Arlovski was in incredible shape when he fought Fedor. He was in his 20s and on a 5 fight winning streak and ranked #2 in the world. In that streak he beat Werdum, knocked Roy Nelson out with punches- something Prime juiced up JDS couldn't do and he also stopped Rothwell violently during that streak- at that time NO ONE was stopping Nelson and Rothwell. Arlovksi was training at Wild Card with Freddie Roach and putting in rounds with Profesional HW boxers on the daily. There's no way you can objectively say this version of Andrei wasn't peaking.
Yes it was, the 5 fight winning streak Arlovski was on included wins over Werdum, Rothwell and Nelson. He never had a 5 fight winning streak or longer with better wins in said streak and his highest ranking ever was prior to fighting Fedor. He also finished Nelson and Rothwell with strikes which is incredibly hard to do. Affliction Arlovski smokes 2003-2005 Arlovski.
Matyushenko was old and a LHW and him and Freeman aren't on the level of Rothwell, Nelson and certainly not Werdum. You act like its easy to finish Rothwell when he was on a 13 fight winning streak before fighting Fedor. Cabbage and Buentello aren't as good as the three I mentioned either.
Forget about whether you were following the sport at the time, although consider what the 2003 join date pointed out...
at the time the forum was saying that version of arlovski was washed up…
...which is true. Nobody thought much of Arlovski's chances, especially after Fedor Zulu'd Tim Sylvia. Or hell, just look at the Fight Finder or look up ranking websites (since there weren't as many MMA outlets and there weren't official rankings back in 2005) and this is not correct.
These ranking sets have been generated by a recent version of the software, using recent data and will not match previously published issues of the rankings, especially since a majority of these...
www.fightmatrix.com
In 2009, Arlovski ranks #7. In 2005, he's #5 and he's wearing UFC HW gold. He also won 6 fights in a row from when he lost to Rizzo to when he lost his belt to Sylvia in their rematch, and he looked better and won more impressively during that prime run than his post-UFC rebound tour. Meanwhile, he needs two rounds to take out Jake O'Brien, who he shouldn't have needed 60 seconds to ice, and he struggles to put away Rothwell, who'd beaten exactly zero people worth a shit and who'd been knocked out already by Carlos Barreto and TKO'd by Ibragim Magomedov, and Nelson, who was mauling him before the worst ref standup in the history of MMA and who rocked him on the feet as well. The Arlovski of old would've eaten those two for lunch. And Werdum had been training with Cro Cop for a little already, but he had no business nearly knocking Arlovski out and lighting him up for 3 or 4 minutes of the first round until Arlovski finally back him off with a good counter right. This is a guy who went almost the full three rounds standing in front of Pedro Rizzo, he had no business getting clocked as often or as cleanly. Even Eddie Bravo called the win "disappointing" as the guest scorer on the mic (as he used to be back then).
You have to take in the big picture here. Rothwell and Nelson are more recent names, but Arlovski shouldn't have struggled anywhere near as much as he did with them and he didn't look impressive in his wins. Yet, against Freeman and Matyushenko, the fights literally looked unfair, Arlovski made it so easy and he finished them so viciously. He was a different fighter in those earlier days because that was when he was in his prime. Just using your eyes, you should be able to see how much lighter he was on his feet, how much better his footwork was, how much faster his hands were, how much better his TDD was. He still had great hands and huge power, so he was obviously still a big threat to anybody standing across from him, but he was never better than when he was running roughshod over the UFC HW division in the early 2000s.
Took all the roid weight off and was lean and mean, maybe 25 lbs lighter, fast as shit.
You're going to need to recalculate your math there. Arlovski weighed in at 237 against Fedor in 2009. He was 238 when he won the Interim UFC HW title in 2005 and he was 242 when he lost to Rizzo in 2002. He was much leaner and much meaner during his prime UFC run, but throughout his career he never fluctuated much weight-wise. You've simply invented those nonexistent 25 pounds.
