MMA & UFC General - Featuring Bellator MMA & Rizin Fighting Federation

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easy said:
Volkanovski looks unbeatable man. So fast. And he's fucking impossible to submit, à la Ortega. Max is my fucking boy of boys, but I don't know if he beats him. If the same Max who beat Kattar shows up, then yeah. But you can't beat Volk with anything less. Guy is fucking immortal rn. If Max doesn't beat him, I see him going down as one of the GOATs
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Volkanovski has fast hands, and it seems like they got even faster judging by his performance against Zombie. His jabs are snappy, and his cross is really fast as well. Best hand speed in the UFC besides Yan, i'd say.

Volk suffers a bit from being tentative, though. He moves and pulls back a lot during attacks from the opponent, and is usually content with dancing on the outside. Also, it's a shame that he doesn't throw enough combinations, in spite of the fact that his punching is solid. If Volk had a strong, pressure-focused mindset, and some tweaks to his striking defense (e.g. tighter guard, chin down, etc.), I'd have to say he's the GOAT.
 
>"Vicente Luque can make any match exciting".
>Matchmakers: "Is that a challenge? Give him Belal".

Edit: Holy hell is Bellator dogshit at marketing. This week is also the AJ McKee vs Patricio Pitbull rematch. Two of the best fighters not in the UFC rematching and almost no one knows.

Apparently, Bellator puts all their fights up on YouTube, but has them unlisted, so to see them you have to go to their website and search for it, there you can find the link. Utterly retarded marketing, instead of putting free fights which direct to the site to buy tickets, they have it the other way around.

Even ONE Championship, which is bleeding money, has figured this out. They put whole fights/events out a week after it has happened, so you can see it, but only after everyone knows the result. Incentivises buying a ticket/ppv to watch live and have the unknown factor and tension in it.
 
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Lmao, peak Bellator. Everytime they are meant to put on a card that rivals the UFCs they manage to have it go absolutely pear shaped. Light Heavyweight Grand Prix ends 3 seconds from a technical decision due to clash of heads. Ruled a no contest so Corey Anderson, who had been dominating the wrestling, doesn't win a title and doesn't win a million dollars.

Meanwhile, AJ Mckee and Patricio Pitbull put forth a boring staring contest in which Pitbull clearly does better in this tit for tat competition, but McKee's father keeps telling him he's up on all rounds, leading to this absolute meme face once he gets his first loss. Made even funnier when he was asked earlier this week about his UFC counterpart Volkanovski, and said he wasn't impressed by his constant "vertical" (lateral) movement.

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Did Bellator forcibly evict an old Gypsy woman from the Indian burial ground they built their Headquarters on? How is a company this cursed?
 
Swiss46 said:
Did Bellator forcibly evict an old Gypsy woman from the Indian burial ground they built their Headquarters on? How is a company this cursed?
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IDK if its cursed so much as Scott Coker being 10 years behind the times and running it into the ground. Fighter is 0-3, but is a Gracie? MMA fans love Gracies, right? Put him on the undercard as he gets horribly mauled, in fact, put all these bin men there with negative records. Grand Prix knockout tournaments that JMMA and K-1 used to do, everyone loves those (even if almost all of the guys who came in at the start drop out because of injury). Putting full fight videos up to promote fights and make people go to our site? That's dumb, they should go to our site and search for the fights, which are all up on youtube, but unlisted.

Coker really is running things like it's the early 2000s. He's holding onto names like Fedor and spending hundreds of thousands on used UFC talent in the hope of drawing people to his organisation. This fight was if California, which meant that they had to disclose pay for the fighters. Corey Anderson outearns the champ he's fighting by viruee of being a former UFC talent that no one cared about. His disclosed payout is 250,000 USD flat, no win bonus, while Nemkov's is 80k show, 80k win. This man is fucking retarded in how he runs that organisation.

Add on that peak Bellator moment of the LHW Grand Prix ending in a no contest, a belt that lists fighters that dropped out because of bullshit, or misspelling Corey Anderson's name, or having legit prospect Aaron Pico fight a late replacement bin man, it's amateur hour over there.
 
