Most posters are pretty stupid and don't really think with their heads. They let talking heads on TV tell them how good a fighter is without using their own mind or logic.
Who is the best fighter Silva has beaten? bryce?
Do we not all agree that lopes would easily dispatch bryce aswell?
Silva has done NOTHING to suggest he's a top 5 talent yet, Lopes already has better wins than a win against bryce mitchell. They are using the fact lopes lost to volk and jean looked great against bryce.
These same people picked Ruffy to beat BSD. Because BSD is a can or something because he lost a fight with a staph infection then had 1 bad showing against moicano in his first main event. Meanwhile ruffy best wins would get smoked by BSD, Leaving no reason to think Ruffy would win.
I mean some people get on hype-trains for the feels or they like the image of the fighter. Others like myself just know talent when we see it.
When Khabib/Islam were on the ascent we told everyone how great they were and people would just go with the "they haven't beat anyone good" narrative to discount the incredible athleticism and fighting technique we could see with our own eyes. It didn't matter that they were doing it to mid/upper-mid level fighters, because the level of technical dominance on display was comparatively astounding. You either trusted your eyes or you always needed them to prove it against a litany of elite talent that they couldn't get booked against for various reasons. Even now there is the revisionist history of both, it's just how the fight game works these days.
Lopes also literally has 1 "elite" win against a semi-washed and heavily-declined Ortega who previously pulled out of in the same fight the day of and Dan Ige stepped in. It's tough to say that Ortega is "elite" at anything any longer except his top-position grappling and being tough as nails. If you remove that from the equation his best win is to Dan Ige on a day's notice where he lost the 3rd round, and Ige is a fringe top-10 gatekeeper. What top 5 fighter in his prime has Lopes beat?
I picked BSD to beat Ruffy, his grappling was highly suspect and they'd matched him very carefully. BSD with non-stop pressure and toughness could always get through the first layer and just spam takedowns/clinch and not give Ruffy space to operate and just overwhelm him. I was never sold on Ruffy because he had cool highlights i.e. the spinning hook kick over Bobby Green. It was like when Lando got the spinning wheel kick knockout of John Makdessi - by itself it's a super-cool unique technique that leads to an amazing KO, but in and of itself it's a trick, not a proven bag of techniques that can consistently control and dictate a fight. You need to be showing a range of skills and abilities regardless of opponents to really showcase that you have an adaptable game that works against a variety of opponents.
I even hated Silva when he first came on the scene and beat Jourdain by being a weight-bully, but with each performance he won me over more and more by show-casing the style of an elite action fighter with tremendous athleticism and a pre-natural feeling for fighting. How he sets up his shots, how he makes reads, how he is able to fight in different phases of the game is just truly top-level stuff to watch operate (regardless of level of opposition).
The dude truly has something special in him and the reason they (the UFC) made this fight is solely because they think he's going to smoke Lopes.
