How come Paulo Filho never came over to the UFC? I know he looked like crap in his second fight with Sonnen, as well as had problems making weight for that fight. I'm assuming this in combination with the whole substance abuse thing kept him out of the UFC initially? If so surely rattling off three consecutive wins against game competitors in 2009 would have made up for aforementioned problems?
He's damaged goods. Dana and co likely thought he would be a drag later down the line since he's a mental case. I would have liked to see prime Paulo Filho vs Palhares
TS read your post you answered your own question. Substance abuse can't make weight and looking bad in losses
Filho used to be awesome, but he went through like a 10 fight skid where he looked like crap, even in victory.
he looked great, he could have won the pride ww gp if he didn't get hurt before the finals, he beat misaki and misaki beat kang to win it
I assume maybe he got a better monetary offer from the WEC at the time. He might've been the uncrowned Pride 2006 WW GP winner, but he still wasn't the official GP winner... just based on that, Kazuo Misaki would warrant a higher offer from the UFC than Filho would. I have no idea, though. The MW division was all over the place 5 years ago... even among divisions that were all over the place, MW was really spread around. Here're the MW rankings at the end of 2007: http://www.sherdog.com/news/articles/4/Sherdogs-Official-Mixed-Martial-Arts-Rankings-10444 Only four guys in the top 10 were signed to the UFC at the time. So maybe Filho felt that he didn't need to be signed to the UFC if he wanted to become the best in the world at MW... which is understandable.
He started having substance abuse problems at the exact wrong time in his career. He got addicted as he was approaching his physical peak, all while the UFC began to truly dominate MMA. I guarantee that if he stayed clean, beat Sonnen again, and retained his WEC championship then he would be a top contender in the UFC. He was insanely skilled.
I'm a huge fan of Anderson Silva and while I don't 100% agree that Filho would have beat him I'm certainly not ruling out that possibility. Filho subbed a lot of excellent grapplers and even at his worst managed to stay unfinished against some very good competition. He was just finding his edge in the striking department too. I still have hope he can one day turn his career around and become the fighter we all expected of him.
How do you make a thread asking a question, and give yourself the best answer immediately after asking the question.
