UFC 188 Fight Discussion: Cain vs. Werdum

How does Melendez beat Alvarez? He's not gonna beat him on the ground, and if he stands with Eddie, it'll be over quick.

TFK

 

The thing is, I love watching Alvarez fight. He is always entertaining.

But from a ranking standpoint, he just isn't one the best fighters in the division.

And I don't believe for a minute that Alvarez is out of his prime. His recent struggles aren't related to age or wear and tear. He is just fighting better competition.

The days of anyone thinking those DREAM lightweights were anything special are gone. That mirage absolutely disappeared when Aoki
finally left Japan and got bitch slapped by Melendez. And it was permanently put to rest when the borderline Top 15 Michael Chandler stopped Alvarez.

I just wish EliteXC would have kept their doors open a little longer so the planned fight between Nick Diaz and Alvarez would've happened. There is no doubt that Nick schools him back then.

 

Alvarez would have clowned Diaz. Kimbo saved him an ass whoopin'.


TFK

 

I have no idea, but he'll beat him.

Watching them fight, plus their results Vs good fighters, tells me Melendez is the better fighter.

 

You'll see how he beats him tonight. :) No one has ended a fight with Melendez quick, except Pettis. Pettis would be one of the greatest of all time if he didn't have a weakness for a specific style of wrestling.

 

Gilbert should have been the UFC lightweight champion that night. He still would have lost to Pettis, but they robbed him of that moment of glory.

I still think he could be champion. Pettis is too injury prone to last long in this sport. RDA has looked outstanding lately, but I think Melendez would have a decent chance of beating him.

 

Styles make fights. Alvarez being more negative than he used to be should help him a lot in this fight. He's better technically than Melendez. Of course his chin sucks so you never know but Alvarez has a style advantage IMO.

 

The two main fights should be fun. :) I'm looking forward to and feeling worried about the Marquardt / Gastelum fight. Nate is one of my all time favorite fighters. He's been declining lately. I hope he can turn things around and make a late career comeback like Lawler or Arlovski. It doesn't usually work out that way.

 

I hope my boy fat little Kelvin thumps him.

Incidentally, what were those fights where Nate was landing a huge assortment of impressive strikes, elbows etc?

 

His knockouts of Tyron Woodley and Wilson Gouveia were fun. :) He knocked out Damien Maia with one punch. Literally the one punch that was thrown in the fight.

 

I think Gastelum is in a world of trouble tonight. He looked 2 weight classes smaller than Nate at the weigh in yesterday. And Nate looked smaller than usual.

It's clear that Gastelum is only at 185 because the UFC forced him after he missed weight in his fight with Woodley.

Unless Marquardt is absolutely shot, I think he'll give Gastelum a tough fight.

 

Agreed, Kelvin is only there as he's forced to for missing weight. He has a tiny frame for the weight, he needs to make the effort to go back to 170.

 

Nate Marquardt / Tyron Woodley





Nate Marquardt / Wilson Gouveia



Nate Marquardt / Damien Maia



Nate Marquardt / Martin Kampmann




It's fun to relive the glory years while he's still fighting. It will be painful to watch if he loses badly tonight.

 

That fight was crazy. Patrick Williams choked Alejandro Peres unconscious with a standing guilliotine like 20 seconds into the fight. I've never seen someone lock up a standing guillotine choke and put a guy to sleep that fast.

 

Awesome, I'll check out the full fights, the gifs are certainly impressive.

 

Jones did it pretty quick against Machida once he locked it in.

 

That was impressive. Machida won the first round with his striking, I thought. Jones was the better grappler and the better fighter overall.

I hadn't heard of Williams or Perez before. Williams landed one big punch, then locked up the choke and finished the fight in 23 seconds.

 

Alvarez has 1 KO loss in his career, by TKO, by a fighter who outweighed him by over 25 lbs when the fight happened. His chin can't suck that bad.

He gets dropped from time to time, but that has more to do with his wreckless style than it does his chin. People talk like his chin is Chuck Liddell's.

TFK

 

Anyone got any decent streams without all the popups and malware nonsense?

TFK

 

I'm watching the prelims on FX. It's free if you have cable and have that channel. I'm actually buying the PPV this time. They've had some shitty PPV events, but this one seems worth buying. It sucks when you're watching a free stream that starts locking up and not working halfway through the main event.

 

That's nigh on impossible these days. God I miss the days of Sopcast and Boxingguru.

It's really weird, almost every aspect of technology has improved, apart from streams, which have got much, much worse.

There used to be awesome, stable streams, full framerate, no ads, no malware - and now all you have is fucking shitty web streams that look like VHS, cut out all the time, and are plagued with ads.

Especially sucks for people like me, who houses don't have satellite/cable. I kind of rely on streams for boxing and MMA.

 

Wow two in a row. Odd

 

Standing guillltine choke finish by Escudero in the first minute of the fight. What are the odds of that happening.

 

The UFC has cold streaks and hot streaks at times. Some events turn out boring even if they seemed exciting on paper. These last 4 weekends in a row have been awesome. I don't know how the main card will turn out, but this one is fun so far.

 

I can't see Alvarez\Gil being anything but a good fight. Cain\Werdum should be good as well, as long as Werdum doesn't fight like he did against Overeem.

TFK

 

I might end up ordering it. I'm going to Vegas in a few weeks so I'm trying not to spend money I don't need to. But if I can't get a decent stream I might just bite the bullet.

TFK

 

I'm driving to Vegas on Thursday. :) My birthday is next week, and EDC is that weekend. My best friend from Florida is flying in that weekend too. I haven't been to Vegas in 4 years.

 

This is actually my job. I write software for the world leader in streaming media content delivery. Streaming media technology improves exponentially every year. Every year my company sets world records in terms of concurrent viewers, peak bandwidth, and reliability. The Super Bowl usually sets the record, unless it's the World Cup or Olympics. If you watch the official UFC stream online, it goes through at least one software component I've worked on before it gets to your computer.

The free stream situation sucks for live events. Bittorrent is awesome for downloading things that have already happened. Trying to watch live events for free has gotten harder and harder over the last few years.

 

Agree.

It's puzzling when when you look at Werdum's fights since that Overeem nonsense. He's fought big punchers since then and hasn't looked afraid at all.