Fedor strengths and weaknesses and his skillset in the UFC today (Long Thread)

[Takes Two To Tango]

Yea I agree.


None compete at the shallowest, slowest paced weight class.

Isn't HW "the old man's division??"

That's why virtually all LHW cut weight so they avoid fighting at HW because it's a weak division.

 

[The Last King]

Volk---10 years in, 34 years old...current P4Pnumber 1

Wonderboy---12 years in...39...currently top 10

Robbie---won UFC title 13 years into his career

Mighty Mouse---16 years in...36 years old...arguable number 1 at fastest paced weight


Figgy---10 years in...34...ufc champ at fastest weight


you cultists want me to keep going??? lmao

Volk has 25 fights in 10 years. Fedor had 23 fights in 4 years to start his career and then fought for another 6 years before finally losing.

According to clowns like you a fighter with 10 fights in 10 years has the same mileage as a fighter with 20 fights in 10 years.

Clown world

 

[MartinGibson86]

That's why virtually all LHW cut weight so they avoid fighting at HW because it's a weak division.

Which goes first


Speed/Reflexes or Power?


Jesus, you're arguing that HW has a younger prime age than FLW??? Seriously???

 

[MartinGibson86]

Volk has 25 fights in 10 years. Fedor had 23 fights in 4 years to start his career and then fought for another 6 years before finally losing.

According to clowns like you a fighter with 10 fights in 10 years has the same mileage as a fighter with 20 fights in 10 years.

Clown world

Fedor's first dozen fights or so werent full contact mma. throw in your zulu's, hmc's, nagata's, ogawa's , lindland's etc and its a whole lot less impressive lol

Plus drug testing

 

[The Last King]

Fedor's first dozen fights or so werent full contact mma. throw in your zulu's, hmc's, nagata's, ogawa's , lindland's etc and its a whole lot less impressive lol

Plus drug testing

So desperate to hate on Fedor among strangers on the inernet that you need to lie. Incredible.

 

[Reffson]

Honestly you have to take your cap off to the UFC they've done a really good job in creating a fanbase that think they know something about MMA but in reality just burp up whatever hype the UFC have just fed them.

Its why opinions on fighters tend to shift so massively with results as UFC hype obviously changes with that and much of the fanbase are totally ruled by it.

Exactly right. It's like, "who do you trust, me or your own eyes?"

 

[Fioretti]

Always nice to check in and see Florini still floundering like a five year old.

“Physical prime is an absolute and has nothing to do with the activity”

“MMA is an endurance sport”



Florini bless. I’m sure the comedy will still be going strong when he’s on Christmas vacation from elementary school and eating pop tarts all day. Enjoy, lads.

Says the child who dodges actual discussion, then tries to last word without quoting or tagging. You're so mature, bro. Like OMG - type mature. You don't math well, do ya, sport? Is normal.

 

[Fioretti]

So desperate to hate on Fedor among strangers on the inernet that you need to lie. Incredible.

Showing your lack of knowledge with this one, fella. Don't know about RINGS? Oops!

 

[BowserJr]

The biggest x fa tor during his prime was his exosive transitions.

Super fast hard punches into a throw follow up with gnp immediately

Closest thing to that I've seen is Usman N vs Pitbull

 

[chaos_36]

Which Basketball fans dislike Jordan? Wtf?

Bron bros or Kobe fans downplay Mike's achievements in order to bolster their guy's status. Happens in every sport.

 

[Deleted member 110072]

Volk has 25 fights in 10 years. Fedor had 23 fights in 4 years to start his career and then fought for another 6 years before finally losing.

According to clowns like you a fighter with 10 fights in 10 years has the same mileage as a fighter with 20 fights in 10 years.

Clown world

People point to fighters in Japan having some mid/low level matches across there career but the flipside of that is that in Japan peoples high level careers started much earlier.

A lot of modern fighters it might be 3-4 years before their fighting high level opposition, in Japan a lot of big names were doing that within their first year in MMA.

I suspect thats actually a harder road training wise as it means your training as a high level pro from close to the start of your career. Mixing in a few extra mid level opponents isnt going to mean you train less hard.

By comparison if your spending those years in smaller orgs potentially as a semi pro I think its more likely your not having to commit to as high level training.

