Fight IQ and energy management? No he lost to the better fighter twice
Lee looked like the better fighter for the first 3 rounds. You can easily argue he won the fight because of that.
He gassed and looked like a fool in the championship rounds which is predominantly what people remember.
Had he paced himself properly, not threw so much energy into the fruitless ground work, particularly the body triangle and sub attempts..likely would've been a very different fight. Competing without a proper head coach at the time did him no favors.
Energy management was also an issue against RDA, which up until the end was another close fight.
A lot of Lee's fights look like that. The skill, talent and potential is there but he's had a lot of self sabotaging moments in his career.
Lee is still an incredible talent who it would be silly to sleep on. Most people just remember Oliveira getting the win in their last fight. But those first two rounds were incredibly close, arguably going to Lee. The 3rd round, Oliveira turned up and started landing some beautiful strikes, Lee shot for a takedown and got choked. Lee is someone who's also 3 years younger than Oliveira with about half the octagon experience.
All that said, the way people just write Lee off is pretty dumb. He's the youngest guy competing around the top 10 and clearly able to hang in there with the best guys but people act like hes a bum.
