You guys are ridiculous. Usually, you associate a “punchers chance” with someone who has to get lucky to even land a punch.

Conor has proven to be deadly accurate with his strikes, on a level that I’ve never seen before in MMA. All on the big stages ever seen in combat sports. Hopefully, someone unbiased and smarter than me can chime in here.

We could hypothesize all sorts of things. Chad Mendes took Conor down 4 times in 2 rounds and was in top position for 4 minutes beating the hell out of Conor. Maybe he could have beaten him...

But he didn't. I prefer to live in reality. The reality as I saw it was that Conor was much bigger and longer than most of his featherweight opponents and he presented a unique challenge with his long reach and movement that they were unable to solve at the time. Jose Aldo was at a 4inch reach disadvantage and now fights at 135lbs (Conor struggled to make 145lbs).

The fight game continues to evolve. Fighters are better at getting to the inside now (look at what Burns was able to do to Wonderboy), and frankly the Lightweight Division is just a much tougher deeper division than 145lbs was when Conor fought there. Aside from Aldo and I suppose Brandao, everyone Conor beat at 145lbs was either a midget (Mendes, Brimage, Siver) or not yet in their prime (Holloway, Poirier).

The lightweight division is so deep. There are like 17+ UFC Lighweights outside the top 15 that have 2 or fewer losses in their MMA careers. Guys like Mateusz Gamrot (18-1), Grant Dawson (17-1), Ottman Azaitar (13-0). You got really good fighters like Drew Dober, Alexander Hernandez, Bobby Green, Nasrat Haqparast outside the top 15. Hell, Davi Ramos is a super dangerous BJJ world champion with a winning record in the UFC and he's barely one of the top 40 UFC LWs.

Conor is just so low brow and always has been. Now he is laughable, which is glorious.

New angles of God testing Conor post fight:

This is the correct take btw. Conor had massive advantages at 145 that didn't translate up in weight and his weaknesses got exposed. It's not any more complex than that. Aldo was likely a more complete fighter than Conor, but that doesn't matter if you can't withstand a single check hook.

it was so pathetic the way all these new espn announcers tried to talk about conor being '1-0 vs khabib's bus', as if that **** was cute

conor is a classless pos who takes things too far and says things that will undoubtedly result in violence in the streets if paths are ever crossed. people can die in the octagon, and people can die outside of the octagon. dustin is right to be pissed and on some 'if i see you in the streets, it's on' type ****

i mean, a street fight? LOL, khabib and his crew definitely a favorite to end some lives in an altercation. dude is ****in lucky to have walked away from that bus incident. gl w that left counter when you're getting dumped on your head on the pavement

Khabib wasn't with his crew in the bus incident. It would have been like 20 vs 2 or something with Conor's crew holding the advantage. Conor is a criminal thug that rolls with thug gangsters so I would take his threats seriously.

At least he seems to realize the only way he'll beat Porier is with Porier asleep and Connor with a gun.

Even with a gun I don't think you'd touch Khabib's crew of chinstrap beard, unpronounceablely named killers.

Well this post from '15 aged well.

It certainly didn't age very well considering Conor won the 155lb title after that.

lol

I also had RDA beating Conor. Not sure how good that take was though as RDA then lost to Eddie Alvarez.

I'd still love to see those two fight. Like Poirier, RDA is a tough durable dude and that would certainly play in his favor in a fight vs Conor.

RDA nearly killed himself to cut weight for the Alvarez and Ferguson fights before moving to 170 for awhile, my guess is Conor would've caught him at the right time similar to how Alvarez/Ferguson did

McGregor was legit in his prime, but his 155 win was 5 years ago. 15 months before that, Anthony Pettis was the champ at 155, it is just a different era

I think Oliviera beats Poirier as he seems on another level now. Improvements everywhere.

Still think the "puncher's chance" thing who actually landed them in a couple huge spots then the showman/hype-monster angle is all this phenomenon was. A touch more. The guy won round 3 from Khabib after nearly getting finished the round before. That's real. Some of it was Khabib resting knowing he was "taking him to deep ocean" later. Still.

Conor got away from the sport and has glaring weaknesses in ring game and commitment now. A while back one of the studs said "Conor isn't a fighter anymore," or something along those lines. It was a heavy comment. He's a boxer, but his only boxing match was with Mayweather. Not good planning.

Sorry, Charlie. Puncher's chance can mean "needs to win by a big punch KO or loses," and you know it. And that sums up Conor pretty well. Of course I can predict your response.

Really? Chandler came pretty close to finishing him. I'm not sure his defense is there, who has he beaten besides Chandler? Poirier has been beating the best of the best sans Khabib for the last 4 years now.

I'm on Oliveira while I'm hot (lol 2-4 last six after 13-1 start when I thought they were actually giving money away on very weak Bones, Stylebender and Khabib lines).

My response would be to rewatch UFC 205. That was the most dominant striking performance I’ve ever seen in my life.

Or ask Eddie Alvarez. Ask Diaz. Ask Cerrone. Ask Aldo.

When you know exactly what’s coming and can’t get out of the way, that’s not just a “puncher’s chance” my friend. Most of the top fighters I’ve seen either have to set it up or use counter strikes to put their striking skills on display. It’s rare that a guy at the top level could immediately start to land on you right after the cage closes. I’ve never seen anything like it.

Dustin was on his way out in the first fight. There’s a reason he’s the number one contender in the world. It took a championship level effort to fight back and get the job done.

When I hear punchers chance, I think of some scrub heavyweights.

I don’t care about Khabib or Mayweather in the boxing ring. Diaz took everything the #2 WW in world had and almost finished him at the end. Respect to Conor for evening the score in a 5 round decision.

9 fight win streak, recent wins over Ferguson and Lee (who are no joke) Plus I'm not sleeping on Chandler as his athleticism is off the charts and will be very difficult to handle for anyone.

What I want to see is Chandler/McGregor. It's truly a hype dream and I say Chandler ends Conor in a really violent way, so I'm all for it. Plus neither of them would say no to that fight. Well, now that Conor is so used to losing.

You're arguing against yourself and doubling down on a stupid definition is not a brilliancy.

I think it's perfectly reasonable to pick Oliveira to beat Poirier. These are two great fighters. That being said, I think there are very logical reasons that most of the smart money will be on Poirier in that fight (barring a big shift in the line).

I'm a total casual, didn't even follow Conor when he first came up, but at least right now he seems like a steaming pile of ****. No class, no intelligence, no maturity - nothing redeeming about him. Just a vile and disgusting person. I don't get why he has such a loyal fanbase.