 

[Orochimaru 大蛇丸]

I wish I got to see prime Fedor.

Honestly if it wasn’t for Sherdog, I would probably not realize how great he was. Thank god I barely caught the end of prime GSP.

I wish the UFC did more to honor these legends, especially someone like Fedor who they actively try to bury because he wasn’t one of their guys.

As the sport gets older, and the UFC gets more and more control over telling the history of MMA, the same way the WWE has rewritten the history pro wrestling, Fedor will likely be mostly forgotten sadly.

 

[Pankration never dies]

Nice recency bias and shillish semantics. Talking about "technical level is better" today at HW? Based on what lol? Such recency bias. Smh. The top 10 HWs in Fedors era and Cain and JDS era were more skilled than the top 10 HWs are today. This is a fact.
...

Your own bias seems to make you particularly emotional.

The top 10 HWs in Fedors era and Cain and JDS era were more skilled than the top 10 HWs are today. This is a fact.

What are the elements that establish this fact ? All modern sports tend to evolve (through better technical or physical performances) just through time and the principle of competition/adaptation. The burden of proof seems to be more on your side than mine. But there were already some discussions about this in the thread.

Please enlighten me with true arguments and not anecdotal cherry-picking that could be interpreted one way or another.

For example, you marvel at the fact that 2004 Fedor could mount Hunt while 2018 Blaydes struggled against him in the clinch, and use this kind of examples to sustain your theory according to which HW grappling has devolved and prime Fedor was superhuman for today’s standards.

I have another theory for you : in Pride, Hunt began as a pure kickboxer with poor grappling, wrestling or clinch ability (his first fight he rushed into Yoshida's guard and, guess what, got caught in a basic armbar) and he actually got technically better during his 14 year-old career. Same as the general level, unbelievable, I know.


We all miss the ubiquitous armbar-from-guard of paleo-MMA, too bad we had some 20 years of time to make some top-game and anti-BJJ progress.

Yes, not getting tossed up by good grapplers as a chubby HW is easier for a 47 years old with more than a decade of grappling experience than a 32 years old newbie.

Derrick Lewis

My point about Lewis still stands. He is below the technical standard of elite HWs : he is almost always dominated by the top 10 but can also always get the win because he has the big equalizer in the form of his one punch KO power. Plus he has some deceptively good attributes and is not a complete can, I mean he is not Bob Sapp.

To another degree, just think of Deontay Wilder in boxing : his technique is particularly subpar for the elite, but he is so big and exceptionally powerful that he can easily sleep any human being with a touch, even elite boxers, and thus he went to the top. That is the “athletic/power inflation” of the superheavyweights you deny (Fury/Chisora was funny in this regard).


5 ft 10 inches HW Rocky Marciano, our expert comments : "the narrative that the HWs today are "bigger" and better trained is utter bullshit and WBO shill propaganda"

Irony aside : the total evolution is less dramatic in MMA as it is a young sport, but superheavyweights have already taken over, and it will only get worse for smaller and less athletic heavyweights in the future.

Oh and you know what ? Lewis could have had success and even be temporarily top 10-5 in Pride and 2013 UFC when many fighters were reckless and had questionable striking defence.


HW #7 in 2013, ten leagues ahead of Lewis, probably.

He would get dominated most of the time, but would wait for his opportunity and would get it sometimes.


Mythical Cain and his reckless entries meeting one-dimensional kickboxer Kongo, just imagine the result if he had been hit by Lewis or some other.

Oh wait.


Yes I know, he was old, still, even in his prime, he was often open to strikes and got rocked several times, counter-puncher N'Gannou was not a gift for him at any time.

The Gane example, MMA skillset, distance management and versatility

You try hard to discredit Gane, which is not surprising since he is a good example (but not the only one) of this HW evolution. First he was not a “shitty MT regional fighter” : Glory had just offered him a contract that he declined to focus his young career on MMA. Maybe he could have been an elite kickboxer, maybe not.

By the way, the fact he started late and rose fast, like N’Gannou and Pereira, is not automatically a sign that the sport has devolved, and maybe one that MMA is no more a niche, now attracting more talented young athletes from certain parts of the world :

Cf. the two possible paths for athletes, either “Tigers” (Tiger Woods, the champion that was hyperspecialized since childhood) or “Rogers” (Roger Federer, practicing many sports and widely developing his athletic/neural abilities before focusing on tennis only in his late teens and becoming the best in the world : this second path is actually statistically the most common for long-term success).

