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I know that when you take a bad loss you want to see things in a light where it makes you look as good as possible.
I also know that when you are teammates with someone (and close friends) you are going to want to back them in their take and show them support by agreeing with them and gassing up their takes.
But a large part of this breakdown, some of these takes...
22 seconds (VOLK) - "You make a mistake in front of a man like Topuria, this is what can happen."
You didn't make a mistake, Topuria MADE You make a mistake. It's not like you backing up against the cage trying to counter off the back foot happened without context, Topuria was constantly pressuring and blitzing with boxing combinations, kicking your calf, feinting and jabbing, which ultimately made Volk back up and reactively try to counter. It's a way to not give credit and instead take blame i.e. "if I hadn't made a mistake this wouldn't have happened" not "how he fought me made me make a mistake and this was the result."
40 seconds (HOOKER) - "I feel like Max has more tools and we can see that when he fought his last opponent Justin Gaethje. Like a very similar opponent to Topuria, very heavy-handed, orthodox fighter, and Max was able to just...spinning kicks, high kicks, and Max was just able to shut him down and take a lot of that power away from him."
Some truth with a lot of cope (or either deflection or stupidity). Yes, Topuria and Gaethje have heavy-hands and fight out of an orthodox stance - other than that they fight almost NOTHING alike. Gaethje was initially a reckless brawler that looked to chop you down with low kicks with no set-up, under Wittman's tutelage he's turned into an outside boxer/puncher that likes to jab guys up from boxing range and also chew the lead leg up when possible, but he's very patient and measured.
Topuria is a pure pressure boxer-puncher that throws in blitzing combinations and uses tight footwork and a really nice system of defensive tools to avoid damage and make reads so he can close distance and work in the pocket. Gaethje's defense is basically a high-guard where he deflects with his arms or he ducks straight down (which Holloway's team studied and realized that jumping spinning back-kick would either hit the body or he'd duck his face into).
Part of the reason Max shut Justin down was A) Justin had the wrong game-plan trying to fight off the back foot and counter Max (terrible idea giving Max the initiative to set the range/pace and get a bead on Justin's timing) and B) Justin got his whole shit broke at the end of the first then double eye-poked in the second, was so physically compromised so early that he was fighting on auto-pilot and incapable of making adjustments except briefly in the 4th.
2 MINUTES 19 SECONDS (VOLK) - (re: Max) "Now he's very hard to hit and I think that's what's going to be tough for Topuria, he wants to find that perfect position to throw hands. I just think it might be hard to find that spot with Max, and again Max, even if he does land in on Max he has that granite chin, trust me I've tried, I've tried cracking that thing many times, and it's a granite chin mate, it's gotta be one of the best chins we've ever seen."
Can't argue that Max has one of the best (if not the best) chins we've ever seen - maybe Jones, prime Mark Hunt, Khabib and a few others deserve to be mentioned in the same catalogue (though Khabib didn't eat as many clean shots as Jones/Hunt/Max, he did eat the ones that were clean just as well as the others).
Max has actually never been that hard to hit, there's a reason he's absorbed more strikes than any fighter ever in the UFC. Here are the stats for how his opponents did his in last grouping of fights against elite opponents that have some combination of good technical footwork/diverse striking tools/put out good volume:
Gaethje - 103 strikes @ 51%
Volk 3 - 199 @ 53%
Yair - 159 @ 45%
Volk 2 - 132 @ 50%
Vok 1 - 157 @ 51%
Dustin Poirer - 178 @ 46%
Against the best guys Max gets hit a ton, most opponents landing 50% of strikes attempted and over 100 per fight. Max has good defense against foot-slow plodding fighters with predictable attacks like TKZ/Allen/Kattar, but against elite guys with range weapons/fast hands/tight footwork he gets hit a lot.
Now to his credit Max is getting in a ton of damage/volume in those fights as well, it's not a one-way street, but it's crazy to claim that he's "very hard to hit" when that's really a relative claim against out-matched opposition that are very style friendly match-ups. The one time his defense looked next level was against Kattar when he was beating the piss out of him and had a perfect read on his range/timing and yet he was still getting caught with big shots by fighting reckless and show-boating.
