Honestly, (insert fighter name) was never really that good

Jarvan

Jarvan

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Disclaimer

The following is purely facetious.
It's to show how irrational it is to shit on accomplished fighters' achievements.
I will be using Tony Ferguson, one of my favorite fighters, as an example of how people can tarnish a great fighters name.

"Tony was never really good"

After knocking off some cans in unknown organizations, Tony came into the UFC, only to beat some no names, an ultimate fighter that never amounted to anything, and then lost to a .500 UFC journeyman by the name of Michael Johnson.

His next 6 wins are all against people who got released by the UFC soon after.

He was then on his way to losing against Barboza, who we know now is an average FW, before he got lucky and snatched th Brabo choke.

RDA was arguably his best win at the time, so there's that.

But then he beat Kevin Lee? He barely even survived against Diego Sanchez! Booted from the UFC.
We all know Donald is/was at that age.. and then Tony lost his next three when he faced actual competition.



And there you have it. When you manipulate the words, you can make an absolute beast of a man sound like an average fighter.

Fedor gets the biggest critique on this forum, and it's disheartening. Disheartening because some people will never understand the reverence that long time MMA fans had/have of Fedor.. and they will go ahead and an attempt to denigrate his legacy.

BJ seems to get a lot of flack too.

You can do this with virtually every single UFC fighter.

It's dumb, and just shows you don't actually appreciate the fight game.
 
thats-bait-mad-max.gif

TS trying to get us all sent to purgatory for fighter bashing :p
 
After a long time there s a good card this weekend so if you want to make a thread stop bitching and make a thread about that great card
 
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You can do that with anyone. Even undefeated fighters. Doesn’t mean it’s true. I tend to give fighters props more than detractions. The only negative thing I’ll comment on is entertainment value.
 
Not as bad as “who has he ever beaten.”
 
I agree, everyone started shitting on Tony's legacy after the Gaethje loss. He was a top lightweight for a long time and it's a shame he never fought for the real belt. Dude was one of the most entertaining fighters on the roster and pretty much beat everyone the UFC put in front of him.
This is due Paradigm and the UFC screwing him over multiple times, to be fair some of those were on him and his team(cable incident).

I'd say many here on Sherdog appreciate Fedor, which is good since he's the GOAT heavyweight IMO.
On other social platforms he's extremely underappreciated with the main argument being, "He never fought in the UFC" to discredit what he's done.

The "fighter was never that good" are sometimes true, but most of the time it's coming from people who already disliked that fighter before they started losing or weren't around to see their prime.
I also think that narrative discredits a bunch of other fighters too, saying a fighter was never that good usually involves discrediting all the fighters he beat and the one that ended his streak.
 
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Always thought that Tony was beatable; but the dude has heart for days.
Deserved more respect from the org; and more than he gets from the fans today.
 
Lost recently? Never was very good, who did they even beat?

Won recently? Probable GOAT.

Lots of recency bias and revisionist history in the mma community. It’s pretty easy to inflate or devalue a win/loss if you look through the lenses of hindsight with an agenda.
 
Honestly, Fedor was never really that good

I'll get banned if I say anymore
 
What people don't appreciate about Tony is that he didn't just beat a bunch of guys on points. He beat the piss out of everyone and made them quit even if he had to take a few shots to do so. This is the fight game so for me that counts a lot.
 
Jarvan said:
Disclaimer

The following is purely facetious.
It's to show how irrational it is to shit on accomplished fighters' achievements.
I will be using Tony Ferguson, one of my favorite fighters, as an example of how people can tarnish a great fighters name.

"Tony was never really good"

After knocking off some cans in unknown organizations, Tony came into the UFC, only to beat some no names, an ultimate fighter that never amounted to anything, and then lost to a .500 UFC journeyman by the name of Michael Johnson.

His next 6 wins are all against people who got released by the UFC soon after.

He was then on his way to losing against Barboza, who we know now is an average FW, before he got lucky and snatched th Brabo choke.

RDA was arguably his best win at the time, so there's that.

But then he beat Kevin Lee? He barely even survived against Diego Sanchez! Booted from the UFC.
We all know Donald is/was at that age.. and then Tony lost his next three when he faced actual competition.



And there you have it. When you manipulate the words, you can make an absolute beast of a man sound like an average fighter.

Fedor gets the biggest critique on this forum, and it's disheartening. Disheartening because some people will never understand the reverence that long time MMA fans had/have of Fedor.. and they will go ahead and an attempt to denigrate his legacy.

BJ seems to get a lot of flack too.

You can do this with virtually every single UFC fighter.

It's dumb, and just shows you don't actually appreciate the fight game.
Click to expand...

Agree with you all the way sir.
 
To me part of this issue comes from the fact that several fans think the best guys 10 years ago were supposed to be as good as the best guys now.
It seems most fighters and analysts tend to say that the overall level of skills and competition have always increased (probably more exponentially in the 90's and 2000's but still true in the 2010's).

So why is it linked? I feel like if you believe the average level 10-7 years ago was the same, then you can compare 10-7 years ago Tony with current guys and come up with the kind of stupid stuff you described brilliantly.

That's why I always think about fighters in their time and age. If I look at Tony, but I use the same method for anybody, I look at the ranking of his opponent at the moment of the fight first, and maybe at what those guys have done afterwards. I'll also look at how much time Tony spent in the top 15, top 10 and top 5 of his weight class throughout his entire career. These are the only figures we can use to compare without falling into this whole "manipulating words" shitchat you talked about.
 
Every thread like this uses the same tools to discredit the opponents of the fighter they are trying to talk down because it's almost impossible to not fit someone in one of these:

- Too green;
- Too old;
- Out of prime / shot;
- Never beat nobody / who has he beaten;
- Can't wrestle;
- Can't strike;
- Former (weight class below to show he's small);
- Former (weight class over to show he couldn't even make it there);

LOL. It's always a waste of time.
 
Almost every UFC fighter is/was "good". Except for a handful of heavyweights that slogged their way into the promotion.

I know firsthand how hard some of the training is, and how much dedication it must take to get there. It hard for me to simply say somebody was never any good
 
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