Rewatched the fight a couple of times now and those shoulder shots had some power in them. How anyone can say this fight was fixed is crazy. Feel bad for Cerrone losing in that way, but well done Conor great performance.
I don't think that fight was fixed. If you're going to fix a fight, you're going to draw it out a bit. Add a little drama. Maybe have Cerrone take a dive in the 3rd or 4th round. There are two reasons for that: 1) fans get to enjoy the fight longer, and 2) betting on the fight finishing by TKO in a specific round (i.e. Conor by TKO in the 4th) to get your rich friends big betting bonuses.
Yeah but if you have 2 fighters who are not used to throwing fights then it is easier to throw the fight early in round 1 than to draw it out. (I'm not saying the fight was fixed though.)
It's possible that there was a loose fix, in that Cowboy was told to go easy on Conor in the 1st round or two. And then Conor maybe abandoned the script and went 100% on an unsuspecting Cowboy. However, I don't even think you'd need to fix that. Cowboy is a notoriously slow starter anyway, and Conor is a notoriously early round fighter. No fix needed for that.
All this jive talk about diving... I'm a tall, slender guy built kind of like Cerrone - and I've had similar things happen to me when I get rushed by shorter, quicker opponents and fail to control the space. Shit happens. Conor is deadly out of the gate - ask Aldo.
Cerrone was already dazed from that first knee. He thought he was getting elbowed so he held on to the arm that he thought was elbowing him.
Exactly. And Cerrone is known to be a slow starter, so it was pretty predictable that Conor was going to hurt him early. The big question was whether Cerrone can weather the storm.
Cerrone left the octagon looking like the guy from goonies and people claim this was fixed... For fuck's sake.
You'd have to be retarded to think the fight was fixed after seeing the slow-mo of the shots that hit Cerrone, and then seeing his face
I have no proof it was fixed. The person with the most wins and finishes in UFC history lands zero strikes is just a fact