I’m just catching up on tonight. Just watched Dariush vs Holtzman and holy fuck what a knockout. His striking has become leveled with his grappling game, definitely think he’s somebody to keep an eye on at the moment.
Good night of fights. Holland, Daruish and Lewis all had super impressive finishes. Nice to see Weidman get a win again. I'd love to see Lewis face the winner of JDS/Rosenstruick or have him face Ngannou for the belt if Cormier wins and retires.
It looked like it took everything for Weidman to survive that fight and stay on top. His stand-up game suffers severely now at this point. Also curious if fighters are usually allowed to fight with things such as a herpes outbreak? Which he was clearly having. Lewis also had a huge staph infection pimple directly on the back of his head.
Lewis, Blades and Ngannou are ruining the division (in the best way possible). They have knocked out basically everyone in the division multiple times aside from DC and Stipe lol How did Weidman fall so hard and fast? People were touting him as the goat because he beat Silva and won/defended the belt within a dozen pro fights, but then he went on to look absolutely terrible against everyone aside from Kelvin. Gotta be USADA, injuries or simply overrated because Silva was a good matchup or just beyond his prime. Either way, it’s crazy that he looked pretty much spent after just 14 pro fights.
Weidman also fell victim to winning the belt right as there was a huge change in eras and talent influx in the UFC. Most of the guys he lost to are elite at some skill, Silva was excellent but there wasn’t the kind of world class talent in the ufc like there is today when he was on his run.
I thought about this too. The old legends (Belfort, Machida) were still hanging around the top and sort of inflated his status. The killers like Jacare, Mousasi, and Rockhold hadn’t made it to contention yet.