The USA totally lost control of the HW Division while I wasn't paying attention.

AldoStillGoat said:
All the US stars are aging out and Jokic will be in his prime with Serbia.
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The US will reload, and guys like Ant and Tatum will be the focal point. Jokic is great, but Serbia doesn't have the ancillary pieces to hang. Obviously it's possible that the US doesn't win again but they will absolutely be the prohibitive favorite again.
 
If more athletic and explosive individuals entered MMA/UFC, the proverbial “ A” athletes , than USA would dominate according to Sherdog pundits .
 
The Accuser said:
HW was never an American thing. Besides Stipe the greatest in no particular order:

Fedor
Overeem
Werdum
Nog
Aspinall
Cain

HW might even be considered the least American division.
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How the fuck is Aspinall one of the greatest HW's of all time. Overeem is a stretch but Aspinall ?

No, Cormier, Rutten, Ngannou, Dos Santos, Couture, and so on.
 
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650lb Sumo said:
Jones is the paperest of paper champions. Stipe is beyond irrelevant until and unless he proves otherwise, which he won't. So here's your top ten:

Jon Jones - USA
Tom Aspinall (the People's Champ) - UK
Ciryl Gane - France
Alexander Volkov - Russia
Sergei Pavlovich - Russia

Curtis Blaydes - USA
Stipe Miocic - USA
Jailton Almeida - Brazil
Marcin Tybura - Poland
Serghei Spivac - Moldova

Excluding Jones and Stipe:

Europe and Russia: 6
Brazil: 1
USA: 1

The USA lost control of HW boxing a while ago, and China is currently ahead in the Olympics as well. 😬 Is this just a phase in MMA or has the baton also been passed?
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Us normal American citizens don't claim Jones.
 
AldoStillGoat said:
All the US stars are aging out and Jokic will be in his prime with Serbia.
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People have been saying this for like two decades. It's not like there's going to not be NBA level stars anymore after 90 year old Kevin Durant retires.


Most of the top 20-30 players in the NBA are American. So even if they do not have a player as good as Curry or Lebron in the future, they are still going to be the same level of threat.
 
I think the UFC lost control of the HW division.

It's absolute garbage. If they signed the top 10 prospects from Eastern Europe there would be 10 Eastern Europeans in the rankings.
 
650lb Sumo said:
Jones is the paperest of paper champions. Stipe is beyond irrelevant until and unless he proves otherwise, which he won't. So here's your top ten:

Jon Jones - USA
Tom Aspinall (the People's Champ) - UK
Ciryl Gane - France
Alexander Volkov - Russia
Sergei Pavlovich - Russia

Curtis Blaydes - USA
Stipe Miocic - USA
Jailton Almeida - Brazil
Marcin Tybura - Poland
Serghei Spivac - Moldova

Excluding Jones and Stipe:

Europe and Russia: 6
Brazil: 1
USA: 1

The USA lost control of HW boxing a while ago, and China is currently ahead in the Olympics as well. 😬 Is this just a phase in MMA or has the baton also been passed?
Click to expand...
Why separate Europe and Russia? Russians are European and eighty percent of them live in Europe? Moscow is the most populous city in Europe for example. Geez the media really is brainwashing the young and dumb.
 
AldoStillGoat said:
The same thing is happening in basketball. The USA is not dominating other nations like it used to. Other countries are catching up.

My pet theory is that the de dollarizarion and globalization that is occurring is chipping away at our dominance.

Even in the Olympics the USA would smack around other teams in basketball and now we almost lost to both France and Serbia. Once the older players retire it’s going to be bad for the US. The next few Olympic golds will be won by other countries in basketball.
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Foghorn Leghorn said:
I think there is a sort of cap or ceiling to talent in sports. There will still be gains at the highest end but much smaller once athletes start hitting that ceiling.

I think in the world now, there's so much access to footage and training techniques that it's helped a lot of other countries catch up.

You say basketball because you're American, I'll use hockey because I'm Canadian. Same reality applies VS lesser teams that historically we'd trounce. Our skills have hit a relative plateau at that ceiling.

Source? Just my pov
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For the past few decades now, Canadian and American hockey players and coaches have been going overseas and playing pro there rather than play semi-pro here, and they have made good money doing it. Not NHL money, but certainly a lot more than they would have made around here. Those players gain dual citizenship and now they can play for that European country, at a level of play they could never get around here.

It's the North American born coaches in the pro and amateur leagues all over Europe now that are narrowing the gap. The quality of hockey players, and hockey in general, coming out of there is a lot better than it was 20-30 years ago. European players are already used to the Olympic rules and ice surface sizes, (it's the Canadian and American teams that have to adapt to the Olympic style) and those European countries get an experienced high-level coaching staff.

I can only assume American born baseball and basketball players and coaches likely have similar stories for the growth of those respective sports overseas as well.

I think the US absolutely has a better chance of maintaining Olympic dominance in basketball than Canada does in hockey. The talent gap there is all but eliminated in hockey, and the playing field is certainly balancing out in basketball, but I just can't ever see the US as an underdog in international basketball.

And with all that being said, a few things...

Baseball, cricket and Karate not in the Olympics, but break-dancing is?? GFY IOC.

Also, would it be too much to ask the fathead and Trump to fast-track MMA into the next Olympics?
 
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