You make a nonsense argument that Gane would lose in kickboxing to Pride kickboxers, who cares ? We are talking about MMA, you know what he would do with Schilt and co ? He would grapple, he would have a heavy-grappling training camp and would take them down easier than he took down N’Gannou.


As you probably know, a certain “Fedor” has demonstrated since the Pride days that, concerning the various aspects of MMA, global well-roundedness and synergy is vastly superior to uneven repartition (narrow specialization + glaring holes). In this regard, Gane is pretty well off compared to the old “kickboxer who does MMA between two K1 Grand prix”.

If he has still progress to make in his skillset (his grappling and wrestling are far from optimal, but certainly not shitty or non-existent), he has one big strength : he can usually make the best of this same skillset (unlike BJJ blackbelts with no wrestling, who are now a dying breed because their best skill is more and more useless).

Why ? Because he has a very good MMA-specific fighting pattern in the form of his distance management and versatility. This is the foundation that enables fighters to really exploit all the different weaknesses of their opponents (and this has historically been the recipe for success in MMA - Fedor, GSP, Jones, etc.).


A karateka lately developed the best MMA wrestling of his time because he understood the whole game better than his fellow D1 wrestlers.

Without getting too long, we know that MMA-specific distance management plays a big role in the game now. It is an “invisible skill” that makes all the difference to dictate where the fight will go and under which conditions (once again, Fedor was a successful precursor in this regard with his Sambo, the elite of the division has just caught up with him progressively).

Gane is unusually good at that foundational layer of MMA for HW : he can fight regular boxing heavy, or southpaw kick heavy to negate boxing, shift stances and clinch quickly to change the dynamics of a fight moment, attempt takedowns, etc. This does not guarantee success, but it gives some of the most consistent chances at the beginning of the fight.

Spoiler alert : the vast, vast majority of HWs fighters didn't have this kind of skills between 2000-2013, even less guys his size.

Gane's gameplan and distance-management against a grappling specialist remains to be seen, but could be more efficient than you think. He would probably play it à la Adesanya, who according to many of the “anyones with any experience in this sport” such as you, should have been outgrappled since forever, yet he knew how to utilize other skills to diminish the grappling threat. Let’s hope we can see a Gane/Blaydes match-up to answer the questions.

Beware of the mythically overrated

Finally, you spent a lot of energy and circular logic downplaying current fighters (any defeat of a modern fighter when he was green can be used against him forever, while the losses of your idols are never tactically significant but always due to “washedness” and thus taboo material). One could easily do the same with those you consider untouchable.

To get back to Cain whom you describe as one of the incredible athletes of the year 2013, we are probably facing the most mythically overrated of all fighters : very good in his time without a doubt, but short-reigning (not just for injuries) and very beatable.

Cain gained his legendary aura by defeating Brock Lesnar (lol, well at least he had the balls to try MMA, but come on) then fighting the two same guys in circles (good match-ups JDS and Silva). He had some serious weaknesses (questionable striking defence, wild reckless entries and average BJJ awareness) that could be easily exploited and were finally exposed once he faced other match-ups.



Also pretty funny to read that “Werdum would put a grappling clinic over Volkov” considering he didn’t despite lots of top control, and was finally KO’ed, whatever the excuse.

You courteously conclude :

Thanks for your UFC recency bias filled, shillish post though

Talking about strawmen arguments, I couldn’t care less about the Pride/UFC debates that seem so dear to you.

Let’s be clear once again, I don’t discredit previous eras of MMA and some things can't be compared between now and them (specificities of the Pride tournament system, etc.).

Still, these times were not vastly superior to today as you make them to be ; no need to overprotect your dear memories by denying the progress in coaching and training, the higher average technical well-roundedness and the athletic inflation of fighters, evolutions that we see in every sport and that for some reason would be unknown to HW MMA only.

Shillfully yours.

 

[The Last King]

I wish I got to see prime Fedor.

Honestly if it wasn’t for Sherdog, I would probably not realize how great he was. Thank god I barely caught the end of prime GSP.

I wish the UFC did more to honor these legends, especially someone like Fedor who they actively try to bury because he wasn’t one of their guys.

