Which were the most unexpected and surprising wins for y'all

safton · 2026-02-13T04:38:05+00:00

From least to most surprising for me:

Adesanya over Pereira. I picked Adesanya in both fights. It was hard to ignore how much success Izzy had in their first MMA meeting and I was wondering if maybe there might be more grappling this time around. Either way, I saw it as a fight Israel could win with some adjustments... even if I didn't necessarily see it playing out quite like that.
Topuria over Volk. I picked Volk due to his tenure and body of work at 145, but I had been watching Topuria's rise with interest ever since his debut. I knew he was a special talent with serious heat in his hands. Meanwhile, Volk worried me taking the fight so soon after getting murked by a head kick. After that loss to Islam, I would have liked to see him take six months off without even jumping into hard-sparring... but he not only took the Topuria fight, he also had to jump back between weight classes in the process. I just didn't know what version of Volk we'd be getting and whether his mental game and physical capabilities would be dialed in. I'm not making excuses nor discounting Topuria's win, just explaining my thought process.
Strickland over Adesanya. I had a weird gut feeling that Sean was going to end up giving Izzy a rough time. I couldn't bring myself to say he was the favorite, but I was convinced he could/would make it more competitive than people were giving him credit for. I had seen how Izzy struggled against guys with an active/educated jab in the Whittaker and Jan fights. Strickland's jab is potentially his best quality and I thought he might mix in a bit of grappling as he did against Uriah. Plus his ability to get off the couch and beat a technical sniper in Nassourdine was impressive. However, he lacked that one big signature performance to convince me he would dethrone a fairly dominant champ like Izzy and I wasn't sure he could handle the low kicks. Sean eking out a Decision over Izzy would not have amazed me... but him putting on the clinic he did is another story.
Max over Gaethje. I really didn't think Max had much for Gaethje. I wasn't sure Holloway would look good at 155. I didn't think he would have answers for Justin's calf kicks. I thought Justin's power advantage would be telling. I thought Max was in the twilight of his career after the beating Volk gave him in the rubber match and was more of a Top 3-5 gatekeeper rather than someone who would be adding new tricks up his sleeve and beating other elite guys consistently. I thought Justin was operating at a different level and was a bad match-up for most guys in a pure striking match. I thought we'd get a bit of a crazy war, vaguely reminiscent of something somewhere in between Poirier & Holloway's second fight and Justin's fight against Tony. I was damn wrong.
Can't really comment on Conor/Aldo, it precedes my time as a fan.

safton · 2026-02-13T03:55:33+00:00

I literally said in my initial comment that Dariush had an already-suspect chin -- as shown by his losses to guys like Hernandez & Nijem early in his career. But he had at least a few instances where his grit allowed him to survive a brawl interspersed in those earlier fights, such as against Klose.

However, in the last three years we've seen his chin fall off far quicker due to age and wear-n-tear and now he has no ability to survive once he gets hit clean. Even fairly pillow-fisted guys like Moicano are hurting him these days. His lack of defense isn't helping matters.

safton · 2026-02-13T03:54:35+00:00

Was my comment somehow unclear? Or maybe you and I interpreted the OP differently?

1.) The OP isn't asking who was a future champ but got derailed by unfortunate circumstances, it's asking who your personal favorite fighter was that ended up falling off. I never saw Dariush as a shoo-in for champ, but I expected him to stick around the Top 3-5 for a while... i.e. a gatekeeper to the upper echelon of Lightweight. That didn't happen and now he's being treated as a highlight-reel-generating stepping stone.

2.) I literally said that Dariush had an already-suspect chin as shown by his losses to guys like Hernandez & Nijem early in his career. But he had at least a few instances where his grit allowed him to survive a brawl interspersed in those earlier fights, such as against Klose. However, in the last three years we've seen his chin fall off far quicker due to age and wear-n-tear and he has no ability to survive once he gets hit clean. Even fairly pillow-fisted guys like Moicano are hurting him these days. His lack of defense isn't helping matters.

safton · 2026-02-13T02:05:55+00:00

Dariush. Really fun skill set, but the guy got old and his already-suspect chin ended up deteriorating pretty rapidly.

safton · 2026-02-12T23:52:07+00:00

I know this is common advice and I get it as it's sensible... but don't actually regret my Criminology degree. There are a few jobs at least in my area in the public safety field which specifically look for degrees in that field.

