Your Most Unpopular MMA Opinion?

Welcome to our Community
Wanting to join the rest of our members? Feel free to Sign Up today.
Sign up

Sheepdog

Protecting America from excessive stool loitering
Dec 1, 2015
8,912
14,237
Pride era Fedor was mostly a pretty boring fighter to watch.

Sakuraba was carefully protected and managed and had all kinds of shadiness in his career until his bosses moved on in the wake of him getting Wanderlized.

Ken Shamrock never won a legitimate fight against anyone with even an inkling of what they were doing.

John Danaher runs Renzo's like a cult leader and isn't really that bright, but hides behind being a Philosophy school dropout and a Kiwi accent to convince people otherwise.

BJ should've lost his fight with Serra.

Jackson and Wink are mostly to blame for Jon Jones behavior from the moment they played Rashad.

Joe Rogan's whole podcast career is due to forum members ceaselessly promoting it for him and giving him feedback in the early days.

Wanderlei never would've had a career if he hadn't illegally head-butted Guy Mezger.

Khabib is an awful human being and looks like a better fighter than he actually is because his opponents have been either undersized or terrible wrestlers.

Henry Cejudo isn't a real champ because he didn't even beat DJ.

DC could fight Jon Jones 100 times and he would lose every time.

The fans are the main reason fighters get exploited.

Scott Coker is no better than Dana White besides being friendlier.

The Culinary union was right.
I agree with some of these while being triggered by others, which a sign of a good post in this thread. I'm bored enough to go through them.

1. Disagree. Not an outrageous call, but his fights were generally pretty decent. Either crushing cans or having ok fights. Only a couple of truly boring ones.

2. Complicated. Obviously an awful lot of shadiness in Pride. He fought Vitor (who just KOd Vanderlei) and Igor before he fought Vanderlei, so I disagree with your attempt to fit the way they managed him into a neat timeline. They fed him cans one minute and threw him to the wolves the next, so the whole thing was always schizophrenic.

3. Seems to be based on circular reasoning. Not sure why you'd single out Shamrock when you seem to be arguing that nobody knew what they were doing at the time - which has some merit, but is independent of Shamrock. Wins over Severn, Funaki and Bas were as legit as you could get at the time (people say Bas had no ground game, but he had 3 sub wins prior to the 2nd Shamrock loss and then never lost again).

4. Spot on. The guy would be running Heaven's Gate 2.0 if he didn't realize that pajama fighting was even more fertile ground for cults than religion.

5. Yep

6. Don't care enough to have an opinion

7. Don't care

8. Weird opinion. Whether he eventually lost or got DQed, there's no reason to think it would have derailed his entire career.

9. A bit exaggerated. Comes from a backwards region and culture which people used to indict the individual but that's too simplistic. The mocking of the homeless guy was terrible, but that's the only really bad thing I've seem him do. Fighting other professional fighters in street fights is hardly the end of the world. Seems to have other redeeming personal qualities.

10. You mean only at 125, right? Because KOing the suspended champ and then the undisputed number 1 contender means he is undoubtedly the rightful 135 champ.

11. Nah, Jones is clearly the better fighter but both fights were competitive. Cormier would eventually win one if you kept running them back.

12. The fighters themselves and structural issues in the law and wider society are bigger problems than the consumer.

13. Yes and no. Equally shady promoter, but I haven't seen Coker's own mother write a book about how much of a piece of shit he is. Dana is a special kind of cunt.

14. Yes.
 

kneeblock

Drapetomaniac
Apr 18, 2015
12,435
23,026
I agree with some of these while being triggered by others, which a sign of a good post in this thread. I'm bored enough to go through them.

1. Disagree. Not an outrageous call, but his fights were generally pretty decent. Either crushing cans or having ok fights. Only a couple of truly boring ones.

2. Complicated. Obviously an awful lot of shadiness in Pride. He fought Vitor (who just KOd Vanderlei) and Igor before he fought Vanderlei, so I disagree with your attempt to fit the way they managed him into a neat timeline. They fed him cans one minute and threw him to the wolves the next, so the whole thing was always schizophrenic.

3. Seems to be based on circular reasoning. Not sure why you'd single out Shamrock when you seem to be arguing that nobody knew what they were doing at the time - which has some merit, but is independent of Shamrock. Wins over Severn, Funaki and Bas were as legit as you could get at the time (people say Bas had no ground game, but he had 3 sub wins prior to the 2nd Shamrock loss and then never lost again).

4. Spot on. The guy would be running Heaven's Gate 2.0 if he didn't realize that pajama fighting was even more fertile ground for cults than religion.

