Who exactly am I 'fanboying' over here? For you to compare Mark Coleman to Cormier on any level is pretty funny. They were light years apart in terms of skillset. Really the only thing they shared was a wrestling base.
My point was that Crocrop didn't have great TDD. The guys that fought him that tried to take him down did.
You've gotten so far off topic here you don't even remember what my original point was, being against a wrestler like Stipe (or DC) Crocrop would have been on his back in short order. That's not fanboying, that's simply a fact.
You just straight up stated that it's a fact that, in a hypothetical fantasy matchup that will never happen, something would happen. You aren't very smart, clearly.
The guy in your avi couldn't take him down despite multiple attempts. He didn't even get close.
Something people seem to forget about Cro Cop is what an anomaly he is in MMA. Sure, he got taken down by Fujita, Sakuraba... but he was a K1 kickboxer and he was just starting out in MMA. When he really started to hit his stride, he rarely got taken down. He redefined takedown defense honestly with his style of sprawling. To say he didn't have good takedown defense, I believe you even said "bad" TDD in one of your posts... that's just plain ignorance and you're making yourself look like an idiot.
Now, that's not to say Stipe or DC couldn't or wouldn't be able to take him down. Of course they're capable, that's not what I'm arguing. But moving on from this...
People need to consider that the PRIDE era/UFC buying PRIDE was unlike anything in the history of the sport and it'll not be replicated ever again unless someday the UFC starts to fail and Bellator starts to take over to the point where it becomes a legit rivalry. Then Bellator buys out the failing UFC and the UFC's talent is absorbed to Bellator. But even then it wouldn't be the same due to the fact that they'd still be in the US and in a cage. And a few other things, such as the timeline. It could happen in the veryyyyyy distant future, but not exactly the way it did with PRIDE and the UFC.
You can't even picture a scenario where this exists if you look at the sport today, but that's what happened back then. It was like the passing of the torch, despite the fact that they were rival promotions and it was a legit rivalry/competition (despite the hierarchy of PRIDE being #1, UFC being #2) unlike the UFC and Bellator.
The top fighters in PRIDE spent the prime of their careers in the #1 promotion (fighter in question, Cro Cop, already had mileage before even debuting in MMA), then they enter "the new" #1 promotion with a plethora of new top fighters, in a completely different country, and most importantly, in a completely different fighting environment. Current top UFC fighters would be way less successful or even fail completely under the same circumstances. Now to my point, since you may be confused... this isn't rly a response to what you said in the quote, just some stuff I've seen in this dumb thread.
I'm honestly not sure why I've seen dumb posts about Cro Cop being in his prime in the UFC. That makes zero sense. Cro Cop had only fought in a ring throughout his entire career in kickboxing, amateur boxing and MMA. His entire style was built around fighting in a ring. At the time, of course it made sense for him to be heavily favored in the Gonzaga and Kongo fights for example, but in hindsight, with context considered... that shit's a difficult transition and would be for any fighter in existence given the time period and circumstances behind it. I mean, just watch the fights, they speak for themselves. He was not the same fighter. In his UFC debut, the way he's walking down Eddie Sanchez... he's just following him around in a circle and it looks really awkward and not good, the commentators mentioned it a few times iirc. This wouldn't happen in a ring. So "he won the OWGP a few months beforehand" is not a good argument to me if you consider these things, on top of the fact that he had a shit ton of mileage anyway. I just don't see this point getting brought up enough considering it's extremely valid.
As for Big Nog, I saw someone say he was in his prime in the UFC as well because of his age lmao... So many of you guys don't even understand what "prime" means. And I'm not sure why people are acting like he got destroyed in the UFC or something... he had really good success in the UFC despite being past his prime.