As the sport gets older, and the UFC gets more and more control over telling the history of MMA, the same way the WWE has rewritten the history pro wrestling, Fedor will likely be mostly forgotten sadly.

Facts

 

[Yellowcrab]

And here we go again...

After all, Fedor fanboys have to be insecure their whole life when their unbeatable GOAT lost against an old MW

And there's something... something... : USADA

 

[The Last King]

And here we go again...

After all, Fedor fanboys have to be insecure their whole life when their unbeatable GOAT lost against an old MW

And there's something... something... : USADA

If Hendo was an "old MW" how did he get a title shot agaisnt LHW champion Jon Jones shortly after fighting Fedor? Perhaps your "Hendo is an old MW" theory is just an intellectually dishonest attack to make Fedor look bad which indirectly makes Hendo look bad because hes an ALL TIME P4P GREAT.


Desperate Fedor haters lol the thirst is real

 

[The Last King]

Your own bias seems to make you particularly emotional.

The top 10 HWs in Fedors era and Cain and JDS era were more skilled than the top 10 HWs are today. This is a fact.

What are the elements that establish this fact ? All modern sports tend to evolve (through better technical or physical performances) just through time and the principle of competition/adaptation. The burden of proof seems to be more on your side than mine. But there were already some discussions about this in the thread.

Please enlighten me with true arguments and not anecdotal cherry-picking that could be interpreted one way or another.

For example, you marvel at the fact that 2004 Fedor could mount Hunt while 2018 Blaydes struggled against him in the clinch, and use this kind of examples to sustain your theory according to which HW grappling has devolved and prime Fedor was superhuman for today’s standards.

I have another theory for you : in Pride, Hunt began as a pure kickboxer with poor grappling, wrestling or clinch ability (his first fight he rushed into Yoshida's guard and, guess what, got caught in a basic armbar) and he actually got technically better during his 14 year-old career. Same as the general level, unbelievable, I know.

View attachment 956382
We all miss the ubiquitous armbar-from-guard of paleo-MMA, too bad we had some 20 years of time to make some top-game and anti-BJJ progress.

Yes, not getting tossed up by good grapplers as a chubby HW is easier for a 47 years old with more than a decade of grappling experience than a 32 years old newbie.

Derrick Lewis

My point about Lewis still stands. He is below the technical standard of elite HWs : he is almost always dominated by the top 10 but can also always get the win because he has the big equalizer in the form of his one punch KO power. Plus he has some deceptively good attributes and is not a complete can, I mean he is not Bob Sapp.

To another degree, just think of Deontay Wilder in boxing : his technique is particularly subpar for the elite, but he is so big and exceptionally powerful that he can easily sleep any human being with a touch, even elite boxers, and thus he went to the top. That is the “athletic/power inflation” of the superheavyweights you deny (Fury/Chisora was funny in this regard).

View attachment 956381
5 ft 10 inches HW Rocky Marciano, our expert comments : "the narrative that the HWs today are "bigger" and better trained is utter bullshit and WBO shill propaganda"

Irony aside : the total evolution is less dramatic in MMA as it is a young sport, but superheavyweights have already taken over, and it will only get worse for smaller and less athletic heavyweights in the future.

Oh and you know what ? Lewis could have had success and even be temporarily top 10-5 in Pride and 2013 UFC when many fighters were reckless and had questionable striking defence.


HW #7 in 2013, ten leagues ahead of Lewis, probably.

He would get dominated most of the time, but would wait for his opportunity and would get it sometimes.


Mythical Cain and his reckless entries meeting one-dimensional kickboxer Kongo, just imagine the result if he had been hit by Lewis or some other.

Oh wait.


Yes I know, he was old, still, even in his prime, he was often open to strikes and got rocked several times, counter-puncher N'Gannou was not a gift for him at any time.

The Gane example, MMA skillset, distance management and versatility

You try hard to discredit Gane, which is not surprising since he is a good example (but not the only one) of this HW evolution. First he was not a “shitty MT regional fighter” : Glory had just offered him a contract that he declined to focus his young career on MMA. Maybe he could have been an elite kickboxer, maybe not.

