I suggest taking a further look at his resume... Even Yahya is a solid scalp. Yahya was just coming off a title shot against Beebe - where he lasted the distance. Yamamoto beat the hell out of him and secured the stoppage. So there's a real good case for him being the best at 135 even in 2007, it wasn't until Cruz came a long that Yamamoto's greatness at the weight really became challenged.
Yamamoto was a great fighter for a few years, incredible natural athlete. It must be remembered that he came into the sport as a pure wrestler and picked up the striking game very quickly. He even gave a kickboxing legend like Masato a tough fight in K1. His biggest mistake was trying to be a 3 sport athlete and make the Japanese Olympics freestyle wrestling team. He badly broke his arm in qualifiers and was never the same again.
He definitely has a very solid resume and some underrated wins. The Mongolian guy, forget his name, that he KO'd was pretty good, I remember him beating the hell out of Gono.
That "Mongolian guy" funnily enough was scheduled to fight on last weeks One FC, he's 41 but has still been able to hang there(not the UFC but there's some solid operators) the fight was scrapped though.
Holm vs Correa or whatever her name is, the one who made fun of Rowdy Ronda rotten crotch and lost in like a minute. and it was boring beyond belief. I guess she also talked crap to Holm and got another KO for her trouble. God damn; I am talking about and watching WMMA LOOL What's wrong with me? The only ones I like are Cyborg and that actual female who is fighting Nunes this weekend.
1) Kid would kill Torres. Literally. 2) There was talk of him fighting Gomi back then. That's how special Kid was. Kid vs Frankie Edgar? Oh gosh, that'd have been some fight!
I've been looking into him more. He completely slipped my radar. Guess that's partly because his division didn't exist whilst he was fighting and I don't always rate heroes that highly. Alexandre Nog slipped my radar at first as well tell I saw his name pop up a few times as well. Not fully rated Yamamoto yet but when I've watched everything I can pre 2010 I'll probably be inserting him into my ATG rankings.
Kid Yamamoto. Watched a bit of him now, as much as I can find anyways. He seems like a complete nob with all the show boating and that post stoppage g&p but talent wise he looks a beast and I see why he's highly rated. His wrestling is obviously world class great takedowns and great positional grappling on the map, but his speed and aggressive striking is very impressive as well. I would favour him over the likes of Beebe, Wineland and Torres. Not sure if he'd be able to grind down Cruz and Garbrandt though with their outside game.
Rampage Vs Evans. Sugar Rashad picks up a very big victory here over heated rival Jackson. Rashad lands a huge punch in the opening exchanges that hurts Rampage badly. He controls round 2. Round 3 was going the same way but then Rampage lands a huge shot of his own and comes within a whisker if finishing the the fight before Evans recovered well and sees the fight out. Over 5 rounds this would have been interesting.
Almost a month since my last update. Watching Leben vs Akiyama. What a war. It's a shame Leben ran into Silva when he was basically unbeatable, he'd have been in a great match up with Franklin.
My spreadsheet corrupted So this is just incase it happens again, my rankings as of year end 2010 1 Anderson Silva 2 Georges St Pierre 3 Fedor Emilinanenko 4 BJ Penn 5 Matt Hughes 6 Jose Aldo 7 Kazushi Sakuraba 8 Mauricio Rua 9 Wanderlei Silva 10 Rodrigo Nogueira 11 Frankie Edgar 12 Lyoto Machida 13 Dominic Cruz 14 Jake Shields 15 Dan Henderson 16 Rampage Jackson 17 Rich Franklin 18 Mirko Filpovich 19 Chuck Liddell 20 Randy Couture 21 Royce Gracie 22 Frank Shamrock 23 Urijah Faber 24 Gilbert Melendez 25 Kid Yamamoto 26 Shinya Aoki 27 Rashad Evans 28 Takanori Gomi 29 Miguel Torres 30 Alexandre Nogueira 31 Cain Velasquez 32 Sean Sherk 33 Fabricio Werdum 34 Tito Ortiz 35 Josh Barnett 36 Paulo Filho 37 Junior Dos Santos 38 Ken Shamrock 39 Alistair Overeem 40 Ricardo Arona 41 Evan Tanner 42 Mark Coleman 43 Carlos Condit 44 Forrest Griffin 45 Nick Diaz 46 Anthony Pettis 47 Renzo Gracie 48 Benson Henderson 49 Hayato Sakurai 50 Mike Brown 51 Carlos Newton