5. Yep

6. Don't care enough to have an opinion

7. Don't care

8. Weird opinion. Whether he eventually lost or got DQed, there's no reason to think it would have derailed his entire career.

9. A bit exaggerated. Comes from a backwards region and culture which people used to indict the individual but that's too simplistic. The mocking of the homeless guy was terrible, but that's the only really bad thing I've seem him do. Fighting other professional fighters in street fights is hardly the end of the world. Seems to have other redeeming personal qualities.

10. You mean only at 125, right? Because KOing the suspended champ and then the undisputed number 1 contender means he is undoubtedly the rightful 135 champ.

11. Nah, Jones is clearly the better fighter but both fights were competitive. Cormier would eventually win one if you kept running them back.

12. The fighters themselves and structural issues in the law and wider society are bigger problems than the consumer.

13. Yes and no. Equally shady promoter, but I haven't seen Coker's own mother write a book about how much of a piece of shit he is. Dana is a special kind of cunt.

14. Yes.
Good post.

Fair point about Ken in that no one knew what was up in the early days, but my only point is that he literally never won a fight against anyone who did. Bas was probably his best early win, but Bas' sub wins were questionable at best. I can't say he was in on it, but like most things in early Pancrase, it doesn't mean the fix wasn't in. He openly admits he knew pretty much nothing about grappling when he fought Ken. I addressed Ken's fight with Funaki above. I'll give you the Severn win because that was pretty impressive.

Re: Sak, I summed up my view of his career here: In a slow MMA week, all the usual sites have been looking back at this article on Saku - the best?

Regarding Khabib, it has more to do with his support of Kadyrov and connection to several shady figures in both Russian organized crime and the kleptocracy along with the homeless dude thing, and his ties to various other extremists and dictators. He also denigrated and disrespected Fedor, of all people and lost in the story of his conflict with McGregor due to Conor being a psychopath was the nature of his threat to Artem, which wasn't about fighting or tough guy stuff, but a threat to his life that Artem had no reason not to take very seriously considering Khabib's affiliations. Karim Zidan has written some truly excellent investigative journalism on Khabib that everyone should read. I'm sure he's friendly to his friends and he's certainly capable of random acts of kindness, but so was Jimmy Hoffa.

Only other thing I'll say is about DC/Jones. I believe if they fought a million times, DC would find a way to lose. In the first fight, his ridiculous chasing of a takedown for what can only be interpreted as pride took a close fight and put it right in Jones' hands. Similarly, his desire to prove he could take what Jones could dish out left him open to that high kick in the same way he left himself open to Stipe. He's a great fighter, but just has some mental holes that Jones seems custom made to exploit, PEDs or not.
 

Rambo John J

Eats things that would make a Billy Goat Puke
First 100
Jan 17, 2015
71,542
71,466
Chael is the worst mma personality hands down

well right there with Shaub
 
Last edited:

Sheepdog

Protecting America from excessive stool loitering
Dec 1, 2015
8,912
14,237
Good post.

Fair point about Ken in that no one knew what was up in the early days, but my only point is that he literally never won a fight against anyone who did. Bas was probably his best early win, but Bas' sub wins were questionable at best. I can't say he was in on it, but like most things in early Pancrase, it doesn't mean the fix wasn't in. He openly admits he knew pretty much nothing about grappling when he fought Ken. I addressed Ken's fight with Funaki above. I'll give you the Severn win because that was pretty impressive.

Re: Sak, I summed up my view of his career here: In a slow MMA week, all the usual sites have been looking back at this article on Saku - the best?

Regarding Khabib, it has more to do with his support of Kadyrov and connection to several shady figures in both Russian organized crime and the kleptocracy along with the homeless dude thing, and his ties to various other extremists and dictators. He also denigrated and disrespected Fedor, of all people and lost in the story of his conflict with McGregor due to Conor being a psychopath was the nature of his threat to Artem, which wasn't about fighting or tough guy stuff, but a threat to his life that Artem had no reason not to take very seriously considering Khabib's affiliations. Karim Zidan has written some truly excellent investigative journalism on Khabib that everyone should read. I'm sure he's friendly to his friends and he's certainly capable of random acts of kindness, but so was Jimmy Hoffa.