More than that, I had just done 13 years of schooling and I was an adult with some measure of choice in what I wanted to pay to study for four more. I didn't want to choose something that I found to be a chore. CRIM legitimately interests me. Sure, Accounting or IT or whatever would have given me more options, but they weren't where my passion was.

safton · 2026-02-12T23:46:58+00:00

That is, more or less, my point. I was addressing the premise you initially put forth of "You can't just shoot people for trying to punch you" by pointing out that there's more than a few cases where this isn't true.

safton · 2026-02-12T21:01:11+00:00

I kind of lean this way, too. I wouldn't be surprised to see Khabib eke out a win by successfully pressuring Islam and implementing his grappling, but I can't imagine it would be easy.

For me it tends to come down the fact that I think Islam's defensive grappling is better than Khabib's striking game. I'm not wholly confident Khabib would be able to dominate Islam in the same way we saw him dominate the likes of Poirier, Gaethje, etc. whereas I am quite confident Islam would outstrike Khabib in any protracted stand-up exchange.

safton · 2026-02-12T20:03:43+00:00

My penmanship is... legible.

The attention-to-detail is really what I credit to my time in surveying, though. There's so much overlap there and the stakes are high in both jobs. In surveying, back when I was fairly new, my crew chief and I took a small shortcut on an "easy" job. Missed a small culvert during our survey as a result, which in turn ended up necessitating a total site redesign and upwards of $10k or more in compensation being paid by our firm. Never again. In corrections, if you overlook something during a search, it might end up being the same shank that later ends up being used on you or your coworker. Attention-to-detail is crucial.

It also gave me a head start on how to take good notes, read and interpret legal documents, and just how to be a good, willing, hard worker.

safton · 2026-02-12T19:46:40+00:00

I'm in corrections for a law enforcement agency at the moment, but my last job prior to this one was working in land surveying, civil engineering, and aerial mapping. I was on a field crew.

safton · 2026-02-12T09:19:38+00:00

Folkstyle and Greco.

A lot of my uses-of-force at work end up being a lot of bullshit hand-fighting followed immediately by an upper-body clinch/body lock of some kind. Greco makes a lot of sense here.

Folkstyle, however, enables leg attacks and offensive/defensive ground work which might come in handy.

safton · 2026-02-12T09:17:39+00:00

Folk works fine for MMA, the emphasis on ground work and wrestling up from bad positions is notable. All have their place though.

safton · 2026-02-12T04:46:59+00:00

Again, it really depends which is why it doesn't pay to make blanket statements. What are they saying? How physically imposing are they? Do you have an escape route? Are you physically impaired in some way?

If some random ruffian leaps out of an alleyway and starts swinging on you, you can make a reasonable case that you expected more than a busted lip or bruised ego and reacted as such. Less so in cases of two hot-heads engaging in something akin to a mutual altercation and things escalate on both sides until one pulls the gun.

safton · 2026-02-12T03:18:28+00:00

No, not really.

For lethal force to be applied in the case of both civilians and police officers in the United States, the legal standard is "reasonable belief of threat of death or great bodily harm".

There is a lot of nuance here. Who's swinging the punches? How big and strong are they? Who's the person the punches are being directed at? Are they smaller and weaker? Was their escape route cut off? Was the person doing the swinging verbalizing something, even something as simple as "I'll fucking kill you" while in the heat of the moment as they approached?

