Board Thread:Questions and Answers/@comment-32783267-20181102174931

Well, I made a fool out of myself by slightly believing in Conor and going into hibernation after the fight, making me even more like a Conor fanboy. That matters no more for I am delivering my next PPV discussion page. I don't think I have to explain the history and notes here again.

And here we... GO!!!

UFC 230: THE DADLIEST WARRIOR VS. THE KNOCKOUT KING

The dust has settled. The infamy rippling from the aftermath of 229 is cooling down as fight fans witnessed the rise of new blood in barren talent wasteland known as LHW last week in Anthony Smith. But apart from Khabib jumping of the cage instead of doing nothing and letting Conor eat his words and we who did no better by accusing both sides of the party of being the guilty, UFC 229 did resulted in something greater than 'humbling' Rowdy McGregor. Enter Derrick Lewis, the Black Beas and the master of thhe ancient art of Houston Getup with fiery balls between his legs, which are as hot as his desire to snatch the HW gold from the reigning and (actually) defending champ-champ of LHW and HW, Daniel Cormier.

The crowd favorite Mememaster (not Stylebender) was being soundly beaten by that Russian with Moana's granny tattoo until Derrick threw a Hail Mary Bomb as Volkov royally screwed himself with an untimely brainfart (why did he go for a freaking intercepting knee? Why?)... and made us pray for April of course. Common sense and medical suspensions be damned as the clearly battered Lewis found himself in a position to fight for the belt in threee weeks with his chronic back problems and raging libido. If Bisping ever did something significant last year, that would be the fact that in this WME-era, medical suspensions worth as much as those stickers you get in pre-school after getting 'checked' by some doctor. Bisping repented his sins of holding on the title for a tad too long by getting not only beaten down by GSP at MSG, but also getting KO'ed by Gastelum three weeks later in the other side of the world. Although he now has a successful podcast with promising acting career and is happily retired so it's not a sad ending. (On further note, Chris Leban did fought twice in the span of two weeks in UFC and won both.. but he's Chris Leban so the rules don't apply.)

The leadup to this MSG card was very noteworthy too as WME or Dana appears to be finally holding a non-title main event fight on a PPV card in a long time, with hyped fight between Dustin and Nate. One of the persistent rumors included Johny B. Bad Jones returning to headline the card after agreeing to 'snitch' on the behalf of USADA (allegedly) and the fact that they still didn't even have a headliner even during UFC 229 mid-fight ads didn't help the matters. But unfortunately for the fight enthusiasts, Diaz brothers clearly overestimated their worth and Nate tried to leverage the UFC higher-ups and we almost shockingly ended up with a female FLW main event no one asked for. Thanks to obvious massive backlash from fans, they pulled that fight off fortunately and Porier/Diaz was back on, only for Dustin to pullout from hip injury and now we are getting DC/DL with both coming in short-notice.

Honest opinions:

Cormier (c x 2) vs. Lewis - Coming into this short-notice fight, our dadliest champ-champ DC claimed to be recovering from a hand injury while Derrick himself had his hand injured during warming up before Volkov fight, and is coming into this fight recovering from the aforementioned beatdown too. But DC is wholesome and whole-packaged in his fighting prowess and as far as the embeddeds and pre-fight workouts went, he looked sharp nonetheless. For Lewis, all his training for the previous fight is carried on for this one so it's an upside too.

The key for DC's path to victory is clear cut. Impose his wrestling credentials and never letting the Beast catch a breath as the Blacksplosive man has poor cardio in contrast to Dad Cormier's iron lungs. Despite DC's claims in pre-fight media stuffs about him willing to take Derrick head-on but his fight with Anderson tells me that he will definitely take the safer path in these short-notice fights.

Lewis is not entirely helpless either as his last few fights have shown that he always has the Fuck-You-KO-Power regardless of his physical state, unlike the Notorious one. Along with this one-in-a-million (not that PRIDE poster) power, he is also blessed with the uncanny ability to stand right back up from any ground positions on his back usually with an underhook (or the Cruz). So in essense, all I'm saying was the Knockout King just need to stand back up after DC took him down and drop dat H-town up the hoe (or the IF-Bomb as Hardy coined it) on DC. Even if DC went for his go-to RNC-on-strikers against Lewis, Black Beast can simply shimmy-shake DC of his back. And Derrick can match DC in headkicking department too to boot... Y'all know what I'm tal'ming bout?.. :P

Seriously speaking though, DC is an effective striker although his striking indeed looks ugly on surface. Due to his short-stature compared to most of his opponents, Emelianegro weaves his way into preferred range and uses his barrel-shaped ideal male body (akin to Fedor) to generate momentum for his strikes. Essentially, he is using the famed Dempsey Roll of Jack Dempsey, tweaked for MMA use of course. Real Dempsey Roll involves utilizing two types of footwork, the Drop and Roll Step (learned from Dempsey's book and Modern Martial Artist's breakdown) instead of apparently stationary figure 8 weaving portrayed in Hajime no Ippo. On defensive side, DC stretches his arms out in what is called the Mummy Guard, used famously by boxer Sandy Saddler, to stiffle his opponents strikes. Those two details are just what I wanted to tack on after watching Dan Hardy's latest breakdown for this card.

I'm picking DC to win this fight as I believe in his fight IQ but I won't be surprised if Derrick pulled (a horseshoe out... ) it off just as he did in his last fight three weeks ago. Though in losing to Black Beast, DC might find himself receiving a lifetime worth of supply of Popeyes from Popeye-sponsored Lewis as an ever-lasting graditude so.. a win-win for all.