Only other thing I'll say is about DC/Jones. I believe if they fought a million times, DC would find a way to lose. In the first fight, his ridiculous chasing of a takedown for what can only be interpreted as pride took a close fight and put it right in Jones' hands. Similarly, his desire to prove he could take what Jones could dish out left him open to that high kick in the same way he left himself open to Stipe. He's a great fighter, but just has some mental holes that Jones seems custom made to exploit, PEDs or not.
Eh, I just think you're stretching it too far with Sak - nobody respectable looks back and says he was some unstoppable monster. But the fact is he has wins over 3 former UFC HW/Openweight champions (Royce, Ken, Randleman) and 2 future LHW champions (Vitor, Rampage). We can only speculate about fixed fights but we know even in his defeats he was often very competitive. When he beat Royce and then took it to Igor for 105 minutes in one night, he was inarguably the fledgling sport's P4P best for that brief time.

People tend to look back at his early legacy and realize he was at the top of the MMA mountain but only briefly, and that MMA evolved passed him. So they then switch to respecting him for his courage and fight anyone attitude. He basically has a legacy that is part Royce Gracie, part BJ Penn, part Cowboy Cerrone and even part Leonard Garcia - nobody thinks of him as Jon Jones or GSP.

The problem with critiquing Khabib is that we are talking about socio-cultural dynamics that neither you, I or even Karim Zidan (who has done great and courageous work) can really truly fathom. Is it really viable for him to make a stand against Kadyrov?

The intersection of unpleasant phenomena such as Islamic fundamentalism and even terrorism, organized crime and repressive government seem like another world to us, but they are a part of life in the complex societies in the Caucasus.

I mean Khabib's manager is shady as fuck, but he is a shady fuck that became a prominent MMA promoter in the US and has American fighters under his wing that have plenty of alternatives. I mean if I'm grading guys on getting involved with Ali, if a guy from Dagestan like Khabib gets an F, then a guy from New Jersey like Frankie Edgar gets expelled.

North American MMA and boxing have shady as fuck, organized crime history - the Fritatas are a historical organised crime family themselves. It's simply not a shock to me that anyone coming up in Dagestani-Chechen-Russian fight promotion world is surrounded by filth.
 

jimmy boogaloo

General Links/Your Account
Nov 15, 2017
4,127
4,265
hang on wait. anyone calling Sak a cunt can fuck right off. in the early days, it appeared that the Gracies were fucking invincible from what was available on vhs. suddenly my pal is talking about a guy called Sakurba who was chewing his way through the whole family, I was gobsmacked.

took a while to iron out the pronunciation of sak's name but we got there lol soon after he fought Igor fucking Vovchanchin after a 90-min match with Royce. ridiculous. the rest of his career was a showcase of his toughness through the lens of that glory blaze
 

aghof

an person
Apr 15, 2015
2,037
3,814
the much-played Shamrock flop vs. Franklin had nothing to do with Ken throwing the fight. As someone put it recently somewhere else, "Imma dive for the leg, shit, abort!, oh god, too late to abort!, going down!, did he just punch me? I got a leg!”"
 

kneeblock

Drapetomaniac
Apr 18, 2015
12,435
23,026
Eh, I just think you're stretching it too far with Sak - nobody respectable looks back and says he was some unstoppable monster. But the fact is he has wins over 3 former UFC HW/Openweight champions (Royce, Ken, Randleman) and 2 future LHW champions (Vitor, Rampage). We can only speculate about fixed fights but we know even in his defeats he was often very competitive. When he beat Royce and then took it to Igor for 105 minutes in one night, he was inarguably the fledgling sport's P4P best for that brief time.

People tend to look back at his early legacy and realize he was at the top of the MMA mountain but only briefly, and that MMA evolved passed him. So they then switch to respecting him for his courage and fight anyone attitude. He basically has a legacy that is part Royce Gracie, part BJ Penn, part Cowboy Cerrone and even part Leonard Garcia - nobody thinks of him as Jon Jones or GSP.

The problem with critiquing Khabib is that we are talking about socio-cultural dynamics that neither you, I or even Karim Zidan (who has done great and courageous work) can really truly fathom. Is it really viable for him to make a stand against Kadyrov?

The intersection of unpleasant phenomena such as Islamic fundamentalism and even terrorism, organized crime and repressive government seem like another world to us, but they are a part of life in the complex societies in the Caucasus.

I mean Khabib's manager is shady as fuck, but he is a shady fuck that became a prominent MMA promoter in the US and has American fighters under his wing that have plenty of alternatives. I mean if I'm grading guys on getting involved with Ali, if a guy from Dagestan like Khabib gets an F, then a guy from New Jersey like Frankie Edgar gets expelled.

