Quote:
Originally Posted by Assani Fisher
He'll be 32 in a month. I know thats not necessarily old by MMA/Boxing standards, but everyone's body definitely starts to decline in their late 20s/early 30s. If he has always coasted as you say, then eventually thats going to start catching up to him and he may "age" quicker than most fighters. Plus hes taken quite a bit of time off, so maybe he needed to train hard in camp moreso than most times. Vegas lines that are on such a big event aren't going to be that far off the true line, so there has to be some reason for that.
I think you give Vegas too much credit, they aren't right about everything. Machida was still a pretty sizeable favorite over Shogun despite the majority of people thinking Shogun outpointed Machida the 1st time, and we know what happened there. Brock is a sizeable favorite over Carwin which just can't be accurate. MMA is a relatively new sport they are going to be long on the ML, and people aren't as educated about MMA as other sports so they will be wrong too. However the whole training camp thing doesn't matter much, Kimbo trained with American Top Team, how'd that work out for him? Once you get in that cage it's only you who is fighting.
Rampage admits he didn't work as hard as he should've early in his career but he also says he's training harder for this fight than he's trained for any fight in his career. He's the same guy who beat a prime Dan Henderson, destroyed a prime Chuck Liddell and then destroyed him again 4 years later to take the belt away from him. Rampage could easily be the best fighter Rashad has ever fought, at the very worst the 2nd best, while Rashad is at best the 5th best fighter Rampage has fought. On top of that everybody Rashad has fought that has a similar style to Rampage pales in comparison. On the other hand Rampge has fought similar guys like Chuck and Hendo (wrestler/boxers)who were better than Rashad at the time and Rampage went 3-0 against the 2. Also the best wrestler Rampage is ever faced was Kevin Randleman who in his prime was one of the 5 best HWs in the world and Randleman couldn't even take Rampage down.
As far as the age thing, Rampage is 31, turns 32 a week after the fight, he's not exactly old, he's also a guy that hasn't taken a ton of punishment. The only fights he's really taken punishment are the 2 against Wandy and against Shogun. He's not like Big Nog who's strategy consisted of letting you punch him in the face while he had you in guard until you either made a mistake or got tired.