A-Level Alert: 6'8" NBA-Level First-Round Draft Pro Athlete Targets UFC

We shall see how it goes. Hope he can actually fight, not swing like most of the nba fights I've seen.
 
Good luck to the guy and I hope he can survive on the ground. Seems like he will get taken down very easily and either submitted or TKO'd.
 
DaWrassler007 said:
Yoel with his roid gastank would after couple of minutes for holding a beer<{Heymansnicker}>
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Almost all his finishes came in the last round, almost all the rounds he wins are the later rounds, so apparently his gas tank is better than his opponents when it matters.

But hey, why let facts get in the way of trying to be funny right?

<RomeroSalute>
 
AngryPorto said:
Being tall is not inherently advantageous, ask Stefan Struve. And picking up MMA when you're 30 also isn't usually a winning formula, especially with no other combat sports background. If he makes it through the amateur scene he would probably get stomped in the UFC, but hey I'd love to be wrong.
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This. It's getting to the point where mma has been around so long that guys in their 20s grew up training mma since they were little kids. It's going to be hard to bridge that skill gap when his life has been spent on the court. It's also different from football which is a sport that has hard contact and wrestling esque body movements. Then you gotta factor in his willingness to take a punch, confidence in the cage against another man trying to take his head off, and how well he can actually take a punch. That's all before even how much skill he can actually pick up before a fight.
 
KID Yamamoto said:
To be fair struve has medical issues. Drago is 6'7 and has had amazing success just due to his ability to keep a distance.
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Fair enough, Struve did look pretty great back when he beat Stipe and yeah health issues since then definitely took a toll on him. If he learned to fight like Jones he would have terrorized the HW division.

Still, a lot of really tall dudes don't have great mobility, so they end up being a big tree whose legs you just chop at until they fall down.

Anecdotally, I used to train MMA and I'm HW, and I never really had problems with dudes who were taller than me (I'm 6'2") as I was always fast enough to hit and run. I think this is why HWs like Cormier and Stipe and JDS in his prime were so successful. Size hurts for sure but speed kills, and when you combine size and speed that's devastating. The really tall dudes never seem to be fast enough.
 
KID Yamamoto said:
Drago is 6'7 and has had amazing success just due to his ability to keep a distance.
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Well, that and being a lifelong martial artist and an incredibly skilled kickboxer. Royce White is just tall. Period.
 
I wish him luck but the assumption that NBA and NFL players are somehow A-level compared to combat athletes always struck me as misguided and possibly grounded in an ignorance of the sports in question.
 
ReadWrite said:
U5665P1117T41D3202F698DT20130929130532.jpg

Inspired by Kobe's competitiveness, ex-NBAer Royce White chases dream to be UFC heavyweight champ

By Kevin Iole

“One of the benefits of starting later is that you get to have a sense of calling,” Royce White said. “I hope to be able to bridge the world between basketball and MMA. I don’t mean basketball players, but I mean the neighborhoods around the country where I came from where guys choose to play basketball at an early age. If I can help to inject that kind of enthusiasm about mixed martial arts into those communities and we start to get a lot of those NBA-level athletes, NBA-level talents, to venture into mixed martial arts, I think that will eventually expand mixed martial arts greatly.

“I do think that the Kobe Bryants of the world would select MMA at least some of the time if they had a proper understanding of it and an approach to the purity of the competition.”

“He was a naysayer silencer,” White said. “He was driven by silencing the naysayers, and he did it in a way where he’d say, ‘It’s not that I’m giving you that much credit as naysayers, but I am getting a bit of satisfaction knowing you were out there naysaying when I broke through. That’s the Mamba mentality and that’s what I think you need to bring to your job as a high-level professional athlete if you’re serious about succeeding. I believe in what I’m doing. I believe in my coaches.”

https://sports.yahoo.com/inspired-b...am-to-be-ufc-heavyweight-champ-225807655.html
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He got owned in a fight by Josh Smith or somebody in that stupid 3 on 3 league.

Greg Hardy would KO this bum.
 
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AngryPorto said:
Fair enough, Struve did look pretty great back when he beat Stipe and yeah health issues since then definitely took a toll on him. If he learned to fight like Jones he would have terrorized the HW division.

Still, a lot of really tall dudes don't have great mobility, so they end up being a big tree whose legs you just chop at until they fall down.

Anecdotally, I used to train MMA and I'm HW, and I never really had problems with dudes who were taller than me (I'm 6'2") as I was always fast enough to hit and run. I think this is why HWs like Cormier and Stipe and JDS in his prime were so successful. Size hurts for sure but speed kills, and when you combine size and speed that's devastating. The really tall dudes never seem to be fast enough.
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Stipe is 6'4 and wide. The dude is a beast. Browne is 6'7 and when he was at an actual gym beat very veteran HW's
When used right height is 100% and advantage.
 
No true NBA talent is gonna dedicate their lives to fighting when they can make wayyyyyyyy more money playing basketball
 
He couldn't cut in NBA due to fear of flying but I'm sure he'll do just fine inside a cage

<6>
 
This dude was (is?) absolutely an A-level athlete and was a good baller. I wish him well, but I'm not gonna pretend to have any real insight on his ability like some clowns here already have.
 
KID Yamamoto said:
Stipe is 6'4 and wide. The dude is a beast. Browne is 6'7 and when he was at an actual gym beat very veteran HW's
When used right height is 100% and advantage.
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Oh for sure, no doubt. Outside of Travis Browne though we haven't really seen any really tall fighters who also have excellent mobility, and Travis Browne seemed to peek around the Barnett fight. What I'm saying is I think there's a diminishing return, where being tall inevitable makes you less mobile and you become just a tree in the mud.
 
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