Reem only lost to big foot after blowing his own wand trying to finish him. Gane ain’t overcoming that punishment in the first place.
I see no point in comparing even a watered down k1 title (btw just look at the names he beat, all time greats) Vs MT.
Gane is a good fighter and even better athlete but the Reem prime for prime comparisons are just not genuine at this moment.
Yes, the sport generally evolves, and the talent overall improves in time. But from this people conclude that every division now is necessarily composed of superior talent than before. That is not always the case.
HW is the paradigm example of that. Lots of people went ahead to claim that guys like Gane, Volkov, Tuivasa, Blaydes, Almeida and Lewis are "next generation talent". In truth, the HW division is in a pretty dismal shape, worse than I can remember it being since the Tim Sylvia days, and certainly a lot worse than after the Strikeforce and Pride acquisitions.
Nothing Volkov does Semmy Schilt did not do better; nothing Tuivasa does did Mark Hunt not do better. Almeida does nothing we haven't seen from guys like Arona, Filho, or Werdum.
Guys like Cyril Gane, who is not even a particularly accomplished kickboxer, is seen to be somehow superior to people like Overeem, Schilt, or Mirko, who were far more accomplished.
Yes, the sport generally evolves, and the talent overall improves in time. But from this people conclude that every division now is necessarily composed of superior talent than before. That is not always the case.
HW is the paradigm example of that. Lots of people went ahead to claim that guys like Gane, Volkov, Tuivasa, Blaydes, Almeida and Lewis are "next generation talent". In truth, the HW division is in a pretty dismal shape, worse than I can remember it being since the Tim Sylvia days, and certainly a lot worse than after the Strikeforce and Pride acquisitions.
Nothing Volkov does Semmy Schilt did not do better; nothing Tuivasa does did Mark Hunt not do better. Almeida does nothing we haven't seen from guys like Arona, Filho, or Werdum.
Guys like Cyril Gane, who is not even a particularly accomplished kickboxer, is seen to be somehow superior to people like Overeem, Schilt, or Mirko, who were far more accomplished.
Juice them up like back in PRIDE and let’s see how things go.
In the early 2010’s the UFC’s heavyweights were actually pretty damn good with prime JDS, Cain, Werdum, Stipe, DC, Travis Browne was looking like a good prospect before Edmund, Carwin was great, Hunt was great. It was pretty decent.
Ah, the days of having enough big guys to fill several promotions HW divisions up with elite champion class fighters. This is what Dana dreams about, when the top HW’s where more numerous and would fight for chump change… he dreams of Cain, Brawk, and Carwin, then it goes nightmare when Ngannou knocks them all out.There's a reason we're not allowed to talk about that period and it has nothing to do with talking about ability and skillsets.
From my perspective, i appreciate the fact that Lewis was able to defend against a "9th degree" black belt and not get submitted. Disappointed that he could not make his game work at all.
Almeida is one dimensional and if you can't submit Lewis, he won't be champion ever.
Dunno about that. It'd be tough to work it out. Theres way way way more money at the top in MMA though. With a much smaller talent pool, maybe competing 30 times in your whole career (vs hundreds of rugby games) and the physical toll honestly isnt much worse than rugby overall.
Its actually pretty crazy how rugby isnt under fire much more for its pay. Its one of the most brutal sports in the world and has some of the best athletes, but pays like absolute shit even though its old and well established. It basically contradicts the idea that the only reason HW MMA sucks is poor pay.
Weight cutting is a big reason for that. Some fighters like Poatan can fight at MW while 20 years ago they would have been HW fighters.
Imagine Jones, Alex, Jiri, younger Glover, Reyes, prime Gus… fighting at HW.
Be prepared to see Gane KTFO. Alistair is an old man, but in his prime was literal K1 WGP champ, in a time when talented giants walked the land in kickboxing. Gane doesn't have the power to stop Alistair, nor the tricks to keep himself at distance Vs Ubereem at all.
There is zero doubt HW is laughable compared to those earlier times, and the same can be said of LHW.
The whole "talented big guys don't choose this sport" is totally irrelevant to the point. If we were to hypothesize that this idea were true, it would have always been true. Remember big guys ALWAYS had better opportunities, but we still had a lot of good big guys at one time.
The point is, HWs and LHWs have devolved overall during the last 5-7 years or so. They have not gotten better, nor have they stayed the same.
LHW has regressed also though, even worse; lots of guys from the past that could beat either of the LHW fighters in the title match.This is a valid point. It's not like elite HW athletic talent was entering the sport in droves, in the late 90's. Big money sports always paid better. The question is why has HW regressed in spite if the sport growing, overall.
In 2013 the UFC HW division consisted of these top 10 fighters:
Cain, JDS, Werdum, Cormier, Bigfoot, Barnett, Mir, Nogueira, Stipe, and Overeem
... if you swapped out Bigfoot's name with Fedor's, that's basically a list of the top 10 greatest HWs ever. Maybe it's missing Ngannou.
But the current HW division obviously does not compare, and you are an absolute noob homer if you think it does.
We had multiple out of prime Pride era fighters still competing just few years back and we still have guy like Arlovski in the roster. That should be proof enough that current heavyweights suck.