Board Thread:Questions and Answers/@comment-32783267-20181231074231

--- POST FIGHT DISCUSSION ---

(I was planning to write a pre-fight assessment of the card but I was busy with paper in uni so I had to passed it over.)

Following the banging final FOX card last 2 weeks, everything was seemingly lining up for UFC to end the year on a high note with UFC 232, which will be headlined by Jones and Gustafsson who are both coming back from their respective layoffs for different reasons, and the co-main is the fight between a female FTW champion and a female BW champion, the first time two female champs of different division ever fought apparently. But just before Christmas, something unsurprising happened and something very despicable ensued that resulted in UFC shooting itself in the foot in the long run.. but I’ll discuss about that later. But now let’s see how things went down.

Entitled Hypocrite sandblasted Entitled Perennial Contender by Proper Game-planning and shadiness of UFC behind the scenes – Right from the get-go, Jones fucked up Gus’ (technically imperfect) mobile footwork by kicking his legs that rendered Alex for the entirety of the fight. Then, he worked the body in the second round to weaken the core of Gus and finally in the third Jones bypassed the Mauler’s amazing TDD and used a Half Nelson to back mount then pound Alex for a TKO win. Amazing tactical display of Fight IQ by Jones no doubt. But now there is now a looming question we all are clearly interested in.. which I’ll discuss below after going through the fights.

Lioness dismantled Cyborg by the plight of Champ-Champ fight for the Champ of higher weightclass – This was such an unexpected fight that subverted our expectations (learn this Rian Johnson) as many, including me, had expected the fight to go on for longer with either Nunes winning between 2nd and 3rd while Cyborg probably edging a decision had it went on for longer. On the first view, I thought Cyborg tried to fight like Wanderlei (hehe) because she got tagged by Nunes and her (justified) ego took over. But on rewatch, the whole ending sequence began when Amanda landed that powerful leg kick that staggered Justino badly and immediately tagged her with her hands. Cyborg tried to be technical but as much as she have improved throughout the years, she is still a technical brawler and almost all her responses were countered hard by Nunes, who is more of a counter fighter. When Cyborg was against the cage, rocked badly, she extended her lead hand to probably handfight or measure/keep the distance but Amanda’s speed carried over to the higher weightclass. The kick setting up the downfall also reminded me of Amanda landing a hard front kick on Ronda which began the fight ending sequence. With this win, Nunes became the first female Champ-Champ who is also a lesbian so she has become a full package three-fer that UFC shouldn’t ignore her that much anymore and promote her more now.

Momma’s Boy outgrappled Old, Unmotivated, and probably Broke (from that Café shop) Condit with legendary shit-tier TDD – Chiesa looked way healthier and thick at WW and he made an impression by pulling off a Double Wrist Lock variant straight out of Catch Wrestling, in a way he powered/forced the hold on Condit’s arm into a Kimura, reminiscent of Sakuraba doing the same thing against (shopworn) Funaki. But the problem was it was against Condit, who is famous for never developing a TDD and Chiesa looked more like outmuscling the Natural Born Killer than using technique to get him to the ground. The unexpected 50/50 battle near the end of the first round was also an amazing spectacle to behold.

Gyno 25/8 outlasted White Budget Romero – A snozefest of a fight where The God of All Men Ilir Latifi was uneventful in his pursuit to secure a victory in the early first round and as a consequence his Majesty was out-pointed by a waddling Top10 heathen. Jokes aside, good win for Corey considering the circumstances leading up to the fight night and how much shit he had to went through. But still such an inconsequential fight in the bigger picture true to the tradition of LHW or the Talent Barren Wasteland. On a side note, Anderson’s chin looked good and he had that obvious gyno, so… look into it?

