MMA fans Greg Hardy
- Thread starter tumorboy
- Start date
Pretty much. But he could get beaten. He's definitely not good. Shouldn't be anywhere near a UFC octagon at this point in his career.
His interview with n ESPN certainly didn't help his cause of deserving to be there.
As much as Hardy is a POS, I think this was more of an experience thing than intentional
Another person, I might give the benefit of the doubt but not Hardy.
Hijacking. We watched the duke/va game, because we are Zion fans. Great back and forth game. They kept teasing the UFC during it. My son wanted to get ESPN+ to watch. I said nah. So after he game we started watching the prelim under card. I have never watched a single UFC bout before. I was entertained. I remembered we already had ESPN+ for the 30 for 30s and some hawk games. We watched the whole fight night. It got a bit long they could have eliminated a few fights for our taste but overall we are hooked. I imagine my csb isn’t the only one like it. The duke/va lead in and product pushing during it must have made Dana white very happy.
I hope there are many more stories like this that come out of the new contract with ESPN.
As for Hardy...he will get another shot, heavyweight needs fighters and he is still very green. The illegal knee was not a strike out of malice IMO, he was caught in the moment and needs to learn control in there. Having said that...he's a POS for putting his hands on a woman, and I can't wait for a top 10 HW to knock him out.
Just from a pure entertainment value they should emphasize points for striking and somehow minimize wrestling. If I wanted to watch wrestling I’d watch wrestling. The wrestling heavy matches/rounds were boring to us. Case in point were the Gillespie and benevidez matches. I am sure they were technically brilliant but they were ho hum to us. We were most entertained by the cerrine, menifeld, and sandhagen fights. We were looking forward to the hardy match and were confused at why they stopped it, not knowing the rules. Made sense in retrospect but seeing how jumping and kneeing someone in the face mid flight while the opponent is flat footed is okay we assumed it was okay on the ground too. We weren’t sure how to feel about the women. Not into seeing women hit each other. We liked Paige vanzant for heterosexual male reasons but did not like seeing her opponent tap out with an arm injury. Overall an entertaining evening with time spent with my 14-year old son, which is harder and harder to come by...
Are there any striker non-savant wrestlers that dominate? It would seem the best punchers in the world wouldn’t stand a chance once a medal-winning Olympian wrestler has him on the mat. Effective so apparently the best way to fight but not as entertaining to watch...
Cejudo won Olympic Gold in wrestling...but the fact is the era of one dimensional fighters ended about 10 years ago. Every round starts on the feet, so you need to at least have good enough striking to set up your takedowns. Having said that...UFC fighter and Olympian Ben Askren dominates people with his wrestling. He rarely gets hit and has never lost an MMA match, but he is probably the one remaining exception. They are few and far between these days as the MMA game is evolving and the techniques of reverse wrestling and takedown defense cancel out even the best pure wrestlers. Also, wrestlers aren't comfortable on their backs...whereas Jiu-Jitsu fighters will welcome you to be on top in their guard...many BJJ guys are far more dangerous on their backs than they are on their feet. Daniel Cormier who is the current HW champion (also an Olympic wrestler) is another good example of someone who came in as mostly a wrestler, but evolved to become an even a more dominant fighter with his advancements in striking.
TL;DR...you can't be just a wrestler in MMA anymore. You can be a wrestle heavy fighter, but in this day and age...you need to be a complete martial artist to be top 10.
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After you start watching for awhile, I'd guess you'll come to appreciate the ground game a lot more. Don't get me wrong, someone lay & praying their opponent is never fun to watch but if you get a couple slick bjj guys, seeing them go for submissions and counters and set things up is pretty cool.
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