...Anderson Silva, Lyoto Machida, Georges St. Pierre, Chuck Liddell, B.J. Penn, Fedor Emelianenko, Dan Henderson, Randy Couture, Matt Hughes, Antonio Nogueira, Rampage Jackson, etc., etc.. We are in the middle of what will be the Golden Age of MMA. Twenty years from now, this'll be for MMA fans what the 70's are for heavyweight boxing fans.
Golden age of MMa may have passed its peak with the Randy/Chuck battles as far as popularity. MAybe Brock can prolong it. Silva and Machida certainly has evolved it
this is just the start of a new sport. these guys will pale in comparison to future generation fighters.
:deal GSP/Fedor is the future of the sport. We will see more of them and much more refined version of them. I dunno about HWs though because that has always been a less skill weightclass that relies on power a lot more so than other weight classes. But welterweights and middleweights will boom in next several years.
I see what you are saying. We just have to see where mma goes from here to be sure. I think we're close to being on the verge of having the era of hodgepodge styles. Where we get an era of nonspecialist showing us what they blend best. I do not claim to know which gives us our best road for advancement. I'm just glad to know I'm here for the ride.
The best road for advancement is when the ground game becomes a prevent facet of the game. With a few exception like the Diaz/Sanchez fight where it was an active, fluid continuous action on the ground most fights that ends up on the ground is either a humping session or a gross mismatch. This thought came to me in the Barnett/Yvel match..It was exciting when it was stood up because Barnett could bang as well but when Josh was on mount, I dont knwo about you but most unbiased fans were probably wishing it gets stood up to give Yvel a chance. Not making excuses for Yvel he needed to get better on preventing the takedown. Same with the GSP/Alves fight, it had moments of excitement when it was stood up and alves managed to get back up, otherwise it just wasnt exciting unless you are biased towards GSP. For a neutral fan it wasnt. When we have unbelievable technical strikers who can stand the fight up only then that this sport will surpass even the most spectacular Boxing display. Only this will make this a supersport, 5 minutes of ground game no matter how sophisticated and skilled will not elevate this game to what its potential is.
I don't know how much more refined you can get than GSP and Fedor through mixing arts, but I agree on principle.
Fedor is very instinctual while GSP is very technical. Combine the two and you have the refined version . Very technical guy who finishes fights because he sees weaknesses as soon as they are available.
in 20 years the fighters will be better than they are now. At the dawn of MMA fighters only knew wrestling, then some fighters started to do BJJ and add more skills to their game, then added some Muay Thai, now you are getting some good Sambo and Karate fighters with skills in all styles. in the next 20 years there will be a a more advanced style of fighting i still think Judo is massively underrated and once a fighter can basically throw and trip from the clinch he will really hurt other fighters..
