I like UFC I was a much bigger fan a few years ago 2 questions 1- Do you enjoy the sport as much as when guys like Liddel and Coutore were champ this is an entertainment value question 2-Who would win, the legends or the current guys, how much do you think the sport has evolved, do you think these greats of before would beat the greats of now
1) More than ever 2) The current fighters who will be UFC hall of hamers will be Jose Aldo, Anderson Silva, and JJ. Penn v Aldo? JJ v Couture? Anderson Silva v Gracie, Liddell, Ortiz? I'm gonna have to say anyone's fight.
Question 1 - In short NO (in terms of pure entertainment) but ............... things to consider , back then the UFC was still relatively new , MMA was not but the UFC's format was , and what i mean here is that around that time it was clear that the fighters under this format were becoming world class , couple that with the UFC's cage and rules made it a very exciting time to be an MMA fan , providing ofcourse you were a fan of the UFC format and not the PRIDE format / culture All of the above in mind , what we have today is a working progress of the evolution of MMA , which in itself is very exciting , but i will say this , the pure excitement , on the edge of your seet thrilling entertainment is making way for a more technical strategic style of fight , and whether you can bring yourself to admit it , thats a little more boring , brilliant and fascinating , but a little boring Question 2 - New breed
1: Absolutely. Coming from a martial arts background and still doing it today, I can understand the techinques involved (albeit not all of them, I do not profess to be an expert in the extremely subtle nuances that only a handful of people in the world understand) and realize just how amazingly sophisticated the stuff they're doing is. It is, by far, the hardest thing to do in all of sports (boxing, amateur wrestling in the mix, too). I can't watch any other sports anymore, they're just so damn boring. 2: Yes, anyone can win, I suppose, but it's a completely new game and the fighters are far move evolved and nuanced in their understanding of the fight game. The new breed of fighters would have a significant edge. At least an 80% favorite over any of the old school fighters. At least. But it gets a little fuzzy when you include guys that have continued to evolve as the sport as progressed, that's different. ...****, that Belcher vs. Palhares fight was awesome!
i liked it back whwn u didnt have the same champ, titles were changing hands and it was exciting, u were alays guessing will keep he belt or not? now u can predict almost every fight invloving jones, jds, and anderson.,,its not as exciting. and id love to see a prime lidell take on anderson. or prime couture take on jds. but anything can happend..any given saturday
1 Yes 2 I like the older fighters but today's ufc fighter looks like they are more well rounded. Jon Jones vs a prime liddell-ortiz-couture etc--jones beat them all IMO JDS vs arlovski-Sylvia-barnett--I think JDS would beat them all, Arlosvki vs JDS would be a bad ass stand up war until someone gets KTFO Anderson vs Frank shamrock would be nice Penn vs Aldo should be nice
1) No 2) Personally i think there was far more depth with fighters in the early years than now. Difficult to pick winners as there was less rules back then. On toughness alone id go with fighters from the late 90's early 2000's every day of the week.
Yes. The sport is about being well rounded and now as guys are getting more and more well rounded it's less weird and more exciting. In the early UFCs it was explicitly "striker versus grappler" stuff and it still kinda was not that long ago with Liddell verus Ortiz was a big fight. I've always found that stuff boring because it was basically one guy who knew how to punch hitting a guy that was clueless or one guy that could grapple owning a guy who was clueless and whoever did it first (99% of the time it's the grappler) would win. Boring as hell. Now it's a lot less random feeling. I think in most cases the guys from today would win for the reasons I mentioned above. I have no doubt that GSP would own any version of Hughes and Prime Silva beats any 185er ever. I wonder about prime Couture against Jones; we'll have to see how long he can keep it up. But yeah, mostly I see the old school guys as one trick ponies who would be exposed as limited nowadays.
1. Yes. 2. The old fighters would lose, the sport has eveloved rapidly and a guy like Royce Gracie wouldn't be competitive now with just BJJ.
The way I see it, the old guys lose. They might have been high-level masters of one discipline and been utterly devastating when fighting another one-discipline guy in a favourable styles matchup. But a top-level modern guy has the option to adapt. For example, Jon Jones can stand prime Tito up, stuff all his takedowns and brutalize him in the standup. Or if he doesn't want to stand and trade with Liddell, he can take him down and wrestle****/GNP him. Same with a guy like GSP. Put him in with anyone from back in the day, and he'll just think "Okay, what is the worst style matchup for this one-dimensional guy? Let's fight that way." Whereas the old-timers didn't really have the option to do that, because the sport was different back in their day. :conf :hat
How is there less depth now when there are so many more guys into mma, and based on what are guys from 10+ years ago "tougher"?
When i say depth im referring to skills. Fighters in the past invariably came from professional backgrounds. That isn't the case any more. MMA has produced a new martial art. Whereby everyone is average at everything, and don't excel at one aspect whilst complementing their skills with other facets as fighters did in the past. And certainly i think fighters of the past were tougher. If you take PRIDE as an example you had a much harsher rule set. In deeper division(s). With the various GP's that didn't necessarily produce the best fighters every time but certainly produced the toughest. Whilst you can laugh and guffaw at the meat head mentality of fighters from the past these guys would literally fight at the drop of a hat and for prize money far more insignificant than these days. They also took far greater punishment on their bodys classic examples being Nog, Coleman Randleman Frye Wandy or Goodridge. Those guys would fight in a parking lot. Wandy and Frye certainly did. Matter of fact even Chuck did.
1-I was a big fan in the beginning.....then, after the end of PRIDE I lost a bit of the interest....but since 2010 I am a fan again...... 2-in the 90´s things were different.....today I think we have more fighters than ever......but I think this "evolve thing" is a bit exaggerate sometimes....