was it the decline or better competition?

[XRaided]

Well, he didn't slide on his face in 04 because he was busy with tomato soup cans.

And steroids,fixed fights, and other drugs they didn't test for in gay pride Japan edition.

happens when the other guy inst wearing an ear piece anymore. im sure he was good, but not "10 years undefeated" good

sherdog, ladies and gentlemen

 

[BuffaloEmperor]

Better competition.

Trust the join date. I watched Fedor through his whole career, unlike anybody else who will post in this thread. Guaranteed.

join date doesn't mean a whole lot bro sorry. i started watching mma back in 2002-2003 era but i didn't join sherdog till this year. doesn't mean i dont know just as much as you if not more because i didn't "blog" until this year. and in my opinion its not completely true to just say better competition. i would include that fedor after pride just started to head hunt. he did not follow the "gameplan"(which in my opinion is why fedor had such an amazing run was his teams perfect gameplans) and just went for the overhand right from hell to knock people out. the fedor that fought werdum was not the same fedor that fought big nog in pride.

 

[The Heat]

Fedor almost retired before the Werdum fight due to injuries from fighting for so long and father time creeping up on him.

 

[SharkBoy]

it's very typical of this place to judge everything by the results, but if you look at the fights, you will see that fighters like Crocop and Fedor began to fight uncharacteristically, same with Nog.
Crocop was a hyper aggressive fighter who gradually became more and more tentative. Fedor, master of gameplans and could impose his will with his physical gifts declined in all areas, fighting recklessly and seemingly losing his will to make the win happen. Nog lost his crispness.

And to be fair, where are the UFC fighters of the same generations?, your Chuck,Hughes, Randy, Arlovski's, Sylvia's all began to fall around the same time.

Too much emphasis is also placed on single performances, in a sport where anything can happen.

Werdum was a scrub for losing to Junior, and not worthy of fighting Fedor (according to this place), but now he is suddenly good in the eyes of all. Just know that this is a sport where anything can happen.

The proof is in the pudding, you'd be hard pressed to find an undefeated fighter who has more than 20 fights.
So when you have guys like Fedor, Nog, Crocop, Hendo, Wand who have well up into thirty fights plus, show some flippin respect.

Yeah, maybe you don't think their opponents were great then, but you don't know how the careers of some of these new fighters will go, especially since so many have sub 15 fights.

There are other factors to consider too, some people mock Pride for the some of the opponents, but the guys were sometimes fighting several fights the same night, not knowing who their opponent would be.
Today, everything is taped from plenty of angles and camps are several weeks long to build the finest strategies for specific fighters, but not having that brought difficulties and an x-factor in itself.
Without mentioning the relative difficulties of each era and then comparing and contrasting with today's criteria just shows a lack of intelligence

 

[eXtv]

it's very typical of this place to judge everything by the results, but if you look at the fights, you will see that fighters like Crocop and Fedor began to fight uncharacteristically, same with Nog.
Crocop was a hyper aggressive fighter who gradually became more and more tentative. Fedor, master of gameplans and could impose his will with his physical gifts declined in all areas, fighting recklessly and seemingly losing his will to make the win happen. Nog lost his crispness.

And to be fair, where are the UFC fighters of the same generations, your Chuck, Randy, Arlovski's, Sylvia's all began to fall around the same time.

Too much emphasis is also placed on single performances, where anything can happen.

Werdum was a scrub for losing to Junior, and not worthy of fighting Fedor, but now he is suddenly good in the eyes of all. Just know that this is a sport where anything can happen.
The proof is in the pudding, you'd be hard pressed to find an undefeated fighter who has more than 20 fights.
So when you have guys like Fedor, Nog, Crocop, Hendo, Wand who have well up into thirty fights plus, show some flippin respect.

Yeah, maybe you don't think their opponents were great then, but you don't know how the careers of some of these new fighters will go, especially since so many have sub 15 fights.

There are other factors to consider too, some people mock Pride for the some of the opponents, but the guys were sometimes fighting several fights the same night, not knowing who their opponent would be.
Today, everything is taped from plenty of angles and camps are several weeks long to build the finest strategies for specific fighters, but not having that brought difficulties and an x-factor in itself.
Without mentioning the relative difficulties of each era and then comparing and contrasting with today's criteria just shows a lack of intelligence

Excellent post, thank you

 

[Whitestallion]

Frank Mir. Sadly that's the answer to our problem. If Nog or Big Country had finished Mir I can assure you all Fedor would have been in the UFC.

 

[Mufasatheking]

And to be fair, where are the UFC fighters of the same generations?, your Chuck,Hughes, Randy, Arlovski's, Sylvia's all began to fall around the same time.

