Talking of underdogs - I like Stipe and think he's favourite.

starched em, lame!

both Kattar and Burgos seem very good and entertaining, i'm impressed.

wow BOSTON crushing

such finishes, much violence

Cormier doesnt look in his usual shape at all

*still throwing bombs tho

Damn.


Shades of roy nelson vs kimbo from TUF there lol. crucifix-****ed

sit down young man

Do you guys think he gets out of the crucifix if you give him 2 minutes to try?

Ngannou is better then Oezdemir but I see the main going the same as the co: a relatively untested challenger who made his name based off a couple of quick KOs getting schooled by an elite, well rounded champion.

yea DC was thicker than a snickers

got my biggest wager ever on francis, if he loses i retire from MMA betting for a 3rd time

Ngannou's rise reminds me of mcgregor at featherweight.

It seems inevitable for Stipe to get ko'd


HYPE

holy **** the trades at the end both got hurt


stipe playing his cards right ngannou might be gased already

mmhm

beautiful performance. i did bet a little on miocic, but it's very hard to feel good about that bet in r1. francis is simply enormous.

Happy for stipe. Must be so scary in the first round when Ngannou is full speed and power

could Ngannou have been any more tired? lol super gassed

he was just a little fatigued. he gets a little wobbly when he's tired.

I'm so mad I didn't bet on Stipe as the underdog. This fight was going to play out this way like 75% of the time. I'd say higher, but I do have respect for how much of a monster Ngannou actually is. They moved him into a fight against a great grinder with basically a half-polished MMA game. Its like if you gave Melvin Guillard a title fight after 3 of his random TKOs when he seemed like I striking beast. You could say the same of the Volkan Cormier fight, but I guess I'd have given Volkan a better chance solely because of Cormier's age.

Result oriented much?
Stipe is the first one to break 3 title defence in a row at heavyweight i think. Thinking ngannou was such an underdog that he had 25% chance to win only doesn't seem to match ufc heavyweight stats.

Zero cardio and zero tdd is a bad combo.

The problem of great genetics is that people tend to take shortcuts that imbalance development.
His next step will be critical in his development. Hopefully he ll join a big camp.

He's trained MMA for four years. He had basically no combat training of any type before that. The idea that he's taken shortcuts seems unfounded? He's a really talented, raw fighter. Might have poor cardio, might not have trained for cardio, might not have managed cardio well - don't know enough to tell. He would have gotten starched today if Stipe was more aggressive and/or had better stamina. He's around the level of Overeem/Hunt/Lewis/JDS. He's an underdog to Stipe and Sea Level Cain™. I think he loses to Werdum.

Could he train another three years and be the best? Maybe. He's still new to MMA & could learn a lot. TDD + scrambling so he's a sort of prime JDS/Gustaffson type would make him mighty dangerous, especially if he learned to pace himself well. I think he'll just be a Mark Hunt type guy who wins Knockout Of The Night in 2/3 his fights and loses the 1/3 of the time he steps up but that's just a hunch.

When I mean shortcut I don't mean anything negative. Just that his short experience and crazy genetics limited the depth of his toolkit to keep up with his crazy rize in ranking.

RIP

glad stim didnt take me up on my offer, i didn't expect that stipe would be able to avoid the initial flurry or that francis' tank would run so completely dry in such short order. credit where it's due, stipe is a true champion, fought a super smart fight, and is probably the GOAT heavyweight at this moment. definitely think francis has what it takes to win the belt, but he's for sure gonna need to work some more on his cardio and ground game.

Fwiw I think Ngannou was very very closing to winning in round 1 - he'd be very much live in a re-match imo, even if he didn't improve in any way, but still an underdog of course.

Huge respect for Stipe. Seems like a decent bloke too.