Belt means nothing. Great fighters are never gonna get that belt when Anderson Silva holds it. Leben is as one dimensional as Wandy, prime for prime, who knows man. Everyone likes to say Wandy is relentless and a warrior but so is Leben, and you just don't go to ****ing war with him, and it's not like Wandy has the technical skill to pick him apart, he's a brutal mother****er. I don't think it's fair to say in his day he'd walk through Leben, I think Leben could turn out the lights, who knows? It's the same thing as Paul Daley, you don't trade with the guy. That's why I give Nick Diaz a ****load of credit, he actually did trade with him and came out the winner, but it's a good job he has a granite chin, or he'd have been plonkered in the first on two occasions. Technically speaking, there's a lot of guys superior to Wandy and Leben, but just all for all war? Who knows, it's the first guy to land. I don't see it as a situation where Wandy wins 10/10 times, I see it as a brutal fight where both men have great chins but the power to put eachother away in the first.
look, i like leben....but he runs into a great fighters, and losses....wandy had wars with some of the greats, and beat many of them....that is the difference
Holding the belt in the no.1 organization (at that time) for 5 years means nothing?, ok I'll stop reading there...
That isn't what I meant, man! What I mean is someone as a Middleweight not holding the belt in the UFC isn't a deal breaker. Anderson Silva is the champion, it's the same in the Welterweight division with GSP. There are great fighters in those divisions that will never taste championship gold because the guys reigning are so very elite it's highly improbable they'll hold it. Wanderlei came from a different time and I'm not discrediting his achievements whatsoever, what I'm saying is you can't be like "well Wanderlei was a champion and Leben wasn't", it's not like boxing. It's not like one guy was a world champion and the other was a eurobum, it's that it's a very hard division and he's fought AS once anyway and got diced. My point is just that Leben has lost against technical strikers and guys who ****ed him up using their brain. I'm talking about a guy going wading in and electing to throw bombs with him. Wanderlei would do that, and I'm not gonna bet the house on him knocking Leben out. Both of them have the tools, at whatever time in their career to knock eachother out. Of course it's possible Wanderlei blasts him in 20 seconds, but it's also possible Leben still does the same. Wanderlei wasn't untouchable even at his best, y'know. And if you decide to throw the gameplan out the window and throw down, someone's gonna get hurt.
so leben can hurt people is that your entire point? because i actually have no idea what you are going on about at this point in time
At this point Scurla's right, I should just drop it. Um, my point is just that if you've got two guys that throw down and have great chins and great power, from any time in their respective careers, you can't call it. There is no gameplan, it's just about who hits the canvas first. Who lands that bomb. Like Hardy vs. Condit (though I think Condit would always kick the **** out of Dan). I'm not saying Leben is better than Wandy or that he'd beat him prime for prime, just saying he's not a bum and he's just a flawed fighter. I think the whole nostalgia of pride and great fighters like Wanderlei and CroCop is diminishing the respect for some fighters of today.
yeah, i have always said leben is decent, never called him a bum....but wandy and cc were beter fighters than leben is today
I couldn't call Leben a bum. I would define a bum as a guy who lets you down, who makes excuses, who ****s up your promotion at the last minute, who acts like a prima donna, who throws fights, ****s up the team, fakes injuries, fouls and cheats.
I'm glad Machida turned it down. Dana White suffers from memory loss apparently. Other than Anderson Silva's last fight, Dana has been absolutely pissed with his boring performances in his last few fights. Also, Machida has knocked out Evans in brutal, exciting fashion, and taking this on such short notice. That means the fight could be stopped again, and people love that. I don't see why he isn't worth Anderson Silva $, at least to Dana White.
White's praised three out of Silva's last four performances (Belfort, Sonnen and Griffin with Maia being the exception) and even when he was getting pissed with his performances he's called him the Pound for Pound best in the world. Indeed for awhile he was pretty much the only guy who still had Silva ahead of Georges.