Those guys are horrible examples, Chuck was in his early 40's and athletically still looked great (franklin fight) but his chin just gone, randy was in his late 40;s, hughes had a decent career after GSP, and again like chuck, athletically he still looks good but his chin is gone(koshcheck fight) and is nearly 40. Theres a huge difference between them and Fedor, who somehow lost all his athleticism in his early 30's when he moved to the states.

 

[PAPERCLIP30]

Fedor's loss to werdum had NOTHING to do with getting subbed.


And as for Nog, he's only lost to 2 people in the ufc. He ain't doing too bad.



But I'll go with a bit of both

 

[Sivo The Ram]

both. while fedor, nog, and cro cop's career were wrapping up and going down, their opponents (who mostly were younger) career were going up. like ali vs holmes. holmes was on the come up and ali was at the end of his career.

 

[Pakman]

And better guard. People thought Fedor was safe on the ground because he beat up Nog there and never really got into trouble. Nog was also overrated while we're on the subject. He usually only subbed clueless strikers and wrestlers like Mark Coleman. Same with Fedor as a matter of fact. Really no wrestlers with sub defense were around at that time.

Coleman's only been subbed by Fedor n Big Nog in his career...well, Randy too but that fight doesn't even mean anything to me, both were too old for me to give a shit.

It has not much to do with fighters being better, but a lot more to do with each fighter not being as good as they were in their prime.

Also, people seem to forget...these men were in their PRIMES from 2002-2006. It's been 5-6 years since then...

Most fighters do not last 5-6 years on the top...let alone a decade.

Instead of shitting on them, why not appreciate what they did when they did it?

 

[FalaRua]

Sure he may have gotten a little older, but to say he lost his prime somewhere between Rogers and Werdum makes me lol wholeheartedly.

He was facing subpar competition throughout his career, fighters who would join the UFC and end up doing poorly (cro cop, big nog some of his biggest fights), and he never wanted to step into UFC to prove himself (without having the UFC bend over backwards of course), so how can anybody honestly say hes the GOAT I'll never understand, nostalgia I suppose.

For me the Rogers fight showed that Fedor was slowing down and was a different fighter than he was in Pride.

So your saying that Fedor was facing subpar comp throughout his career by not fighting in the UFC. Don't you think the UFC HW division was "subpar" compared to Pride during Fedor's prime?

Fighters joined the UFC ended up doing poorly: Other than Mir, how have UFC HW champs during Fedor's Pride reign like Ricco, Couture, Sylvia and Arlovski done since that time?

If you really saw Fedor back in 2004, it's hard for me to believe you think there is another HW that ranks ahead of him.

 

[Andre Xiong]

Also, people seem to forget...these men were in their PRIMES from 2002-2006. It's been 5-6 years since then...

Most fighters do not last 5-6 years on the top...let alone a decade.

Instead of shitting on them, why not appreciate what they did when they did it?

Rampage is my best example of "prime": he can still compete but people seem to overlook that Rampage entered his prime in freaking 2003--nearly 10 years ago!!!

It's a bit of both. When you run into someone like Jon Jones or Anderson Silva, even your prime can't help you but obviously these "Pride" era guys were in their prime during, well, the Pride era which was long ago and to judge them (solely) by their performances of late is unfair and disrespectful.

 

[TheComebackKid]

oops, my bad, I got that wrong.

still you said Rich/Sakurai = Cro Cop when CC had beaten guys like Randleman (UFC Champ) Coleman (UFC and Pride Champ) Igor (MMA Legend) and Barnett (UFC Champ) going into the Fedor fight.

Franklin's biggest wins going into the Anderson fight were over Nate Quarry and Evan Tanner, and Sakurai's biggest win was over Frank Trigg.

I think that CC is a far better win for Fedor than Rich or Sakurai were for Anderson.

Theres nothing special about Coleman and Randleman in 2004 and 2005. Barnett was a great win but thats about it.

Franklin was 22-1, #1 MW in the world, former top 10 LHW and top 10 p4p. Plus he didn't get kod by someone like Randleman, subbed in 10 seconds, or taken to a draw by someone from a weight class below. He compares to CC just fine.

And Sakurai was the #1 p4p fighter in world at that time. You cant find a bigger win than beating the #1 rated fighter in the world.

Hope that clears things up.

 

[georgejjr]

It's always better competition. Michael Jordan was as good on the day he retired, as he was when he was winning MVP's. Its just that the NBA got better. Same with Wayne Gretzki. And Muhammed Ali.

Because age is just a number, and ten years at the top of a contact sport is a walk in the park. No one deteriorates, the competition just improves.


