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.
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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).
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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 :
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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.).
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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.
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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.