 Porier vs. Diaz - 'Everyone's on steroids,' famously proclaimed the Diaz and every fight enthusiests, from serious to casual, gladly parroted the shit out of it and the rest was history. After making a fortune by doing a tango twice with the alleged champ-champ, Nate clearly thought he made it big and was in the upper echelons of the LW when it was more of a fortunate stylistic matchup against Conor. Since then he overstated his worth in UFC and hasn't fought in forever. Then when Conor returned to fight Khabib and suddenly Nate wanted to fight again and he was paired with Dustin who had been a very busy fighter in 2018 and is on a convincing winstreak with notable names under his belt. But now with Dustin being out, Nate went back to his whinning ways while probably reading the Book of Five Rings.

According to my humble observations, I can't help but notice that both Dustin and Nate are quite hittable as far as I've seen. In fact, Skinhead Dustin appears to be chinny at FW and his ascent to LW did dividends massively for his career, meanwhile Nate is naturally gifted with the graphite chin of Diaz and is able to confortably flip a double deuce what would be KO blows to his head. They are also similar in a way that they both got flash-KOed in LW by MJ and Josh respectively.

The thugitsu master Dustin Porier had fixed his looks and now he's a hearthrob with a Salon-Quality Hair and a crisp well-rounded contender who keeps amazing the fight fans. His opposition Nate is also quite well-rounded as long as you don't bring lowkicks into the equation and he has the signature unblockable Stockton Slap. Nate is not the same with his brother Nick as he seems to more of a counter puncher unlike his swarmer brother. He will lean back from punches and roll with them, which was how he can absorb a lot of shots, especially from Conor. However, the downside to this slick boxing defense is that they leave the legs open for the opponents to attack on, which all opponents fighting the Diaz brothers did at one point and so could Dustin with his precision striking. Apparantly, the Diaz reasoned that keeping a stance is essential to pull off strikes and hence their non-existent leg checking game. And interestingly enough, Dustin also never check his leg against Gatheje in his last fight and that was how he won the fight, as Justin was on one foot after a lowkick as Dustin threw his counter left straight.

I can't explain or breakdown more as I'm getting exhausted lol. I'm going for Dustin. Are you guys reading this?

Weidman vs. Rockhold Souza - Rockhold and getting injured. Name a more iconic duo lol. Sucks for Luke though. 2018 is a shitty year for him and getting Cuban Missiled by Jacked Cuban Man was always not a good way to start off a year. Anyways, Branch is also getting screwed again for the third time thanks to Rockhold and now we got Jacre filling in to fight the Chris. It's hard for me to pick since they are both part of the older breed of fighters. Both are technically and literally strong with servicable striking with sub game. But also both looks quite slow to me even in their high times, not to mention their gas tank. I can see Weidman eking a decision out as he can play the game of points if he needs to more than Jacre does in my opinion, but Jacre's physical prowess is not something to be looked over and he could one-shoted the Chris in his hometown just like Yoel did in Weidman's last MSG fight. Getting drousy here. I'm going with Chris as long as he didn't do that spinning Chael shit or leaping backtake in the heat..

Branch vs. Cannonier - As stated above Barbarshop Branch is getting the Felder treatment in UFC right now, probably because UFC didn't expect David to become a champ any time soon in the future at his age and now he is fighting a former LHW who is a former HW and now a MW on a two fight losing streak?!??

Roberson vs. Marshman - With Jacre/Branch bout scraped, they decided to pad the main card up with.. guys both coming off of loses. Yikes what were they thinking.. I mean this is MSG for crying out loud. No further comment as they ain't worth getting headaches as I'm exhausted right now.

Brunson vs. Adesanya - For some reason, Mini-Bones is getting on my nerves lately (probably his ozzing confidence) while Derek Brunson won my heart by playing with his adorable kid on embedded. But I must not be influenced by personal bias and all I can say is that Isreal has a good chance to win this fight as Derek sadly has this chin-up-body-bending-pass-his-knees-and-punching-while-lunging-like-that fighting style that will keep him a gatekeeper status forever. Unless Derek remembered he's a wrestler and use this to impose his will and may be even mix it up if he really wants to throw heat at Izzy.

Eubanks vs. Modafferi - As I am writing these down, I got a news that the woman who runs the division missed weight by 2 pounds. As hilarious as it sounds we should be really grateful that she didn't headlined MSG, that would be some disaster. Roxanne is an OK fighter but I haven't seen Sijara more except that weak TUF highlight. I don't care who wins in this fight honestly.. we got Joanna and Valentina in FLW.

Saunders vs. Good - Wait didn't Ben got pretzeled by Sergio a month ago? Well I guess you can ignore medical suspension shit as long as you don't get seriously KOed or something. Both fighters are coming into this fight of a lost and I would miss prelims anyways so I no longer care...

Other fighters of note includes Lando Vannata taking on a guy with no Wikipedia page and Shane Burgos returning to take on another guy with no Wikipedia page too after his experimentations with hands-down punch-baiting style went horribly wrong. I heard Lando left that shithole named Jackson-Wink camp and I wish him well to improve in the future and possibly reach championship levels in skills.

Conclusion: So there it is guys (and girls). I've just spent more than 2 hour to write this while suffering from exhaustion and I hope you all would participate in it as long as it's civil. I'm sorry if I got some grammer errors or too wordy (or sarcastic) with the whole thing. Feel free to let me know. Cheers but no beers. :) 