A lot of people are pickng Weidman

Did you miss the Mia fight?

 

Weidman is a good, well rounded fighter who has whipped everyone he's fought. He's beaten good grapplers like Munoz and Mia and is a really good athlete. The best strikers he's beaten as far as I can tell are Uriah Hall and Sakara, and that's not enough to make me think he can hang with Silva. If Weidman gets him down or can get in against the cage, maybe he can catch Silva. Probably not though. Silva is probably going to knock him out, as usual.

 

The hook on both guys is their sub skills, except that Mia has beaten better guys. Being "pure athlete" has helped him to exactly 1 ko win, so you may want to scale back how much importance you put on that.

 

Assuming you're white, when you watch a fight and you're not familiar with either participant, do you immediately think "Guess I'd better cheer for the white guy because he's white like I am"? Or do you watch for a moment and then choose who to support based on style?

And how many white dudes support Anderson over Weidman? Plenty, myself included. Most, even.

You may instinctively cheer for someone who looks like you and who you perceive as being more identifiable, sure. But the way Koa tells it, it's like he really honestly thinks that every white guy watching MMA uses it as some sort of racial propaganda tool. Whereas in reality, Chael is the most despised fighter on this board and two of the most universally-popular heavyweights are Cigano and Mirku Huntuu. How many Brazilians and Samoans we got here? :conf

He is Cuban but he clearly has a genuine love and appreciation for Australia, and wants to represent it and make a life for himself there. That's good enough for me. He considers himself a new Australian, that's exactly the attitude Australia is supposed to be all about. :good

:hat

 

:hat

 

Stoo, when I showed up today it took you a full six minutes to respond to a post of mine that was in no way directed towards you. Yesterday it only took four minutes. You are slipping. :nono

:hat

 

i got to take issue with that Haggis. Chael's among my favourite fighters, so he has at least one ardent fan

not sure if the same can be said for guys like Kongo or Bisping

 

Chael's one of my favourites too, but it's tough to say that any fighter gets more hate on this board than he does. :good

Personally I don't mind Kongo and I am a fan of Bisping, despite having a general bias against English teams/athletes/entertainers/people. :yep

:hat

 

very true mate. he's a bit like the Joe Calzaghe of the mma forum then - you either love him or you hate him :good

 

If he's like Calzaghe he should be more like GSP, he wins.

Sonnen to me represents a WWE aspect to MMA in terms of his entertainment and hype. To me, it's unprofessional and not something that belongs in professional fighting when a guy who can't win gets consecutive title shots, and big name fights off the **** content of his mouth, rather than the merit of his fighting abilities.

It's like people forget he has a poor record as soon as he opens his mouth and makes promises to do this and that. In real life when people get called on their **** and get their asses kicked, they disappear, or stfu for a while.

But people keep buying into his bull**** that they actually believed he had a shot vs. Jones. :tired

Calzaghe, as much as I don't like his boxing style was an excellent boxer. He talked some trash and has some wins over guys that were really over their primes that he seemed to take a little too much pleasure in, but he still was a winner.

People that don't like Chael for far more reasons than they didn't like Calzaghe. Sure, he likes his cocaine, but I think he had a whole lot more integrity to boxing than Chael has ever had in his life about anything. Dude has been a cheat and a liar about damn near everything he does, or I have ever heard about. That **** about Lance Armstrong, and then his trt numbers should have gotten him banned from the sport.

 

you're missing the analogy mate. nothing to do with their skills or records, simply the way they are viewed and treated here by the posters on Eastside

 

But people are viewed and treated based on what they do. The reason I hate Chael is because he's willing to trash people's reputations and names while never being accountable for himself. The dude is spineless, and the sort of people he attracts are, "morans" or, "just bleed" meat head bro's, or redneck trucker hat douchebag sorts that don't know **** about the sport.

Maybe I'm over-stereotyping, but that's what I see.