Dustin has really surprised me over the last few years. He always looked like a mid-tier fighter to me, but clearly not any more. Listening to him speak, it sounds like he has great emotional control and most importantly believes in his abilities.
I do not particularly like Usman, but he is GSP 2.0.
I honestly don’t catch as many fights now as I did when I was competing. I think the specialist reign is over with Khabib leaving. The few that are left are too one dimensional and usually do not have the same physical gifts as the other fighters.
“Back in the day” it was all about BJJ because no one else trained it.
The next era was mostly wrestlers who prevented takedowns and threw haymakers.
Since there’s money in it now for the top tier guys… the current era are physically gifted, explosive athletes who are well rounded enough to power through stuff and stay out of trouble.
This trend will continue until they remove round time limits, which will never happen. If it did, skinny twerps like the Diaz brothers would win almost all of their fights.
I can't disagree with any of this.
Honestly, I think even guys like McGregor with their "touch of death" style knockout power in early rounds, but relatively worse stamina down the stretch, are on the way out as well.
Except for maybe heavyweights. Everyone loves a walrus fight. But the shorter the better.
I think the next gen is gonna look a lot like Kamaru Usman or Dustin Poirier. Good knockout power, Olympic level cardio, BJJ black belt and similar high level wrestling skills...probably collegiate athlete if not D1 or Olympic wrestling pedigree.
It's not gonna be an "either/or" it'll be a "both/and" with some small exceptions for guys like Khabib or Adesanya who lean more heavily in something they are clearly very gifted in and have clearly thought about how and why they use it in MMA.
I think Islam Makhachev is gonna be the lightweight to beat soon.
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Ryan said he broke his hand on the first punch he landed. Looks like his jabbing hand. He has done kickboxing for years.
Not to thread drift, but I think this explains why a lot of people don’t post as much. I’m a black belt in BJJ and have done some boxing and MMA, but I don’t suffer fools well and nobody pays me to argue so talking about combatives here got tiring quick.
Probably similar to why we don’t hear from guys like DB or SLG any more.
There's nothing civil about this war.
I am also in the phase of parenting young children so the time just speeds by without warning!
One of the best pieces of advice came from my boxing coach. He told me that once I had children I should stop fighting because I’d be concerned about getting hurt and worrying about being able to take care of them. He was right, so I stopped a few years ago and focused on my education and my career. I can 100% say it was the right move. I made so little fighting compared to where my business career has gone.
I’d imagine there is more pressure for UFC fighters to stick with it once they “make it.” But really, unless you are a household name you are forced to work a second job… or third.
I think the input of guys like @GAP and @Mitch has been incredibly valuable to me in my journey as a martial artist.
I definitely appreciate their contributions, especially having been one of those guys who used to genuinely believe in pressure point knockouts. I actually met George Dillman once. He seemed nice enough, but he couldn't actually knock me out [emoji28]
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