[No-God]

Raymond Luxury Yacht;355609 said:

Still not sure what happened to Aleks E. I really hope, for the sake of fighter safety if nothing else, they ban rings from mma. Falling out of the ring should not ever be a concern someone has to deal with when fighting.

I disagree. The ring looks a lot more professional, and it influences the fight a LOT less than the cage.

Affliction definitely lived up to the hype. Fedor proved to the doubters that he is the #1 heavyweight in the entire world.

I don't really get all the Anderson Silva hype though. True, he's on an impressive win streak, but Dan Henderson is the only guy he's beat that is ranked anywhere near the top of his division. Fedor cleaned out a much more competitive division, but somehow people give Silva more credit. To me, you can't ignore Anderson Silva's losses. A lot of people seem to completely forget about the times he lost and only concentrate on when he wins. He was ousted from PRIDE because he wasn't good enough. Now, he's fighting low competition.

Maybe if he beats Paulo Filho or an in-shape Matt Lindland (both of which I bet would destroy Silva), but beating b-level-at-best Irvin isn't all that impressive.

[No-God]

amphibian;355624 said:

I think the UFC needs to allow the octagon to be used by everyone. Yeah, it's a signature visual element, but the UFC should realize that the fighters, not the venue, are what really matters.

I hate when the fight goes to the ground and the referees have to stop the fighters for a time to move them off the ropes or to the center of the ring. Just put up a chain fence and then let 'em go.

My problem with that is when a fighter pins his opponent against the cage, it has nothing at all to do with the better MMArtist. That has nothing to do with determining the better fighter. Thats simply who can use the cage better.

The cage affects the fights far too much. The ring does not.

[Bent]

Raymond Luxury Yacht;349446 said:

Yeah, he hasn't really been tested yet. I still haven't seen his tito fight. I know it's free somewhere on the internets but I don't do the piracy thing. I'll have to wait until it comes out on dvd and rent it.

The Tito pay-per-view (UFC 84) will be shown in its entirety on Spike TV next weekend.

[Raymond Luxury Yacht]

No-God;355687 said:

My problem with that is when a fighter pins his opponent against the cage, it has nothing at all to do with the better MMArtist. That has nothing to do with determining the better fighter. Thats simply who can use the cage better.

The cage affects the fights far too much. The ring does not.

The ring kept Babalu from pulling off a submission at least twice, and could have easily led to injury. If not a cage, they need to do something to make the ring safer. MAybe some sort of netting between the ropes, or at least a bunch of Japanese guys to keep them from falling out of the ring like they had in Pride.

Yes, they need to be Japanese for it to work.

Do you give Silva no credit for wrecking Franklin?

[amphibian]

No-God;355686 said:

Affliction definitely lived up to the hype. Fedor proved to the doubters that he is the #1 heavyweight in the entire world.

I don't really get all the Anderson Silva hype though. True, he's on an impressive win streak, but Dan Henderson is the only guy he's beat that is ranked anywhere near the top of his division. Fedor cleaned out a much more competitive division, but somehow people give Silva more credit. To me, you can't ignore Anderson Silva's losses. A lot of people seem to completely forget about the times he lost and only concentrate on when he wins. He was ousted from PRIDE because he wasn't good enough. Now, he's fighting low competition.

Maybe if he beats Paulo Filho or an in-shape Matt Lindland (both of which I bet would destroy Silva), but beating b-level-at-best Irvin isn't all that impressive.

Anderson Silva's last real loss was four years ago. The last fight he was in that went to the judges was also four years ago. Apart from Filho and Lindland, he's fought pretty much every single top flight middleweight and knocked the crap out of them in spectacular fashion too. Anderson Silva is absolutely legit. Go watch some more of his fights and marvel at his fluidity and skills.

I don't think PRIDE kicked him out. Silva moved from PRIDE to Cage Rage to the UFC and seemed to follow the money and good fights.

No-God;355687 said:

My problem with that is when a fighter pins his opponent against the cage, it has nothing at all to do with the better MMArtist. That has nothing to do with determining the better fighter. Thats simply who can use the cage better.

