Sports: Events Without Depth

Birdjaguar

Birdjaguar

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Thread title confuses me. Are we not supposed to discuss?
 
You certainly can. All the active threads seem to be dedicated to big time sports and I thought maybe a thread with assorted events might be fun. Holly may be worth a a little effort until some other not so big event comes along.
 
Good idea. I could have used a "misc" thread for my Lomu post.

I've been following MMA pretty regularly for about 10 years, and Holm's win over Rousey was among the best performances I've ever seen. I'm no Rousey hater, either. I think she's amazing and have enjoyed her career as much as anyone. Holm's gameplan and execution were just about perfect, and there may not be another fighter in the sport who could have done what she did. Props to the JaxWink team, who are clearly evil geniuses bent on world domination.

I was also happy to see Holm tell people to lay off Rousey after the fight. It remains to be seen how she shoulders the work of being a UFC champion - something Rousey did better than anyone ever has - but she seems to have a lot of class.

I think a loss by Rousey may have been good for fans of the sport. I think any division gets less interesting the longer it's dominated by one champion, and Rousey was starting to make a mockery of her competition. The jury is out on whether Rousey's star has been dimmed for the casual fans who don't really follow the sport.
 
Holly's start as a boxer gave her an advantage. She throws hard straight punches unlike her opponents who throw wide curvy punches.
 
Birdjaguar said:
Holly's start as a boxer gave her an advantage.
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No question. Holm has been boxing for about as long as Rousey has been doing judo. I think Rousey and her coaches may have forgotten that, and thought she could box with Holm.

Birdjaguar said:
She throws hard straight punches unlike her opponents who throw wide curvy punches.
Click to expand...
Her footwork and head movement were superior, too. Rousey had no lateral movement and kept walking in on Holm's straight left. Everybody likes to post photos and gifs of the head kick, but Holm was clobbering Rousey long before that happened.

classical_hero said:
I find it frustrating that some people are claim that Rousey lost on purpose. This is a big insult to Holms who deserved the fight.
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I agree. I think it's a big insult to Rousey, too. She and her camp made some bad mistakes, but anybody saying it was fixed just doesn't know the sport very well.
 
An almost ridiculous long weekend of UFC fights this weekend. Even a pretty serious fan like myself will be exhausted by the end. For the casual fan who likes to watch a UFC once in a while, Saturday's card may be for you. Some people are saying that, on paper, it's one of the best ever. (I use Fight Matrix's division rankings, rather than the UFC's, because their calculations encompass fighters in the whole sport, not just in the UFC.)

Jose Aldo (25-1; #1 in division) vs. Connor McGregor (18-2; #3 in division) for the 145 lbs championship. Aldo hasn't lost in 10 years and is commonly regarded to be the greatest Featherweight in the sport's short history, one of the sport's top "pound-for-pound" fighters, and yet many betting lines have him as the underdog. McGregor is big, aggressive and versatile, and seemingly brings 10,000 drunk Irishmen with him to every fight. Both men are outstanding MMA kick-boxers and have been jawing at each other for months.

Chris Weidman (13-0; #1 in division) vs Luke Rockhold (14-2; #2 in division) for the 185 lbs championship. Weidman is the guy who knocked out Anderson Silva and then broke his leg in the rematch. Rockhold recently made former 205-lb champion Lyoto Machida look terrible.

Yoel Romero (10-1; #4) vs Ronaldo "Jacare" Souza (22-3; #5) at 185 lbs The consensus opinion is that this is the "#1 Contender" fight. Romero won a silver medal in wrestling at the 2000 Olympics, and lost to Cael Sanderson at the 2004 Olympics. Souza is a 5-time world jiu-jitsu champion who also has a blackbelt in judo, and the last time he lost an MMA fight was to Luke Rockhold (above) 4 years ago.

Friday night's card features Frankie Edgar (19-4-1; #2) vs Chad Mendes (17-3; #6) at 145 lbs, and the winner will probably get the next title shot.

Thursday night's card features Rose Namajunas (3-2; #7) vs Paige Van Zant (6-1; #21) at 115 lbs. The winner of this fight will probably take a big step towards a title shot. At 23 and 21 years old, respectively, they're both considered top prospects to become stars of the sport, regardless of the outcome this week.
 
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