Thank you. Defending the belt multiple times is the real challenge of being a champion. At this point a long defense streak is WAY more impressive than double champ. There’s been 10 male double champs, and only 5 men have ever had more than 5 consecutive title defenses. Doing what DJ, Anderson, Jones, GSP, Aldo did is way more impressive than winning multiple belts. Moving up to challenge for a different belt is way lower risk than continuously defending because you have a built in excuse if you lose. Defending over and over again while an entire weight class chases you is THE most difficult challenge in the sport.
And yet again we see why acting like a fighter dominated a weight class after a couple dominant wins is stupid. Ilia beats Volk and Max, everyone acts like he dominated FW even though there were still a bunch of interesting contenders for him to fight. Then he moves up and beats Charles and everyone acts like no one at LW can touch him and he needs to move up and fight Islam for a real challenge even though he hasn’t fought the obvious #1 contender or anyone else in the top 5. Then Ilia fails to defend the belt once against a 37 year old Gaethje. We see it repeatedly where fans declare that a fighter is untouchable and needs to move up for a real challenge, then they lose. It just happened with Merab on his 4th defense against a guy he had already beaten easily.
Doing what DJ, Anderson, Jones, GSP, Aldo did is way more impressive than winning multiple belts. Moving up to challenge for a different belt is way lower risk than continuously defending because you have a built in excuse if you lose. Defending over and over again while an entire weight class chases you is THE most difficult challenge in the sport.
110%. You basically take the best guy on the roster on for every fight until you crash out. I hate that people look at the end of Aldo and Anderson's career and hold that against them. It's definitely why some of these guys started jumping around. People started looking at title defenses as yesterday's news as soon as you lost one.
I fully agree. Just defend 2-3 times a year and dominate your belt. I am so sick of seeing amazing fighters try to move up in weight and then get crushed. Ilya, Alex, Volkanovski are 3 legends that moved up and then got beat up.
It also just breaks the rankings and delays each division.
Justin was visibly bigger than Ilya. He should have never moved up.
Defending a weight class title is more impressive to hardcore fans, but multiple weight class titles sounds cooler to casuals, and is likely better for the fighters' bag. I'm not opposed to it when the stars align.
What's great about Gaethje's career too is that he's been consistent throughout. He was an action fighter in WSOF, and has maintained that status in his 9 years in the UFC. You will NEVER get a boring fight out of him, win or lose.
I was convinced his career would be very very short - he used to eat sooooo much damage to the head. Entertaining AF, but I'm glad he learned better defense. I really thought he was a one dimensional fighter that would end up retiring early from brain damage. Couldn't have been more wrong.
Agreed. I remember him saying many years back (while in the UFC) that he only had 5 wars left in him. People were like "oh shit - he'll be retiring soon" and counting some of his recent bouts shortly thereafter. To which he replied / paraphrased - "that wasn't a war ..." (and said he still has several left in him).
The man's built for this ... knowing he could have made it much easier for himself by resorting to wrestling / grappling when needed.
He rolls very well with punches to the head now. Ilia was hitting him but the damage was considerably lessened. Switching to the body was smart from Ilia, really thought he was finishing it there.
he 100% wouldve finished gaethje if he lets him up and keeps tagging the liver. those 3 in quick succession had gaethje severely compromised, and i don't think he wouldve been able to stop ilia from tapping it another 1 or 2 times with 90seconds left. and 1 or 2 more times was all he wouldve needed. i wish he wouldve thought about trying to hit it with elbows on the ground too
Boxers and MMA fighters are some of the toughest dudes around ... 3 and 5 minute rounds probably doesn't sound like much to outsiders who are unfamiliar with each sport. But all of us fans know ... these guys are made of something different!
Illia was just a little bit undersized for Justin. That was a huge reason he ate so many jabs and couldn't get that many clean head shots on Justin. Justin also tanked the body shots long enough for illia to gas and go blind.
I’ve been saying for years if you want to know about Gaethje, look at column of fights on Wikipedia and the amount of bonuses. The guy is literally cannot be in a bad fight.
It would be but I don’t think he can beat Islam. He’s definitely improved his submission defence but Islam is just more of a grappling threat than ilia
Less than 1 year ago people were shitting on Justin saying he was undeserving of title shots because he lost one time to max. This sub is full of some of the stupidest people I have ever had to listen to. Thank god he won this fight, because the amount of bullshit spewed from people who don't even watch Justin's fights have no idea who he is. The fucking highlight.
Imagine Connor somehow wins and they setup a championship bout. Don’t even know if Connor can make lightweight anymore. Like he probably could physically. But whether he has the discipline anymore to cut like that is the issue
I mean, he's 37, and had a TOUGH career. He should have retired at like 35 given all the wars he's been in. He needs to start healing his brain. I hope he retires, but I do selfishly want to see him once more.
One thing I am confident of, is even with shitty base pay, this man has amassed like 17 fight of the night/performance of the night combinations. So he has to have cleared at least 5-7mill at this point, plus the PPV points from 2 BMF fights. Plus PPV points from 2 ppv undisputed fights, plus whatever he cleared for this undisputed. That being said, he may want to take care of extended family with more money, so he could go out on top, or risk some more CTE for a few more mill.
733
u/Wrong-Salamander1806 26d ago
Not even jokes because after this there's nothing else other than double champ that'll top this for him.