Longing for the Good Ol' Days of MMA

I used to love mixed martial arts. I would watch all the fights. It didn’t matter if it was in America, Japan, Russia, or Poland, I could find interesting things on cards all around the world. And now, it seems as there are maybe two fights a month that I even bother watching. If anything, there should be more talent in the sport which would lead to a better product. So why am I not into it? Ultimately, I think the talent is the problem.

It seems the greater the talent, the less exciting the fights become, and you just can’t match the excitement of early UFC cards. I’m a bad fan in that I love the Royce Gracie era as much as anything that has happened in mixed martial arts. Those fights were memorable. I remember him taking on the one-gloved boxer, Art Jimmerson and Jimmerson tapping out even though Royce didn’t even do anything to him on the ground yet. I remember Ken Shamrock tapping out but then trying to continue the fight. And I remember Royce Gracie holding his choke just a little bit long on Gerard Gordeau because that dude was a nasty son of a bitch.

I think about the best fighters of today, and although they are head and shoulders above that original crew, how many have truly memorable fights? I loved GSP, but honestly, his two most memorable fights are his two losses where he got caught in an armbar by Matt Hughes and caught with every punch imaginable by Matt Serra.

Jon Jones is the greatest fighter in the world, but I don’t vividly remember any of his fights. I remember the elbows he dropped on Matt Hamill, the armbar he escaped from Vitor Belfort, and that nasty ass choke he put on Lyoto Machida, but are any of his fights actually memorable? I know the Gustaffson and second Cormier fights were close (until Cormier got caught), but it’s not like I remember much of the back and forth.

Heck, I’m not even sure if I can name all of the champions, without looking, I think it’s Cejudo, Cejudo, Volkanovski, Khabib, Usman, Adesanya, Jones, and Miocic. For women it’s Zhang, Schevenko, and Nunes. Now there are more champions these days, but I could have named them in UFC, Pride, and Strikeforce back in the day. I think Horiguchi and Bader are Bellator champs but have no clue of anyone else.

It’s just not as much fun anymore. When I think about all the fighters I would love to see on a dream card, none of them are active today. Let’s just put out ten guys that would be super fun: Cro Cop, Wanderlei, Royce, Pudzianowski, Sakuraba, Mark Kerr, Hong Man Choi, Minowaman, Lesnar, and Akebono. Now, I’m going to use a random number generator to make the fights:

Cro Cop vs. Royce Gracie
Hong Man Choi vs. Akebono
Sakuraba vs. Wanderlei Silva
Mark Kerr vs. Brock Lesnar
Pudzianowski vs. Minowaman

Good God, I would not only watch that card with everyone in their primes, I would watch that card today, and consider it the greatest gift of entertainment in this world. The one exception is Kerr/Lesnar which, in their primes, maybe the hypest I could be for any fight in MMA history, and if it were to happen now I would pay money to make sure that doesn’t happen. Also, sorry to not put a women’s match in there, but I did not need to see the man vs. woman dynamic, and the greatest women’s fight has already happened so there is no point to ever try topping it.


I know, it makes me a terrible person to yearn for the freakshow matches, but the heart wants what the heart wants. And it’s not like I could make a better UFC card with current champions facing top contenders in fresh matchups.

155 - Khabib vs. Gaethje
170 - Usman vs. Masvidal
185 - Adesanya vs. Romero
205 - Jones vs. Johnny Walker
HWT - Stipe vs. Curtis Blaydes

Okay, so Khabib/Gaethje would own, obviously, but it’s a significant dropoff from there. I even put in Johnny Walker just for funsies. Hell, I couldn’t do it with classic champions taking on current champions.

155 - BJ Penn vs. Khabib
170 - Matt Hughes vs. Usman
185 - Anderson Silva vs. Adesanya
205 - Chuck Liddell vs. Jones
HWT - Tim Sylvia vs. Miocic

That list of fights isn’t nearly as exciting, and that’s even with me putting in Tim Sylvia in the main event.

I don’t know. Clearly the skills are much better, and it’s not like there aren’t a ton of exciting finishes, but I feel like the UFC has made itself the star, and it’s really hard to care about personalities in today’s world of mixed martial arts. Even though guys got like 30 seconds to explain themselves at early UFC events, you actually saw a personality, and I guess it was wonderful to see how delusional they were to think people would believe that they were 400-0. Now I feel like every fighter is varying degrees of Cowboy Cerrone, kind of stupid, tougher than I could ever imagine to be, and thinking that they are the best in every area but taught well enough to give their opponents respect instead of speaking their truth. Why should I care?

But damn, thinking about that Kerr/Lesnar fight in their primes, now that is something that I would very much care about.

CM Punk's Next UFC Opponent

CM Punk got his ass kicked on Saturday night, and it's pretty clear that he is not a UFC-level fighter. Hey, the guy did become one of the best wrestlers in the world, and more importantly, he married AJ Lee, so I'm not going to be shedding a tear for him anytime soon. Still, I will defend the guy, as even though he shouldn't be fighting in the UFC, he's not the worst to fight in the UFC.

