In MMA a Loss Doesn't Mean as Much as Boxing

Comment of the year

 

Everyone in the UFC is a bum. Welcome to boxing where having a record means something.

Riddle me this. If everyone in the UFC has a kazillion losses, how the **** do you know who's actually good? They don't. They just say that everyone is good and records don't matter. UFC is like those PC everyone gets a trophy type games liberals have been trying to push on us forever.

Wake up. We let good guys take losses all the time without writing them off. Pacquiao, Marquez, Klitschko, Martinez from the early 2000s. Nobody is writing Kovalev off now because he lost to Andre Ward and he proved himself with a series of title defenses first. But yeah, to get that kind of consideration, Kovalev put 31 fights together without a loss and that counts for something. Nobody in the UFC has ever done that. Ever. Ever. Ever.

The only guys who've competed in UFC who were world class elite athletes like we have at the top of our sport were Jon Jones, Georges St-Pierre, and Anderson Silva and those guys aren't win some lose some like everyone else in the UFC. They are the real deal and they put ten or twelve wins between their losses.

Other guys that never got written off for their losses: Canelo Alvarez, Tim Bradley, Erislandy Lara, Vasyl Lomachenko, Juan Francisco Estrada, Amir Khan, Daniel Jacobs, Chris Eubanks Jr., Tony Bellew, Nathan Cleverly, Donnie Nietes, James DeGale, Andy Lee, Denis Lebedev, etc. Of course, none of them put together the kind of horrific records you see in the UFC where guys have as many losses as victories.

 

Jon Jones has a top resume and is virtually undefeated.

 

Yep, just the UFC belt, the Bellator Belt, the World Series of Fighting Belt, the One Champion belt, the Deep belt, King of the Cage Belt, the Ultimate Challenge belt, the M-1 Global belt, the KSW belt, the Shooto belt, the Pancrase belt, etc. Good luck with that.

 

Luf, the point he's making about Jon Jones is that he's the real deal. Everyone else in the UFC is a bum but he managed to clean out his division going nearly undefeated. The only really talented fighters the UFC has ever had are Jon Jones, Georges St-Pierre, and Anderson Silva. Everyone else was just way below them in talent level, because most of their fighters are bum class, and there is a very shallow talent pool for that sport. We have tons of "competitive fights" at the club level too.

But we have real stars like Lomachenko, Gonzalez, Golovkin, Crawford, and Ward, and if we tried to give all the club fighters belts and build a franchise around a bunch of club fighters awkwardly clubbing each other, eventually one of our elites would get on the show and make their champs look foolish. They'd go undefeated for like 50 fights like Julio Cesar Chavez, Ray Robinson, or Jimmy Wilde.

 

Well, usually it's either the divisional number one or the lineal champ. That's pretty much always been the case.

 

How can the best fight the best in the UFC if some of the best never join the UFC? Indeed, it seems like there are many top fighters who fight for rival promotion companies from World Series of Fighting, to Bellator, to One Championship. Their promoters put them under exclusive contracts much like the split between HBO, Showtime, and PBC, which hinders major fights from getting made.

Ben Askren is with One Championship
Will Brooks is with Bellator
Patricio Freire is with Bellator
Cristiane Justino is with Invicta
Justin Gaethje is with World Series of Fighting
Phil Davis is with Bellator
Jake Shields is with World Series of Fighting
Michael Chandler is with Bellator
Marlon Moraes is with World Series of Fighting
Rousimar Palhares is with World Series of Fighting after being kicked out of UFC

This all suggests that the mma world is a lot less unified than we are lead to believe. It further proves that there is a lot more talent outside of the UFC, making it less likely that the best are always fighting the best there, instead of just the best available.

 

You know how when you go to wikipedia and it lists the champs at a weight for the WBC, WBA, WBO, and IBF? You go to wikipedia and it lists the belt holders for the UFC, Bellator, WSOF, and One Championship. For instance: at welterweight the UFC champ is Tyron Woodley, the Bellator champ is Douglas Lima, the WSOF champ is Jon Fitch, and the One Championship champ is Ben Askren. Not only does Ben Askren has the best record of the four, but he's also got the best reputation. So if Tyron Woodley 16-3 hasn't beaten Ben Askren 15-0, is he really the best welterweight in the world, and can he say that he's really fighting the best if he's not fighting Askren, Lima, and Fitch?

In fact, according to Wikipedia, Tyron Woodley lost to Jake Shields in 2013 who's fighting Jon Fitch for the WSOF title on the 31st.