Having a think about fights that shouldn’t have been good, but turned out great, and fights that should have been great but turned out garbage. Comments please. This content is protected
Two fights come to mind for fights that on paper shouldn't have been good, but turned out great.. Frankie Edgar vs Gray Maynard 2. In their first fight, Gray Maynard had used superior size, strength and wrestling skill to take Frankie down repeatedly. Despite Frankie's improvements in his footwork and his all around mma game, I don't think most fans expected anything different in the second fight. Instead, we had a fight that resembled Pacquiao vs Marquez 1 in which one fighter was battered to the point where they were a hair's breadth from being stopped in the first round and was down a 10-8 or 10-7 round, having to fight and crawl their way back winning one round at a time just to end up earning a draw. Maybe the fight wasn't as great as their third one, but I don't think anybody expected an all-time great lightweight fight coming into it. Another that comes to mind is Jon Jones vs Alexander Gustafsson. Going into this fight, Gustafsson seemed like a good fighter but had nothing to challenge someone as great as Jones. He had been thoroughly out-grappled and submitted with an anaconda choke by Phil Davis, and his best wins were an shot Shogun Rua and a decent but always overrated Thiago Silva. Not exactly someone who seemed like a threat. I remember thinking that Jones was just going to take him down and land some damaging ground and pound for a clear second round stoppage. Instead, we got one of the greatest fights in UFC history. Gustafsson's footwork, boxing combinations and sprawl were on point and he was slowly busting up Jones' face. But Jones kept fighting back, landing high kicks (even though some were blocked the power still went through), spinning back kicks to the body, and short range elbows from the clinch. Beautiful technique as they fenced for range with their side kicks and oblique kicks, too. Most people thought Alexander was up at least 2-1 going into the fourth and he was really beginning to beat up Jones now. But Jones proved his toughness which people always questioned and pulled off a spinning elbow that probably saved his career and proceeded to just maul Alex against the fence. And the 5th round, Alex was just completely exhausted but Jones just proved he wanted it more and he finally got his takedowns to work and landed some damaging ground and pound to seal the round.
