So Overeem is the lineal champ now

Drew doesn't rate Fedor or non UFC fighters so Overeem vs Werdum was a battle of 2 non top 10 fighters when in reality it was 2 top 5 fighters.

In reality, Werdum isn't top 5

In the past 2 years he's beaten Fedor and Big Foot.

bobbitt15 wrote:

In reality, Werdum isn't top 5

+1

Andrew ranked Werdum 6th and Fedor 8th in his last rankings anyway. Seems appropriate

Yeah fair enough. I have them at 5 and 8.

Flopping on his back in a fight he otherwise did OK in is no reason to strip him of top five status in this division these days. That says more about HW than it does Werdum.

Wolfgangsta wrote:

Flopping on his back in a fight he otherwise did OK in is no reason to strip him of top five status in this division these days. That says more about HW than it does Werdum.

Just like our discussion last night, the fact that there are many fighters I would feel comfortable picking over Werdum outweighs some other factors for me

My Heavyweight Rankings-

01. Cain Velasquez
02. Junior dos Santos
03. Allistar Overeem
04. Brock Lesnar
05. Fabricio Werdum
06. Antonio Silva
07. Shane Carwin
08. Fedor Emelianenko
09. Frank Mir
10. Josh Barnett

Lets not forget that Overeem had three takedowns of his own, though he didn't necessarily follow Werdum down there I count tossing someone to the ground like they are in a weight class two divisions down the ladder as a takedown. Werdum pulled guard twice and tripped Overeem up once. With those he did nothing, not a single solid submission attempt, not a single sweep, reverse, or anything else. Even when Overeem did lay in his guard, obviously too tired to posture up and throw anything from the top Werdum just kind of sat there waiting for an opening that wasn't coming. Werdum may have outstruck Overeem if you look purely at the numbers but everytime he got struck he dropped like a stone. Everyone knows he probably wasn't truly rocked from every shot, one might even argue he wasn't rocked at all during the fight but the fact of the matter is he gave the judges no choice but to score against him in doing that.

Like someone said earlier today on this thread or the other one about last night's event Fabricio Werdum came in just looking not to get knocked out. All he did was tire himself out with nine unsuccessful takedowns while making it look like he was wobbled everytime he got hit.

In a lot of ways, Werdum used the Thales Leites vs Anderson approach. If there is one style I hate the most in MMA it is the impotent pussy BJJ butt scooter. Fuck them all to death.

I wouldn't count what Overeem did as takedowns, they are throws and they score points just like takedowns do.

It's still very much a takedown for all intents and purposes. My point was that the two guard pulls and one ankle trip takedown of Werdum should for all intents be negated on the scorecards by the three instances where Werdum was pushed off his feet and onto his back by Overeem.

bobbitt15 wrote:

I talked about his K-1 style defense a few months back when looking at a hypothetical matchup with JDS. But the bottom line is he still has good technique, hits like a truck and throws vicious knees from the clinch. He headhunted all night last night as guys tend to do when they don't feel threatened at all and are up against someone who keeps shooting for "takedowns" in vain. It won't be the last time we see a great offensive fighter look like shit against a jiu-jitsu artist that comes in with that kind of gameplan. I expect we'll see a fuller arsenal against Bigfoot with kicks mixed in as well. And sure he doesn't have the movement that he used to have. He was a string bean that was long and athletic and now he's a hulk walking around the cage. Still going to be really hard to take down, still has an underrated grappling game and still packs huge power

JDS still leaves his chin exposed and head up when he comes in to throw combinations and could easily get put out cold by Alistair. I'm not going to react that strongly to what we saw last night. Werdum came to not get knocked out ultimately

Reem does have great strikes, and is a better all around striker then JDS (Not boxing though), but he still is plagued by poor defense and a questionable chin. Even if he didn't feel threatened by Werdum it's hard to ignore Werdum winning a bunch of the exchanges, and Reem looked slow to get off and wasn't sitting down on his punches. The Leites/Anderson comparisons aren't that strong IMO because when they were standing Werdum did quite well while Leites did nothing. With a JDS matchup, well yeah Jr leaves himself open at times too, but what he does have is a great chin, he takes a shot, we've seen fights decided in chin battles, AA/Serg comes to mind (yes Reem's chin isn't that bad). I'll write it off mostly as a bad performance is an akward matchup, but certain issues can't be ignored.

