Roy Nelson is an underrated wrestler

Concrete Whale

Concrete Whale

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Took down Mark Hunt and took his back and almost had an RNC.

Took down Barnett at least twice and held him down and Barnett's corner was shouting for him to just hold double underhooks from bottom half and stall till stand up / end of round.

More or less shut down Rosholt who is one of the best wrestlers in the division.

I don't remember the Cormier fight that well but I seem to remember Cormier having an awkward time with him as well.
 
Concrete Whale said:
Took down Mark Hunt and took his back and almost had an RNC.

Took down Barnett at least twice and held him down and Barnett's corner was shouting for him to just hold double underhooks from bottom half and stall till stand up / end of round.

More or less shut down Rosholt who is one of the best wrestlers in the division.

I don't remember the Cormier fight that well but I seem to remember Cormier having an awkward time with him as well.
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He does, people just forgot because of his right hand of death
 
I recall the Roy Nelson from the IFL having a really good power double. I've always wondered why he doesn't use it in the ufc.
 
He is just flat out a good fighter, physique aside.
 
Zankou said:
He is just flat out a good fighter, physique aside.
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Agree Nelson has a very good overall grappling game.

And he doesn't strike me as being "dumb" that said I don't why he won't adjust his eating I think he would be a legit force at 205 or 185.

With the amount of training a high level mma fighter must do he's burning so many calories that IMO even a small adjustment in his diet would mean that flab would just fall off.
 
Nelson's a great grappler all round. He submitted Mir in a grappling competition, once upon a time.
 
Jack Handy jr said:
Agree Nelson has a very good overall grappling game.

And he doesn't strike me as being "dumb" that said I don't why he won't adjust his eating I think he would be a legit force at 205 or 185.

With the amount of training a high level mma fighter must do he's burning so many calories that IMO even a small adjustment in his diet would mean that flab would just fall off.
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He ain't making 205, and he sure as hell ain't making 185. If he's one of the more dangerous HWs, still honestly really dangerous for anyone, why would he go down?
 
mattemate said:
He ain't making 205, and he sure as hell ain't making 185. If he's one of the more dangerous HWs, still honestly really dangerous for anyone, why would he go down?
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If the UFC had a LHW vs. HW tournament, Top 8 vs. Top 8, I bet the Light Heavies would win the majority. Cormier vs. Werdum, Jones vs. Cain, Rumble vs. Stipe... Roy Nelson is very smart for staying at Heavyweight, where he can continue fighting well into his 40's.
 
Concrete Whale said:
Took down Mark Hunt and took his back and almost had an RNC.

Took down Barnett at least twice and held him down and Barnett's corner was shouting for him to just hold double underhooks from bottom half and stall till stand up / end of round.

More or less shut down Rosholt who is one of the best wrestlers in the division.

I don't remember the Cormier fight that well but I seem to remember Cormier having an awkward time with him as well.
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A LOT of MMA fighters without wrestling backgrounds are underrated wrestlers. Almost all high level fighters have at least a small arsenal of moves they can hit on almost anyone, generally with some MMA specific facets that make it just different enough from amateur wrestling to work even against accomplished ammy guys. You take someone like Demian Maia: everyone talks about his BJJ (and they should), but hardly anyone talks about how he uses the cage really intelligently to take down guys like John Fitch and Chael Sonnen, both of whom have far more wrestling credentials than him. Guys like Lyoto Machida and Donald Cerrone aren't primarily wrestlers, but if you go back and watch their fights they actually take a lot of guys down in fairly untraditional ways. Hell, Machida threw Dan Henderson at least 2x in their fight. Basically anyone in the top 10 in any division are going to have some good wrestling even if it's not their main weapon.
 
Uchi Mata said:
A LOT of MMA fighters without wrestling backgrounds are underrated wrestlers. Almost all high level fighters have at least a small arsenal of moves they can hit on almost anyone, generally with some MMA specific facets that make it just different enough from amateur wrestling to work even against accomplished ammy guys. You take someone like Demian Maia: everyone talks about his BJJ (and they should), but hardly anyone talks about how he uses the cage really intelligently to take down guys like John Fitch and Chael Sonnen, both of whom have far more wrestling credentials than him. Guys like Lyoto Machida and Donald Cerrone aren't primarily wrestlers, but if you go back and watch their fights they actually take a lot of guys down in fairly untraditional ways. Hell, Machida threw Dan Henderson at least 2x in their fight. Basically anyone in the top 10 in any division are going to have some good wrestling even if it's not their main weapon.
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Doesn't Maia have some sort of Judo background? He has a pretty slick Kosoto that he always seems to use.
 
Gambledub said:
Doesn't Maia have some sort of Judo background? He has a pretty slick Kosoto that he always seems to use.
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Probably. Most of the old school BJJ guys from Brazil do.
 
PolishHeadlock said:
He did? I'm pretty sure he just beat him on points after Mir gassed out.
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Was it just points? I defo remember the match cause Roy was a much a slimmer lad back then. I had a feeling he kimura'd him but I could well be wrong.
 
is it that far os a stretch to say he was a good performing grappler but he's sort of lost his ability to do that effectively because of his physique and preference to stand? How many subs he got int he UFC? How many does Big Ben have? a belt only covers half of your ass, you've got to cover the rest. Megaton was a force to be reckoned with in his heyday,and still competes in IBJJF BB... but he aint winning.
 
just bumping wrt last night

unstoppable clinch - bodylock - outside trip - top control but every time he went up to side control Beast just rolled over and got up. Nelson never attempted to take his back or move to a front headlock or anything just repeated the cycle. He hardly did any damage with gnp nor got anywhere near a sub nor achieved anything striking wise on the feet. So overall it was somewhat of an incomplete performance but his wrestling certainly looked good. He is fighting completely differently now to how he used to. frustrating result
 
terribill said:
is it that far os a stretch to say he was a good performing grappler but he's sort of lost his ability to do that effectively because of his physique and preference to stand? How many subs he got int he UFC? How many does Big Ben have? a belt only covers half of your ass, you've got to cover the rest. Megaton was a force to be reckoned with in his heyday,and still competes in IBJJF BB... but he aint winning.
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I'm sorry, what? Megaton wins all the time when he fights in his division. He just seems to fight in the adult category in smaller tournaments is all, which he won't do as well in. I watched him WRECK people at the 2015 euros and then bow out to someone in the finals.
 
Roy's a really good positional grappler too, but one thing I couldn't figure out the other night is, is he literally too overweight to take someone's back and get hooks in? It seemed like he had several opportunities to against Lewis and never tried. I'd imagine with his grappling and punching power that he'd be a monster from that position.
 
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