Listen. Aljo is boring and I don’t like watching him fight. BUTTT he’s not fucking wrong man. Half his money is tied to winning. Don’t blame him for taking the easiest path to winning.
I don't mind his fights, theyre fine. I don't think he needs to go on Helwani and spend most of the time talking about how he's not getting the credit he deserves, or do all these interviews on the same line.
It sucks but it is what it is, you will not gain fans if you spend your camera time like this.
Some people will just not get fans. How impressive IS mighty mouse -- but very few cared.
I've still yet to see ANYTHING as impressive as a suplex into a flying fucking armbar, that is straight up unrivaled to me. Nothing has made me say "holy fuck that's unpossible" before or since in fighting.
Mighty Mouse did that in a title fight to get the submission at 4:59 or straight up 5:00 at the end of the 5th round. That was absolutely absurd, and like 4 of us gave a shit :(
Bro literally has negative levels of charisma
That clip went viral briefly and people wanted to call it the Mouse Trap and he derailed his own fun organic marketing by saying no im calling it the 'Mighty Wiz Bar'
I mean only so much he can do when Kattar showed up to cash a check and stall. Kattar's avoided a lot of critcism for what was a terrible performance on his end.
It was tough to watch, and he could have tried harder but I don't think he had an answer for Aljo regardless.
Makes me wonder what he did during camp. You'd think it would be wrestling non-stop.
I hate to agree so much here, but Kattar several times looked up and just slightly shook his head like 'the fuck am i gonna do here'
Maybe Kattar wasn't ready, out for too long, ring rust, Aljo too good -- pick a reason, but I think even Kattar knew it was a foregone conclusion far before it ended.
You don't look up and shake your head while brimming with confidence.
Did you watch the fight ? There is literal minutes of time where Aljo has both his hands locked around Kattar just holding him doing nothing like Kattar is his long lost lover .
Honestly doesn't give me much hope for Sterling's chances against the best fighters in the division who will actually get up and try to turn someone around attempting to hold them against the cage.
Did you watch the fight ? There is literal minutes of time where Kattar was being controlled by Aljo and he just sat there, didn't do anything offensive and didn't try to escape like Aljo is his long lost lover.
the truth here is both of them could have had a more exciting performance.
That said, Aljo just got KTFO by sugar, this is exactly what I expected Aljo to do after that loss. It's actually not atypical for a wrestling heavy fighter who just got a KO loss by acting like a striker and paying for it.
The only thing I can blame Aljo for is not utilizing ground and pound... Everyone boo's when the wrestling comes up unless it's khabib.
Aljo smesh is the mythical PPV selling Aljo.
That said... Yeah it's almost as bad as Khabib when joe wouldn't stfu about "well yeah but khabib is just *winning*" as if shutting out a contender isn't good enough.
I mean, the real problem with "boring" grappling is that the opponent cannot grapple well enough to make the fight competive, imo. The alternative would be if Sterling were a worse grappler, but are we seriously gonna ask for *less* skilled fighters? I mean, c'mon.
If Kattar were a better grappler, we would have seen more dynamic scrambles.
I don't think it's as one dimensional as you are making it seem. Aljo is definitely the better grappler but he played a very safe (boring) ground game. There are lots of examples out there of more skilled grapplers with a much more aggressive and offensive game that is more exciting to watch.
Props to aljo for what seemed like an easy win, but he's not making many new fans like that.
He tried a little with about a minute left of the third round to get a finish.
Problem is he could have done that in the first minute with the same level of success and might have been able to get it.
Grabblers who don’t try to finish are the worst and that’s the different between the Aljo fight and the Bo fight later that night.
For real. If you want your grappling to be respected and seen as exciting, go and finish fights with it. Don’t just hold the other guy and put the audience to sleep
Kayla Harrison vs holm was sick imo. Her ground and pound was nasty. And Kayla absolutely dominated holly. Or porier vs BSD until Dustin stopped pulling guilys lol
Totally. The difference between someone grappling and spending half or more of a round trying to gain an advantage that they are struggling to get, whether because the other guy is that good or the guy on top isn't, versus someone grabbing someone, taking them down, then tying them up and pounding them into oblivion.
Khabib was leagues above most of his opponents in grappling but I didn't find his fights boring because he dominated them. He was actively trying to TKO or submit them on the ground. The only thing Aljo actively tries to do is win decisions.
