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He is HW thats how heavyweights should look 230 lbs jacked not like fat pigs
Will Blaydes' wrestling be too much for Jailton?
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Something like that... Because if he can take Blaydes down, so we'll be witnessing the next champ 100%. No doubt. Surviving Blaydes hands and taking him down is enough to me. Blaydes is an OX.
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Yup, he'll be the first one Jailton has faced with a true real deal wrestling background. I definitely see a KO coming once Jailton is stuffed a few times imo. We'll see what the odds are, but I'll probably put money on a KO for Blades. Not too much money though, just Incase Jailton proves my dumbass wrong. Lol
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He won't come close to a single takedown, at least not one that doesn't result in Blaydes getting up in less than ten sedonds. His hope to win is to rock Blaydes standing, which is doable.
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If this is your definition for "long", you probably have some delusions about your manhood
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TBH I don't think anyone really passed Blaydes test.
His losses were more about Blaydes hims4lf failing HIS tests...
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I think they just find out banging is easier.
I think he just uses his grappling poorly. He went out slugging in his last fight against a superior striker, then tried to panic wrestle AFTER he got tagged.
Blaydes needs some fight IQ.
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The striker he beat were devastating at one time, but no so much when he beat them (like JDS and Hunt). Volk was a good win, but he is a quality striker and not a devastating one.
He uses strategy poorly UNTIL he gets caught and crumbles; he doesn't utilize strategy adequately; that was what I meant. You don't engage in fire fights where you are outgunned.
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Probably.
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Curtis, on paper, matches up well against Almeida and I'm probably going to favor him here... though I worry about his horrendous fight IQ and the erosion of grappling skills over the years.
It's worth noting that Curtis's TDD stats on the UFC's page don't tell the whole story. First of all, they're outright wrong. They have literally counted phantom takedowns against him and not counted takedowns that he's stuffed. Secondly, this doesn't account for the fact that despite the multiple times he's been taken down inside the UFC, he has less than a minute of bottom time accrued in all his fights in the UFC. He doesn't accept bad positions and almost always scrambles right back to his feet.
His relevant performances for this fight came early in his career:
Worth noting that Blaydes has also fought out of a guillotine from Reem (ADCC European Trials Gold Medalist, won all matches via guillotine and has 8 guillotine wins in MMA) and also easily fought off both a kimura & guillotine from Volkov. Blaydes, prior to his fight with Aspinall, put in a week at B Team Jiu-Jitsu rolling with Nicky Rod who is probably one of the best training partners around to simulate Jailton: stud collegiate wrestler, athletic freak of nature, one of the best no-gi submission grapplers in the world, very skilled at back-takes and attacking the RNC. Similar height & build, too.
So if Curtis is able to sprawl n brawl Almeida successfully, I think he wins this nine times out of ten. Way too many people are overselling Jailton's striking while underselling Curtis on the basis of "He is athletic and fast and started out as a boxer when he was a kid and Blaydes gets knocked out a lot!!!" Jailton has shown very little on the feet and what little he has shown does little to convince me he can win a striking match down the stretch. He uses the takedown threat, his awkwardness, and his explosiveness to make up for gaps in his skill set, loading up on everything with bad intentions. I call it "car crash striking". It's the same way Brunson and Dricus used to fight. Shamil cracked him early and was able to continuously explode out of bad positions on the mat, defying Jailton's ground control until he gassed. Jairzinho stuffed Almeida in his initial shot and looked primed to walk him down and start swinging until Jailton got him on the re-shoot.
Blaydes has really solid striking and tends to look pretty throwing hands even in losing performances (i.e. Lewis and Pavlovich). Who else has landed flush on Sergei's chin that many times in a striking affair? He also looked like he was on his way to TKO'ing Black Beast before trying to force the takedowns. This is putting aside his performances against Daukaus, Willis, JDS, etc. He mixes it up well at all three levels and hits more than hard enough to hurt people. All of his losses have come to the biggest knockout artists in the division.
My hang-up is that I fear that this improved striking from EFT has come at the expense of the wrestling & positional grappling that got him to the dance in the first place. The last time he really had an impressive mauling performance in that department was against Shamil like... four years ago. Since then his offensive grappling has looked really mediocre and he seems to be focusing more on his striking. I blame Elevation in large part for this as I feel that many of their fighters have a bit of a grappling blind spot. For a while they didn't even have a dedicated wrestling coach on staff. Furthermore, he has openly said during interviews that he is going to stop trying to find takedowns in fights and instead only wait for an easy one to presents itself from his opponent making a mistake during a striking exchange or what have you.
Finally, and most worryingly, Blaydes has said that during fight camp he only does one brief wrestling & grappling training session each week with the rest being dedicated to striking. He does this because he feels he is way ahead of any other Heavyweight when it comes to grappling since he's been doing it since he's been on the mats since he was a kid, but he is still playing catch-up on the striking. He also says he doesn't modify his camp formats very much from one opponents to the next as he feels his approach is "universal". It's possible that this will be the exception due to the unique threat Jailton poses.
And finally, my last hang-up... Curtis doesn't fight smart a lot of the time. Between him trying to force a telegraphed takedown against Lewis despite dominating the striking exchanges to him coming out and trying to box with Pavlovich after having seen his training partner previously outgrapple him and talking about how he could do it better... I don't even know to explain it.
