I strongly disagree. I have a hunch that Almeida is a glass canon waiting to be exposed. He goes heavy on wrestling cause his standup isn't good, now he's facing a grappler who's not going to fall for all his crap. Almeida has always struck me as an over bloated lhw in the wrong weight division.
I wouldn't be that sure, Volkov took Blaydes down and his TDD also looked mid against Cody East.
but neither those guys did anything with it, tdd is overrated, getups and scrambles are more relevant. Almeida failing to tap Lewis is even more red flag. I don't worry about his last fight, Almeida doesn't carry those skills to ko Blaydes.
Has Blaydes ever shown anything that would suggest he wouldn't be one of those wrestlers who look like turtles off their back though? It's not like his top control ever looked truly stifling, it's why his takedown rate is so high, and at HW I don't think a dynamic scrambler is a given even if they have a wrestling pedigree.
if he hasn't been held down before , why assume now? Almeida isn't a crazy top CTRL specialist , Nasrudin was the last decent grappler he faced(that wasn't a fossil like shamil) and that was 205, he lost position several times. Got stuffed two times, expand that now to a life time wrestler, who's bigger and more credentialed. Almeida is due for a fall. I'll take Blaydes who's got more ufc experience and has a wider gap on the feet than he does on the ground.
Because Blaydes has literally never fought any good wrestler before? Look at the names on his record and tell me who you think would've tested Blaydes' grappling, old man Oleinik? Reem?
let's just use deductive logic. Lewis had enough grappling defense to thwart subs from Almeida, maybe due to his size. Blaydes is also a big fella and strong, we can deduce a no sub chance as we've seen Almeida hit a wall. A tko ground and pound? hardly see it happening, again you can apply the same logic to what he didn't do to lewis. So his path to victory is a 3 round 15 min ground ctrl win where he makes zero mistakes and lands every takedown and holds him down with ease, this is just a lot easier said than done, even Lewis stuffed 5 takedowns on a gassy Almeida, if Blaydes is still there, he's not going let Almeida dictate the grappling, he's going to do some takedowns of his own and help drain his tank, compounded with the wide striking gap, better chin, more experience in these scenarios, Blaydes should beat Almeida in the late rounds. The only scenario where Almeida puts on a flawless performance, it's landing a heavy punch and knocking out Blaydes on the feet, which i don't see happening , not enough cage time on the feet, nor has he shown he likes to even stand.
He didn't go with the plan to fight safe, he attempted four times to attack a sub and failed. He hits a wall on his submission rating or sub offense. That is really bad, the reasons are that it limits his potential to sub even better opponents than Lewis.
You've mentioned 5 rounds for this a few times or Jaliton cardio going into latter rounds, it's a 3 rounder isn't it? Why would it be 5?
He could've had an off-night though, and it's not like we've never seen high level guys struggle to finish dudes they should've ran over on paper.
when i went to research the maia fight , i kinda saw coming why that was so, Yakovlev had only got caught by armbars in every loss, he had a vulnerable spot with bottom bjj fighters when sitting in full guard. maia bulk subs are rnc. It has more to do with style matchup.
i was just bringing up cardio issues, not that it was 5, i say he tired out much more by 3rd.
