The days of 40+ fights in a career are gone

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KingMellow

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Anyone else notice a trend lately?

Chris Weidman won the belt in his 10th professional fight.
Cain Velasquez in his 9th professional fight.
Jon Jones in his 14th professional fight. (and that was taking it slow)

I doubt any of these guys will have more then 30 fights (maybe jones). It seems they are trading ring/cage experience for experience in training.

It would be uncommon for your average boxer to have less then 40 fights at retirement and in fact 60, 70, 80+ fights is not uncommon.

Just food for thought when thinking about brain damage.
 
Meh, I don't think it's that set in Stone.

Matt Brown and Carlos Condit are approximately 30. Khabib will easily have over 30 fights when it's all said and done for him. Still got Bobby Green, Bisping...

Usually it's guys with wrestling backgrounds that have really good or undefeated W/L ratios that start out in the UFC with a few fights.
 
Also Chuck had 29 mma fights plus another 22 kickboxing matches = 51 fights
Cro Cop had 42 mma fights and 29 kickboxing matches = 71 fights

The two biggest examples of what we suspect is brain damage are guys who fought 50+ times a piece. (hopefully not)
 
Quality over quantity. Jones beating one elite fighter after the next is much more impressive than a padded record, and he has a very long winning streak.
 
I think it's more of result of there being more major promotion shows per year. Fighters don't have to fight on the local circuit 6-7 times a year before they get noticed by a major promotion (if they are worthy)
 
KingMellow said:
Also Chuck had 29 mma fights plus another 22 kickboxing matches = 51 fights
Cro Cop had 42 mma fights and 29 kickboxing matches = 71 fights

The two biggest examples of what we suspect is brain damage are guys who fought 50+ times a piece. (hopefully not)
Click to expand...

You forgot Cro Cop's amateur boxing (however many fights that was).

Dojo training alone can put mileage on you.
 
Penn won the ww belt with a record of 7-1-1
Against a very tough and dominant champion being in matt hughes
 
Dr Poop said:
I think it's more of result of there being more major promotion shows per year. Fighters don't have to fight on the local circuit 6-7 times a year before they get noticed by a major promotion (if they are worthy)
Click to expand...

Yea, and even more than that.

Fighters don't fight several times a year, or multiple times a night, as part of a tournament.
Fighters have to be cleared by a doctor for every single fight and can't, for example, fight two more times in a single night, after being eye gouged to the point of blindness in their first fight.
Sanctioned events follow a lot of rules that keep fighters healthy, both short and long term. It was a lot different in the Vale Tudo days in Brazil and the unsanctioned days in the USA. The pioneer generation went through hell when they were coming up and took on crazy risk, just to get noticed and they also fought for chump change money.
 
It would be nice if the UFC followed PRIDE's model and matched up the elite fighters with cans every once and a while. I think that would result in them fighting more frequently and possibly reaching that number. And who doesn't love a Fedor vs. Zulu, or Cro Cop vs Rodriguez.
 
I doubt it as MMA becomes more mainstream many of the fighters can start their careers at around 18 or 19. Many young fighters have many fights Jordan Mein is 24 and he already has 36 fights.
 
Keep in mind - the regulations in the last 5-7 years have made it so that guys have to be cleared, tested, etc before taking another fight.

You don't have guys taking 5-6 fights a year anymore in the smaller orgs, or tournament style fights anymore - they won't get cleared.

That's a big reasoning, IMO.
 
Tell that to Travis Fulton. He fought 40+ times last week.
 
KingMellow said:
Anyone else notice a trend lately?

Chris Weidman won the belt in his 10th professional fight.
Cain Velasquez in his 9th professional fight.
Jon Jones in his 14th professional fight. (and that was taking it slow)

I doubt any of these guys will have more then 30 fights (maybe jones). It seems they are trading ring/cage experience for experience in training.

It would be uncommon for your average boxer to have less then 40 fights at retirement and in fact 60, 70, 80+ fights is not uncommon.

Just food for thought when thinking about brain damage.
Click to expand...

Don't see Jones or Cain being champion long
 
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