yea its weird because i generally find fighting distasteful and trashy (i dont watch worldstar or yootoobz), but my buddy and i stumbled upon pride fighting back in the day and we were able to order PPVs and wrestle with his alcoholic roommate in the living room for lols. shockwave, i think, when cro cop headkicked wanderlei stands out as pretty goaty. everything about pride was just so sick, the 10 minute first round, the bracket tournaments, the bushido spirit and the sacrificial lambs, bas rutten and rampage's guest commentating, rampant/sanctioned steroid abuse, rumors of the yakuza running the show, yellow cards and little japanese refs screaming "ACTION!" at the most absurd times, whipping peoples hands with canes if they grabbed the ropes during a takedown, knees/kicks to the head of a downed opponent and the crowd boo'ing the NV state athletic commission in the first USA event because they didn't allow it...like, one of my favorite movies growing up was JCVD in bloodsport, and pride was like IRL bloodsport!!! the honor and the heart and the commitment and all that, lol idk why i'm rambling like this maybe i'm just high but i digged that **** and was super sad when it ended. the UFC is just like, the closest thing to it. got too much metal in my body from skateboarding injuries at this point to be rolling around on the floor, probably getting staph infection and **** from all these disgusting apes. i dont watch other sports, i like the individuality and the grit/toughness that it takes.

jokes aside, beating mike pyle is impressive, hes a tough and scrappy vet. WW division needs some new blood, if CC comes steamrolling through it i'll definitely be a fan.

I now know more about rep_lol than I do about Colby Convington.

Really? He just went 5 hard rounds with Tony Ferguson and looked pretty good. Honestly if it wasn't for the eye poke in the 2nd it's very possible, maybe even likely, he wins that fight.

I think he's really short for WW.

I think the success of guys like Kelvin at MW, Cerrone & Masvidal at WW, are a lil early. Kelvin beat two old guys who should have retired a long time ago. lets see how he looks against actual good MWs. He was top 5, maybe even top 3 at WW, lets see how far he gets at MW. Cerrone was top 3ish-5ish at LW, and he never really competed against any elite WWs. His best win was probably Rick Story. And Masvidals only good win really is Cerrone.


I think there is an illusion these guys are doing better at these higher weight classes because when they move up they also get big steps back in competition. They went from facing top 5 guys in their original weight classes to fringe top 15ish guys at the weight above, or worse.

Good news is WW is really weak right now compared to even a year ago, so I could see RDA doing pretty well. Just don't think he'll be a title contender like he was at LW.

i may be wrong about him being usada'd, i only watched his fight with eddie once and i came away from it thinking he had eaten harder punches in previous fights, but i just re-watched and he got tagged with some legit bombs. we always see dudes' chins fade when they come off the sauce but it's probably not fair to assume that yet about RDA

given how scrubby the guys on top in WW have looked lately, maybe RDA does actually become a legit contender

Always gonna be one of the greatest what-if's re: his fight with Conor.

MMA and the whole fighting landscape could be so different right now.

I forgot who it was but one of his teammates confirmed he passed out twice from his weight cut prior to the Eddie fight. Obviously being that dehydrated is going to affect your chin.

It's weird because he doesn't look that big for LW. Think he'd be better off dropping a few pounds of muscle but whatcha gon do.

Lorenz Larkin officially to Bellator.

weight cuts are beyond me, never done it for anything and assume it's just horrific on your internal organs/stamina

yet these dudes drop like 20-30 lbs before a fight, re-hydrate in a ****ing day and step into a ring looking like they're gonna kill somebody. wtf

Weight classes aren't optimal for a lot of fighters. 10-20 pounds difference is a ton. It works out better for the fans since we get more stacked weight classes, but definitely screws over lots of fighters who would be better off somewhere in between.

I'm sure lots of guys would prefer to cut less weight, but when it's between that and fighting guys with 5-10+ pounds on you, you don't got much of a choice.

I'm sure a ton of guys would love 160 & 175 lb weight divisions.

It would be great if the divisions were something like this - 125, 135, 145, 155, 165, 175, 185, 195, 205, ~235, 226+

It would take a bit of restructuring but would do a lot of good imo. Quite a few people say the cut to 155 is too tough but they are small for 170. Cerrone was saying that a 165 weight class would be perfect for him.

yea above would be pretty perfect

on paper it looks good, in practice i fear it most likely just leads to every other fight being champ v champ

yes, people will just float back and forth between divisions to get the fights they want, eliminating the purpose of divisions in the first place.

adding more divisions would be bad for the sport. it would benefit the safety of the fighters but that would be the only benefit.

how do you populate the new divisions? as big as the UFC roster is, there aren't enough fighters to make new divisions. you would cannibalize other divisions to make the new ones.

