Well Thompson IS 6'0 and he does have a long reach though. Made Hendricks look like Cejudo in there.
Yeah, but a lot of Welters are 6'0" or taller with comparable reach. And Hendricks being the shorter man with lesser reach in the cage is not exactly a new thing for him and his career...
Burns was a short notice replacement. He was just coming into WW. Edwards, Ponzi, maybe I guess. Edwards wasn't also as highly rated as he is now either, Gunnar was. Maybe, I don't know, ranking is kinda wierd anyways for UFC, they do whatever they want.
That's what I'm saying. In an alternate timeline where Gunnar beat Edwards and Ponz he probably would have never faced Burns to begin with and probably would have ended up fighting someone like RDA or what have you.
I don't even think Nelson himself really believes it's Kungu that's helping him knocking people dead with OVERHAND RIGHT. But GSP sure does think so. He tries to represent, you know. And really believes it too.
I mean Holland has a black belt in Kungfu too....
Actually, Nelson has always honored his Shaolin roots even when people assumed he was having Bruce introduce him as a "Kung-Fu fighter" as a gag. He felt that his striking fundamentals were built by the art (which he continued to train in even during his UFC days, even if just for spiritual reasons), albeit somewhat indirectly: he didn't do well in point-fighting tournaments because he liked to brawl too much, but it translated well to MMA.
I mean I don't think it's crazy to attribute some of Kevin's striking style to Kung-Fu. I've seen the man throw some relatively unorthodox stuff like standing hammerfists and shit IIRC. He doesn't rep it quite to the same degree as much as Wonderboy and GSP do Karate, but when I found out he had a foundation in it back in the day it really didn't surprise me.
Yeah Maia vs WB, would've been a great match up. I favour Maia given how he looked against Burns and Belal and the fact that he hasn't faced grapplers like that in his entire career really, and Maia will pin him up against the cage all three rounds and Maia is very tough to take out. But you never know in MMA, but I think Maia is a good fav, in my opinion
Yeah, it's hard to say. I could see WB skirting around the outside and stuffing a dozen takedowns while picking Maia apart en route to a UD or I could see Demian taking him down and controlling him -- maybe finishing him, maybe not (Maia was more conservative than many modern submission aces) for a victory of his own. Would have liked to see it.
I don't like that fight, but we will see. Its just that when Nelson can't take people down and/or submit people, he mostly lost in UFC, and if Claudio gets busy on the feet, who knows
I mean, that's true to an extent. It's possible I'm being overly optimistic and attributing a gameplan I'd
like to see from Gunnar that he hasn't actually shown in the past (technical striking/sprawl-n-brawl), or that I'm being overly dismissive of Claudio's power when starts throwing those stupid haymakers and crazy calf kicks. It's just after seeing a short-notice James Krause (recently recovered from COVID, no less) basically toy with him for three rounds and be the fresher fighter despite the circumstances followed by Court McGee of all people dominating him to the tune of two 30-26 scorecards... I have so little faith in Claudio or his gas tank these days. If someone doesn't fall over at the first sign of adversity and play his game on the mat, I'm not convinced he can impose his will on them.
I favour Nelson against WB, but I think that fight could go either way. Nelson is way better than the guys you mentioned obviously when it comes to submission other than Burns, and Burns I think was happy just staying on top, but Nelson would've tried to finish, but I don't know if Nelson's TD is necessarily better than WB's TDD. It would have been a hell of a match up, I think we might end upu seeing this match if Nelson wins a couple. I got Nelson by sub now, given how he looked in last two fights, but maybe WB did slow down who knows. In prime for prime, I favour Nelson, but wouldn't be surprised either way. AT his peak, WB did look pretty amazing to be fair. Nelson never reached that peak that he was supposed to.
Yeah Nelson is a better submission ace than Matt Brown and Tyron in every way. But against Woodley it's at least worth nothing that he defended those subs while badly rocked, which can make up for a disparity in technical skill. Not to mention that he was still very green on the mats when fighting Brown. With Burns it's weird. He has the better BJJ competition creds than Nelson and I feel he's probably the overall better fighter, but I feel Nelson has actually transferred his strict submission grappling skillset better to the cage. Durinho definitely didn't take too many chances against WB, but there were brief moments of that fight where he legitimately looked like he was struggling to control him on the ground and advance position -- especially along the fence. But it's so hard to say with so many unknowns at each guy's respective peak (WB not facing much in the way of grapplers and Gunnar leaving the sport). I could legitimately see this fight happening in the next couple of years, though, yeah. Wouldn't overly surprise me to see Gunnar pick up a W.
My list would be
GSP
Machida
Rob
Guchi
WB/Nelson
lol, a bit of a cop out maybe, but oh well
Solid list. I edited mine a little bit as
@Hotora86 pointed out, it's criminal not to include Bas.
I'v seen some people say that GSP took his control of distance from karate and grafted a jab and a double leg onto it but really I'm not sure that stands up if you watch his early career. The early GSP really wasnt focused as much on controling distance, he was much more aggressive and that side of his game really I don't think you start to see devolp until after the 1st BJ fight and then really start to become dominant after the Serra loss.
The fact GSP had a Kyokushin background as well seems to make that less likely to, not a style you'd really asscoate as much with control of distance and timing off of shots from range as you would Machida's Shotokan.
Yeah, I agree. An excellent jab is probably the least Kyokushin technique I can think of. And I don't say that to discredit Kyokushin; I actually
like Kyokushin. It's one of my favorite styles of martial arts. I used to watch knockdown competitions for fun.
While there are quite a few technicians in Kyokushin whose style is a total contrast to the brutish "lumber forward into practically clinch range and exchange punishment" stereotype and instead make use of fighting on the outside, lateral movement, intelligent pressure, etc... these technicians tend to be the exception. And even then, you're left with the fact that none of these skills directly translate to developing a crisp jab or a good double-leg. In fact, I would argue that the knockdown ruleset deliberately undervalues or even selects
against the jab by virtue of how it's constructed and what its practitioners value.
