His in ring post-fight interview essentially confirmed what we thought. Santos is a BB in Muay Thai and he was never planning on brawling with him. He also touched base on how Santos’ leg kicks were hurting.
Maybe he saw Askren get pasted and decided to abandon the wrestling completely? Maybe he's just bored and wants to challenge himself? Personally, I think he's just tired. He's essentially fought three times in six months. I think he needs a break.
I give him all the props in the world for the fights he's taken this year. Gus was his toughest fight up until then and he smoked him in the rematch. Smith and Santos are dangerous fights because both of those guys are savages but not big names. They also came up from middleweight so it gives that misconception that they aren't dangerous to LHWs. Those are both high-risk, low-reward match-ups when a ton of other champions are mostly gunning for those big name money fights. He's planning on fighting in December as well. His future defenses will be interesting. The division has no more former champions or veterans, so they're nearly all prospects. It's pretty crazy.
Just saw the payouts for saturday and its so great to see Nunes get paid the same amount as Jones. After seeing how royally screwed the womens soccer team got with payouts I figured the one sport that may do it right is the UFC. As far as I can tell the pay is equal for at least its top women and men stars.
Wow that's amazing. Especially considering it's a fighter (male or female) who is a draw purely based on skill and not trash talk, controversy, or any of those other external factors. She's just a great, likeable fighter. I've definitely noticed that in the last 1-2 years, I've been deliberately (but sub-consciously) catching the female fights more often than the male fights for most of the cards (barring the huge main events, of course). For instance, I hardly watched any of the prelims this weekend but made sure I caught Claudia vs. Randa. I think part of this is because the women's divisions are newer than the men's so it kind of takes me back to the old days before all of the weight classes were so over saturated. There's tons of quality talent, don't get me wrong, but I know <50% of the fighters in the UFC nowadays. The women's divisions still have a normal number of fighters so I'm familiar with nearly all of them.
Askren is going to be on Helwani's show here in a bit. I'm already predicting that he's going to say he shot for a takedown because he expected Masvidal to do a running groin kick like he did against Till.
Covington said that CM Punk has more Octagon Time and less KO losses than Ben Askren in the UFC what a troll
Dominick Reyes is saying he is going to be the next one to face Jones ehhhh I guess it makes sense, he beat Blachowicz
Reyes is 4th I think in the rankings and everyone else above him Jon has beat recently. I’d like to see Walker next but he probably needs another win
Walker could be a fun one but I bet they want to see him in a fight that at least goes a single round first. The dude has so many good wins but so little octagon experience because of it. Haha. I pointed this out before but it’s crazy how much physically bigger this division is than it used to be. Many of the former champions ended up going down in weight. Now, Jones looks very average in size compared to these new contenders. The weird thing is that Smith and Santos both moved up in weight and still don’t look undersized.
Yeah I agree. Jones used to look like a monster against nearly everyone but now not so much compared to the new guys. It’s also insane to think this is the best LHW has been in years due to all the young guys and guys that moved up but the division still looks weak because Jones is still cutting through them all. I wouldn’t be opposed to a Santos rematch for Jon. But Dana seems to think Jon won that fight convincingly.
Does anyone else think Dana didn’t give Santos enough credit for his performance? I mean it’s very rare nowadays for Jon to lose rounds and Santos beats him in at least 2 rounds (3 depending on who you ask). I had it 3-2 Santos.
Really? I don't really feel like he has much of a personality so I don't really get how people feel strongly about him one way or another. haha. I've always followed him over the years because I feel like he tries to keep his opinions and emotions out of things for the most part. Side note - he was pretty pleasant when I met him at Disney World two weeks ago. I waited until he wasn't preoccupied with his three kids and said "Excuse me, sir". He and his wife looked at me like they were a little startled and then I asked for a picture and his wife let out an audible laugh. I shook his hand and left him alone until we left. Then I just waved and told them all to have a good day and he said "It was nice meeting you!" I figured that he probably does nothing but talk about MMA every other hour of his life so I decided not to even mention it since he was on vacation.
I'm sure I've said it in here before, just lost a lot of respect for him after 199 and now he's a Skip/Stephen A personality of MMA masquerading as a journalist. My first time listening to him in a while, which brought it all back lol. I'll agree with Dana not giving Santos enough credit, but Dana's going to push DC/Bones 3 hard if he can. Maybe give Santos a Blachowicz rematch? 205 is so shallow right now.
What? Where did you get that idea? I like Ariel and said I always follow him and his show. I said at the beginning of the post that I just don't know how people can feel too strongly about him (love him or hate him) because he tries to keep things objective and professional. I personally like that about him.