How good was Prime Colby?

TheBulge said:
Wasted most of his potential. I will say he had an exciting style with a high peak and quick crash. It takes a lot out of you to fight like that, and I think he knew which is one of the reasons he rarely fought and spread out his big fights over the years.

At his peak certainly good enough to be champ looking at his fights against Usman, a top 3 ATG WW.
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This. 1st one to state is the wasted potential.
Truth it we will never know how far he truly could've gone with so many fights left on the table through his career.
Still believe he won against Usman. Would he have stayed champ? Likely not buy he should've became champ at least once in his career.
 
Mediocre. Avoided all contenders unless it was for a title shot, which he didn't deserve, and his claim to fame there was having cardio and not getting finished that 2nd time against Usman.

The UFC helped him out a lot by setting up some fights with outgoing highly regarded or ranked people mostly coming off of losses and heading into retirement/out of the UFC. The last time he beat a current UFC fighter, it was a LW, 6 years ago.
 
Piss poor resume for someone who received three title shots. No power, limited jiu jitsu, his best wins were all fighters coming off back-to-back losses (Masvidal, Woodley, Lawler), a blown-up lightweight in dos Anjos, and Maia who struggled against wrestlers at 170.
 
Masturbin said:
I hate the guy but let's be fair.
He won the interim belt, then tried to have surgery for his nose and then got stripped because he was taking too long (4 months is too long for the ufc)

But yeah could still have a bit of fear after getting whooped at the gym by prime Twood
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If we're going to be fair then that was the stupidest IC title ever made. Colby fight RDA in June for the IC WW title. Woodley then defended the undisputed WW title in August. There was literally no reason to make the WW IC champ besides a money grab and a marketing tool to promote Woodley vs Colby as a champ vs champ fight. Then knowing what the UFC plans was colby went ahead and got a non essential surgery on his nose for something that he had been dealing with for years already. The UFC felt he was intentionally trying to ruin their plans and punished him for it by stripping him of the IC title and not giving him a TS.
 
Colby was a good matchup against Usman, but we will never know what his prime looked like because it's so rose tinted from aged veterans. He wasn't active enough to see against real tough WWs.
 
RockyLockridge said:
No no Colby is a way more talented fighter than Woodley ever was
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This would be used as evidence of your insanity in court.
One guy was an undisputed champ with multiple title defenses.
The other was an IC champ and a rank squatter.

Yeah Colby beat him but if you can beat a 50 year old Michael Jordan in basketball does that mean you're more talented than MJ?
If you beat a 55 year old Roy Jones Jr in boxing does that mean you're more talented than RJR in boxing?

Yeah Colby beat Woodley but that was a Woodley that was more interested in retirement than fighting and just wanted to fight out his contract.
 
Couldn't even finish the whores he hired for his cringe ass videos.
 
Bend NvR Break said:
This would be used as evidence of your insanity in court.
One guy was an undisputed champ with multiple title defenses.
The other was an IC champ and a rank squatter.

Yeah Colby beat him but if you can beat a 50 year old Michael Jordan in basketball does that mean you're more talented than MJ?
If you beat a 55 year old Roy Jones Jr in boxing does that mean you're more talented than RJR in boxing?

Yeah Colby beat Woodley but that was a Woodley that was more interested in retirement than fighting and just wanted to fight out his contract.
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colby would have beaten them at pretty much any point of their careers.
 
FreddieRoachsVoice said:
1) GSP
2) Matt Hughes
3) Kamaru Usman
4) Jake Shields
5) Leon Edwards
6) Jon Fitch
7) Belal Muhammad
8) Pat Miletich
9) Tyron Woodley
10) Robbie Lawler
11) Johny Hendricks
12) Rory Macdonald
13) Nick Diaz
14) BJ Penn
15) Carlos Condit


Should I list more? I'm sorry but barely blanketed a LW with a career long history of struggling with wrestlers is not exactly a career defining win nor is getting sloppy 3rds on Woodley and Lawler when both were clearly done. Even Thiago Alves, Demian Maia, and Wonderboy Thompson had much more impressive roads to a title shot than Colby did. I'd bet money that Martin Kampmann would have beat Covington too Prime vs Prime if Colby actually showed up.

The guy was absolutely spoonfed his entire UFC career and still couldn't notch an impressive resume in an extremely thin era of the division. WW has a long and storied history... recency bias and the UFC hype machine has clearly worked on you but Colby is not, nor was he ever, an elite fighter
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Honestly prime Kos probably gives Colby real problems
 
HavokHarmon said:
Honestly prime Kos probably gives Colby real problems
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Agreed. Kos is around the level of fighter Colby was except Kos had more power (but was more reckless).

I think people assume that Colby had a better resume than he actually did because he was a fixture of the title picture for so long but this is only because:
1) he was flat out gifted 2 completely undeserved title shots and
2) He became probably the worst rank squatter in MMA history (besides Ortega) fighting 4 times in 5 years and only beating 2 guys on big losing streaks who retired within a year after

You don't get credit for things you didn't do and if Colby actually was a top tier fighter at any point, he certainly didn't prove it sitting around for 5 years turning down opponents. How someone could be in the UFC for a decade and fight so few of the elite of his era is actually baffling. Stylistically, he probably would have beaten some of the top 15 WWs of all time but in terms of resume... sorry, he's not up there.
 
Of today ? It's the same generation. Like 5 years apart.
 
A pretty high level pressure fighter. But just not quite good enough at anything in particular to win the title. Had the poor fortune of being around at the same time as a pretty dominant long standing champion. And by the time that Champion had been removed, was too old to pose any real threat to his successor.
 
He was boring as shit to watch against a string of opponents who were either pushing 40 or coming off losses.

Inb4 Colbytards bring up getting dropped 5 times by Usman
 
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