA most 3 pointers all time (which belongs to Steph Curry, as does the career FTP

most of the top 5-top 10 in each of these are dominated by years closer to the present. but in the spirit of transparency, some of the records are still half a century old. But, again, in the case of the NBA, these are not just records in the gym, they're achieved against resisting opponents (who, by my theory, are also better)

I love stories of older athletes who are still active in Pro sports. Like, if i had to write a masters degree thesis on something, it would be on that. Lebron, TOm Brady, this lady. But that's wholly different than thinkinh the athletes of yesterday are superior -a real laughable take - or even competitive with todays. The dominant HW's of the early 2000's were, by todays standards, guys who should be cutting weight to fight at LHW. about a decade sgo there was this line repeated ad nauseam on here that the "Best HW's were guys that weight in at the mid 230's." Sure there's a point of diminshing returns, but looking at todays climate its pretty clear that the guys with some talent that are solid and 250-the HW limit usually whoop guys who are more talented/skilled but give up 20lbs of mass.

I know this is long, but one other thing thats been bothering me on here for almost 10 years. siunce i started reading this forum in probobly 2008, ive been seeing this line repeated ad nauseam "there's not ss many good HW's in MMA because guys that big usually choose a conventional sport because it pays better" IMO that's such a bullshit, lazy, lack of any - let alone critical - thought saying...

because it implies that the talented 200+ pound athletes out there chose their sport either a) after they grew into their adult man size or b)chopse their port based on what they were likely to go pro in. In both cases this is dumb; people choose their desired sport because that's what they happened to become the best at growing up playing. Lebron didn't "choose basketball because he knew he was going to be big and it would make him rich" Basketball CHOSE him, and it chose him because thats what he probboly liked the best as a kid. ya know, when you can put 8 hours a dsay into a hobbie. Colin Kapernick. He was also very good at baseball, could of pursued it harder and made it to the majors. But he went the NFL route; not because, though, thats where he could of made more money, but because... he was also good at it! Do you think if he discovered he REALLY wanted to go in the NBA an in 11th grade decided to shift his focus to playing b-ball, he could have just walked on the team? hell no. He had been throwing and playing baseball and football ssince he was a boy. Long before he ever knew he was going to be big, or hve the skill to be a pro. Remember when Michael Jordan played baseball? by this sherdog theory that guys "pick their sport" he should have been able to walk onto the field and have a mediocre MLB csareer. But that wasn't the case, and not because of any lack of sthleticism, or desire, but because he hadn't been playing baseball with the concentration required to be pro. Now thjat said the barrier to entry to MMA is a lot lower thsn pro sports and there are guys who, in their late 20's or 30's decided they wanted to get into MMA partly because they thought they had a goo0d chance of making it. But for each of them, there is also a guy COMING from an established career in another pro sport who just, for whatever reason, csnt translate their athleticism to MMA (Greg Hardy, first that comes to mind) EVery young athletes WANTS to be pro, but actually achieving it is a result of a mind boggling amount of factors - luck being a huge one - and to imply that an athlete has a choice in what they are going to excel at based on what the sport pays and some knowledge that they know theyre going to be of a certain size. Like, thinking back, can any of you recall standout youth athletes in any sport who said "I am as good as i am because there's a liklier chance that i'll make it in X sport." NO. NOT AT ALL! they just found out vis trial and error what sport they enjoyed the msot and then got the bug and couldn't put the ball down.

Sorry for the long post, ive tried to make the point on here over the decade and a half hoping one day it would be read and really that id be able to put it into words the right way. I can never seem to elaborate my point commensurate to how strongly i feel opposed to the aforementioned.

 

[sanguinius]

Lol I am not defending a fighter. I am just defending my opinion. But seeing as you have no clue what my conversation was about and still want to argue for some reason, it's clear that you are just a Hunt hater or just troll in general. Certainly not a serious MMA fan though. Going by your join date, you really are a noob to the sport or you're just a return ban and going by this likely troll attempt, I see another ban coming in your future.

Does this mean that we aren't buds anymore, bud? What's hunt's best bowling score?

 

[Iroh]

Does this mean that we aren't buds anymore, bud? What's hunt's best bowling score?

We can be buds, bud. But we clearly won't be talking about MMA You seem to really like bowling though. Maybe we can be bowling buds.

 

[sanguinius]

We can be buds, bud. But we clearly won't be talking about MMA You seem to really like bowling though. Maybe we can be bowling buds.

Oh, I like talking about MMA, like how Hunt has a sub .500 record and has lost to several cans, which makes comparisons between him and other brawlers more than valid. You are the one that changed the subject, bud.

 

[Iroh]

Oh, I like talking about MMA, like how Hunt has a sub .500 record and has lost to several cans, which makes comparisons between him and other brawlers more than valid. You are the one that changed the subject, bud.

Oh, I am sure you like to talk about it. You just don't understand it, which makes it clear to me that talking about it with you has no benefit to me.

 

[sanguinius]

Oh, I am sure you like to talk about it. You just don't understand it, which makes it clear to me that talking about it with you has no benefit to me.

Yeah, I’m clearly too new at this sport to not make a mistake like comparing two one-dimensional fighters that lose more often than not. Do you think Tai would beat Sean mccorkle? Have you heard of him before?

 

[Iroh]

Yeah, I’m clearly too new at this sport to not make a mistake like comparing two one-dimensional fighters that lose more often than not. Do you think Tai would beat Sean mccorkle? Have you heard of him before?

You can do whatever you want to, bud. Make all the comparisons you want. Now you just gotta find someone who wants to entertain your overly simplistic comparisons.

 

[sanguinius]

You can do whatever you want to, bud. Make all the comparisons you want. Now you just gotta find someone who wants to entertain your overly simplistic comparisons.

13-14, bud.

 

[deanambrose]

Lol. You’re going by the Shertard logic- you win= prime, you lose= not prime.

Tai is 31 with 22 pro fights. He may not have even hit his peak. It’s just that last four guys he fought ( Gane, Pavlovich, Volkov, Tybura) are all way more skilled than Tai

Dafuq? What you wrote is plain stupid. I make fun of shertards who think that you lose = you were never that good.
I actually analyze fighters. I am planning to write article about lifecycle of a fighter because many of you are clueless.

 

[GOATtalks]

Dafuq? What you wrote is plain stupid. I make fun of shertards who think that you lose = you were never that good.
I actually analyze fighters. I am planning to write article about lifecycle of a fighter because many of you are clueless.

Lol. Tai just isn’t a skilled fighter. His loses have nothing to do with his prime. He has no wrestling, no BJJ, his striking is sloppy and his chin isn’t granite. The only thing going for him is his KO power. Basically he only has a puncher’s chance in every fight and that’s not enough when facing the elites. His only good win is Lewis, who’s also just a brawler.

 

[MeatGrinder]

It's impossible to be 265 and shredded without a huge amount of steroids. All HW are going to look at least a little soft

A little soft vs a massive pile of blubber are very different. And there are PLENTY of Hw that are indeed pretty shredded and healthy looking.