More seriously, some of both. MMA has improved, and Fedor is actually one of the reasons it improved - he was one of the first well rounded fighters. At the same time, Fedor slowed down noticably even by the time he fought Arlovski - something even his boxing coach admitted two years before he lost to Werdum (and coaches never admit any weakness in their athletes unless they figure its obvious ... its why NFL coaches don't tell the press who's injured unless they're so bad they can't play).

People trying to make this either-or don't understand either how sports evolve, or how age slows you down. They're not mutually exclusive.

 

[Sivo The Ram]

Theres nothing special about Coleman and Randleman in 2004 and 2005. Barnett was a great win but thats about it.

Franklin was 22-1, #1 MW in the world, former top 10 LHW and top 10 p4p. Plus he didn't get kod by someone like Randleman, subbed in 10 seconds, or taken to a draw by someone from a weight class below. He compares to CC just fine.

And Sakurai was the #1 p4p fighter in world at that time. You cant find a bigger win than beating the #1 rated fighter in the world.

Hope that clears things up.

only thing that is clear, is your nutthugging of anderson

 

[Mufasatheking]

it's very typical of this place to judge everything by the results, but if you look at the fights, you will see that fighters like Crocop and Fedor began to fight uncharacteristically, same with Nog.
Crocop was a hyper aggressive fighter who gradually became more and more tentative. Fedor, master of gameplans and could impose his will with his physical gifts declined in all areas, fighting recklessly and seemingly losing his will to make the win happen. Nog lost his crispness.

And to be fair, where are the UFC fighters of the same generations?, your Chuck,Hughes, Randy, Arlovski's, Sylvia's all began to fall around the same time.

Too much emphasis is also placed on single performances, in a sport where anything can happen.

Werdum was a scrub for losing to Junior, and not worthy of fighting Fedor (according to this place), but now he is suddenly good in the eyes of all. Just know that this is a sport where anything can happen.

The proof is in the pudding, you'd be hard pressed to find an undefeated fighter who has more than 20 fights.
So when you have guys like Fedor, Nog, Crocop, Hendo, Wand who have well up into thirty fights plus, show some flippin respect.

Yeah, maybe you don't think their opponents were great then, but you don't know how the careers of some of these new fighters will go, especially since so many have sub 15 fights.

There are other factors to consider too, some people mock Pride for the some of the opponents, but the guys were sometimes fighting several fights the same night, not knowing who their opponent would be.
Today, everything is taped from plenty of angles and camps are several weeks long to build the finest strategies for specific fighters, but not having that brought difficulties and an x-factor in itself.
Without mentioning the relative difficulties of each era and then comparing and contrasting with today's criteria just shows a lack of intelligence

Rampage is my best example of "prime": he can still compete but people seem to overlook that Rampage entered his prime in freaking 2003--nearly 10 years ago!!!

It's a bit of both. When you run into someone like Jon Jones or Anderson Silva, even your prime can't help you but obviously these "Pride" era guys were in their prime during, well, the Pride era which was long ago and to judge them (solely) by their performances of late is unfair and disrespectful.

Rampages prime was in 2007, which is when he had the two best wins and best performance of his career (against hendo) when he was 29-30 years old.

 

[C0NCH3TO]

Both things. 65% percent is due to the evolution of the sport though(which to me is part of ''competition'')....35 is the decline of those fighters.

 

[C0NCH3TO]

The new breed of HW MMA fighters have the advantage as most modern athletes do. Nutrition. Training. Skills. They have the luxury of learning from a history of MMA, while the studs from Pride were actually making it.

true.

 

[Halliburton]

The old PRIDE heavies have all lost a step or two. To deny that is to just be ignorant. Anyone who has watched them throughout their careers can tell. That being so, competition in the heavies have definitely gotten better over the years.

Put the two together and you get old vets losing to newcomers. Nothing really unusual. Crocop, Nog and Fedor weren't exactly spring chickens when they moved over to other orgs.

 

[karateisundratd]

lol fedors retired and never been in the ufc, yet hes got 2 threads in the ufc right now, lol talk about loved and hated! though I know there both troll threads and balli definitely started this with his troll account thats why he was able to get the first post in but I don't think he made the other one. I find it funny that it pisses lots of people off knowing fedors the goat. decline or better competition? well nog beat hendo and werdum, werdum beat bigfoot so he actually fought crappier competition. The guy didn't give a shit after pride folded he stopped caring and didn't train as hard and definitely didn't fight the same, in strikeforce he did it for the money or just wanted to fight but he definitely didn't care as much and claimed it was all gods will at that point lol

Werdum has actually evolved quite a bit, he was green when he fought Nog also Hendo once defated Nog as well despite being much smaller and Hendo has evolved with time as well. You dont have any logic in ur post!