Silva vs. Diaz

Thrilling stuff halfway into the 1st. Get ready for 22 minutes of light kicks on the knee. :klitfanb:

The co-main event on Solo Boxeo is taking priority for me. I'll keep the corner of an eye on a lousy stream of this joke, though, in case either of these guys is hilariously KTFO.

 

:dead

 

I only glanced at like a minute of each round (the duration of stool breaks/commercials in Herrera vs. Buelvas on Solo Boxeo) and man was it awful.

Silva and Diaz are supposed to possess some of the best striking in MMA, or at least they were back when I still followed the sport (along with guys like Noons, etc) and the stuff is just an utter mess. Granted, both are past their prime, I realize that - but I'd give the boxing shown by either a D+ (although it was probably straight-A by MMA standards). Lazy ineffective jabs, wide lead haymakers, chins sticking out, circling into shots and then pulling back in straight lines with poor balance. Ugh.

...and since I only ever tolerated MMA for the striking game (I can't stand ground work or grappling in general) it reminded me quickly why I stopped watching it. These guys were - maybe not anymore, but in the recent past - among the best p4p in the sport and this is the level of quality of striking a meeting between them produces? :-(

Give me kickboxing over MMA any day of the week, for an in-a-pinch boxing substitute. Much cleaner and crisper stand-up and without all the ground sh|t. :good



I'll say this - back when I did follow it, Silva's reputation as boring always struck me as unfair, relative to his peers. Watching him actually box his opponents (whose boxing was usually flunk-out material and made his look A+ in comparison) circling away, throwing fairly accurate southpaw pot shot counters and stuffing most of their shoots made for anticlimactic MMA but was eminently more watchable to me than most other championship matches that devolve into ground-and-pound barf) or jockeying for positional control with a genuine submission attempt maybe once every minute or so, if you're lucky.

 

Yeah, Rush was definitely the p4p #1 IMO back when I watched and had been for some years.

Yeah. I mean Diaz is more of a career welterweight (only dropping to lightweight midway into his career) but Silva, it has long been argued, is basically a natural light heavy that boiled down through most of his career, including the bulk of his prime and dominant championship run.

There is definitely a size disparity and Diaz, while tough and (whether you like him or not) talented, was never esteemed to be in Silva's class even in pound for pound terms, let alone pitted head to head with a man essentially two weight divisions bigger.

Silva ought to have, if not stopped him, been far more dominant. His performance was nothing to lay down crying in joy about, like he did. You'd think he just regained his title at 39 or something.

 

:nod

Not to mention pretty much every heavyweight in recent memory.

Overeem for sure. Lesnar almost undoubtedly. Probably the rest.

 

Hmm?