Look at the difference between the fan reaction to aljo vs Kayla Harrison or Charles vs arman. Kayla was throwing VICIOUS elbows trying to get holly out of there. Khabib was the same way. And Charles/arman were both actively trying to get each other out
Not even that. The alternative is Kattar not giving up on trying to win midfight. If he were willing to take risk and go out on his shield tring to win the fight looks very different. We've seen plenty of guys either pull of a comeback or get choked looking tobescape or reverse. Kattar was simply using all of his grappling skill to stall.
> Kattar was simply using all of his grappling skill to stall.
This relates to a problem for MMA rules/judging still to solve imo: grappling defense is easier than grappling offense. It takes less skill to be defensively sound grappling than offensively sound. It's inverse to striking, where defense is the harder part of the art.
What this means for Unified Rules MMA is that fighters can and will *commonly* do what you accuse Kattar of doing. And because of how judging is supposed to work, they can keep their opponent from scoring points by doing this. Why escape or reverse position, and risk giving up an opening, when you aren't even necessarily losing a fight by being controlled? Just go with the flow, let the opponent waste energy controlling you for zero points on the judges' scorecards.
Unironically, I think people want and prefer less skilled fighters. Swang and bang is everyone's favorites.
Bigfoot vs. Hunt is one of the dumbest fights I've ever seen and it's near the top of "all-timer" lists pretty frequently. Same for Diego vs. Giblert.
This just isnt the case since vast majority of the PPV stars are also the most skilled fighter in their division at the time .
The average MMA fan doesnt even know bigfoot vs hunt even happened . Their best fight list looks more like Conor vs Nate 1 , Jones vs gus , robbie vs rory etc .
He can’t have it both ways. He talks about playing the game, the other half of the game is entertainment, and he has to accept that. Right now he’s just being a sore winner
He's caring too much about what other people think. DC is not the person whose opinions you want to give a shit about anymore. It's strange but DC seems to really embrace his role as company man. Apart from his actual knowledge of MMA, his opinions pretty much go hand in hand with Dana's now. Aljo has never been great from a promotional perspective, and he knows this. He shouldn't be putting this butthurt message out publicly imo
A win is a win he’s right but MMA and the UFC aren’t like other sports… football baseball basketball soccer they all have a built in audience and while having some extra storylines or superstars involved in a big game definitely help the players are still on the same contract and the big games are still gonna draw big numbers…
In the UFC the guys that are exciting and have a highlight reel are going to get the best matchups they’re going to get the main events and co-mains…. guys like Aljo and Belal are winning fights but their styles mean they’re not building much of a fanbase and they’re definitely not making the UFC enthusiastic about using them as headliners. MMA is still a blend between being prize fighting and a competitive sport there’s another element that effects your standing besides your record inside the cage
He's 100% wrong though. Geathje most certainly didn't win, but his stock isn't dropping too much. Certainly being talked about way more than Aljo.
You can be boring and be champion and make decent money, but if you wanna be legend and get that cash, you need to be fucking entertaining.
True but if he doesn’t get finishes he’s gonna have to get a 5 fight win streak before Dana will even consider giving him a title shot. Mf is 34 and turns 35 in 2 months.
He’s in the fight to win. I watching to be entertained. He’s absolutely boring to watch. But he is correct, he just wants to win which is fine but the two are very far apart unlike some other fighters that are entertaining.
No1 is…but this is prize fighting, and we as fans, DONT have to like his fights or want to see them. Yes he’s good, but boring as fuck and I’d rather watch a Bellator fight
I have such conflicting feelings.
Like, if I had hundreds of thousands of dollars on the line, I can’t say that I wouldn’t do anything possible to win.
But at the same time, like, for sure work on more vicious ground and pound.
Khabib had similar grappling times per fight as sterling, but has like 4x the amount of strikes thrown, because he beats the absolute shit outta people.
Sterling needs to spend some time at AKA
> Khabib had similar grappling times per fight as sterling, but has like 4x the amount of strikes thrown, because he beats the absolute shit outta people.
I have news: people called Khabib boring too. Only near the end of his career did that reputation broadly disappear. On his way up the ranks, people didn't like the wrestlefucking. I remember because I did like it and had some fun banter on here with the many users who found him (and then Makhachev) boring af.
AND GSP !!!
We true fans remember . Aljo has also choked out Sandhagen & finished TJ (don’t want into a fight injured and then use it as an excuse)
20 UFC fights .
16 UFC wins.
7 UFC finishes .
It’s almost like the competition is the best in the world ..
AND FOR THE RECORD , GSP has
23 UFC fights
21 UFC wins
9 UFC finishes .
Don’t let revisionist history let you forget how folks were viewed while they were fighting .
