Media Aspinall's defense is porous and little more than just backing up.

[Trabaho]

He also can't throw a kick or knee without his hands down

He's an offensive juggernaught, but he's also reckless, has poor defence, and it's going to catch up to him. Plenty of offensive fighters have come and gone before him.

He didn't get hit with anything in all 3 gifs. You know that ?

 

[markg171]

He didn't get hit with anything in all 3 gifs. You know that ?

Not only is that wrong, but you somehow missed the point that having a bad tendency and weakness gets exploited.

Amazing.

 

[jitzmonkey]

While I won’t disagree, his speed seems to make up for his not super refined stand up technique.

We’ve seen him suffer from poor distance management when he crashed in too* far on Blaydes jamming his own leg kick.

While I was subsequently under the impression that he’d corrected the aforementioned “deficiency,” he still seemed to (I don’t know the correct term that won’t lead to a bunch of g@y jokes) “over-penetrate” and just generally stand a bit too close to Pavlovich.

Re Blaydes rematch: I’d have been more concerned if the challenger didn’t drag his rear foot.

In both of those fights, he was extremely v able to land counter shots by angling off the centerline (more pronounced in the former of his two previous fights.)

Since Gane’s fights are longer, I’m not going to review his most recent successes; but it’ll be interesting to see how the champ deals with someone who is lighter in his feet and extremely quick/athletic for the weight class.

Not going to address their respective ground games.

 

[bjjwar]

I think he got a declining Blaydes and Pavlovich has proven to be a bit overrated. I don't understand why he's such an overwhelming favorite against Gane. People seem to have forgotten about Gane's fight against Spivac after Ngannou and Jones. Spivac is a really good grappler and was even getting the better of Jailton Almeida until he wilted like always does.

People just hate Jon Jones so much that they can't forgive Gane for getting smoked and they want to discredit Jones so bad that they have to pretend Gane is a white belt and completely clueless when it comes to grappling.

Gane is great, but he IS a whitebelt in the grappling department. He and his coach admitted that he is lazy and never liked to train for grappling. Before the Jones fight, he was basically just playing with his pro video game team all the time instead of training for mma. Probably thought a fat LHW bum that just got destroyed by Reyes and Santos,2 mediocre fighters, has no chance and he didnt even need to train. Lol Jones himself even said it and was suprised weeks before the fight he only saw Gane playing video games all over the place. So no, that win for Jones isnt great looking back and taking into account the circumstances.

 

[chiefwiggum]

Apparently Jon disagrees with your assessment of Tom lmao

He said the fight doesn’t excite him. I get it.
He’s main evented some fight night cards in London.
The ufc can tell the fans it’s the biggest hw fight of all time and the fans can parrot that but it’s a pretty absurd statement.

For the life of me I can’t find any of his grappling matches. His mma fight ehere a guy tried grappling and his go black belt match he was immobile off his back and was dominated. And he’s done bjj since diapers? How?

 

[Tweak896]

He also can't throw a kick or knee without his hands down

He's an offensive juggernaught, but he's also reckless, has poor defence, and it's going to catch up to him. Plenty of offensive fighters have come and gone before him.

These sequences are great. Tom has more weaknesses than people like to admit. Still, the HW division is so poor that he only had 2 guys left that matter he hasn't beat yet. Also even in his exchange with Pavlovich he took one to give one. So his chin atleast isn't paper.

People need to set their feelings aside about the Jones/Aspinall crap and look at him as a fighter more objectively. He's well rounded and fast striking and power, but not perfect. Although he does smartly back up afterwards in 2/3 of those exchanges where he could, so his defense isn't totally zero.

 

[JustBleed69]

It is pretty bad, it seems like a common thing for whatever reason that a lot of UK guys strike with their chins straight up and aren't great at evasive footwork.

Luckily, Tom is an amazing athlete and HW is terrible at the moment, so I doubt anyone will be able to make him really pay for his poor defense at the moment.

 

[AndrewGolota48]

Gane is great, but he IS a whitebelt in the grappling department. He and his coach admitted that he is lazy and never liked to train for grappling. Before the Jones fight, he was basically just playing with his pro video game team all the time instead of training for mma. Probably thought a fat LHW bum that just got destroyed by Reyes and Santos,2 mediocre fighters, has no chance and he didnt even need to train. Lol Jones himself even said it and was suprised weeks before the fight he only saw Gane playing video games all over the place. So no, that win for Jones isnt great looking back and taking into account the circumstances.

Gane has been tapping out UFC level heavyweights since his debut and second fight in.

Gane, in the 4th fight if his entire career, arm triangled a Brazilian opponent that has never been subbed by anyone else.

 

[BowserJr]

Literally an obese powerlifting novice striker is able to catch him repeatedly with overhands because Tom is so incredibly predictable with his defense, only knowing how to back up. It reminds me of MMA strikers from decades ago when the sport was more primitive and it was more common to rely on simply backing up like this. His offense is actually his best defense....

He has gotten away with it so far because he is able to take out his opponents early with his admittedly outlier finishing ability, but it will be interesting to see how he deals with an actual skilled striker like Gane that isn't stuck in the mud. I just hope Gane doesn't get caught with something or taken down early so we can see some prolonged striking exchanges.

I wonder if a skilled striker like Gane will be able to figure out an answer to Tom's elite and highly advanced "backing up" erudite martial arts defensive technique.

He also trains with Verhoven who is leagues more skilled than Gane.

We dont know how long into the training session this is, its also a very small cage. There is very little to be deciphered from this footage

 

[ComfortablyNumb55]

Tom is so finished.

Embarrassing.

 

[Siver!]

The great thing about Tom is he's an offensive juggernaut, as someone said, and doesn't piss around waiting to see what his opponent can do to him.

Good like Ciryl, you're gonna need it.

 

[orca]

He also can't throw a kick or knee without his hands down

He's an offensive juggernaught, but he's also reckless, has poor defence, and it's going to catch up to him. Plenty of offensive fighters have come and gone before him.

hes a muay thai world champ
an olympic level wrestler
a lifelong legit bjj blackbelt

according to hs fans

when i asked about a fight videos showing these skills
his fans would insult me and call me a casual

 

[orca]

GSP didn't stall the division for literal years

you act like aspinal was the number 1 fighter in the world when
jones vs gane happened

you also act like aspinal was the number 1 fighter
when jones vs stipe was scheduled

jones held up the division for 6 months (HW title fights average 12 months)

you also act like gsp having no title defense
is better than jones having a title defense

wtf gsp coward away without trying to defend the belt

lmfao 1 eyed bisping

seriously

 

[Bobble Head]

Jones basically pulled a GSP. Went up and fought a favorable champion with zero intention of fighting the more difficult matchups in the division. Only difference is at least Jones defended the belt which optically looked worse but is actually a bigger accomplishment. It's just that Jones is such an unlikeable dickhead who couldn't articulate his resistance to fighting Aspinall properly.

GSP gets zero flak for coming out of retirement to fight Bisping when everybody knew there was ZERO chance he was going to fight Rockhold, Weidman, Jacare, or Romero.

I do agree with this. GSP deserved all the flak. I still don’t even recognize him as a multi weight class champion. (Not that my opinion matters, who am I?) Adding to your point, The guy he beat, 40 year old one eyed Bisping, went on to get KO’d in the first round by Gastelum and retire right after that loss.

It pays to be liked/loved.