I mean, let's just look at the early UFCs. He could definitely take out some of those guys. I mean, Steve Jennum won UFC 3, and I would take CM Punk to win in a fight against him. You don't remember Jennum, the man to end Royce Gracie's reign of UFC titles by coming in as an alternate in the finals after both Gracie and Shamrock dropped out? Well, he did, and he's the UFC 3 Champion, so if CM Punk had a time machine and incredible luck, he also could have become a UFC Champion.

And that brings up a great point. Since CM Punk wants a second fight in the UFC, the question becomes who does he face next? Well, I just mentioned the perfect opponent. No, not Steve Jennum, but instead, another man who has dabbled in pro wrestling, the World's Most Dangerous Man, Ken Shamrock.

I mean, it's perfect. Everybody can't stop complaining about how awful CM Punk is, and everybody can't stop complaining about how badly Ken Shamrock looks the last 11 times he's fought (so yes, for more than a decade). Yes, Shamrock is a bit larger than Punk, but Shamrock was down to 201 for the Gracie fight, and I'm pretty sure he could cut at least five more pounds with his build. You could even make it a retirement match, which may mean that the loser is the real winner, but still. I guess the winner can fight UFC Flyweight Champion, Demetrious Johnson. Not for the belt, obviously, but if you're saying you wouldn't want to see Mighty Mouse fly around the cage picking apart a man with 50-75 pounds on him, then I don't know why you watch fighting at all.

If it's a draw? Well, that's the best result of all. Handicap match where Shamrock and Punk team up to take on Brock Lesnar with maximum steroids.

Basically, I miss Pride, and I want the freakshow matches to return.

Is There a Parallel for Ronda Rousey?

Ronda Rousey destroyed another opponent this weekend. She's gotten so good that she doesn't even have to use her world class Judo skills to beat her opponents. She is now the best boxer in the division as well. She's stupid good, and it's nearly impossible to come up with a relevant comparison for what she is doing right now. Here is my journey to attempt to find a parallel for what Ronda Rousey is currently doing.

First, it was pretty easy to eliminate any athlete involved in team sports. Even at Michael Jordan's level of dominance, a team sport just doesn't allow for a single person to so totally dominate all of their competition.

After that, I looked at the most dominant athlete of the last 20 years, Tiger Woods. As great as Tiger Woods was during his prime, he basically would have had to have his performance at the 2000 US Open in every major for three straight years to be as dominant as Ronda Rousey. Tiger Woods was amazing, and he's not even close to Rousey.

Then I took the logical step of looking at MMA. The most dominant recent champions have been Anderson Silva and Jon Jones. Both guys were dominant, but they had some struggles against opponents. Anderson Silva ripped off 16 straight wins in the UFC, but in there, even he had times of mortality against guys that could put him on his back like Travis Lutter, Dan Henderson, and Chael Sonnen. Jon Jones has never been beaten, but Alexander Gustafsson gave him a lot of trouble, and he usually wins by picking his opponents apart, where Ronda Rousey steamrolls them.

If you want to go old school, you can look at a guy like Royce Gracie who did completely dominate from UFC 1-UFC 4. Until Dan Severn lasted over 15 minutes, nobody made it to the six-minute mark against Royce. Still, Gracie won purely with technique, where Rousey wins with not only technique but by also just being more physical than her opponents.

If I was going for an MMA parallel, the answer would have to be Mark Kerr. Kerr was not only a world-class wrestler who became incredibly adept at submissions, but then he quickly learned how to light people up on the feet and had absolutely brutal ground and pound. He destroyed every one of his first 11 opponents, where only one man was able to last past 3:04. He was the guy picked to rule over Pride. Obviously, that didn't happen, but even if you only count those first 11 fights, the level of competition that Kerr faced was usually not the greatest, where Rousey has been taking out the best of the best since her third fight.

And that brings us up to the most common comparison, Mike Tyson. As weird as this sounds to say about Mike Tyson, he wasn't dominant enough to be compared to Ronda Rousey. Even before he won the title, he got taken to decisions by guys like James Tillis and Mitch Green, who were solid gatekeepers but guys on a level that Tyson should have steamrolled. I will give Tyson credit as he avoided his toughest possible opponent in his prime with Evander Holyfield and Ronda Rousey has avoided her toughest opponent in Cyborg. The nail in the coffin is Tyson's loss to Buster Douglas. Douglas is basically the equivalent to Bethe Correia, a beatable opponent that is meant to showcase the champion in a foreign land. Tyson got knocked out by Douglas, Rousey took less than a minute to annihilate Correia.

After going through all of these greats, it would seem like I have exhausted all of the possibilities. But then I realized the answer was standing in front of me the entire time. I don't know how I could see around his blobby existence, but I managed to do it until now.

Of course, I'm talking about Steven Seagal. He has fought the best in the world and has always come out on top. But that's the thing, he had contemporaries like Bruce Willis, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Jean-Claude Van Damme who had similar accomplishments, but nobody made it look easier than Seagal. He annihilated his opponents without breaking a sweat and hardly ever having a single mark on his face as a sign that he had been in a battle to the death.

Ronda Rousey is incredibly impressive, and in MMA, she has had to deal with a wide variety of opponents and situations, but it is nothing compared to what Seagal has shown in his fighting career. Just take a look at this highlight video that would even impress Miss Rousey.
Ronda Rousey is great. She is the female Steven Seagal, and there is no greater compliment than that.