for example, there are 53 fighters at 185. if you add 175 and 195, you'll absolutely decimate 185. now you're down to 25 fighters at 185. once the numbers get that low you don't even have a division anymore. before long you're setting up bad mismatches because you've got #4 fighting #11 and murdering him when they would have been #37 under the old system.

ideally for the UFC, there would be no weight division and they would have the freedom to match anyone against anyone. ideally for the fighters, there would be a new weight division every 1.5 lbs. a good equilibrium is probably right around where the divisions are now.

i'm coming up with a new scoring system and some improvements to judging and i'm going to go to the NAC meeting two months from now to present it during the public comment portion. should be fun.

there is a 0% chance they will take me seriously or do anything with my ideas even if they think they are great. but it will go down in the public record and then 2 years from now when they get around to fixing the scoring system, if they happen to use any of my ideas, even unintentionally, i'm going to need the members of this forum to lobby ariel helwani incessantly until the rule change is known as the augie rule. this is the ultimate goal.

I'm an enthusiastic casual fan. Like rep, I don't follow other sports at all. I'm also repetitive as ****. Now that's out of the way, I brought this up before but I really don't get why they can't do a yearly/seasonal tournament in each division rather than have a belt holder at all times. It seems to work so well in a much less flexible environment for tuf, it would make every fight outcome matter much more, it would eliminate ducking or the appearance of it...

I mean I understand the why behind having a king of each division, but it is broken as **** currently. I don't think there is a single champ other than Mighty Mouse in the men's divisions that could be considered a true king of their weightclass by the majority or doesn't have an straight up asterisk next to their belt.

There are far better contender match ups in almost every division than title fights. Put some actual stakes on those fights. Less wondering if you have to win a dozen fights in a row while you wait for a primadonna champ to get off the pot, or hey you are a good looking white person so have a title shot before you earn it, or someone got injured so let this ****nut go after an upset short notice with a punchers chance and nothing to lose save the ppv. Or interim bs.

Why not?

The BBC just this week released a documentary that shows pretty accurately what its like



SPOILER: its ****ing miserable!

Also a really good article that looks at the specifics/timings of the process, and goes into the numbers of whats possible for cutting/rehydrating

http://tim.blog/2013/05/06/how-to-cut-weight-ufc/

Even for a Nick Diaz interview, this is SUPER awkward!!

K1 does that, and in the UK there were (maybe still are) Prizefighter boxing tournaments over one day. They were popular I think, but you didn't get the top guys competing (and why would they, if they can fight just twice a year for more money).

In boxing there was a middleweight tournament a while back (with Froch, Ward etc), and I think in MMA there was a heavyweight event (with Fedor, Overeem and Cormier). The problem was that when people got injured the event almost fell apart. Cormier won, I believe, but he wasn't in the original list so came in later in the event.

Howard Treesong Johnny Truant,
I've always liked tournament formats, too, mostly for all the reasons you stated. It doesn't have to be those brutal one-night deals they used to have. Plus it would give guys like Covington or Dan Kelly a legit shot to make a name for themselves. I'd love to see it.

But UFC is so invested in the weight class / champion format that they'll likely never change it. I would like to see 165, 175, 185 weight classes though. Mostly for fighter safety. I wouldn't mind seeing more champs fighting champs -- it's one thing I actually like about Conor's shtick.

Also, criminal of the new UFC mgmt to keep letting all these quality guys walk. Kinda had the feeling Lorenz wasn't going to get re-signed, still sucks.

ETA: that supermiddleweight tournament was basically the last time I paid attention to boxing. And it actually forced Ward to, ya know, fight once in a while.

Just fact checked myself and found out Ward fought three times last year -- small miracle! Also shows how little attention I pay to boxing any more.

What happened there?

It's one thing for the UFC to decide vets are washed up or MacDonald isn't worth the cost, but could they really not afford Larkin?

This cut really concerns me. He's exciting, in the prime of his career and seemingly a value play for the UFC. What are they doing?

Not to mention you really start undermining your Top 10 rankings when those fighters are expendable.

Coker really is going to end up with another Strikeforce.

Yea I'm really curious to see what kinda money is Bellator is paying Larkin. Maybe if they offered him something crazy like 100k/100k + obviously better sponsors.

But UFC WW division is in shambles as I've been saying. Right now you got Woodley who is one of the least popular champs above BW in a super long time. And him and the #2 fighter of the division just had the most boring title fight of all time. Only other contender is Maia who most casuals find super boring, had the worst ratings ever for a fox when he headlined against Condit. Outside of them there aren't any real exciting contenders besides GSP dropping back down.

Just seems like a crazy situation to let go a super exciting, top 7ish guy, who just put on a great performance against top 10 Magny.