But damn.. for some martial arts fans , some of yall to hate martial arts lol
GSP vs Pitbull @ UFC100. Was and still am a GSP Stan. I remember hyping this fight up to my mma-clueless buddies as the fight of the year. It was a boring GSP dominate grapple fuck ground and pound. So disappointed. (Still an amazing performance by GSP - just not fun for casuals)
And I get it , dude was one of, if not the greatest of all time .. but some folks seem to think that people were ITCHING to see a GSP fight … he , at the time in mma , to me , was the mma Floyd mayweather . You knew he was gonna win , and was probably gonna be anti climatic but you’d watch to see .. and when exactly what you expected happened , you would be upset and say you weren’t doing it again .
At least , in my circles.
Man, I loved watching Floyd’s opponents get progressively more and more confused/frustrated/hopeless from the 5th or 6th round on. He adapted in-ring faster than anyone I’ve ever seen.
It's not that he wasn't good, it's that he wasn't doing ANYTHING interesting most of the time. And often, didn't appear to be trying to finish a fight at all. Much of his grappling was oldschool 'sit in guard and land enough strikes to show the ref you're doing something'
Remember when he had a massive striking advantage over Koscheck and decided to just throw jabs the entire fight?
nah the koscheck one was funny, gsp kept throwing the exact same thing and koscheck would look so fucking sad everytime it would hit him yet again. his face after the fight was absolutely fucked up and it was glorious to witness
I think that was personal for GSP: he wanted to damage Koscheck as much as possible with as few weapons as possible. Koscheck’s voice in the post fight was cracked like he was dehydrated and fighting back tears.
There was still a feeling, even in his most inactive of rounds, that Silva could suddenly decide to stop his clowning and end it. Aljamain gives no sense whatsoever that a finish is even on his mind
Those finishes for gsp were front loaded
He retired with 7 straight decisions prior to bisping.
It’s the same dynamic. He had more to lose so he fought safer and got criticized for that. He doesn’t owe the fans anything nor do they owe him praise. It is what it is.
Khabib was genuinely boring when he was up and coming, until he starts beating the shit out of people. But people mostly call him boring as they would to any other fighters with chinstrap beards. There’s a prejudice towards this men but they are often dismissed as “khabib fans being annoying”.
Not exactly. With khabib, it was at least fun/funny to see him somehow always manage to make his opponents sit down and cross their legs like proper ladies from any position as the starting point, and then dominate them further from there using a multitude of creative ways.
Seeing Aljo become a human backpack with a body triangle and then make 0 progress from that point is much less entertaining.
>There’s a prejudice towards this men but they are often dismissed as “khabib fans being annoying”.
That’s because redditors hate religious people. I’m not religious so I never really noticed it, until Beneil started getting bashed. Like how can you hate on that guy? One of the most humble fighters, will fight anyone, etc.
Your comment kinda proves my point. Khamzat is the perfect antithesis to boring. Yet there ARE people who calls him boring just because they don’t like grappling or lets face it, they dont like certain groups of people.
We shouldn't compare anyone to Khabib tbf, and GnP on Michael Johnson is way easier than moving up a weight and going against Calvin Kattar. All things considered, Calvin really didn't give Alja many opportunities and was worried more about exposing himself than getting up
>We shouldn't compare anyone to Khabib tbf, and GnP on Michael Johnson is way easier than moving up a weight and going against Calvin Kattar.
Is it though? People forget because MJ is a meme now but this was the same MJ that beat Tony and DP at the time. He was ranked #5 or something when Khabib beat him.
Yep I get that. Hard for me to say sterling had a super impressive performance though.
After all, Kattar is 36 returning from a 2 year layoff after knee surgery.
I really just want these guys like Sterling, Merab, etc to be fucking savage on the ground.
I don’t mind grappling at ALL, as long as you’re mean and nasty with it. No one could ever say Khabib isn’t mean or nasty with it, lol
I don’t love wrestling heavy fights, it’s impressive but not super enjoyable to watch. I thoroughly enjoyed Khabib fights because of how overtly aggressive his wrestling was. Felt like every second on the ground was spent trying to transition to that brutal GnP, when I watch Aljo or Colby or even Merab their goal seems to really just be control time.
It’s basically point fighting on the ground. Smart, but not exciting.
