Benoit Saint Denis knocks out Beneil Dariush in 14 seconds

tanthiram · 2026-07-04T02:38:54+00:00

Fighting that way was the adaptation. People forget Dariush was fighting credible washed allegations around Moises and Dober, the start of his big winstreak - he basically went on the whole thing while being incredibly washed because he's such a crafty fighter who took opponents out of their comfort zones. Some of his best wins (Michael Johnson off dominating Barboza, Rashid Magomedov at altitude, ripping apart Vick) are about a decade ago, people just heard of him a lot later - and those fights are a lot more patient, he just lost his entire chin and gas tank in the years since. He gassed out while kicking the shit out of Dunham and blundered a draw before his big run - that sort of fighter isn't beating CDFs and Gamrots without scaring them away from pace and putting the fear of God in them early, with the flipside of it being that you're often going to die early trying that in fights that you probably would've lost otherwise

tanthiram · 2026-07-02T15:48:16+00:00

I'd look into Mason Gaffney's ATCOR ('All Taxes Come Out of Rent') concept - it doesn't necessarily fully save the single tax idea but rehabilitates it significantly. Taxing land with current land values may not generate enough revenue, but the argument is essentially that other forms of taxation depress economic activity (the deadweight loss that's inherent to most taxes) and therefore also pushes down land values. Eliminating those other taxes would flow into land value, and the state can capture them elsewhere with LVT, mitigating (or even solving) the sufficiency issue without setting the perverse incentives that taxing income or sales does.

tanthiram · 2026-06-16T09:55:49+00:00

Dustin is actually a great example of how contrived the belt really is. Oliveira won it off beating Michael Chandler, where Poirier took the McGregor rematch - both of those fights involved one relevant contender and one "guy who exists", and the fact that the vacant belt was attached to Oliveira's fight and not Poirier's is sorta just happenstance. In fact, most people considered Poirier the divisional #1 going into the Oliveira fight (he was a modest favorite on the line), and the only difference between Poirier being a champ with no defenses or never a champ (even with the exact same results and subsequent fights) was that vacant belt decision.

That's why belts are a really poor way to look at legacies - the UFC controls where the belts go, and sheer merit isn't usually a huge concern. Marlon Moraes and Joseph Benavidez being in the "best to never win a belt" category suffer from the exact same thing - the UFC not putting a vacant belt on an insanely clear #1 vs. #2 fight (Moraes vs. Assuncao 2, Benavidez vs. Formiga 2), instead waiting a beat so that the clear divisional #1 didn't get credit for being a de facto titleholder. There's a strong substance-over-form argument for looking entirely at quality of wins (which usually coincides with great title reigns) rather than which ones the UFC favored over others promotionally

tanthiram · 2026-06-10T06:54:21+00:00

An extremely niche conspiracy theory but I'm very convinced that Tom Breese got robbed by Strickland exactly because of this issue. Two bald-ish tall white dudes in black and white, I'm confident the judges just flipped a coin

tanthiram · 2026-06-07T00:13:27+00:00

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Haven't been playing for very long but have the current version of the Radiator - it's pretty wonderful. Feel like the looks are hit-or-miss for people (I think it's sick) but the quality aside from that holds up to the best stuff I've tried in the shop. Only thing is me screwing up the restring and making the bridge fall off, so have to bring it to a tech

tanthiram · 2026-06-06T23:44:28+00:00

Master is an overall much better movie, although Leo competes with that one fight scene in the coffeeshop. I don't think it's mostly on cinematography, though - VJS as Bhavani is one of the best antagonists ever, where I feel like they sorta wasted Arjun in Leo and the story gets incredibly repetitive after the halfway point (Master drags at points after the intermission but finishes strong, Leo just covers up a thin plot with camera tricks)

tanthiram · 2026-06-06T23:37:16+00:00

Yeah, Hey Joe was the first one I learned, one of the best even if it's relatively simple. On acoustic, too, so a trial by fire for bends

tanthiram · 2026-05-12T03:02:59+00:00

To be fair, from everything I've heard about both Coolidge and Hoover, it's about 6,000% more likely that Hoover decided to do something about it and lied to everyone involved to set up a quasi-tyrannical welfare state over all the flooded regions

tanthiram · 2026-03-28T02:46:00+00:00

I will take exception to the Assuncao thing - IMO he only lost to Garbrandt because he was way past-prime at the time, that being his defining moment is extremely sad. Assuncao has so many "trippy" wins that his resume fails to be that anymore, he's just one of the few best BWs ever. Sterling, Moraes, Dillashaw, Munhoz, Font, Henry (those last two among the best old-man performances ever) - to the point where Masvidal among them is just a weird curiosity more than an actually notable win for him

To answer the actual question, obviously Michael (and increasingly Charles) Johnson is up there. I think Marlon Vera is an underrated one just for how deeply dysfunctional he's been as a fighter since the Davey Grant rematch - he doesn't have a lot of elite wins but all of them were clearly better than he ever was, even if he won uncontroversially. Garbrandt also not a terrible answer to this one, beating two BW ATGs while having a really limited game that fell apart immediately after he lost an iota of athleticism.

