Chris Weidman and the 205lb division

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Chris and the 205lb division

  • he will be champion

    Votes: 1 16.7%
  • I think gwill go very well

    Votes: 5 83.3%

  • Total voters
    6

homo fagit

Writer, and adventurer
Jul 17, 2018
1,095
1,371
At this point I don't see Chris being anything special. Maybe if he'd gone up in 2014
 

ejlarson

I like chicken
Jul 4, 2015
1,219
1,370
edit your own fucking posts

ok so he will fight Dominic Reyes for his first 205lb match, in October.

i'm concerned for him. if a fighter is struggling at 185, the answer isn't necessarily to eat well and fight someone much bigger. just ask Luke Rockhold.

plus he has eaten some hard damage in recent fights.
What kinda coors light drinking poll is this? Great or very well are your options? Wow. What an unbiased and accurate poll this is!
 

WoodenPupa

Member
Feb 14, 2015
2,920
3,565
Rockhold took his superhero soul and now Chris is still a damn good, but not champion-level, fighter. He's basically switched places with Anderson Silva, except he's going downhill at an earlier age. USADA tears are real.

The fact is, he's 1-4 in his last 5 and Gastelum came within a Jesus eyelash of murdering his brain into Bolivia. Chris is thousands of years old at this point and just hasn't kicked a door down in over 6, when he beat Silva the first time.

It's tempting to say Chris had a meteoric rise and fall. Even in his prime, he rarely dominated his opponents or even got clear wins without taking heavy damage. Ironically, his cleanest two victories were the Silva fights. He punished Silva for pretending to be Muhammad Ali in their first duel, and although the rematch ended prematurely via self-inflicted gumby-leg injury, it looked as though Chris had everything under control. But after that, there hasn't been too much ace performanceship.

Looking at his main weakness, when Chris beat Belfort he was able to do that convincingly because Belfort couldn't stop the TD. But when he can't land the TD, Chris tends to get into trouble. Chris performed very well against Machida, who was still Machida at that point. Chris could not take him down and he got pummeled in a pretty rough sequence in the 4th, getting clearly in trouble for a bit. That one went to a decision. More recently, he came very close to losing to Gastelum, a guy he physically dwarfs. Clearly, when Chris takes people down he dominates.

He's 2-4 in the last 5 years, and will be fighting much bigger people now at 205. At 185, Moose, Rockhold and Jacare are all around his size and all gave him tons of trouble en route to destroying him, whereas Gastelum, Belfort, Machida, and Munoz are all smaller and of that group he dominated only Belfort because Vitor couldn't stop the TD. Only Romero didn't fit this mold, as he is pretty short, but we know Yoel is the of freaks and on he can handle elite fighters with much larger frames, as he did Jacare and Rockhold. The point is, when Chris can't take people down, he gets into gun fights on the feet and invariably gets rocked.

I hate to put it this starkly but I think Chris is toast at 205. I think he'll beat Reyes because Dominick stands straight up too often and if he widens his stance to accommodate an insta-sprawl strategy, Weidman will score on the feet. It will be messy though, because that's what happens when Weidman fights people he can't take down. Reyes is going to rock him and Chris will have to mount yet another comeback victory, which will age him either more and make him a tasty treat for a youngblood like Johnny Walker early next year. No way in HELL is Chris beating Jon Jones, nor is he touching the top 5 in the 205 weight class. He should have stayed at 185.

On the plus side, from a fan-perspective, if he loses against Reyes, we might be able to see a Rockhold rematch. Chris can beat him because Rockhold's chin is broken into 5,000 pieces now and his will to strategize badly has never been stronger. So that kind of fight could be a high note for Weidman to go out on. Beat Rockhold and retire and start coaching. I'm sure he has other plans at the moment though, so we'll see how it goes.