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Fighters who were broken and became champ?

Randy Couture. Counted completely out at HW after losing to Ricco Rodriguez. Then going down in weight to defeat the real ice man, chuck liddell. Beated Tito Ortiz. and then when LHW seemed done, he went up to HW and beat Sylvia. Randy Couture is the man, the myth, the legend, the real Captain America. WAR RANDY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
 
The best example of this I ever heard of was Muhammad Ali breaking George Foreman. Foreman couldn't step foot in a boxing gym for decades before he got his head straightened out and he became champ again.
 
This is literally one of the great moments in MMA and total lightning in a bottle. Although he became champ I am not sure people could say he was best in the division at the time.


To me Tex is the best example of this. Everyone thought his window had closed/he was too old, but he rose like a Phoenix and when he won people were all asking to see him fight for belt. It is was a late career resurrection which isn't meant to happen in combat sports.
He wasn't even the 5th best at the time - Hughes, Fitch, Trigg, Koscheck, Lytle, Karl, Diego, Sherk, Kenny, Swick, and BJ Penn snuffing around too... Serra was a washed-up TUF winner, and probably the biggest underdog of all time going into a fight... It was unthinkable.

And boy did he milk that belt for all it was worth, lmao!
 
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Glover might be a good answer to this thread but not because of this fight. Rumble didn't break him; he knocked him out in 13 seconds. Very much not the same thing.

Glover lost decisions to Corey Anderson, Jon Jones and Phil Davis and I haven't seen all those fights but it's more likely he was broken (if at all) in one of them.
Definitely... Fuck, I'd even forgotten about the Corey Anderson fight tbh.

That must have been a low point.

<6>

Maybe Johnny Walker can still do it...
 
I disagree, Ngannou wasn't broken against stipe, he kept trying to get up and was still swinging, he was just so gassed he was moving slow as shit. Stipe gassed the fuck out trying to control him. I couldn't believe it went all 5, once stipe started taking him down i thought francis would give up. IDK maybe I need to rewatch that.
 
(Inspired by this recent thread from @CageWalks and the below youtube short from Ramsey Dewey)



Two of the best examples I can think of are Ngannou vs. Stipe I and Amanda Nunes vs. Julianna Pena I. But both of these were already title fights and in the case of Nunes she was already a champion, and we now know that going into it she wasn't fully fit and had an off night, a very un-Nunes-like performance.

I'm wondering who was broken early in their career and developed into a champion later on?

I know Charles Oliveira has the record for most losses in the UFC for someone who went on to become champion. He entered the UFC at an early age and has fought very frequently. But even though he was finished in most of his losses, I'm not sure how often if ever he was broken.

Being broken is not the same as being finished. You can get caught by a KO strike or a submission and it doesn't mean you were broken. If you wake up thinking I just got caught but I can beat this guy, I want to go again, you weren't broken. Even if you tap, it means you got caught in a position you couldn't get out of but doesn't necessarily mean you were broken.

Best example I can think of is the CDF vs. Gregor Gillespie fight where after a very competitive first round, Gillespie got into mount in the second round and Ferreira was too gassed to escape leading to a TKO. CDF is a very good fighter but he's also 38 years old. Has anybody lost like this early on and gone on to become a champ?


FYI in millenial and Gen Z culture "broken" now means unbeatable. Most broken fighters become champ.

Just letting you know cause this could lead to some confusion cause the words meaning basically flipped.
 
I disagree, Ngannou wasn't broken against stipe, he kept trying to get up and was still swinging, he was just so gassed he was moving slow as shit. Stipe gassed the fuck out trying to control him. I couldn't believe it went all 5, once stipe started taking him down i thought francis would give up. IDK maybe I need to rewatch that.
The broken part was the timidity displayed by big Frank in his next fight, it took 2 fights for him to get his mojo back.
 
Nobody expected Glover to come back from this, let alone become champ...

anthony-johnson-glover.gif


RIP Anthony Johnson.
Talk about early stoppage, come on, ref.
 
I disagree, Ngannou wasn't broken against stipe, he kept trying to get up and was still swinging, he was just so gassed he was moving slow as shit. Stipe gassed the fuck out trying to control him. I couldn't believe it went all 5, once stipe started taking him down i thought francis would give up. IDK maybe I need to rewatch that.
Stipe was definitely tired towards the end but he also played it safe. He is not a submission artist by any means and going for a finish usually means giving up some degree of control. Ngannou was able to work his way up a couple of times and you wanna avoid that by any means, even a gassed Ngannou. He actually wobbled Stipe a little bit in the 4th or 5th with a slowmotion arm punch so Stipe was probably like "fuck that I'll just hold this big fucker down"
 
Nobody expected Glover to come back from this, let alone become champ...

anthony-johnson-glover.gif


RIP Anthony Johnson.

This was the first thought that came to mind.

After being dominated by Jones for 5 rounds and KOed by Rumble in 15 seconds most thought Glover would never come close to getting UFC gold.

What a huge comeback, and in his 40s for god's sake.
 
FYI in millenial and Gen Z culture "broken" now means unbeatable. Most broken fighters become champ.

Just letting you know cause this could lead to some confusion cause the words meaning basically flipped.

Can you explain the broken = unbeatable more? How did they get from one to the other? I can usually guess at how slang came about, but this is a mystery.
 
Can you explain the broken = unbeatable more? How did they get from one to the other? I can usually guess at how slang came about, but this is a mystery.

Came from video games.

Found this explanation on google.

"Broken is a term used in many games, particularly fighting or otherwise competitive ones, to describe characters, techniques, or other elements or combinations of elements so overpowered that they make the game stop functioning as intended and/or severely skew the game's balance in a player's favor"
 
He wasn't even the 5th best at the time - Hughes, Fitch, Trigg, Koscheck, Lytle, Karl, Diego, Sherk, Kenny, Swick, and BJ Penn snuffing around too... Serra was a washed-up TUF winner, and probably the biggest underdog of all time going into a fight... It was unthinkable.

And boy did he milk that belt for all it was worth, lmao!

Yeah and it was great for the UFC IMO.

Serra is also a pretty cool guy who has done well over the years in his post fighting career.
 
I dont think Ngannou was broken by Stipe. He didnt give up the whole fight.

He had a loss of confidence in the next fight,but that was just a bad night for him,and he came back like it was nothin after that. Just my 2 cents
 
Came from video games.

Found this explanation on google.

"Broken is a term used in many games, particularly fighting or otherwise competitive ones, to describe characters, techniques, or other elements or combinations of elements so overpowered that they make the game stop functioning as intended and/or severely skew the game's balance in a player's favor"

That makes perfect sense, actually. Thanks for explaining!
 
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