Why did the UFC cut Werdum in 2008?

jko1355 said:
honestly... now im really curious how that fought would go... Werdum was a wizard... but he wasnt strong like Mir to tap Brock... I think Brocks pure weight and strength would stop any submissions... and if you dont believe me look at Jeff Monson at ADCC... no neck all muscle super hard to tap...

Hell we have examples of Werdum not able to tap Ubereem twice... he did tap skinny reem once
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What Werdum had that was pretty unique at heavyweight is that it was basically impossible to do any damage to him in his guard. I think Brock gets tapped at some point in a three round fight. Overeem was significantly better at BJJ.
 
NoBiasJustMMA said:
Wanderlei was passed his prime by like 32. Wear and tear and how often you fight matters a lot more than age. Fedor's only loss at the time was to TK who cut him with an illegal elbow but it was in a tournament and they didn't have alternates so they just decided to give TK the win instead of disqualifying him.

Fedor started MMA young(23 and Sambo even younger) fought top competition early in his career and had a simultaneous Combat Sambo career so his prime was over at a young age.
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Fedor started doing Judo as a child and was being developed for the Olympics. Combat Sambo was something he picked up later as he decided to transition into MMA. Fedor had more miles on him than most fighters.
 
don't ask said:
Fedor started doing Judo as a child and was being developed for the Olympics. Combat Sambo was something he picked up later as he decided to transition into MMA. Fedor had more miles on him than most fighters.
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A lot of people that rely strictly on age to determine if someone is in their prime or not disregard things like how much mileage the person has on them from various sports whether they're combat or otherwise and that's just not how that works.

Most fighters tend to have something like an 8 to 12 year prime, but some will have shorter and some will have longer depending on how often they fight how much injuries they accrued. And how much wear and tear they have from various different sports.
 
BigTruck said:
Ah, I knew of the faces reputation but didn't know if his personality went with it.
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His personality is not really a troll personality.It's more of just someone who goofs around at least from what I have seen of him and interviews and from stories, cro co-op has told in interviews.
 
NoBiasJustMMA said:
Werdum's reputation comes from the troll face smile he's known for not from actually being a troll
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blaseblase said:
DC didn't get cut for showing up fat in his last few fights. If you watched JDS you could tell his striking was elite. Heavyweight debuts look so sloppy 90% of the time.
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Werdum showing up fat was not remotely the same as DC showing up fat, at any point, but especially at the time. Up until that point, Werdum was tall and lean and athletic looking, and was showing up around 225-230, but showed up for this fight at around the 265 limit. That was the last fight on his contract, he came in looking like he didn't care that he was there, or like he even trained, and got mercked by a complete unknown who'd never fought outside of a regional promotion, up to that point. Joe and Mike did their best to reason that he put on the weight to gear up for a potential fight with Brock, but Dana wasn't happy that he went from long and lean to a fat monkey looking guy who didn't take things seriously, and he didn't renew his contract.
 
At the time people saw Werdum as a bootleg Big Nog, or without the striking. Even here in this forum everyone was talking about Nog rather than Werdum. Werdum was 2-2 in UFC, UFC had a blown up budget for roster at HW.
 
Bobby Boulders said:
Werdum showing up fat was not remotely the same as DC showing up fat, at any point, but especially at the time. Up until that point, Werdum was tall and lean and athletic looking, and was showing up around 225-230, but showed up for this fight at around the 265 limit. That was the last fight on his contract, he came in looking like he didn't care that he was there, or like he even trained, and got mercked by a complete unknown who'd never fought outside of a regional promotion, up to that point. Joe and Mike did their best to reason that he put on the weight to gear up for a potential fight with Brock, but Dana wasn't happy that he went from long and lean to a fat monkey looking guy who didn't take things seriously, and he didn't renew his contract.
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Werdum weighed in at 247 before that fight. An 8 lb weight gain. DC used to weight in at 224 before he moved to LHW. He wasn't always a fat ass.
 
Wasn't exactly lightning the world on fire at the time.

Looked awful in the JDS fight, so they used it as an excuse to low ball him.

Instead he goes to Strikeforce, taps Fedor, returns to UFC on a bigger contract and makes a run ending with him as champ.

I would say it worked out better for him honestly
 
NoBiasJustMMA said:
His personality is not really a troll personality.It's more of just someone who goofs around at least from what I have seen of him and interviews and from stories, cro co-op has told in interviews.
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Unless you're Tony Ferguson
 
Same with Arlovski. They wanted more money, and ufc was unwilling to pay it. They approached them with a new deal.

Also... Werdum was 45% McDonald's going into that fight, and looked like shit
 
blaseblase said:
Werdum weighed in at 247 before that fight. An 8 lb weight gain. DC used to weight in at 224 before he moved to LHW. He wasn't always a fat ass.
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He was 233lbs for Arlovski the year prior.

Werdum not being renewed has nothing to do with DC, anyway, and I'm sure you've been around long enough to know that Dana isn't uniform in how he handles situations.
 
blaseblase said:
Werdum weighed in at 247 before that fight. An 8 lb weight gain. DC used to weight in at 224 before he moved to LHW. He wasn't always a fat ass.
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These two situations have a decade and a buyout between them, hardly comparable. Cormier also won the two fights he showed up fat for (and weighed less than Werdum did against JDS), and then slimmed down to 236lbs for the two Stipe rematches before retiring. He didn't get finished in 1 minute as a -650 favorite over an unknown guy that was 1 year removed from getting subbed.

The JDS loss looked bad at the time, and still does due to how lightly Werdum took the fight, and that matters a lot when you're heading into contract negotiations. Back in the day it was common for guys to get cut off of 2 or 3 losses even if they had a solid career up until that point, not like now where you can even go 0-5 while getting finished in each fight.
 
He came in looking fat and sloppy against JDS... not really a good look.
 
Was he really even considered one of the best in the world at that time? I feel like that came later, but it has been a long time.

Werdum came in and lost to Arlovski, beat Gonzaga and Vera, and got slept by JDS in an 18-month period, isn't like he was unstoppable at the time.
 
His fight vs Arlovski was awful and his loss to JDS embarrassing. His win over Vera wasn't especially impressive back then either.
 
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