UFC Fighters who were never very good but were popular and had name value

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Lionheart7167

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UFC fighters that were often talked about, for whatever reason or the other, but just weren't great fighter's at the end of the day, call 'em busts, overrated, overhyped, whatever. Here's a few off the top of my head.

Todd Duffee- Built like a specimen, came in hot with the fastest KO at HW, then had a shit career thereafter
Erick Silva- Mega-hype- total fizzle
Roger Huerta- Started off super hot, looked like he could be a champ for a moment. Let his ego (and that Sports Illustrated cover) go to his head
Clay Guida- Despite his longevity, and some thrilling fights early on (Diego fight was insane) Clay was never that good
 
Koala said:
Toney, Punk, Kimbo, Molly maybe
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Molly and Punk for sure. Toney was a laughable circus fight. I don't think anyone's thought of MMA Toney before or since.
I actually think Kimbo overachieved based on what he was.
 
Lionheart7167 said:
UFC fighters that were often talked about, for whatever reason or the other, but just weren't great fighter's at the end of the day, call 'em busts, overrated, overhyped, whatever. Here's a few off the top of my head.

Todd Duffee- Built like a specimen, came in hot with the fastest KO at HW, then had a shit career thereafter
Erick Silva- Mega-hype- total fizzle
Roger Huerta- Started off super hot, looked like he could be a champ for a moment. Let his ego (and that Sports Illustrated cover) go to his head
Clay Guida- Despite his longevity, and some thrilling fights early on (Diego fight was insane) Clay was never that good
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All of your examples don't even fit the bill outside of Duffee, and by HW standards he was probably even considered "good" lol.

-Silva good but not great, only lost to top guys until he went on a late career downslide, just a failed prospect in the end.
-Huerta good but not great, had a couple great early wins but hype went to his head and then got fed to elite fighters.
-Guida good but not great, had a long career with some solid wins and bad losses intermixed until the slide at the end.

Silva/Huerta were good prospects, they just weren't ever elite, and once they started losing they lost confidence and started falling to pieces. Guida is the classic journeyman MMA fighter, good but not great, had a tough style that could test newer prospects and match up well with other journeyman.

If you notice a trend looking at failed prospect careers the losing gets to their head and they start failing to pieces worse and worse with each loss. There are a couple other failed hype prophets like Phillipe Nover, Will Brooks, Brandon Thatch and to be fair to Brooks and Thatch they were good but Brooks lost his head once he started losing and Thatch never developed his game after early success. Nover was probably just never that good just had some TUF recognition to build his profile before actually being in the UFC.

The ones you should be naming are Sage Northcutt and Paige Van Zant. They had the most name value with the least amount of actual fighting skills.
 
Phil Baroni, Clay Guida, Tony Fergeson, Brock Lesnar [great wrestler, no other MMA skill], Kimbo.
 
EndlessCritic said:
How was Lesner never any good? He was a freight train who beat the shit out of Mir, KO'd Randy Couture, and gave us an all-time comeback against Carwin.

He can hold his head high with his only unavenged career losses being to a prime Cain and prime Overeem.
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Great wrestler, but not a good MMA fighter.
 
EndlessCritic said:
How was Lesner never any good? He was a freight train who beat the shit out of Mir, KO'd Randy Couture, and gave us an all-time comeback against Carwin.

He can hold his head high with his only unavenged career losses being to a prime Cain and prime Overeem.
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Most of his success was directly related to size, not skill. His sustained beating and comeback from Carwin was impressive but you know most refs would have stopped that.
 
A lot of the Spike-era TUF vets fit this mold: Melvin Guillard, Chris Leben, Stephan Bonnar, Keith Jardine, Kendall Grove, Scott Smith, etc. There's a theme here. Fun fights and personality.

In recent times? More violent guys like Mike Perry, Bobby Green, Gokhan Saki, Roy Nelson.

Mayhem Miller probably has the highest contrast between popularity and what he actually accomplished in the UFC.
 
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