I personally thought that Barnett had the best chance. He is big, strong, can hang about standing, and is good enough on the ground I felt to give Fedor a challenge with his submission wrestling.
Lesnar only got subbed a few fights ago. Sure he has improved loads but avoiding a Mir sub and a Fedor sub are different things. Fedor will make a sub happen in quite complicated situations. Fedor is always one move away from finding the answer to ending a fight. Machida and Silva would be great if they can handle the weight. These guys have skills. I don't think Fedor has fought very skilled fighters. Guys like Cro and Sylvia are considered good in heavyweight terms but P4P they don't impress me so much.
This content is protected Don't confuse what you see today with what was true a couple of years ago. Prime Crocop was one of the most ferocious MMA fighters ever. To say anything else is just plain ignorant. He was the best striker there ever was in all of MMA, and that's non-debatable. It is equally non-debatable that he had one of the greatest takedown-defenses ever as well. Crocop was basically a pure striker, but he still managed to beat accomplished wrestlers such as Josh Barnett (x3), Mark Coleman and Kevin Randleman. I'd rank a prime Crocop over both Machida and Silva p4p. As good as Machida is, he has done nothing to deserve being compared to a top 3 ATG heavyweight such as Crocop. As for Anderson Silva, I guess you could make a case for Anderson being the better fighter if you really wanted to, but even if they were the same size, Crocop would easily outstrike him and would stand a pretty good chance of being able to stay on his on his feet. Fedor couldn't even submit him for christ's sake atsch. Fact is, Crocop had one fluke loss in his prime against Kevin Randleman, but he later avenged it, and one loss against Fedor and Nog each, but then there's no shame in coming up short when you are facing the two best heavyweights of all time. And then he has a loss against Mark Hunt, who is basically the David Tua of MMA. Silva has had 4 losses against relatively unknown fighters :!:.
MARVELOUS!!! :amen Not only could Fedor not submit him he spent a fair portion of the fight on his feet and found it very hard to get CC to the mat. Memories of fans are far to short in this sport.
blagoi ivanov has already defeated fedor in combat sambo and is now joining the ranks of paid professional mma and has already stated that he would like to be the one to defeat fedorin the professional ranks he has already signed to face fujita in the beginning of august and has signed to face fedors little bro aleksander in late september
Ivanov has another thing coming. This is comparing amateur boxing sparring to WBC title fight. I think he's good but he's green. If he gets past Fujita I'll be actually glad, if he beats Alexander I'll be shocked but grateful to see another great HW emerging. I think Fedor's greatest strength is his speed over others. Whenever he's faced a fast opponent he had trouble. So a guy like Anderson Silva is the perfect guy to beat Fedor. EVERY time he's faced a slow opponent the fight didn't last long. Fedor destroyes Brock within 2 minutes(I'll be shocked if he lasts longer than 1 tbh).