North American MMA and boxing have shady as fuck, organized crime history - the Fritatas are a historical organised crime family themselves. It's simply not a shock to me that anyone coming up in Dagestani-Chechen-Russian fight promotion world is surrounded by filth.
Fair points about Sak. My main contention is just that he had a lot of help along the way and I reposted that prior post to go through some of the documentation of it. It's not worth relitigating who was best really, but it is worth pointing out the unsavoriness of the way the business was conducted and how it benefited Sak. As you point out, combat sports have always had theses shady people at both the center and periphery.

Regarding Khabib, I think that kind of reasoning is a little paternalistic and almost essentializing. The idea that culture works as a force that renders people completely illegible or beyond reproach isn't really attuned to the realities of people's social and political lives on the ground. It's the logic of Orientalism, by which I mean the East is located as site of mystery, moral relativity, and fundamental incommensurability. Khabib's allegiances and motivations aren't beyond the scope of our comprehension and I don't think you're actually suggesting that they are. It sounds like you're saying his ability to be successful is tied up in his accession to political and economic realities as a prominent athlete in the region he's from. As you correctly state, there are intersections of crime, radicalism, repressive regimes, and everyday life in Khabib's Dagestan. That's fairly straightforward. However, in our personal determinations of people's character, we can't help but judge them by some of the company they keep. We also have to take into account how much they amplify the messages of that company. In Khabib's case, he's shown ample willingness to aggressively promote and amplify the message of murdererous butchers like Kadyrov, loudly supported his militant state persecution of LGBTQ people, and even acted as his spokesperson when joining the chorus of people threatening and harassing Fedor for taking a stand against child MMA fights. I understand Khabib's dealing with his own situation and he's free to navigate it, but to me, we're also free to find it reprehensible, regardless of his donations to charity or shaking a person's hand after a fight. It hurts me because I so want to be able to celebrate the guys who have given McGregor his comeuppance, but both Floyd and Khabib are impossible to root for.

I appreciate your bringing Frankie Edgar into the conversation, though not only for his connections to Abdelaziz. From people I've known who know Ali, he seems to be mostly a big talker, a useful idiot, and a guy who bungled into his success due to his connections to people with a lot of money at a time when prominent people in the sport have desperately needed it. Edgar's team, however, is co-sponsored by the Kingdom of Bahrain which has a fairly decorated history of human rights abuses and brutal crackdowns on dissidents. Edgar's had nothing to say on the matter, nor do I expect him to. Almost twenty years ago (FML), I wrote about my concerns over the close affiliation between many in the sport and state representatives of the United Arab Emirates, which has its own checkered human rights history and practices of extreme elements of sharia law. At the time, most people were too grateful for the money to care. Also, MMA fighters seem to sometimes have ambivalence if not outright enthusiasm for authoritarianism, as evinced by the flocking of several Brazilian fighters into publicly endorsing Bolsonaro, though I do appreciate the level of dissatisfaction with some of the corruption of the prior regimes that also animates some of this enthusiasm.

It's probably not reasonable to expect fighters to vet every dollar flowing their way, but it is reasonable to withhold our support unless and until they do, for as little as that means. More valuable I think is using cases like these to force ourselves to take a harder look at how influential a force MMA has become on the global stage and how it intersects with its own particular characters and interest groups who use it and are used by it. Some journalists and bloggers are doing work on it today, but generally speaking not enough. Most point to any form of financial investment as a sign of the sport making the big time, regardless of the source. To me, Khabib, like Sakuraba before him, has chosen to be entangled in certain political economic realities of practicing his chosen sport with particular benefactors from his particular region. I hope he won't be ground up and discarded like Sak was once his handlers either move on or fall from grace.
 
T

The Big Guy

Guest
I believe gsp is closet gay. Hes super clean and neat. Damn near 40. Not married.

Thats a gay man if i ever saw one. Probably a bottom too
 

Sheepdog

Protecting America from excessive stool loitering
Dec 1, 2015
8,912
14,237
Fair points about Sak. My main contention is just that he had a lot of help along the way and I reposted that prior post to go through some of the documentation of it. It's not worth relitigating who was best really, but it is worth pointing out the unsavoriness of the way the business was conducted and how it benefited Sak. As you point out, combat sports have always had theses shady people at both the center and periphery.

