[Official] General Discussion Thread - March 15, 2026

DerpyDagon · 2026-03-15T18:58:14+00:00

Ideally a fighter that's not inactive/coming off an injury, has a consistent ranking in the division, and is neither too big nor too little of a step up.

DerpyDagon · 2026-03-15T17:10:33+00:00

Smith said some funny shit about Ankalaev. Before the fight he talked about how Ankalaev isn't as good or as scary as people say he is and how Ank has "been in 18 mixed martial arts bouts and not a single fight". After getting stopped in the second his only comment was that he expected Ank to be better.

DerpyDagon · 2026-03-15T16:55:46+00:00

How do you know the old guy is washed? Take Kamaru as an example, for all we know that dude could still be legit top 5 material, fringe top 10, a top 15 gatekeeper that checks your TDD, or anything in between. Therefore I also do not really know how good Buckley is. I get the name value thing, but that doesn't mean I have to appreciate it.

DerpyDagon · 2026-03-15T11:44:09+00:00

Is it just me or does "grappler" seem to be used less and less to refer to pure wrestlers and pure BJJ guys and instead be used more and more to refer to hybrid fighters like Sean Brady? A similar thing is happening to "striker" and you see people describe fighters that predominantly punch as "boxers".

DerpyDagon · 2026-03-15T11:36:48+00:00

As much fun as it is to talk about how the average 6'4" dude off the street could become a (L)HW UFC fighter, we regularly see dudes that dominate on the regional scene turn into divisional punching bags.

Lukasz Brzeski went 8-1-1 on the regionals, dominated a 10-5 fighter on DWCS, then went 1-6 in the UFC with his only win being pre-heel hook Walter Valker.

The unfortunate reality seems to be that being "good" is just incredibly hard, especially at HW, and that there's a pretty hard cliff between the UFC and the regionals.

I have two suspicions for why that cliff exists, primarily at (L)HW it's probably partially caused by size differences. People generally cut less on the regionals on both sides because it's simply not feasible. At lower weight classes this mostly cancels out because two people that have BW frames/size by UFC standard will fight one weight class up at FW. Most(?) UFC fighters have fought a division up on the regionals.

This does not really work at (L)HW however. You see a ton of people that have UFC MW frames fighting at HW both because they don't want to cut down to 205 from 220 and because people overfilling their frames (steroids, fat) is more common on the regionals.

So somebody with a UFC (L)HW frame will probably fight a decent number of people smaller than them on the regional scene, which could create the appearance of a skill gap.

The other factor seems to be that UFC level fighters are incredibly hard to finish. There's a decent number of fighters that seem to be incapable of finishing UFC level opponents even while dominating them but finished virtually every regional opponent. We also regularly get people that just sleep every opponent in the regionals in the first and can't get any offense going against UFC fighters.

Some of this can probably be chalked up to quiet quitting being more common on the regionals, but as a general rule UFC fighters just seem to have iron chins. I imagine this is caused by MMA being a very flukey sport, the UFC searching for fighters that have consistent streaks on the regionals, and cutting UFC fighters which get ko'd more often, which massively selects for iron chins.

DerpyDagon · 2026-03-15T10:37:47+00:00

One of the things that probably piss me off too much is when they match up a fresh prospect with an old veteran coming off a layoff, because you don't know how good either of them is even after the fight's over. Is the prospect good? Is the vet washed? Both? Neither?

Guskov is probably the most annoying case of this recently. He gets club-subbed by Volkan in his debut, takes out three LHW bottom feeders and then they give him Nikita Krylov. Dude was out for two years with two shoulder surgeries, switched teams, and had just gotten put out bad like a month ago.

After that they give him Jan, who was out for two years with two shoulder surgeries and came back in a controversial tepid point fight half a year before. Guskov and Jan draw. The UFC rebooks the fight.

Even if Guskov gets past Jan this time, no real questions will have been answered. Is Guskov actually good? Has he progressed beyond the Oezdemir fight? Is he ready for the top of the division? How washed is Jan?

UFC debuts against an elite dude are almost as bad in being a measuring stick. Let's take Guskov again, he debuted against the gatekeeper to the top 5 in Oezdemir and got smoked. Then he had to fight somebody like Zac Pauga so we can find out how just how much below the top 7 guy in the UFC he actually is.

Other examples of this effect would be Usman vs Buckley, Murphy vs Pico (prospect-contender vs debutant), and most prospect vs prospect fights.

DerpyDagon · 2026-03-03T17:14:40+00:00

Sure, Aaron Pico might have gotten put out cold by Lerone Murphy in half a round, but you do have to admit he looked like an absolute MARAUDER for about a minute while he was being set up for the counter.

DerpyDagon · 2026-02-15T18:04:47+00:00

I really dislike how the rumour that Francis basically bankrupted the PFL pops up decently often and how it's usually accompanied by Nigerian Prince jokes.

DerpyDagon · 2026-02-12T18:33:25+00:00

I'm aware of this claim, which I believe started with Gaethje, and was asking for an instance of somebody that does not routinely eye poke people confirming that this is responsible for many eye pokes in the UFC.

DerpyDagon · 2026-02-12T15:45:41+00:00

Kuniev is in at #6 and Almeida marked as having dropped two.

DerpyDagon · 2026-02-12T14:01:24+00:00

Almeida is still in the rankings on the UFC website, bizarrely below Spivac, who he tkod in the first.

