- Joined
- Mar 17, 2011
- Messages
- 8,915
- Reaction score
- 12,991
He just fought and beat a noted striker with power that was lauded for his scrambling and anti-wrestling ability after his last outing where he became champion, a weightclass up, like 4 hours ago. A guy a great many people, pro fighters included, thought would win. That was a risk.But they were not stylistically risky matchups as others. Like who do you mean? Hooker? Its not stylistically risky fight for Makhachev. Topuria is explosive for example, this is risky fight. Theoretically Gaethej.
Now he will advocate to fight Usman - another favourable matchup. They will pad his record with 2 more easy wins - most likely vs managment co-members and then he will leave as "goat". Just wait and watch...
I just don't think that if Islam had fought and beat Gaethje, you would have ranked it. You could easily just shove him into the favorable matchup box if you wanted to.
Who did he duck, in reality? Arman was always the biggest threat at LW, and he accepted that rematch after already beating him once already. Arman fucked that up.
I don't think he ducked Topuria. I think they both moved up when they felt they couldn't make the weight safely any more, and it just happened at the same time. Topuria didn't just move up to fight Islam, he pretty openly said he couldn't make FW anymore. Same thing for Islam. Now we are here.