Regarding Khabib, I think that kind of reasoning is a little paternalistic and almost essentializing. The idea that culture works as a force that renders people completely illegible or beyond reproach isn't really attuned to the realities of people's social and political lives on the ground. It's the logic of Orientalism, by which I mean the East is located as site of mystery, moral relativity, and fundamental incommensurability. Khabib's allegiances and motivations aren't beyond the scope of our comprehension and I don't think you're actually suggesting that they are. It sounds like you're saying his ability to be successful is tied up in his accession to political and economic realities as a prominent athlete in the region he's from. As you correctly state, there are intersections of crime, radicalism, repressive regimes, and everyday life in Khabib's Dagestan. That's fairly straightforward. However, in our personal determinations of people's character, we can't help but judge them by some of the company they keep. We also have to take into account how much they amplify the messages of that company. In Khabib's case, he's shown ample willingness to aggressively promote and amplify the message of murdererous butchers like Kadyrov, loudly supported his militant state persecution of LGBTQ people, and even acted as his spokesperson when joining the chorus of people threatening and harassing Fedor for taking a stand against child MMA fights. I understand Khabib's dealing with his own situation and he's free to navigate it, but to me, we're also free to find it reprehensible, regardless of his donations to charity or shaking a person's hand after a fight. It hurts me because I so want to be able to celebrate the guys who have given McGregor his comeuppance, but both Floyd and Khabib are impossible to root for.

I appreciate your bringing Frankie Edgar into the conversation, though not only for his connections to Abdelaziz. From people I've known who know Ali, he seems to be mostly a big talker, a useful idiot, and a guy who bungled into his success due to his connections to people with a lot of money at a time when prominent people in the sport have desperately needed it. Edgar's team, however, is co-sponsored by the Kingdom of Bahrain which has a fairly decorated history of human rights abuses and brutal crackdowns on dissidents. Edgar's had nothing to say on the matter, nor do I expect him to. Almost twenty years ago (FML), I wrote about my concerns over the close affiliation between many in the sport and state representatives of the United Arab Emirates, which has its own checkered human rights history and practices of extreme elements of sharia law. At the time, most people were too grateful for the money to care. Also, MMA fighters seem to sometimes have ambivalence if not outright enthusiasm for authoritarianism, as evinced by the flocking of several Brazilian fighters into publicly endorsing Bolsonaro, though I do appreciate the level of dissatisfaction with some of the corruption of the prior regimes that also animates some of this enthusiasm.

It's probably not reasonable to expect fighters to vet every dollar flowing their way, but it is reasonable to withhold our support unless and until they do, for as little as that means. More valuable I think is using cases like these to force ourselves to take a harder look at how influential a force MMA has become on the global stage and how it intersects with its own particular characters and interest groups who use it and are used by it. Some journalists and bloggers are doing work on it today, but generally speaking not enough. Most point to any form of financial investment as a sign of the sport making the big time, regardless of the source. To me, Khabib, like Sakuraba before him, has chosen to be entangled in certain political economic realities of practicing his chosen sport with particular benefactors from his particular region. I hope he won't be ground up and discarded like Sak was once his handlers either move on or fall from grace.
All valid points, but I think what people sometimes see as paternalism or moral relativism is just an understanding that assessing someone's individual character is pretty complex when you are factoring in different cultural norms. I don't see a problem in distinguishing between a lone atheist nut who grew up in Montana who insists on his wife wearing a veil when she leaves the house because he's psychotically jealous of other men looking at her, and a Muslim man who expects his wife to the same because that is simply a cultural norm.

I'm not saying cultural norms absolve any personal responsibility or agency, but they do impact how you otherwise judge somebody individually. I'd imagine War Machine probably has cultural values more similar to mine than Khabib does, but that doesn't mean he isn't a bigger piece of shit.

And we all really do live in glass houses. Taking a picture with Kadyrov makes you a monster, while taking a picture with Barack Obama makes you cool. Never mind that the latter is directly responsible for the deaths of far more innocent people than the former. Our tax dollars (if you are from any 5 Eyes country, which I assume you are) have deliberately helped spread violent Islamic fundamentalism to places like Chechnya through our Saudi proxies, and we clutch our pearls as if this stuff has nothing to do with us.

But I actually don't why I'm defending Khabib anyway. The homeless guy thing fundamentally makes me think he is an asshole, as preying on the weak is a horrible trait that transcends any culture.
 

jimmy boogaloo

General Links/Your Account
Nov 15, 2017
4,127
4,265
jesus you two. that was quite a rewarding read. but don't you try intimidate me with your books and learnin'.
 

ender852

Posting Machine
Jan 31, 2015
4,769
4,840
I can't stand the Diaz bros, that whole caesar gracie crew 6 dudes jumping 1 guy was disgusting.

I can't stand trash talk, hate that we have to have it for every fight.

I like quiet humble martial artists who respect their opponents and let their fighting do the talking.