Yeah, because a 36 y.o. fighter that just retired and was considered #1 just 2 years ago still being able to fight at the top level is the same as a 50 y.o. bball player who was considered the best 15 years ago and hasn't played for 10 years still being able to play top level bball today.

Your analogies are analogous to your intelligence. I also like that the gif you posted of Fedor comes from a round he won.

All this pro-Fedor arguments come with the caveat of "If he started training seriously". This is like BJ Penn. You get the great talent but you also get the sh**ty work ethic. You can't divorce those 2.

Difference being that Fedor had insane work ethic during his pride days, which slowly waned after 2007. BJ never trained like Fedor did.

What you're supposed to take from it is he's backed up against the cage getting punched in the face by a WAY WAY slower striker than elite 205ers. and that was the positive stretch of the fight for him.

LOOOOL @ LF "only 2 years ago." Thats a ****ing eternity in this sport. Two years ago, nobody knew wtf Dan Cormier or Chris Weidman were. Give up the Pride Never Die nostalgia and leave the past in the past. Fedors time has been over for some time.

Penn earned his BJJ black belt in 3 years and then won the World Championship for BJJ black belts. To go from white belt to World Champion black belt in 3 years is insane. I can't even imagine the work ethic that takes.

While I agree it is an amazing feat, BJ comes from a wealthy family who paid for private lessons with the best BJJ teachers. On top of that his natural abilities are amazing, BJ has never been knows as a hard worker.

If I had to pin point why he became a world champion so quickly I would credit natural ability and advantages most don't have, rather then hard work. I am a BJ fan but he disappoints me with his lack of dedication and motivation.

Fedor is my fav fighter of all time but also disappoints me in the sense that he was too stubborn to bring in top notch training parteners...the guy beat all the best in the world essentially jogging and training with bums in russia other then his sambo training.

Now look at GSP/Anderson and Jones...all have the same natural abilities but train harder/smarter. To be the best you need natural ability AND dedication.

Mark Kerr won the ADCC 3x back to back during his prime, and he had no background in bjj. It's hard to say how much of BJ's win was to due to talent and how much was work ethic. Of course, I'm just speculating when it comes to the training, but I was always under the impression BJ didn't take training as seriously as he should've, especially when seeing him during his hiatus from the ufc after winning the belt. His win in 2000 was also before he started mma so he might've had some insane work ethic then that slowly waned after becoming champion and having the contract disputes, who knows.

And in regards to Fedor, I'm just saying he would still give a lot of fighters problems even in his current form. You have guys like Werdum and Nog ranked 4-7 or so, and Mark Hunt emerging as a contender and you think if Fedor came back and applied himself, he wouldn't be able to break in the top 10 and maybe even 5 in today's hws? Please.

So what you are saying is that if u had to put money on jon jones opponent, ud rather he fights rashad, sonnen or hendo and not fedor because they have a bigger shot of beating him. That's ludacris.

If I have to pick a non HW to beat Jones i'd take Anderson

If I can pick anyone, Cain followed by JDS

If Sonnen bulks to 205 well he honestly has a way to win the same as Belfort did. The 205er most likely to beat Jones is Machida though.

It'd be between Cain and JDS, not sure who to pick actually. But who do you think has better shot at beating Jones, bulked up Sonnen or Fedor?

Fedor but only due to size really. He just isn't the killer he used to be anymore.

Also I think Sonnen is more live than most people give him credit for, although Jones will be -800 or whatever obviously but I do think it's closer to -700 than -2000

So not to the fact that he has better hands than Sonnen or the fact he has better submissions? Yeah sure, he isn't who he once was, but I'd think where he is today is still better off a challenge than Sonnen is.