Bellator love inflating records as well. They'll feed an exciting prospect absolute cans to build win streaks until they inevitably lose to some journeyman/woman who picks apart their glaring weaknesses.

It's the reason that fuck all people who start out there end up in the UFC. It's 99.9% talent that are various degrees below the level of "elite athlete".
 
trent said:
Bellator love inflating records as well. They'll feed an exciting prospect absolute cans to build win streaks until they inevitably lose to some journeyman/woman who picks apart their glaring weaknesses.

It's the reason that fuck all people who start out there end up in the UFC. It's 99.9% talent that are various degrees below the level of "elite athlete".
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*cough* MVP *cough*. Loses to Douglas Lima in the Grand Prix, next matchup he's fighting Richard Kiely, a then 3-1 maths teacher. They rematched him again with Lima recently and I'm not convinced at all that he won that one. Spent all his time on his back holding Lima's wrists for dear life, and seemingly not having any idea or intention of trying to get back up.

One of the key things about Bellator is the number of things fighters do that shouldn't work with the current MMA meta, but do. Pitbull doing one of the most ill advised things you could do in modern MMA in round 3 of the McKee rematch, wrapping the neck and jumping guillotine, and it almost worked. McKee getting away with throwing 1-2s with his body so far ahead of his feet to the point where he would make Chikadze blush. Both guys seemingly getting tired fighting at a tepid pace.
 
Slimy Time said:
One of the key things about Bellator is the number of things fighters do that shouldn't work with the current MMA meta, but do. Pitbull doing one of the most ill advised things you could do in modern MMA in round 3 of the McKee rematch, wrapping the neck and jumping guillotine, and it almost worked.
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Are you saying Khabib and Poirer are both Bellator level fighters??

 
KatanaSenshi said:
Are you saying Khabib and Poirer are both Bellator level fighters??

https://youtube.com/watch?v=RmPk0mkS64w
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Didn't work for Poirier, did it? Neither did it work for McGregor jumping guillotine against Poirier in the 3rd fight. It's about one of the worst things you can do in modern MMA because almost everyone who is good knows how to move and pass to the opposite side of the guillotine where it doesn't work. You are now stuck in bottom position.

Dustin Poirier, as good as he is on the feet, is someone who makes bad decisions on the ground when he's against a good grappler. If he can't scoot his butt back to the cage and use it to stand up, he freaks out and we get something like round 2 of his fight against Oliveira where he sits in full guard stalling and accepting being 10-8ed rather than try and do anything to scramble. Same thing with round 3 where he was very slow to address the threat of the back body triangle and choke.

A lot of the shit that works or that people get away with at Bellator doesn't work at the highest levels of the UFC. That whole fight between McKee and Pitbull was a slow paced, tit for tat point striking fight for the most part. They aren't really throwing feints, the feints they are throwing isn't convincing the other guy, McKee several times throws 1-2s in a way that is ridiculously overcommitted, with his torso parallel to the ground, which you can't do at the top levels of the UFC (see Kattar-Chikadze, where Chikadze overcommits several times and gets run ragged by how inefficient he's throwing).

Another example I can think of is MVP's rematch with Lima. MVP gets taken down, and he sits there in guard, holding Lima's wrists with both his hands in guard. Lima doesn't do anything and MVP gets away with it till the ref stands them up. You can't get away with having a bottom ground game that shit against good wrestlers or bjj guys, but he did. That's what I mean by "shit that works only in Bellator". It might work against the lower ranked guys, but against top competition in the UFC in the lower weight classes, it won't.
 
Man, Baeza vs Fialho was really refreshing. Never see straight-hitting boxers outside of the top guys at bantamweight and featherweight. Their punch defense is not great, but still, both of these guys have sharp 1-2's and fluid combos in general.



 
naffatune said:
Man, Baeza vs Fialho was really refreshing. Never see straight-hitting boxers outside of the top guys at bantamweight and featherweight. Their punch defense is not great, but still, both of these guys have sharp 1-2's and fluid combos in general.

