" those were about as big a gimmie fight as you could give either guy"
When you call a fight a gimme fight, you do that before the fight, not after the fight lol. Then you can say that Stipe was a gimme fight for Ngannou, seeing how dominant Ngannou was, when we both know that Stipe was a tough opponent on paper.
Rashad and Jones were just that good, that's why they beat Sonnen the way they did.
Also, the Rashad fight did seem a little weird, how easily Rashad took Chael down and held him there.
See here:
"Now, the
TSN reports that in a new interview with Sonnen, Landsberg revealed that a source told him that the fighter had undergone colon surgery before
fighting Rashad Evans at UFC 167 last month. Sonnen would not explicitly confirm that he did indeed have surgery but did say that "It's a little bit of a surprise that you had that information.""
Shogun was still good enough to be a top ten opponent when chael fought him. And shogun gave Gus a very tough fight beforehand, the same Gus that went on to give Jones the toughest fight of his career at the point, in his next fight