By the way, the fact he started late and rose fast, like N’Gannou and Pereira, is not automatically a sign that the sport has devolved, and maybe one that MMA is no more a niche, now attracting more talented young athletes from certain parts of the world :
View attachment 956380
Cf. the two possible paths for athletes, either “Tigers” (Tiger Woods, the champion that was hyperspecialized since childhood) or “Rogers” (Roger Federer, practicing many sports and widely developing his athletic/neural abilities before focusing on tennis only in his late teens and becoming the best in the world : this second path is actually statistically the most common for long-term success).

You make a nonsense argument that Gane would lose in kickboxing to Pride kickboxers, who cares ? We are talking about MMA, you know what he would do with Schilt and co ? He would grapple, he would have a heavy-grappling training camp and would take them down easier than he took down N’Gannou.


As you probably know, a certain “Fedor” has demonstrated since the Pride days that, concerning the various aspects of MMA, global well-roundedness and synergy is vastly superior to uneven repartition (narrow specialization + glaring holes). In this regard, Gane is pretty well off compared to the old “kickboxer who does MMA between two K1 Grand prix”.

If he has still progress to make in his skillset (his grappling and wrestling are far from optimal, but certainly not shitty or non-existent), he has one big strength : he can usually make the best of this same skillset (unlike BJJ blackbelts with no wrestling, who are now a dying breed because their best skill is more and more useless).

Why ? Because he has a very good MMA-specific fighting pattern in the form of his distance management and versatility. This is the foundation that enables fighters to really exploit all the different weaknesses of their opponents (and this has historically been the recipe for success in MMA - Fedor, GSP, Jones, etc.).

View attachment 956383
A karateka lately developed the best MMA wrestling of his time because he understood the whole game better than his fellow D1 wrestlers.

Without getting too long, we know that MMA-specific distance management plays a big role in the game now. It is an “invisible skill” that makes all the difference to dictate where the fight will go and under which conditions (once again, Fedor was a successful precursor in this regard with his Sambo, the elite of the division has just caught up with him progressively).

Gane is unusually good at that foundational layer of MMA for HW : he can fight regular boxing heavy, or southpaw kick heavy to negate boxing, shift stances and clinch quickly to change the dynamics of a fight moment, attempt takedowns, etc. This does not guarantee success, but it gives some of the most consistent chances at the beginning of the fight.

Spoiler alert : the vast, vast majority of HWs fighters didn't have this kind of skills between 2000-2013, even less guys his size.

Gane's gameplan and distance-management against a grappling specialist remains to be seen, but could be more efficient than you think. He would probably play it à la Adesanya, who according to many of the “anyones with any experience in this sport” such as you, should have been outgrappled since forever, yet he knew how to utilize other skills to diminish the grappling threat. Let’s hope we can see a Gane/Blaydes match-up to answer the questions.

Beware of the mythically overrated

Finally, you spent a lot of energy and circular logic downplaying current fighters (any defeat of a modern fighter when he was green can be used against him forever, while the losses of your idols are never tactically significant but always due to “washedness” and thus taboo material). One could easily do the same with those you consider untouchable.

To get back to Cain whom you describe as one of the incredible athletes of the year 2013, we are probably facing the most mythically overrated of all fighters : very good in his time without a doubt, but short-reigning (not just for injuries) and very beatable.

Cain gained his legendary aura by defeating Brock Lesnar (lol, well at least he had the balls to try MMA, but come on) then fighting the two same guys in circles (good match-ups JDS and Silva). He had some serious weaknesses (questionable striking defence, wild reckless entries and average BJJ awareness) that could be easily exploited and were finally exposed once he faced other match-ups.

View attachment 956385

Also pretty funny to read that “Werdum would put a grappling clinic over Volkov” considering he didn’t despite lots of top control, and was finally KO’ed, whatever the excuse.

You courteously conclude :

Thanks for your UFC recency bias filled, shillish post though

Talking about strawmen arguments, I couldn’t care less about the Pride/UFC debates that seem so dear to you.

Let’s be clear once again, I don’t discredit previous eras of MMA and some things can't be compared between now and them (specificities of the Pride tournament system, etc.).

Still, these times were not vastly superior to today as you make them to be ; no need to overprotect your dear memories by denying the progress in coaching and training, the higher average technical well-roundedness and the athletic inflation of fighters, evolutions that we see in every sport and that for some reason would be unknown to HW MMA only.

