Is Aoki number two?

oggy420 wrote:

the ref made the right call did he not? Hansen kicked him square in the nuts and then got two free kicks to aoki's head. Didn't seem like the protection was enough if you ask me.

I do think Aoki is kind of soft though. He is as one dimensional as it gets but he happens to be a master of that one dimension. Who's next for him though? I dont know which japanese fighters are friends and such but i'd like to see him fight Kitaoka or Hirota

+1

And he's beyond kind of soft. The fact that he's willing to let a fight get called a no contest when he's supposedly hurt drives me nuts. His act when getting "fouled" is legendary and very irritating. You're a man, fight like a man... With that said, he's still #2 with a very impressive resume...

tolivendiewithLA wrote:

Honestly just off how fighters matchup, and who to I think could beat who. You can't always use resume as a indicator, like some think Brock beats Barnett despite a large discrepency in resumes. Also the weight of Aoki's resume, it's subjective, I also tend to think UFC LW's don't get as much cred as they deserve, all this is really why I'm one of the biggest proponents for a unified Org. Would love to see some of the UFC LWs matchup against LWs over in Japan.

I love it when you bring up the one thing in life we agree on, LA... It just proves there is hope for you young uns...

LikesToFightGuy wrote:

boomer sooner wrote:

Well Vitor Ribeiro and JZ did fine against Aoki's BJJ. I think there's probably a lot of guys out there that could avoid the sub. Diego and BJ being two of them for sure.

So wait... Spending 15 minutes focused on not getting submitted to the point you can't mount an offensive is a good way to fight? You do realize those guys both lost the fight, right? Yeah, they didn't lose due to submission... They lost due to lack of an offesnive due to fear of submission. Still a loss. Better to take a risk and mount that offensive and hope you rock him before he grabs a limb. It's the only way to effectively fight a guy like Aoki unless your content with boring a crowd to death while looking to lose a decison...

JZ wasn't worried about a sub the first time. He took it to him before having the fight called due to Aoki's actin...injury. THe seocnd time they fought JZ said that things just snowballed for him the wrong way. Aoki won the fight, but JZ was far from ever being submitted. JZ didn't look confident from the word go and I think his bandaged knee had something to do with it.

As for Vitor, Vitor actually wanted the fight to go to the mat, but Shinya chose to keep it standing with his reach and takedown defense.

I think Aoki should be #2. His ground game is sick. No way he could beat BJ though, he's not good at striking and BJ is pretty good at boxing.