The MMA Thread

Khabib + his team tonight/next week

how does merab end up on a co-main in a rushed fight after beating omalley?

does ufc just hate him or something?

Merab the 135 GOAT, unreal cardio

Merab has a chance to be the 135 GOAT. He says Aljo is the GOAT right now and that Aljo gets the best of him in practice. But right now he has cleared out most of his division, with the only possible upcoming contenders being guys he has already beaten (O'Malley and Yan). An outside contender is Song Yadong only because he is top 10 and hasn't lost to Merab yet.

Lower ranked contenders like Bautista and Jackson still have work to do and are likely not serious threats to Merab. I'm a big Merab fan and I think he has a chance to have a long reign and really establish his legacy.

More thoughts to share after tonight's event.

Loved seeing Jiri win. If Ankalaev wins in March, he is without question the #1 contender. He wants to fight Alex again for a third time. I'm not sure how likely that is, but a nice TKO over a top contender and former champion doesn't hurt.

Islam steam rolls to get the record number of lightweight defenses. He is likely the best 155'er of all time and better than Khabib. If he challenges for the welterweight title in the future, he'd be a serious threat for it and could have his name in P4P GOAT talks.

Merab's biggest threat to the title is likely Umar coming back in a rematch and fighting without a broken hand, but even still, making up that gap in cardio will be an issue. He trains with a tough team, so if he's not there now it's hard to see him gaining that ground.

I'm not excited about the UFC 312 lineup. DDP vs Strickland seems like a matchup that DDP takes. Then the co-headliner is Weili vs Suarez, which is an interesting enough match, but not interesting enough to be a co-headliner and carry a fairly weak card. That card in February is a bit of a letdown from this one tonight.

Sydney card is looking horrendous. Justin Tafa as feature bout? lol

Early odds suggesting Ankalaev as favorite over Pereira, interesting....

Interested to see how this works out.

I'm looking at Alex's fights in the ufc and they are all strikers. He fought his recent fights against worse strikers who never attempted to take him down.

Now he's got a dude who will do nothing else but that. We know he's training ttd every day against top dudes, but practice and game time don't always correlate.

First takedown attempt gonna be super intriguing!

Will he though (Ankalaev) ?

I feel people are making him a big wrestler. All the fights i've seen of him he only uses stand-up. He has no submission wins

I think Ankalaev gets grouped in with the Dagestani wrestlers because of his look with the hair and beard, but he is more like an Umar or Shara where is prefers to strike

Yeah looks like I was wrong there and assumed what you said.

But that's dope! Another striker vs Alex will be a sick fight

Ankalaav opens -120

that is gonna be 1 fight where 90-95% of the action is on 1 guy

superstar vs guy no one knows who hasn't even been very impressive

time for Izzy to retire

Yea Izzy's washed.

Had a great run. 2nd 185 goat after Anderson.

The odds for DDP beating Strickland seem rather generous to me. I can't say that I see Strickland winning this one.

Yeah Strickland probably should join Izzy after this one.

I hope that POS human being Strickland gets pounded into oblivion tonight.

Remind me when the main event starts.

jake paul is right, mma just becoming bad kickboxing

Does Strickland know this is MMA?!? He literally stood bolt upright as if it was a boxing match with the occasional half-hearted kick. Maybe he should really pick a different sport.

DDP was breathing heavily through his mouth from beginning of Round 3 and looked pretty gassed out. It would have been nice to see him use takedowns more as he's not exactly the most polished striker.

No doubt, Strickland is a tough guy. But it was a comfortable win for DDP as I expected. Albeit not the most interesting of bouts.

Maybe Strickland looking to fight Jake Paul

There's zero reason to go for the takedown, which takes a lot of energy, if you're dominating on the feet against someone who has no knockout power.

Strickland does jab, jab, teep, nothing else. He has no path to winning unless he does that at a higher frequency than his opponent (see Costa, Paulo). DDP did 100% the right thing in waiting for Strickland to increase his output before switching anything up.

FWIW, DDP always looks like that. With the couple extra hours to rehydrate thanks to the early weight in he was probably >220lbs at 6'0.

Strickland had zero adjustments for the rematch. Only occasionally he would threaten with multi strike combos. I won tailing Ian Parker's bet of picking DDP and over 2.5 rounds.

I was fortunate to win by betting on Weili last night. All the picks I saw online were for Tatiana because of her wrestling and how Weili was taken down during her last fights. But I was still skeptical of Tatiana because of a 1.5 year layoff and that Weili has been an active and dominant champion with a well rounded skillset. She is not just exploitable in one area. And I remember she has been working with the Hickman brothers wrestling team for a long time now. Ofcourse, I only wish that I had bet more.

Which UFC fighters would be fun to watch in a fight like this?