Idk if anyone here was watching during Showtime’s peak, but he produced some of my favorite moments in MMA from WEC to the UFC. I miss being excited about his fights. He’s done a lot for the MMA community, he fought the best in his respective divisions always, but somewhere along the line just seemingly lost the cardio and drive. It’s been tough to tune in for his PFL fights.
There’s an entire era of WEC fighters that were great. They were good for the sport, their communities etc But it just seems like they’ve never gotten the credit they deserve. Pettis, Faber, Cruz, Aldo, Garcia, Varner, Bowles, Benavidez, Mike Brown, Torres, Benson and the list goes on and on. Those dudes got a fuck ton of people into MMA
That Pettis vs. Pitbull fight is wild because if Pitbull can do it, he'll have had a belt in three different Bellator divisions. Absolutely crazy to think about. Re: WEC.... that was my favorite era of the sport, I think. Between the WEC, UFC and Strikeforce (and the occasional Bellator), you basically had two events a week of HIGH-quality cards. I remember a lot of those WEC cards and the UFC Fight Nights would be on TV on Wednesdays. So you'd get some crazy, historic matchups in the middle of the week. What was fun back then was that each organization had a healthy roster of great fighters, but Strikeforce and the WEC lightweights were looked at as the b leagues. You always wondered how they would all matchup, and then eventually those two got absorbed into the UFC anyway and lo and behold, they all took over. Pettis and Benson became champ, Cowboy had some incredible winning streaks and broke records (then of course Strikeforce had DC, Rockhold, Werdum, Overeem, etc.) But yeah, there are a whole heap of guys who got cut for some reason and never got to make that same impact after the merger.
Still seems crazy. It would seem silly to book anything before Aljo/Cejudo. Even if O’Malley gets next regardless of who wins, Cory is the only person Merab should have to fight until he gets a title shot. It does seem like BW is the division where number 1 can fight number 11 though haha
His shoulder surgery required a lengthy layoff. Interesting to see how many guys who were on steroids and then USADA-forced off all begin suffering the worst + identical injuries. Shoulder Dislocation/Pop: Ortega, Dillashaw Tibia Snap: Silva, Weidman I’m sure there’s more but those come to mind.
Something that happened recently that kind of went under the radar One of O'Malley's training partners popped for ostarine. Which is the same thing Sean was suspended for a few years ago (twice)
As someone dealing with a shoulder injury myself, Ortega definitely needs all the possible recovery time. It's funny, I can grapple with relatively no issues, but striking has only started to get back to normal-ish. This experience really drove home how wild Dillashaw was gutting out that camp and trying to fight lol.
A couple of days late, but you guys remember when Khabib vs. Tony was scrapped for the fourth time on April Fool's Day because Tony stepped on a cable? That was maybe the craziest week in my history of watching MMA, simply because there was an entire day where everyone thought all of the MMA journalists came together for one elaborate prank.
Not only that, but they cycled from Holloway to Pettis to Felder before Raging Al was allowed to fight and ended up going the distance.
Jorge could always catch him but I think Burns is gonna walk through him. if it goes to the ground (and it will) the fight is over