Shillfully yours.

Your recency bias and shillish semantics are not only desperate but also amusing lol. I didn't read all of that nonsense but skimmed through it.

Derrick Lewis wouldn't be top 5 HW in 2011 and he wouldn't be top 5 HW in 2005 and this is a fact. Another fact is that he was recently top 5 in today's era and fought for the HW title in todays era twice. He would honestly have a hard time making the top 10 in both generations.

If he fought in 2005-2007 he would get absolutely outclasses by Fedor, Nog, Cop, Barnett, Aleks, Werdum, Sergei, Hunt, AA and would even have his hands full with the likes of Kerr, Coleman, Randleman, Schilt, Rizzo, Zentsov and Erickson.

If he fought in 2011-2013 he would have gotten badly outclassed by Cain, JDS, Ubereem, Werdum,Bigfoot, Hunt, Cormier and Mir. This means that the top 10 HWs in the last two generations were BETTER AND MORE SKILLED.

Cain Velasquez getting dropped by Kongo doesn't define him and doesn't mean that would happen every time they fought. It was an exceptional situation like Fedor getting rocked by Fujita, Stipe getting KOd by Struve or GSP getting knocked out by Serra.

This sometimes happens in combat sports but it's not the norm which is what you're trying to paint it as. Using an example of Cain being KOd by Ngannou in a fight Cain was so old and washed up in that he never fought again after shows how desperate and shillish your perspective is.

Deontay Wilder is much like Derrick Lewis. Low skilled boxer who is ranked high because the HW divison in boxing today is much weaker than it was in previous generations. Deontay Wilder woudlnt beat the likes or Ruddock or Bowe in the 90s, let alone Lewis or Holyfield but today he's a top 3 HW on boxing. Similar to the weak ass UFC HW division of today. Thanks for making my point for me.

Gane taking down Francis Ngannou who had reconstructive knee surgery on his ACL and MCL right after they fought doesn't make him a special wrestler. He's still a regional, French Muay Thai scene kickboxer with poor grappling skills. Taking down an injured Ngannou doesn't change that and submitting two cans who aren't even ranked in the top 20 doesn't change that either.

If he has to fight the likes of Fedor, Nog, Barnett, Randy, Brock or Cain he'd be put on his back by all of them and would be fed knuckle sandwiches and if he fought guys like prime Cop, prime AA, prime Hunt, prime Sergei and prime Schilt he would lose to almsot all of them or at the very least have his hands full with all of them.

This doesn't mean Gane is a bad fighter it means that today's top HWs aren't on a higher technical level than the elite HWs of the past two generations. Also you use Werdum losing to Volkov at 40 years old as an example of exactly what? That old ass fighters lose to young, peaking fighters. Thirsty and desperate shill. Pathetic.

Today's HW division has some decent talent and some good fighters at the top BUT they're not in any way on a higher technical level than the HWs from 10 years ago or from 18 years ago. In fact most of them are on a lower technical level.

Cheers.

 

[The Last King]

Bron bros or Kobe fans downplay Mike's achievements in order to bolster their guy's status. Happens in every sport.

Yea, you're actually right. I see it from cringe Bron fans. Today's generation is incredibly naive. Kobe and Jordan fans for the most part agree that they were equals.

 

[Can’t Handle My Riddum]

If Hendo was an "old MW" how did he get a title shot agaisnt LHW champion Jon Jones shortly after fighting Fedor? Perhaps your "Hendo is an old MW" theory is just an intellectually dishonest attack to make Fedor look bad which indirectly makes Hendo look bad because hes an ALL TIME P4P GREAT.


Desperate Fedor haters lol the thirst is real

How old was Hendo when he fought Fedor? Poster was exaggerating weight class but how old was he? Just curious.

Edit: Don’t bother. I just looked it up. He was 40+, I guess past his prime with over 35 fights and also had competed at MW only 15 months prior, losing to Shields.

 

[NoBiasJustMMA]

How old was Hendo when he fought Fedor? Poster was exaggerating weight class but how old was he? Just curious.

Edit: Don’t bother. I just looked it up. He was 40+, I guess past his prime with over 35 fights and also had competed at MW only 15 months prior, losing to Shields.

Leaving out that Hendo was allowed to use PEDs makes it kind of obvious what you're doing here.