Wolfgangsta wrote:

In a lot of ways, Werdum used the Thales Leites vs Anderson approach. If there is one style I hate the most in MMA it is the impotent pussy BJJ butt scooter. Fuck them all to death.

He did pull a bit of a Leites, but it's not quite the same because when standing he did quite well.

bobbitt15 wrote:

In reality, Werdum isn't top 5

Agree, I have a fairly long list of guys that would beat him too.

LA wrote:

bobbitt15 wrote:

I talked about his K-1 style defense a few months back when looking at a hypothetical matchup with JDS. But the bottom line is he still has good technique, hits like a truck and throws vicious knees from the clinch. He headhunted all night last night as guys tend to do when they don't feel threatened at all and are up against someone who keeps shooting for "takedowns" in vain. It won't be the last time we see a great offensive fighter look like shit against a jiu-jitsu artist that comes in with that kind of gameplan. I expect we'll see a fuller arsenal against Bigfoot with kicks mixed in as well. And sure he doesn't have the movement that he used to have. He was a string bean that was long and athletic and now he's a hulk walking around the cage. Still going to be really hard to take down, still has an underrated grappling game and still packs huge power

JDS still leaves his chin exposed and head up when he comes in to throw combinations and could easily get put out cold by Alistair. I'm not going to react that strongly to what we saw last night. Werdum came to not get knocked out ultimately

Reem does have great strikes, and is a better all around striker then JDS (Not boxing though), but he still is plagued by poor defense and a questionable chin. Even if he didn't feel threatened by Werdum it's hard to ignore Werdum winning a bunch of the exchanges, and Reem looked slow to get off and wasn't sitting down on his punches. The Leites/Anderson comparisons aren't that strong IMO because when they were standing Werdum did quite well while Leites did nothing. With a JDS matchup, well yeah Jr leaves himself open at times too, but what he does have is a great chin, he takes a shot, we've seen fights decided in chin battles, AA/Serg comes to mind (yes Reem's chin isn't that bad). I'll write it off mostly as a bad performance is an akward matchup, but certain issues can't be ignored.

Agree with pretty much all of this. As I said at the beginning, me and Wolf discussed Overeem's style of defense in K-1 when he has actual gloves on that he can just go high guard and cover up with and the problems he gets into when he tries to do the same in MMA. His K-1 experience has almost developed some bad habits for him if he continues to bring them into the cage with him. Doesn't move his head a whole lot and tries to block a lot of shots with his forearms.

Ultimately my post was just against some of the bigger overreactions towards Reem for last night's performance. That was to be expected though I guess

I see, yeah totally with K-1 defense vs MMA defense, great point.

freakzilla wrote:

My Heavyweight Rankings-

01. Cain Velasquez
02. Junior dos Santos
03. Allistar Overeem
04. Brock Lesnar
05. Fabricio Werdum
06. Antonio Silva
07. Shane Carwin
08. Fedor Emelianenko
09. Frank Mir
10. Josh Barnett

Brock at 4?

Ludo wrote:

It's still very much a takedown for all intents and purposes. My point was that the two guard pulls and one ankle trip takedown of Werdum should for all intents be negated on the scorecards by the three instances where Werdum was pushed off his feet and onto his back by Overeem.

I agree, Overeem simply threw Werdum to the canvas on some instances

Think I'd have Brock at 4 as well, he's beaten top quality guys, and Werdum wouldn't beat Brock, he beat Carwin and Mir, Foot's up in the air, and I still say Brock lands his first shot on Fedor and we've seen size give him problems and that was always the argument. I'd pick Barnett over Brock but he needs another win to be moved up far enough. It's really not that questionable... MMAfighting has Brock at 3, BE has Brock at 3, MMAweekly has Brock at 4, Reem's win only moves Brock to 4 or has him stay at 4 in all the rankings.

Brock being that high is maddening. Then again everyone is sucking around him. However, had he fought JDS he'd be dropping to the bottom of the top ten.

I outlined why, it's not that crazy. If it was only a few people you could be like get the fuck out of here, but it's a lot of people who still think so.


To be honest I'd pick the following HWs to beat Brock, but it isn't rankings...

Cain
JDS
Reem
Barnett
Foot, I could se Brock winning too
Fedor maybe, you know my thoughts on the shot and size.

No Carwin in a rematch? He at least has a chance right?

Would Brock crush Sergei?