Was crazy when people first started paying attention to weight classes under 155 in MMA, everyone talked about Torres or Faber like they were Fedor, just only for hardcores who watched all of MMA. They came to UFC and started taking losses, so tons of people basically wrote them off. But Torres himself already was fighting for 9 years and 38 fights before he was caught by Bowles. Faber fought for 5 years and 20 fights before losing to Brown.
If you saw their rise, you'd think they'd be a staple to be on the lists for BW Goat or FW Goat, had those 20 or 40 fights been in UFC. It's a shame what time does to fighters that took losses later in their career. They never get the respect they deserve for carving out the divisions.
As far as Torres, he was a victim of the tides turning for what was acceptable in public. The internet and everyone on it made it a pretty edgy place, but by 2011, that's where people started being held accountable for offensive humor online, really it was a change culturally. He made a dumb rape and party van joke, and immediately dropped from UFC as commentator. I know tons of famous people who were cancelled from posting stuff during early internet. I'm just glad I'm a nobody, because if anyone combed through what I said, I'd be cancelled too. But that sort of set the tone for dropping him as basically the BW pioneer and forgotten about. What a shame.