Volk is right, he does have a granite chin that is seemingly uncrackable, but strange to try to claim that he is the one that should be "cracking that chin" when he's never even got a true KO as champ - he's got a TKO against of a semi-washed TKZ and the Yair TKO came after one of the hardest head butts I've ever seen in a fight that didn't result in an extended stoppage so the guy who got fouled could recover properly.
Topuria is legitimately the hardest hitting FW we've probably ever seen, flat-lined Volk with the end of a combination (slumped dead before follow-up shots), boxed Emmet's face off with like half a dozen knockdowns, put Jai Herbert into the land of shadows and ghosts at LW - 4 of his last 6 wins are by KO (not TKO) and in the other two wins he boxed up Emmett (who can take a hell of a punch) and beat the piss out of Bryce so bad he was able to arm-triangle supposedly the best grappler in the division.
4 MINUTES 23 SECONDS (HOOKER): "The momentum he's [Max] kind of carrying is second to none...not that Illia's not...I think Max gets it done, I would like to see Illia...for Illia to get it done, you fight Illia, I fight Max and then we get this whole thing (sorted out?)"
Outside of the LW fight (different weight class), Max is 4-3 in his last 7 at FW (though to be fair all 3 losses to Volk, which might be stylistic poison for him) - it's a 2-fight win at FW with one of those wins being TKZ in his retirement fight (lamb being led to the slaughter).
Topuria is on a 15-fight unbeaten streak, undefeated, 7-0 in the UFC with 5 finishes including 5 of his last 6 with the last fight being flat-lining the champ in under 2 rounds.
Objectively there is no way around it, Topuria has way more momentum, he has never lost and has been putting on better and better performances. For Max even in some of the recent wins they were objectively close i.e. Arnold Allen fight and the Yair fight, with the Yair fight closer than the Allen fight but still closer than we'd like to see compared to someone literally killing their competition with increasing confidence.
Also there is no way in hell Hooker would ever deserve a shot at Max based on his current performances - he's got back-to-back split decisions in life and death wars with Gamrot and Turner, he isn't putting anyone in the top 10 out in a highlight reel or completely dominating them. His last real "quality" win was against Paul Felder 4 years ago, the year Felder retired after one more fight, by guess what....a split decision.
THERE IS MORE FROM HOOKER ABOUT HOLLOWAY BEING ABLE TO USE THE SAME GAMEPLAN THAT HE DID AGAINST GATHJE - even though Topuria is not going to sit patiently at jabbing/kicking range and let Max methodically walk him down. apparently Holloway can do the exact same thing against an opponent that has way better defense and is going to be looking to constantly come forward and work to get inside the pocket.
They seem fixated on this idea that Topuria is "always waiting for the perfect shot" when he's a methodically intelligent boxer-puncher, he's using reads based off feints and jabs/throwaway shots to see what his opponent does so he can figure out how to effectively close range and get inside the pocket where he can throw in combination and have his opponents reacting to his attacks.
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Now there are some bits of truth mixed throughout by Volk and smart analysis from him (i.e. Topuria will have a hard time wrestling Max so will likely be a pure stand-up fight, Max won't want to sit in the pocket with Topuria, which seems blatantly obvious but still fair points).
But most of it just seems to be an attempt to gas-up Max (which makes Volk look better, since he beat him 3 times) and downplay what makes Topuria so dangerous and write-off Volk's loss as "making a mistake" in a complete vacuum as if it was the type of mistake where Moicano got killed off the first jab-counter against TKZ at the very start of the fight.
I love the Topuria/Holloway fight, it's an incredibly close fight where I can see it going either way and give the slightest edge to Topuria because of youth/speed/power edges, but Max has range/clinch/underrated counter-grappling and of course that chin (though it could crack any fight because of the cumulative damage he's taken and Topuria would certainly be the type of fighter where if he hits you super-clean could be the one to do it).
Anyways just wanted to share the video and give my thoughts on what I saw as some outlandish takes - what say you Sherbros?
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