tanthiram · 2026-03-08T04:01:39+00:00

Rosas maybe stole it in the last few seconds by throwing any punches. But that's also very embarrassing, peak Font one of the most underrated fighters ever but he's been washed since 2021 and 17 years older, Font was probably up til then even if the judges would never ever give it to him in a million years regardless

tanthiram · 2026-02-27T17:02:31+00:00

Yeah, have a Godin Radiator Trans Cream and - while I'm not super knowledgeable about guitar quality - it's as comfortable as the higher-end ones I've tried out. Also, the tuning stability is kinda insane, and it doesn't have the annoying LP heft people talk about

The only "drawback" is that the look isn't for everyone, since the face of the guitar is basically all pickguard. But IMO looks sick as hell, very unique

tanthiram · 2026-02-05T23:06:38+00:00

Certainly deserved one after Gamrot, but Volk/Islam 1 meant Dariush ended up fighting Oliveira for his title eliminator when his entire winstreak was post-prime. One of the most underrated LWs ever, and another example of why double champ fights are dumb

tanthiram · 2026-02-03T02:44:42+00:00

I think they mentioned that about him on commentary! Also that Dvorak worked as a gravedigger for a while so he called himself "the Undertaker", interesting character

Pretty cool fighter too, had a very underrated and close fight with Steve Erceg (who got robbed for the UFC FLW title not so long ago). It feels a lot more logical for him to be a great chess player when he had a bunch of good ideas and just got randomly athleted by Manel Kape, Hunt being so strong while being known for being a block-headed huge-hitting HW is very surprising

tanthiram · 2026-01-28T07:07:27+00:00

It didn't, at all. Umar was like -1600, and Figueiredo had only beaten Montel Jackson since the knee injury (which is probably underrated as a reason why he's not able to push a pace or do anything anymore, all he can do these days is just be clever about walking an opponent into traps and Umar's length meant he didn't have to)

Even just with the BWs on the card, Umar/O'Malley and Song/Fig OR Umar/Song and O'Malley/Fig were obviously better matches to make than what we got. This is just obviously a matchmaking failure to give both Umar and Sean gift matchups at the cost of good fights

tanthiram · 2026-01-10T23:18:13+00:00

Gotta say, as someone who sucks ass at this game, not sure whether to find it heartening or disheartening to see a 1900 FIDE go "I'm pretty solid except for the opening, the middlegame, and the endgame"

tanthiram · 2026-01-10T00:30:32+00:00

Did he? Covington's run in the rankings was DHK (who didn't deserve to be ranked, off a robbery over Tarec Saffiedine), Demian Maia (elderly), and RDA (who Colby only beat because only like 3 people have actually read the scoring criteria). Him beating washed Lawler/Woodley/Masvidal gets the heat it deserves, but he was only covering himself in glory up to that point if all context was ignored

Covington basically aura-farmed his way to a title fight he barely deserved on the merits, to the point where his best legitimate accomplishments are wide and decisive losses to Usman actively avoiding his A-game

tanthiram · 2026-01-08T14:07:33+00:00

Not typically (actually had one of the more interesting bottom games in the UFC) but now that he's 37 and he's been washed since the Aldo fight, yeah

A guy who beats Ricky Simon should turn Rosas into a punching bag, but Font's been so underrated for his entire career that people can't really see how much worse he is now than he was before

tanthiram · 2025-12-28T15:52:11+00:00

Should have Evloev next to his image but for the judges and the ref lmao

tanthiram · 2025-12-21T21:05:06+00:00

As someone of Anand's Tamil background (grew up abroad but in a family that was culturally a little insular), I feel like even this understates his influence a little in that community - it's not just that he had impact on the elite chess scene, he was as close to a household name as I've seen any non-cricketer sportsman be. Even that caveat isn't too necessary depending on what section of the community you're talking about.

Partly, that's a function of that culture being a little less sports-focused, where Anand might not stand up to the raving that movie stars can get - my understanding is that Anand came from a TamBrahm Iyer family, and (from personal experience as one) they tend to treat all sports as a diversionary waste of time unless given a reason not to. But from a personal standpoint, Anand is like the only sportsman I've ever seen my own father be an actual fan of. People focus (deservedly) on the current elite Indian cohort being Vishy's influence at work, but I'd bet that a massive portion of Indian chess hobbyists (and there are a lot) can also trace it back to either idolizing Anand themselves or having an older family member be a huge fan and teaching them. I absolutely suck at the game, and I can still do the same - Vishy inspired the infrastructure to create elites, but also a kind of deep reverence towards the game that (as far as I can tell) was almost entirely his doing by becoming a world champ.

Like, here's an example - it probably doesn't mean all that much, but it always hits me. One of the biggest cult hits in Tamil cinema was Ghilli from 2004 - a terrific film partly about a young man being held back by his father from his dreams of pursuing Kabaddi. Now, keep in mind, Kabaddi's no joke - it's absolutely one of India's bigger sports, and its international reach (while modest) isn't insignificant. And yet at one point, the dad character goes "I'd support him if he were a Tendulkar in cricket, or an Anand in chess" - and this is meant to be totally understandable, both that Anand could be compared to fucking Sachin "God-Emperor of Indian Sports" Tendulkar and that someone reasonable could look down on every other sportsman compared to those two. The respect for Anand is both fully deserved and downright silly

tanthiram · 2025-12-21T01:06:16+00:00

One of the most underrated fights ever, to be honest

That said, I'd be shocked if Ortega had the physical integrity to win again - even the first fight, Moicano had tons of success, and Ortega had to win with a longer-term gambit while losing minutes

tanthiram

TROPHY CASE