Why are Americans all so fixated with the A level athlete BS?

[BC]

Lmao prebek was a legend

 

[Stormtrooper85]

Maybe not an American thing but idiots on Sherdog thing

 

[bubbleboyjones]

I'm Italian and here in Europe and UK you hardly hear about this A level rubbish.
Is it something you guys get from American football?

For example in football (aka soccer) we never talk about A level athletes, we talk about players being skilled. It is packed with extremely athletic guys who can't make it in football because they are not skilled enough and do not have the talent to become skilled.

On here I always hear how these supposedly A level athletes would roast all UFC FIGHTERS. I think it's utter bulls hit. Being a great fighter requires not only athleticism but also (and more importantly) a huge set of skills, a solid chin and huge huge guts.

Let's have a look at the current champs:

HW C not very athletic but great skill and chin
LHW: since DC is HW let's say it s Jones, B level athlete with great distance control and timing, length, supersolid chin
MW: BOBBY Knuckles, very well rounded, wouldn't say he s an extraordinary athlete
Ww: Woodley is a very gifted, blacksplosive athlete....A level confirmed
LW: khabib , not a level, huge skill and chin

It' getting late so I ll stop here

Because the U.S. is setup very differently. The education system is setup largely to filter most of the best athletes into football, basketball and smaller extent baseball. Lets put it this way. If you were a very high level athlete at 14 years old why wouldn't you want to go into say football or basketball where you will be automatically in the highest standing social scene in your school and you'll date the upper level girls. On top of this if you excel in the sport you can land a full scholarship to a University where you'll be a celebrity at your school and compete on national televised games all while banging the best girls at your school. If you excel at that you can end up making millions of dollars right out of college playing professional. Thats why largely most of the best athletes are not in the combat sports and are in the A leagues. Sort of like how Jon Jones's brothers are NFL players. Its not a coincidence Jones's happens to be in GOAT status and his brothers are NFL players. Genetics do matter at the highest levels.

https://worldview.stratfor.com/article/european-difference-collegiate-athletics

To my European colleagues, the amounts of money involved in U.S. secondary school and college athletics programs are hard to fathom. European students do, of course, participate in athletics. The options available to them on campus are all quite modest, though. For high-level competition, they must look elsewhere. Each model of education has its associated positives and negatives. Compared with most of their counterparts elsewhere, U.S. universities forge much stronger connections to their alumni. As a consequence of their athletics programs and other outreach efforts, they also possess much stronger "brand identities," which enable them to tap into sources of funding such as donations from former students and lucrative licensing deals with outside companies.

 

[ILoveALLsports]

MMA fans are generally quite insecure when it comes to athleticism and money.

Athleticism&IQ both are powerful weapons.

 

[aus101]

Being flexible absolutely assist your fighting ability, do you even roll or kickbox bro? the fact someone can run a 4.33 means little without context, but if a being can push his body to that limit he has elite explosiveness. When that same guy starts throwing leg kicks the detractors will start singing a different tune, and when guys with 40 inch verts start throwing flying knees, we'll start seeing shit we've never seen before. I agree things like toughness obviously play a factor, but if you make it to the top of your profession I think it goes without saying your atleast decently tough.

Flexibility, sprinting ability, a HW fighter like Hunt has none of that and would crush any gymnast or sprinter no matter what their training is.

Pure freak 0.000001 percentile flexibility and sprinting speed is great in stretching sports or on the track but locked in a cage other facets of athleticism are more important (strength/power, endurance and toughness/durability).

 

[abedm]

if LeBron james jj watts russel w estbrook had taken up boxing or mma how well would have they done
Hypothetical would they have been able to beat a prime Muhammad ali or mike Tyson had LeBron russel watts all fought in the same era growing up started training at the same time