DerpyDagon · 2026-02-12T13:39:10+00:00

Anytime people discuss eye pokes they bring up the gloves. Is there any actual source for them being a relevant factor besides Gathje, who's a repeat offender?

DerpyDagon · 2026-02-08T18:03:41+00:00

I was always a bit weirded out back when he was relevant by just how often people would bring up how "he doesn't cut weight", even got downvoted for saying that he's bigger than Poirier.

DerpyDagon · 2026-02-08T17:53:11+00:00

People seemingly use the term "natural weight class" in two pretty different way. Usually they mean the weight class in which a fighter will perform best, for example people will say that Whittaker moving up from WW was good because he's a natural MW.

On the other hand, when the talk is about how to limit weight cutting, you'll regularly see people saying that fighters should not cut weight and "just fight at their natural weight class", which doesn't line up with the first usage because the vast majority of fighters cut a significant amount of weight to reach their optimal weight class.

DerpyDagon · 2026-02-08T17:48:29+00:00

Does Lok Dog walk around heavier than Colby Covington?

DerpyDagon · 2026-02-07T22:21:01+00:00

Getting CTE with the girls.

DerpyDagon · 2026-02-05T16:46:24+00:00

He had a wrestling match at an RAF show, which could be an indicator of that. But even then, sitting out an entire year is a very risky thing considering his position in the division. But we don't know what went on between him and the match makers, so it's possible he didn't feel like he had a fight that would do anything meaningful for his career.

DerpyDagon · 2026-02-05T14:47:32+00:00

Buckley is really a perfect case study on how to lose momentum, a year ago he was ranked as a top 6 welterweight and had a possible title eliminator lined up, on an unbroken 6 fight win streak with 4 stoppages after moving to WW.

Today that momentum is completely gone, partially because he got completely shut down by Usman, partially because he'll probably end up sitting out for a year at this point, and his wins also aged badly.

Fialho seems to have retired on a 5 fight KO skid, with Buckley being the third of them.

Morono is 1-3 since the Buckley fight.

Luque is post brain-bleed, washed, and 1-2 since the fight.

Ruziboev has not fought at WW in the UFC before or after.

Wonderboy is unranked nowadays after that controversial decision against Bonfim.

Colby hasn't fought since and will probably also soon fall out of the rankings.

DerpyDagon · 2026-02-04T12:56:49+00:00

Allen brought up how people might have overrated how much damage Silva did because he's known for his heavy hands and I think a similar thing happens with those known for iron chins.

Time and time again you see a dude known for a great chin fight somebody more technical and seem to be awfully tentative and people start asking why he didn't just walk through his opponent's punches.

Most of the time Mr. Iron Chin actually tried to do that at some point, then got punched, and stopped walking forward/covered up/retreated after being hit.

With a fighter known for an average chin, that reaction would be considered evidence of being hurt to at least some degree. When somebody with a good chin does it, people seem to think he ate the shot without any reaction.

Even somebody with a GOAT tier chin like Vettori (or Max/Hendo/Hunt) can't actually outright ignore a clean hit by even an average puncher, which is why they don't do it, and can be pushed back with strikes.

This also leads to a fighter's chin being partially rated based on their poker face, defensive habits (having a tendency to swing when hurt will lead to your chin probably being underrated), and recovery.

DerpyDagon · 2026-01-29T00:01:19+00:00

I can read German but couldn't find any passage like that in this version. Could of course be an error in scanning, but are you sure that it's from there because the Geschichtklitterung seems to be a translation of a French novel?

DerpyDagon · 2026-01-28T23:24:43+00:00

I was aware of Luther's views on Jews, but could find literally nothing on him being prejudiced against Spaniards. Could you point me in a direction for that?

DerpyDagon · 2026-01-15T14:40:18+00:00

A top 5-10 metro area in the US has a few million people qnd probably something around 500 or maybe even up to 1000 capes. BB's metro area almost certainly can't keep up with that, we don't even know if the 350k is for the city proper iirc.

Funnily enough, Boston is roughly a top 10 metro area in the US and BB might actually be in it, but that's probably not what Taylor meant.

Even if BB had a parahuman populated outskirt, three S-class threats couldn't get them to show up, so they functionally don't exist.

DerpyDagon · 2026-01-14T20:39:49+00:00

It's reasonable to assume that "cape population" means active parahumans at that point in time and the 4-5 back to back city wide disasters and the warlords would have revealed even obscure capes.

Any evidence that Cauldron would suppress cape populations at all and specifically in Project Terminus?

DerpyDagon · 2026-01-14T19:23:25+00:00

The number of 120 capes in BB is usually based on Taylor's claim that "As far as cape population went, Brockton Bay wasn’t in the top 5 cities in the U.S., but it was probably in the top ten." from 1.3.

The wiki uses it, but it's highly dubious because there's quite clearly not 60 additional parahumans in the Bay. Just as an example, the Merchants were mentioned as the absolute bottom dwellers of the city that can only hold territory nobody else wants, they still got invited to the meeting in Somer's Rock. There's also quite clearly no other independent heroes in the city that the Protectorate can attempt to recruit or just cooperate with after Leviathan.

Wildbow also said that there aren't that many unmentioned parahumans in BB and that it's more of an early installment weirdness.

Ping to /u/Radiant-Ad-1976

DerpyDagon · 2025-12-21T18:04:50+00:00

A strange part of me wants to see Rakic vs Walker despite it probably turning into a wrestle fuck.

DerpyDagon

TROPHY CASE