5’ 6” Not-Russian Aussie former Rugby Absolute Unit (unfortunately) retired His Older Outdated Counterpart in Chadius the Chad Mendes  – Watching the fight was bizarre like I was witnessing some video game mirror fight shit. The only difference was Volkanovski was using the Jab to enter into exchanges unlike Mendes who just exploded into it, as Cruz rightly pointed out. In essence, Alexander won by being a more measured striker as during the final exchanges, Chad was winging his shots hard barely missing Volkanovski’s head while the other picked his shots better. The news of Chad retiring was shocking as it came out of the blue but upon reading stuffs up, he now has a stable job that is booming and the whole return seems to be his final run for the title, so the loss to a better version of him convinced him to hang the gloves up early. Such a shame that we never got to see the matchup between Max and Chad.. but at least we got Alexander filling up the void/changing the guard as Chad Mendes 2.0.

''** From this point on I haven’t watch the fights as they don’t air those here in Myanmar. So I’m judging my opinions on the snippets and news **''

White Navi Lady defeated the Former Alpha due to her sharing her teammate, Cruz’s curse – Man, this sucks for both sides. Cat got devastated repetitively by unfortunate circumstances including in this fight while Megan got to be definitely feel bad for ‘winning’ this way. The rematch is inevitable and the only saving grace was it wasn’t a title fight like Couture/Belfort, which is the sole reason why we have Vitor as a champ in our game…

Mini Griffin shredded the (former) Prodigy’s knee to hopefully make him stay at home – After holding out for TWO YEARS for a big name opponent, Ryan Hall returned in style against the aging legend who just can’t stay home and spend quality time with his family. At least BJ didn’t get beat up for three rounds or worse but that Heel Hook looked like it twerked Penn’s knee though. I know Penn was like the first American BJJ guy to win a gold medal and got his black belt really fast, but in watching his career, I noticed he relied more on his natural gifts (his flexibility) to augment his skills and I don’t think he’s that good on the ground in MMA context as he tends to get smashed by wrestlers in his later career as his gifts waned. There are many anecdotes about Penn’s physical feats that made me conclude that BJ had developed a form of laziness where he let his gifts took over his skills in fights, which backfires in the long run, explaining the Motivated BJ Penn meme.

If I am right, Hall was infamous in BJJ circles for his 50/50 game and gaming the system as a whole, which netted him a lot of medals. Now he’s in MMA and it looks like he’s gonna game the system judging from his last few fights, like doing enough and correctly to completely neutralize Maynard in their fight. I wish we could see more 50/50 exchanges in his future fights like Chiesa/Condit did. I wonder who he will fight next…

Worthy Mentions – Petr Yan looked amazing and Andrade’s corner did the smart thing while Uriah Hall managed to pulled his trigger successfully last night. I hope that lost shut up that Siyar the Great guy for a while.

Jon Jones and UFC screwed the MMA Community as a whole because WME does the fook it wants and they apologize to absolutely nobody  – Now, let’s cover the context first so I don’t appear like jumping to conclusions out of nowhere. Retrospectively looking back, a young and aspiring homely Christian boy Jon Jones, entering the MMA world as he’s ‘scrawny’ for NFL, ascended the LHW rankings (which is similar to Gastelum’s MW run), winning the belt and defending it consecutively looking invincible, against older competition. Sounds like a great marketable champ for UFC.. right?

Then he derailed his career left and right with no sense of apparent self-awareness. The Hit-n-Run incident, the DUI one, and popping for ‘dick pills’, returning only to pop again, essentially popping multiple times for different substances and he’s the only fighter in UFC to get stripped of his titles multiple times. The worst part was the humble Christian façade he tried to play up in the public instead of embracing his true persona, which is very frustrating. So why is UFC ruining their credibility for this junkie this time of all things? Because he is a drawl??

Not really, the PPV draw of Jones summed up at average at best and so then are they protecting him because he is a special spectacular fighter??

Well, I have always heard of Jon Jones the awesome, dominant and well-rounded fighter. But whenever I watch a Jon Jones fight, I felt not-that-whelmed for some reason, in that something doesn’t sit right. Then listening to the latest Heavy Hands podcast (Ep. Blame Jon Jones) one of the guys made a point about Jon jones that nailed how exactly I feel about that guy.

