"Junior Dos Santos Was Never The Same After The Cain Trilogy"...

[ShreddinMMA]

JDS absorbed nearly 500 strikes in the 2nd and 3rd fights. The 3rd fight was so one sided more than one professional opinion questioned why his corner didn't throw in the towel. There's no way that didn't effect him. He may not have been completely shot after that fight, but he was definitely not the same and it was immediately noticeable.

Cain also showed a blueprint which other fighters copied to defeat JDS.

Stipe was JDS' last good win against a truly elite fighter, and he absorbed plenty of damage in that one too.

Comparing the damage JDS took as a HW to a fucking LW in Ferguson is dumb as hell.

 

[TheBulge]

Cain did not ruin him. It was the first fight against Stipe that changed him the most, he was past it after that. Accumulated damage.

I notice that he only took 5 months off after the first Cain fight, the brutal fight where he lost his title. 5 months after that going against Mark Hunt and taking flush shots was not a good idea. Later on he took long breaks after the brutal fights against Cain 2 and Stipe 1 though.

 

[TheBulge]

He was never the same after the last Cain fight, his next fight was a close win against Miocic in fight where he got rocked multiple times, prior to that he had an iron chin, fighting some of the most heavy handed mma fighters in the world, including Hunt and Carwin.

After the first Stipe fight, he had weird fight against Overeem where he looked very gun shy, kind of like how francis looked against Derrick Lewis, and got knocked out. A win in between against Rothwell and the knocked out again against Stipe. This was very uncharacteristic for JDS, who was known for being a very aggressive striker, not afraid of getting hit. Then he had a couple of good performances against the likes of Ivanov, Tuaivasa and Lewis, but this wasn't the prime vintage JDS, this was a lesser, watered down version of the man that we used to see.

He did not get rocked against Stipe in the first fight, in fact that was one of the most remarkable things about that fight.

And you make no sense. He was never the same after Cain-2 yet he went on to defeat the greatest UFC HW of all time in a 5 round war right after? nope.

 

[cmw43]

I strongly disagree.
Not everyone responds to damage the same way. One fighter might be okay going through wars over and over again and others might be toast after one tough beating.

I also kind of think you're missing the argument of the initial claim; it's not that he magically left his prime in the sense that he lost his attributes, it's more of a psychological thing.
The beating was so bad on him 2xs in a row that it mentally fucked him up.
I don't have the stats on hand to back this up, but purely from the eye test and his up and down record JDS went from being a super confident striker to being much more tentative.
That's one of the tell-tale signs of a fighter being past it, having an unwillingness to throw.

He did have some good wins after Cain , like Mark Hunt and Derrick Lewis, but he was very clearly more aggressive and accurate pre-Cain.

Side Tangent: Cain is the most overrated fighter in the UFCs history. His resumé is nothing spectacular at all and it's harious to me when people include him in HW GOAT conversations.

It was because people put this wierd magic on HW title defences and Cain equaled the record with two defences. Then Stipe got 3 and became "the most accomplished UFC HW eva".

I still think JDS original run was the best and it's one of the longest in the division.