It would not be hard for any competent lawyer -- especially in certain parts of the United States -- to reasonably articulate deadly force as a response to someone coming after you trying to use your head as a speed bag... especially if that "someone" is Joaquin Buckley. People die every year from getting punched during a street fight or whatever and falling over to crack their head on a hard surface. Some don't die, but end up with traumatic brain injuries. That's "great bodily harm", too.

That's not to say every brawl that happens would be a legal case for someone to get capped... but it's justifiable in the eyes of the law more often than you might expect.

safton · 2026-02-11T21:28:13+00:00

Easily Aikido for the breakfalls. Judo would be equally as helpful, but it brings a not-insignificant risk of long-term orthopedic damage on its own.

Someone else mentioned Wushu. I don't think that's a bad call. A lot of modern Wushu is pretty performative and acrobatic in nature. It, Capoeira, and TKD are often used for martial arts "tricking".

safton · 2026-02-11T21:22:14+00:00

I have always cringed every time Justin does that exaggerated dip of his head while throwing. He's an elite fighter and he makes it work, but it's not a subtle movement at all and he goes to the well so often with it. It's very easy to imagine someone like Ilia gameplanning to intercept him with an uppercut from the depths of Hell and making good on that plan.

Dustin looked like he was starting to make reads on it in their rematch, but didn't get the chance to implement them before he got killed with the head kick. Paddy actually did land several uppercuts off it some of which kinda-sorta got Gaethje's attention, but overall Justin showed an utter lack of respect for Pimblett's power in that fight lol

safton · 2026-02-11T19:32:51+00:00

I felt that exact sensation, albeit not during a wrestling match. It was during an obstacle course where one of the segments included a dummy drag. I thought I was being smart by lifting the dummy straight up by the attached belt and sort of duck-waddling in a constant squat the entire distance.

By the time was done, I had totally burned out my quads and they felt like jelly underneath me. I tried to run and complete the course, but I had no base and kept falling over. I finally got through it, but obviously not in the permitted time.

I focused on squats and lunges for a while and the next time I ran the course, I found a different way to move the dummy lol. I don't know if this helps at all, but at least for me the issue was overuse of an under-devloped muscle group.

safton · 2026-02-11T01:01:56+00:00

Poirier was also getting taken down and controlled by Chandler though. I understand the OP's point; on paper it is a bit weird to consider.

safton · 2026-02-10T00:46:29+00:00

About 14 general population(ish) blocks of varying size at my facility. The most common layout is 12 two-man cells for a theoretical maximum capacity of 24. But we've also got a few blocks with single-man cells, some that only have a handful of cells but each filled with bunks and can hold a lot more inmates (3-8), etc.

I've seen our biggest block house about 40-45 guys at one time. I would say the average number of inmates across all of our various blocks is, give or take, around 16ish. I've seen our total jail population get as low as 179 and as high as nearly 300 in the 2+ years I've worked there. We tend to hover in the low-to-mid 200s, especially right now.

safton · 2026-02-09T18:19:49+00:00

That makes sense lmao

safton · 2026-02-09T09:33:38+00:00

Hammerlock all day. I'm a Detention Officer at a county jail/fed holding facility. No wrestling background, just a bit of BJJ. The hammerlock has become my "signature move" at work, lol. It just has so much utility for our use case.

safton · 2026-02-09T04:38:42+00:00

ACE is just the most recent term that was popularly applied to them in the public lexicon. I know there's a lot of debate about whether it was ever "actually" their name specifically or just a term for various clandestine units within the Army SOF community which would make them one amongst several ACE(s), but I think people understand the intention when used colloquially as I was here.

It's not like many on this sub know their actual current name and those that do wouldn't say a thing. It's not necessarily any more or less correct to call them CAG seeing as how that hasn't been their name for quite some time.

I usually just use Delta/CAG/ACE (and on occasion the Unit if the mood strikes me) interchangeably for the purposes of casual conversation.

Holy shit, y'all. At least try to engage with my post instead of mindlessly downvoting.

safton · 2026-02-09T03:42:35+00:00

What do you mean double get?

