Quote:
Originally Posted by just_mo
Machida is always willing to take you down if he sees a good opportunity.
And how does Evans have better cardio lol? He has historically faded later in fights (dropped 3rd rounds to Jackson, Silva).
Still think Machida is the 2nd best 205er in the world, and he's plenty versatile. Evans has come a long way from his days of being embarrassed on the feet by Machida (watch how much his footwork has improved) and needing a flurry of ground strikes to beat Griffin after getting worked on the feet.
But I don't think it will be near enough to mount any kind of threat to Jones. Think this looks a bit like the Jackson fight.
Machida isn't looking for the takedowns or doing stuff to set them up, mostly. Yeah, we see the random trip or double underhook takedown. I don't think he attempted even one takedown in the Jones fight if I remember correctly. Point is, all Jones was worried about in the fight against Machida was his standup game. He didn't need to be worried about the fast double leg takedown etc, like he has to be worried against Rashad. Even when he fought Rampage he didn't need to worry about the takedowns.
Considering the conditioning, I don't remember him dropping the 3rd round to either Jackson or Silva, more like winning the fight until the last minute, then getting dropped and pounded on for a small amount of time, and also even against Rampage he reversed that takedown in the final seconds. I think it has to do a lot with what kind of kind of fight you're in and how many rounds. I mean basically everyone at lhw and up gets tired in the championship rounds.
I just compared their last performances, Machida looked a bit drain, more than usually in r2 and Rashad looked better in r2 vs Davis.
Also this is far from the same fight as Rampage. They have quite different styles of fighting and gameplans.