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Really feel for Baeza. Came in as this undefeated dark horse prospect who seemed like he was slowly building up to become a top 15 fighter, to now dropping 3 fights in a row. Really hope they don't get rid of him. Seems to be having massive confidence issues since his last fight with Khaos Williams, where he got slept in a crazy pocket exchange.

None of his losses can be described as boring. Even this one with Fialho which lasted one round had about 3 or 4 momentum swings. Sad moment after this fight where Fialho hugs him and tells him to come over to Sanford and train since they are both in Florida, and he goes "no man, i'm done, they are going to get rid of me, my journey is over". Really not what you want to see from a guy who could have been something.
 
Slimy Time said:
Really feel for Baeza. Came in as this undefeated dark horse prospect who seemed like he was slowly building up to become a top 15 fighter, to now dropping 3 fights in a row. Really hope they don't get rid of him. Seems to be having massive confidence issues since his last fight with Khaos Williams, where he got slept in a crazy pocket exchange.
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From what I remember seeing from Baeza, he does have good straight hitting, but he can only throw offense. He doesn't seem to counterpunch and his defense is lacking.

I don't think Baeza is going to be cut atm. I think he stays in the UFC and goes down as some Cub Swanson type fighter who excels at specific skills and provides fun for the audience, but doesn't make it past #7 in Welterweight. Hopefully I'm wrong and he becomes a Jorge Masvidal type who rises to prominence by improving his style or fighting popular dudes.
 
naffatune said:
From what I remember seeing from Baeza, he does have good straight hitting, but he can only throw offense. He doesn't seem to counterpunch and his defense is lacking.

I don't think Baeza is going to be cut atm. I think he stays in the UFC and goes down as some Cub Swanson type fighter who excels at specific skills and provides fun for the audience, but doesn't make it past #7 in Welterweight. Hopefully I'm wrong and he becomes a Jorge Masvidal type who rises to prominence by improving his style or fighting popular dudes.
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He's got tall man defence syndrome combined with the questionable training and tactics of MMA Masters (Colby Covington's current gym). Tall guy with good powerful straight hitting and hard calf kicks, who if you sit at his range, will just pick you apart, but if you (as his last 3 opponents have done and as Matt Brown tried) just go "fuck it" and break through that range, his defence falls apart. He had some trouble with ancient Matt Brown when Brown just came at him, only when he got Brown back to his range did he get back to it, and caught him with a check hook coming in.

I do hope he take Fialho's offer goes to Sanford, because I question the tactics of MMA Masters. This is the same gym which got Colby to try and do this outside, backfoot kickboxing tactic against both Usman and Masvidal, having him switch from southpaw to orthodox just to calf kick (telegraphing it from a mile away), and telling him not to do the thing he's good at. And then when he gets clipped and goes back to his bread and butter volume game, he just had way more success.
 
Thinking about the matchup between Marlon Vera and Rob Font that's coming up on April 30th.

Same physique, different styles. Font is an offensive fighter, relying on straight punches and long combinations to wear out his opponents, while Marlon uses low and front kicks, along with knees and elbows in close-range; very similar to the traditional Muay Thai style. Also capable of using the Thai plum to keep guys in places for knees to the body.

Font is a good straight hitter, so he's never going to find himself going chest-to-chest with Marlon, which means Marlon will find it difficult to land knees and elbows, or get in the clinch.

Marlon also has a tough time defending punches. Relies on a long-guard that makes him susceptible to uppercuts. Little to no head movement. He can only fight you at long-range or short-range. Font fights almost exclusively at mid-range. Only thing that saves him from Font is toughness, flying knees, and countering single jabs from Font with his leg kick.

Rob Font by TKO, 3rd round. As long as Font keeps it at mid-range, Marlon won't do much.

This prediction is based on Font's matchups with Moraes and Garbrandt and Vera's fight with Edgar
 
naffatune said:
Thinking about the matchup between Marlon Vera and Rob Font that's coming up on April 30th.