There’s a myth that many believes in that Jon Jones is so well-rounded as a fighter that he can take on and beat everyone in their own game, which he did so all the time. But the unflattering interpretation of this myth, they said, was that Jones doesn’t really possess a true edge in a single discipline, something he could impose his will on, so he ends up fighting everyone in their own game regardless of the matchup and only edged them out by the virtue of just being that well-rounded. So he is essentially the Mario of MMA, a pragmatic one in my eyes. His style is not that aesthetically pleasing compared to GOATs like GSP and Aldo imo.

He has the talent, no denying that, but game planning of Jackson Wink really helped him a lot. The real question was the factor of Jones’ transparent PED usage, since Fight IQ and physical attributes go in hand-to-hand and as PEDs allows, on paper, to recover faster and therefore train more to hone his fight IQ and skills better. Fight IQ can be subjective but you cultivate the IQ more than you possess innately, speaking from my experience. For example Cruz may have one of the best minds in MMA but he won’t be able to beat anyone in BW let alone the top 10 in his current state, especially with his torn shoulder. Of course a fighter may possess more Fight IQ than physical skills or vice versa. But I hope you see my point. Also it’s hard to not have a skeptical hippo eyes on Jon when both of his brothers failed NFL ‘tests’,  popping multiple times as stated above, taking weightlifting during suspension and his willingness to win by any means necessary (kicking the knees, jamming poor Glover’s shoulder, poking eyes, etc).

Back to the main topic, now with all the reasons of him being a draw or master fighter out of the window, for some reason, UFC went out of their way and dignity to move the entire venue from Nevada to California on the basis of Jon popped during the holidays and the officials are away. California State Athletic Commission got themselves into the mess by just accepting to license Jon because Dana and Jeff claimed Jon had been negative throughout and only turned up positive for this test. A lot of money was lost for many MMA based media and a lot of fans found themselves wasted their hard-earned cash just because Jones ‘pulsed’ T-Bol and Nevada was too lazy to properly sort things in time.

The whole fiasco and the excuses are jarring and they do not stack up well at all if you think of it. Dana said Jones had been tested for months and was clean just before the pop (it’s in the Embedded) but Jeff later revealed he already popped before in September/August which was suspiciously coincide with USADA’s implementation of the new policy of not alerting the public of fighters popping before proper assessment. So there is no way they shouldn’t been able to notify NSAC earlier if that’s the fact, including popping in 6th December rumor.

And Jeff kept parroting how small a pictogram pictogram is for the entire week, but the purpose of a drug test, as far as I know, is to detect the residual leftover of PEDs in the blood/urine, which means Jon was clearly taking in more T-Bol to pop 60 picograms of it and Jeff didn’t specify whether it’s a picogram in the whole body or just one sample clearly. Another thing is that the main excuse they are using to justify Jones, the ‘pulsing’ effect, was just from a single study revolving around a single person and it hasn’t been replicated yet. They also claimed how experts agree with the conclusion when Jeff later unintentionally revealed they are former USADA employees on JRE. The most damning thing is that Jeff Novitsky is no expert in the chemical side of it, being an accountant, and he kept deflecting difficult questions on JRE.

People, including me, might have been overreacting a bit as USADA was contracted by UFC because Fertitas Brothers wanted to sell ZUFFA to WME, so it appears more legit. Since then, shady shit happened throughout like letting Brock fight despite popping earlier. But only with this Jones situation the whole corruption became more upfront. So let me sum things up. Jon is not that of a draw. Jon is willing to do anything to win. Jon is an unreliable hypocritical junkie. UFC made a lot of contradictory excuses for the sake of one guy. Then I came to the only conclusion left that Jon probably has something on Dana which would justify why they are going that far to help this guy out. Maybe, he walked in on Dana and Jeff having a Lemon Party…. I don’t know.

Sorry for being too wordy. Thanks for reading the whole thing if you did. Feel free to share your thoughts, be civil and cheers!! 