The cage affects the fights far too much. The ring does not.
[Took the following from the other post]
I disagree. The ring looks a lot more professional, and it influences the fight a LOT less than the cage.

Dude, your argument doesn't really make sense. A chain link fence isn't the walls of Tremolor grabbing onto people and holding them there. How is a ring more professional than the octagon? That reeks of boxing-is-better traditionalism to me.

The ring and octagon both affect fights. There's different strategies for both, but it's pretty obvious that the better fighter can and will win in both. I dislike the resets and falls through the ropes that ring fights entail. The fence, though it rewards those who like the clinch (ie. Couture) and those on top for g'n'p, lets the fight flow. Fighters frequently reverse position against the fence and since the UFC octagon has less severe corners, they can slide to the left and right and keep it standing pretty easily.

I also like the camera work in the UFC better. There's more angles and more cameramen to get better shots. However, I can see why that would kind of suck for a live audience.

I think fighters shouldn't have to worry about falling through the ropes in awkward positions or having a bad reset in the middle of the ring. I also think MMA should constantly strive to be different from and better than boxing and near-universal adoption of the octagon would be a great step in doing that.

As an aside, PRIDE did throw out an octa-ring a while back. I haven't seen it since.

[Pig Iron]

Wow, Fedor makes it look so easy - the true sign of an artist. Like anyone could go in there and bam, bam I had most all of his fights in a nice download but lost them in a HD-crash, sucks.

And I like the ring too. The cage becomes such a large part of the game, it's a much bigger factor than the ring in the fight. I'd rather have both, think it was perfect when you had UFC and Pride balancing each other.

BTW Arlovski had his big hair and beard again, and of course he won.

[Raymond Luxury Yacht]

AA lost his edge when he got less hairy. Look at his fights where he was dominant and scary. Big beard, hairy chest, crap even his shoulders were hairy. Then he starts going hollywood, no body hair, and looks bad. Glad to see he's hairy and good again.

[Cougar]

I can confirm that hairy shoulders are the sign of a truly magnificent example of manhood, as can everyone else who went to the UK Malazan BBQ.

I once saw Arlovski on the street and he was scary as fuck anyway

[Raymond Luxury Yacht]

One of the guys one one of the mma shows said something funny, basically that if someone lined up all of the heavy weights from the affliction show, and said you had to fight one of them, if you didn't know who any one of them was most people would pick fedor. I think that's correct, he doesn't look that scary if you had never seen him fight. Oh, what a bad choice though.

On a more productive note, here are the fighter salaries from affliction, as posted by mmajunkie.com. Some of these guys were way overpaid.

"The total disclosed payroll for the event was $3,332,100.

The full list of salaries included:

Fedor Emelianenko: $300,000 (no win bonus)
def. Tim Sylvia: $800,000

Andrei Arlovski: $750,000 (includes $250,000 win bonus)
def. Ben Rothell: $250,000

Josh Barnett: $300,000 (no win bonus)
def. Pedro Rizzo: $70,000

Mark Hominick: $10,000 (includes $5,000 win bonus)
def. Savant Young: $7,000

Renato "Babalu" Sobral: $90,000 (includes $30,000 win bonus)
def: Mike Whitehead: $50,000

Matt Lindland: $300,000 (includes $75,000 win bonus)
def. Fabio Nascimento: $20,00O

Antonio Rogerio Nogueira: $50,000 (no win bonus)
def. Edwin Dewees: $15,000

Mike Pyle: $20,000 (includes $5,000 win bonus)
JJ Ambrose: $5,000

Ray Lizama: $3,000
vs. Justin Levens: $6000*

Vitor Belfort: $140,000 (includes $70,000 win bonus)
Terry Martin: $30,000

Paul Buentello: $80,000 (includes $20,000 win bonus)
vs. Gary Goodridge: $25,000

* - Fight postponed due to time constraints. Both fighters paid negotiated salaries.

