People in this thread thinking he got hyped cuz of Conor are dumb as fuck or have no memory. Tell me, what exactly about training with Conor was supposed to make people think Gunnar would get better, when clearly the narrative was Conor was training with Gunnar to be better at grappling.
Gunnar had a lot of praise coming into the UFC, well before Conor was a blip, and for good reason. He was a breakout player in grappling in 2009, winning gold in the middleweight divisions at the Pan-Ams in gi & nogi. The same year, Jeff Monson got bronze at ADCC for 99kg+ under Roberto Abreu and Werdum, but he lost in the first round to Gunnar in open weight, who was 170-194 lbs. Gunnar ended up 4th, behind Magalhaes, Xande, and Estima, some of the best no-gi BJJ artists ever.
*reminder who Jeff Monson is*
And yet Gunnar..
He brought an undefeated record of 9-0-1 with 9 finishes (8 first round) into the UFC and fought with an deep karate background & style despite his grappling experience. People expected big things. He wasn't suddenly going to be "more karate" with Conor around. Trust me, he got zero shine from the Irishman.
I get that Conor has raised the bar of what it means to get attention, but when he is the human/mma-equivalent to Fortnite, it makes people forget that people actually used to get excited about when the next Splinter Cell was coming out. You know MMA used to exist, right? Like beforehand?