Curtis has all the tools to be a better fighter than he is and if he has a proper camp (preferably spending some time with Nicky Rod again) he should derail and possibly even finish Almeida... but Jailton has openings to exploit his general inconsistency.
It's worth noting that Curtis's TDD stats on the UFC's page don't tell the whole story. First of all, they're outright wrong. They have literally counted phantom takedowns against him and not counted takedowns that he's stuffed. Secondly, this doesn't account for the fact that despite the multiple times he's been taken down inside the UFC, he has less than a minute of bottom time accrued in all his fights in the UFC. He doesn't accept bad positions and almost always scrambles right back to his feet.
His relevant performances for this fight came early in his career:
- Cody East: Two-time New Mexico state wrestling champ and Jackson Wink product. The two wrestled each other back and forth, but Blaydes won most of the scrambles and finished him with GnP after sprawling one of his shots.
- Aleksei Oleinik: Blaydes beat Oleinik up on the feet, stuffed his TD attempt, took him down four times, and showed zero fear of his ground game. He shucked off multiple submission attempts including a guillotine, triangle, and armbar and at one point even sliced through Oleinik's guard into side control to start landing GnP. This was back when Aleksei was still winning fights, too.
Worth noting that Blaydes has also fought out of a guillotine from Reem (ADCC European Trials Gold Medalist, won all matches via guillotine and has 8 guillotine wins in MMA) and also easily fought off both a kimura & guillotine from Volkov. Blaydes, prior to his fight with Aspinall, put in a week at B Team Jiu-Jitsu rolling with Nicky Rod who is probably one of the best training partners around to simulate Jailton: stud collegiate wrestler, athletic freak of nature, one of the best no-gi submission grapplers in the world, very skilled at back-takes and attacking the RNC. Similar height & build, too.
So if Curtis is able to sprawl n brawl Almeida successfully, I think he wins this nine times out of ten. Way too many people are overselling Jailton's striking while underselling Curtis on the basis of "He is athletic and fast and started out as a boxer when he was a kid and Blaydes gets knocked out a lot!!!" Jailton has shown very little on the feet and what little he has shown does little to convince me he can win a striking match down the stretch. He uses the takedown threat, his awkwardness, and his explosiveness to make up for gaps in his skill set, loading up on everything with bad intentions. I call it "car crash striking". It's the same way Brunson and Dricus used to fight. Shamil cracked him early and was able to continuously explode out of bad positions on the mat, defying Jailton's ground control until he gassed. Jairzinho stuffed Almeida in his initial shot and looked primed to walk him down and start swinging until Jailton got him on the re-shoot.
Blaydes has really solid striking and tends to look pretty throwing hands even in losing performances (i.e. Lewis and Pavlovich). Who else has landed flush on Sergei's chin that many times in a striking affair? He also looked like he was on his way to TKO'ing Black Beast before trying to force the takedowns. This is putting aside his performances against Daukaus, Willis, JDS, etc. He mixes it up well at all three levels and hits more than hard enough to hurt people. All of his losses have come to the biggest knockout artists in the division.
My hang-up is that I fear that this improved striking from EFT has come at the expense of the wrestling & positional grappling that got him to the dance in the first place. The last time he really had an impressive mauling performance in that department was against Shamil like... four years ago. Since then his offensive grappling has looked really mediocre and he seems to be focusing more on his striking. I blame Elevation in large part for this as I feel that many of their fighters have a bit of a grappling blind spot. For a while they didn't even have a dedicated wrestling coach on staff. Furthermore, he has openly said during interviews that he is going to stop trying to find takedowns in fights and instead only wait for an easy one to presents itself from his opponent making a mistake during a striking exchange or what have you.
Finally, and most worryingly, Blaydes has said that during fight camp he only does one brief wrestling & grappling training session each week with the rest being dedicated to striking. He does this because he feels he is way ahead of any other Heavyweight when it comes to grappling since he's been doing it since he's been on the mats since he was a kid, but he is still playing catch-up on the striking. He also says he doesn't modify his camp formats very much from one opponents to the next as he feels his approach is "universal". It's possible that this will be the exception due to the unique threat Jailton poses.
And finally, my last hang-up... Curtis doesn't fight smart a lot of the time. Between him trying to force a telegraphed takedown against Lewis despite dominating the striking exchanges to him coming out and trying to box with Pavlovich after having seen his training partner previously outgrapple him and talking about how he could do it better... I don't even know to explain it.
Curtis has all the tools to be a better fighter than he is and if he has a proper camp (preferably spending some time with Nicky Rod again) he should derail and possibly even finish Almeida... but Jailton has openings to exploit his general inconsistency.
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Until I see otherwise, I'm of the mindset that Curtis can win if he keeps it standing. And Jailton has yet to fight a wrestler like Curtis. So there's that too. I still wish he had stayed at 205. That division is thin and full of injury prone fighters.
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Blaydes keeps it standing and TKOs him with punches in the 2nd.
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The only way this happens is if Almeida magically develops knockout power. Blaydes has only been hurt by literally the three hardest hitters in the entire sport.