Now, the usual disclaimer: the figures do not include deductions for items such as insurance, licenses and taxes. Additionally, the figures do not include money paid by sponsors, which can oftentimes be a substantial portion of a fighter's income. They also do not include any other special bonuses the organization may have paid its fighters.

In other words, these are simply base salaries reported to the commission and do not reflect entire compensation packages for the event."

[Cougar]

The stand out there is how that pedestrian fat fucker Sylvia got paid $800k which takes the piss when you have Babalu on $90k.

[Pig Iron]

Maybe you've seen this already, but a good article I think (on Fedor-Sylvia and on Affliction):

http://sports.yahoo.com/mma/news;_ylt=AoVW...=yhoo&type=lgns

And this by the same guy on Hansen taking the title in Dream:

http://sports.yahoo.com/mma/news;_ylt=A0wN...=yhoo&type=lgns

Edit: looks weird when you follow the links now (at least for me), but scroll down.

[Raymond Luxury Yacht]

Pig Iron;357282 said:

Maybe you've seen this already, but a good article I think (on Fedor-Sylvia and on Affliction):

http://sports.yahoo.com/mma/news;_ylt=AoVW...=yhoo&type=lgns

And this by the same guy on Hansen taking the title in Dream:

http://sports.yahoo.com/mma/news;_ylt=A0wN...=yhoo&type=lgns

Edit: looks weird when you follow the links now (at least for me), but scroll down.

Good articles. I wish I could have seen the Dream fights.

[Pig Iron]

Raymond Luxury Yacht;357304 said:

Good articles. I wish I could have seen the Dream fights.

This is Hansen-Alvarez from Dream3. Everything MMA should be IMHO. Think the link should be OK since the commentary is in Japanese, if not please remove post Mods with my apology.

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x5ehzq_jo...varez-dre_sport

[No-God]

I've been extremely impressed with Dream. They've had a bunch of the best fights of the year (Alvarez/Hansen, Alzarez/Kawajiri), some big upsets (Hansen/Aoki), and just overall great fights (Aoki/Calvancante II, Overeem/Hunt). They've got the deepest lightweight division, but unfortunately, some of the other divisions are lacking.

[Raymond Luxury Yacht]

I think Aoki might be overrated.

[No-God]

Raymond Luxury Yacht;359852 said:

I think Aoki might be overrated.

How? He beat a fighter who is arguably #2 or #3 lightweight in the world (Gesais Calvancante), and he's got wins over Caol Uno (great lightweight) and Hansen (one of the best in the world, and has been ranked for years).

I personally have Aoki ranked higher than BJ Penn, because he has more wins over lightweight top 10 fighters, recently, than Penn does.

[Raymond Luxury Yacht]

No-God;360989 said:

How? He beat a fighter who is arguably #2 or #3 lightweight in the world (Gesais Calvancante), and he's got wins over Caol Uno (great lightweight) and Hansen (one of the best in the world, and has been ranked for years).

I personally have Aoki ranked higher than BJ Penn, because he has more wins over lightweight top 10 fighters, recently, than Penn does.

Oops. I meant Gomi, not Aoki.

[No-God]

Raymond Luxury Yacht;360993 said:

Oops. I meant Gomi, not Aoki.

Oh.

Well, Gomi hasn't fought in quite some time against a top opponent, but back when PRIDE was in full swing, he didn't only beat everyone, but he dominated everyone. His losses were against some really top fighters. His win over Kawajiri (the #2 lightweight in the world at the time) was a good example of this.

[Raymond Luxury Yacht]

I'm not saying he's got no skill, but I've heard it said he's still the top in the world. Nick Diaz worked him over, which should refute that at least a little bit. He's a good fighter, but not the best in th world. That's all I'm saying.

So who's watching some WEC tonight? Free mma on cablee tv, gotta love that. The last WEC show was quite good.

[Raymond Luxury Yacht]

Good noght for WEC! Some exciting fights. Gotta love the free mma. It's being replayed later tonight, catch it if you can.