Machida would be -300 against Fedor if they were to announce a fight at 205 for them.

sorry to interrupt the fedor talk but i just opened a 5dimes account after railing this thread for a week, and can't find where all the prop bets are (like what round the fight will end and all that) also can someone explain what a parlay bet is? cause going back to some of the older pages seen alot of you guys talk about making parlay bets.

thanks for any/all help

In the original menu that appears when you log in, under "Fighting" there's UFC, Strikeforce, Bellator and Props. You have to select props rather than UFC if you want UFC props. Note that there probably aren't a lot out right now, has to be closer to the event for them to be up.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parlay_%28gambling%29

The information on that link about parlays having substantially reduced odds isn't super accurate, generally these days if you parlay bets together it uses the odds for each bet to generate the odds for the parlay, meaning you pay the juice on the bets as normal but no extra.

thanks, helped alot

I am going to have 3 bets for the Bellator card tomorrow. They will all be 1-star. I'm not going to nominate a Best Bet when I don't have a 2-star bet. I'll have them up tomorrow (Aus time), I still have a bunch of money to get down before I want to reveal them.

The fight I won't have a bet on is the Nazare - Tirloni one. Lean Tirloni though.

Also, have done a bunch of work last couple days incorporating Tapology poll results into my DB. Just have to iron out bugs tomorrow then can do some analysis. Hoping to find some interesting results. Should have about 1,200 fights which hopefully will be enough of a sample given all I'm probably interested in is the anomalies (i.e. where the odds and the polls disagree). My prediction is where they disagree the fighter the odds favour will be a good bet, but we'll see.

Explain to me how that's ridiculous when those fighters are actually beating relevant opponents, while Fedor is clearly totally shot (lost last 3 fights via finish against capable opposition).

You can't just say "Fedor has a chance to finish him" when he hasn't finished anyone relevant since January 2009 and even that's questionable because AA hasn't been competitive in a relevant fight since then. The last time he finished someone who was competitive in a relevant fight afterwards was Mark Coleman in ****ing 2006. So that argument simply doesn't hold water.

Applying that logic, Takanori Gomi would be the biggest threat to Jose Aldo because hey, he's bigger, he has a history of finishing his opponents, and he was dominant around the same time as Fedor. But everyone in here would I'm sure agree that's an absurd statement. But for some reason, when the same reasoning is given for Fedor, people just nod their heads in agreement. The Fedor mystique has you guys by the balls, let go of it and simply look at the facts.

Just answer the question, would u rather put money on Rashad, Sonnen, Hendo or Fedor, given it's the same odds, they have the same amount to train etc
And also stop making bad analogous, first with Jordan and now with Gomi. No one is using MMA math but u seem to base your arguments on MMA math that is irrelevant. Everyone else making arguments is actually basing them on how Fedor looks in the octagon rather than doing basic MMA math which, once again, has no relevancy.
It seems you think Fedor is a bum and it's more you being a UFC fanboy than anyone else being a pride fanboy. Dude is past his prime, but he's not that past to the point he's a total bum as you seem to think.

I didn't know I needed to spell it out. Yes of course I give relevant fighters who have beaten someone worthwhile in the past 3 years a better shot than Fedor.

The Gomi analogy seems quite apt to me. Both past their primes (though Gomi is actually facing fighters who are something of a threat), both dominant around the same time, both known for finishing opponents, both from a higher weight class, both with recent knock out wins over fighters who don't belong in a top flight promotion that makes their fanboys cling to a shred of hope. But if I said Gomi was the biggest threat to Aldo, I would be laughed out of the room.

Also, basing it off how he looks in the Octagon? LOL did you not read my posts? That's exactly what I'm basing my reasoning on. He can't beat anybody besides 40 year old cans these days, he lost his last 3 fights convincingly when faced with a high-level opponent.

Fedor fanboys will just swing from his nutsack until the day he croaks, crowing about how he's one of the greatest of all time and THIRTY STRAIGHT FIGHTS MAN (never mind all the cans he fought) and YOU ARE JUST A UFC FANBOY, YOU DON'T EVEN KNOW ABOUT THE PRIDE DAYS THAT'S WHEN MMA WAS THE BEST.