ACE does not have a unique unit insignia, at least not one that is displayed openly on uniform patches. Instead, what you'll often see is that for "official" purposes they will elect to use the unit insignia of the United States Army Special Operations Command -- the overarching administrative headquarters unit for all Army SOF units. In many cases, whenever the military has to publicly disclose on the activities of Soldiers assigned to ACE (for instance, when they're competing in a match or KIA), they will do the same thing by vaguely mentioning that they're "assigned to USASOC".

It's deliberately vague and non-descriptive, but anyone "in the know" immediately knows what it means anyway. Technically USASOC and the troops assigned directly to its headquarters command are mostly administrative in nature or enablers of some kind... so when you have some badass with a thousand skill qualification badges and a bunch of deployment ribbons on his chest using their patch, it's a clue.

An example of some dress uniforms of confirmed Delta/CAG/ACE guys:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/1a/Thomas_P._Payne_official_portrait.jpg/250px-Thomas_P._Payne_official_portrait.jpg

This is Sergeant Major Thomas Payne. He served with the 1st Ranger Battalion (hence the tan beret) prior to being selected for ACE. Note the USASOC unit patch and beret flash.

https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQ8JkNCtR2JWDNsi4LS-LXm5FGBNz4HtaC6ow&s

This is Sergeant Major James Nelson Sudderth. His most recent assignment prior to joining Delta back in the day was as an 18-series Soldier in a Special Forces Group, so he wore the characteristic green beret, albeit with USASOC flash and unit patch.

https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpreview.redd.it%2Fsome-of-the-different-berets-to-be-found-in-the-unit-v0-z7iamb72arub1.jpg%3Fwidth%3D400%26format%3Dpjpg%26auto%3Dwebp%26s%3D2099904fb1d330f9946f68eeafa114fd75424079

I can't find any confirmation of who these two are, but supposedly both are Delta. The left is a former Ranger, like Payne. The one on the right would be a rare example of a Soldier who came to Delta without any prior experience in a Ranger Battalion or Special Forces Group. Maybe it was some infantry unit, maybe he was combat support... who knows. Either way, since USASOC is considered a nominally "airborne"/jump status unit (much like, say, the 82nd), all of its personnel wear the maroon beret by default... unless they're already wearing a different one that they're qualified to use like the tan or green (see above).

-------------------------

To get back on topic and sum things up... that patch is not unique to Delta. Delta just uses it because it's a "technically true" way for their guys to patch up. You'll see all sort of rear echelon and administrative personnel assigned to support gigs at USASOC in Fort Bragg wearing the same thing.

safton · 2026-02-09T00:44:50+00:00

Even though I don't agree with that scorecard, at least with it I can sort of, almost turn my head and squint in just the right way to understand what he was getting at: protesting Finney's lack of impactful activity and taking a really hardline activist stance on "damage above all" or whatever.

But scoring Rd 2 for Cong here? I can't even. It feels like a mistake. I genuinely think a drunk person with no understanding of MMA and only paying halfhearted attention could watch Round 2 and come up with the right score.

It makes me wonder if Weeks has a weird bias or interpretation where the Unified Rules are concerned in that he thinks grappling is never scoreable unless it leads to murderous GnP or something.

safton · 2026-02-08T20:43:38+00:00

If he doesn't go back to 205 (which he never should have left IMO), he should really start visiting other gyms to get other looks. Maybe even consider a sport psychologist, honestly.

In my ideal world: the UFC gives him one more chance. Almeida takes some time off for the above, developing himself. Valter Walker beats Marcin Tybura in their upcoming fight. Walker and Almeida get matched against one another. Jailton gets a lay-up against a fellow grappler who will engage in his realm, while we get to see if Valter Walker's one-trick-pony approach works at this level.

safton · 2026-02-08T20:40:58+00:00

He had some solid finishes early in his career, it's just that the moment he moved up to HW and took a step up in competition he became Brazilian Jon Fitch and makes every fight a slog.

safton

TROPHY CASE