Same physique, different styles. Font is an offensive fighter, relying on straight punches and long combinations to wear out his opponents, while Marlon uses low and front kicks, along with knees and elbows in close-range; very similar to the traditional Muay Thai style. Also capable of using the Thai plum to keep guys in places for knees to the body.

Font is a good straight hitter, so he's never going to find himself going chest-to-chest with Marlon, which means Marlon will find it difficult to land knees and elbows, or get in the clinch.

Marlon also has a tough time defending punches. Relies on a long-guard that makes him susceptible to uppercuts. Little to no head movement. He can only fight you at long-range or short-range. Font fights almost exclusively at mid-range. Only thing that saves him from Font is toughness, flying knees, and countering single jabs from Font with his leg kick.

Rob Font by TKO, 3rd round. As long as Font keeps it at mid-range, Marlon won't do much.

This prediction is based on Font's matchups with Moraes and Garbrandt and Vera's fight with Edgar
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But what about Marlon's mythical ability to utterly fuck up the first round and then come back in the second and just win? Didn't take that into account, did you?

In all seriousness, I have no idea why every fight with him is like that. Whether it's an ancient Frankie Edgar or Davey Grant, he gets the absolute shit kicked out of him the first round, and then in round 2 seems to remember how to fight and then just utterly beats the piss out of his opponent.
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Lmao.
 
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I hope Font wins. I like his style and how technical he is, Aldo vs Font was one of my favourite fights from last year. Being late in life to MMA who knows how many years he has left so hopefully he can get opportunities against top guys for as long as possible. On paper Font vs Vera is one of the best 5 round stylistic matchups so far this year.

Speaking of good stylistic matchups Dariush vs Islam hasn't been rebooked and neither guy has really said anything. What's going on there? Surely we're not going along with Islam getting a title shot after beating Bobby Shmurda?
 
apolloday said:
I hope Font wins. I like his style and how technical he is, Aldo vs Font was one of my favourite fights from last year. Being late in life to MMA who knows how many years he has left so hopefully he can get opportunities against top guys for as long as possible. On paper Font vs Vera is one of the best 5 round stylistic matchups so far this year.

Speaking of good stylistic matchups Dariush vs Islam hasn't been rebooked and neither guy has really said anything. What's going on there? Surely we're not going along with Islam getting a title shot after beating Bobby Shmurda?
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Only thing with Islam-Dariush is Dana said he really wants to see that fight, and after the nonsense Islam's manager Ali pulled with RDA it seems they aren't letting him go for a title shot.

For context. RDA and Islam was booked 3 times, each time one of them would get sick or injured. UFC272 RDA is booked against Fiziev. Fiziev tests positive for covid the week or so of the fight and is pulled. RDA is desperate for an opponent.

Islam (Ali) @s him on Twitter saying let's do it, but at 170lbs (remember, 272 was the week after Islam smoked Bobby). RDA says no, do it at catch weight, but then changes his mind and says yes, 170lbs. Everything is settled. RDA wakes up next day, is about to stop cutting weight, when he is told Islam isn't going to fight, and he still has to cut. Moicano comes in like a hero and RDA stays on the card.

Bare in mind that just the week before this, Dariush pulled out and the UFC went out of their way to find someone for Islam (Bobby), then for him and his manager to pull that. So it seemed to annoy Dana and the other top brass guys, and they have decided he has to fight Dariush, whenever that is.
 
coming back to the discussion about scott coker running bellator into the ground like @Slimy Time was saying, i just wanna know, like, wtf went wrong with him? he used to run strikeforce, and strikeforce was fucking good. strikeforce had real fucking talent; the diaz bros, motherfucking DC, jacare souza, rousey, hendo, the list goes on.

is it really so simple as coker still running shit like it's 2009? there's more to it than that, no? strikeforce had good matchmaking as far as i remember; bellator is like,, it's fucking bellator man. and other than the pitbull bros, lima, mckee and (arguably) mvp, all their talent is just ufc almuni. why can't they get good new fighters? strikeforce was a goldmine for that shit. what went wrong?

idk man it just does seem truly cursed at times. they do occasionally put on a pretty comfy card, but those are really few and far between.
 
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