I actually roll my eyes at some of the stuff UFC has done lately, and believe me I used to stay up til 9am streaming Dream and K-1 cards so this has nothing to do with me having some sort of UFC allegiance lol...I just am capable of looking at things from a rational, logical point of view. And from the point of view, it's not hard to see that Fedor has nothing to offer a fighter as elite as Jones.

Gomi has looked like **** in all of his recent matches except against Griffin but that was like the first punch or something, I think he'd get outworked there if it wasnt for that KO. So that is really my point, Fedor hasn't declined as much as Gomi has. It's also because of the fact that Fedor isn't as tentative as some of the LHW fighters, especially when facing Jones. U saw it in all of them, Rashad, Vitor, all of them where very tentative with their striking. And when it comes to Sonnen, as I said, that man has almost 0 striking skills, I really don't know how you think Sonnen has a bigger chance of outwrestling/TKO'ing/Submitting Jones than Fedor has TKO'ing/submitting Jones. So that's the reason I think Fedor is better suited beating Jones.

"Fedor hasn't declined as much as Gomi has."

There's simply no evidence for this. Why, because Fedor beat Rizzo and Monson? They are both WAY past their primes who are only beating guys who don't belong anywhere near a top promotion.

I'm not sure what point you're trying to make when you say people are being "tentative" against Jones. Probably because it's hard to find openings against arguably the best fighter in the world who also happens to be gigantic for his weight class? I mean, if the answer to beating Jon Jones was just to barrel in at him, winging strikes, I'm pretty sure someone would have pulled that off by now. To top it off, it's not like Fedor has a speed advantage against Jones.

Yes, Fedor has a history of finishing his opponents, while Sonnen has almost no chance of finishing Jones. But Fedor hasn't finished anyone relevant in YEARS, while Sonnen is actually...you know...beating relevant fighters. That holds WAY more weight with me than 5 year old youtube clips, I dunno about anyone else.

Because Fedor was actually competetive in his fights against top 10 ranked HW's and top 5 ranked LHW while Gomi wasn't(Not the werdum fight, didn't go on long enough to actually say anything about that fight, I forgot he got subbed in the beginning so hence my former post saying he was winning that)?

"I'm not sure what point you're trying to make when you say people are being "tentative" against Jones. Probably because it's hard to find openings against arguably the best fighter in the world who also happens to be gigantic for his weight class?"
This is exactly why he's beating people, because he is the more skillful fighter and has that huge weight/body advantage over ppl at LHW. You don't beat Jones by playing the distance game like Rashad and vitor did, they were very tentative in that fight. Yeah, they minimize the risk of losing due to an embarrassment TKO/KO by not exposing themselves and waiting for counters, but they also minimize their chance of winning. I think it's pretty logical to say that whenever u face a skilled opponent, it's in your odds of trying to make it a dog fight because skill matters less there and more luck comes into play. Now I say try because it's one thing saying it and another thing doing it. But at least someone like Fedor will have no respect for jon and just go at him. One thing Fedor does is fight to win and not like Vitor or Rashad fought like, fight not to lose in that fight.

If you think Fedor wouldn't beat the guys Sonnen has beat, Bisping, Stann, Okami etc then you're out of your mind(and he will do this because of weight advantage). I'm just saying this because you're saying Sonnen is beating relevant fighters, yeah, but those fighters are at middleweight and not LHW.
The reason why Sonnen is beating people is because of his wrestling and being able to overpower fighters with it. At LHW he won't have that luxury. Fedor actually wins by TKO/submission a small % of the time while Sonnen doesn't. Fedor is past his prime, but not that much that Sonnen would do better than him vs Jones.

I agree with some of what you're saying (Sonnen will lose some of what makes him so good at a higher weight, a firefight may be to an underdog's benefit by introducing more variance) but I just will never be able to agree with the notion that Fedor's losses were close fights. Yeah, he had a couple of moments but he was finished in convincing fashion in all three. And if he's being finished by the only top guys he's facing, there is no way in hell I am gonna sit here and say he's got a decent shot to beat arguably the best fighter in the world who is probably also bigger than him.