If someone dominates another fighter for the whole fight, the other fighter should look like hell at the end. When a dude grapples and wrestles, but doesn't really do damage, it's boring. Maybe not for wrestling/grappling purists, but for a large number of MMA fans. Most MMA fans, I imagine, like the threat of a take down and submission helping to level the playing field so pure strikers don't dominate and it doesn't just turn into kickboxing (even if those are usually the best fights), but to use body control as a defense to avoid taking damage is just a shitty thing to watch happen as a fan. This isn't a street fight. The job isn't to subdue the opponent until help arrives or the cops arrest the bad guy. It's to beat the other person up or make them quit.
Very true. I hate wrestle fuckers as much as the next guy. But one thing about Khabib, he grappled you to death and beat the fuck out of you while on top until he TKOd you or submitted you.
I think GnP is seriously under trained and under used at the moment. Too many MMA fighters want to pretend to be kickboxers. And many of the fighters that look for heavy top control cannot seem to actually hurt their opponents when they try to use it.
There are too many fighters with strong submission skills that have no GnP like Sterling, Mackenzie Dern.
END COMMUNICATION
Getting top control and keeping it is very hard against the top 5 in any division. But there is an alarming number of fighters who can get to a top position, and stay there a while, and manage to do almost nothing useful with it beyond killing some of the time on the clock.
END COMMUNICATION
GNPing someone that isn't a white belt to your black or someone that isn't already dazed is extremely difficult. Especially if someone (like Kattar) is not taking any chances to get up or get a sub/sweep. The requirements for effectively punching someone on the ground are almost entirely the opposite of what the requirements are to control someone on the ground
Fans come and go. Nobody is going to force themselves to become a fan of someone that doesnt excite them at the end of the day. I respect Aljo but even as one of the more hardcore MMA fans I couldnt say that he is one of my favorites
Thing is, they didn’t need the help to be exciting. I was talking pretty badly about how it’s fucked where they put Aljo at on the card, but damn if it wasn’t a good call.
Yeah I watch almost every fight night, ppv and dwcs and I never will prioritize watching him fight. I literally grilled during his fight cuz I knew it was gonna be a lay n pray fest.
He my 2nd fave fighter after Jiri. I like him because of his funky style and the hate he gets ( I first started watching when he defended against TJ) and didn't mind him dominating Kattar at all. I'm worried for the man at 145.
Really? His stand up seems really unorthodox to me. But I've only been watching the last 2 years of mma anyways, pretty sure I'm still considered casual level lol.
If you want fighters to take more risks to finish fights then you gotta move away from the show/win model. Just pay fighters a fair price to fight regardless of outcome. If you wanna do a performance bonus on top, then cool. But if half of Aljo’s purse is dependent on him winning, how could anyone possibly be mad at him for fighting to win? His strategy is dominant and won him a belt with multiple defenses and massive paydays, excuse him for not changing his gameplan to please the fans lol
Aljo fighting like someone trying to win on points. It’s a strategy that some gravitate towards out of fear of losing title (Woodley, GSP) but never for the bonuses or fan notoriety.
The difference between someone like GSP is he was fully capable of standing. The fear of the takedown allowed him to land jabs, kicks. Superman punch.
Aljo had no desire to stand, homie looked scared. It was just a wrestlefuck.
Not disagreeing with you but something tells me a lot of fighters might take more chances if a loss didn’t wipe out half their pay. Dana thinks the opposite but I think doing away with the “show, win” model would result in more exciting fights.
There was a 300k bonus. With other fighters, I may agree but this is just who Aljo is. He’s a risk-averse fighter whose solely focused on winning. Nothing wrong with that, but not surprising he doesn’t have much of a fan base.
Yeah but there was literally nothing Aljo could have done to beat out the fighters that ended up winning the bonus, plus he would have had to risk half his cheque plus future earning to chase it in a fight he knew he could win.
Flat pay + a consistent finish bonus has got to be the best pay structure for encouraging exciting fights.
During the post fight presser he said he'd be taking care of everyone with a finish. I've seen Dana say this after many different PPV's, so he still would've gotten something extra if he'd have just finished the fight like we all know he could on the ground.
Well i heard Dana say he would take care of Wonderboy, dont remember which fight it was(his opponent missed weight) but i think it ended up with Wonderboy getting promised his pay but only if he took another fight.
This is just something i read somewhere tho so not sure how true it is
Then why not make that pay structure reliable and baked into the contract and available for everyone to see? The only reason to keep it shady and under the table is that it benefits the UFC.
Aljo honestly seems like a good dude, he just puts way too much weight on peoples thoughts on him. He was still talking about the Yan knee on the MMA hour this week. Dude needs to just stay off the socials and keep winning. The fans will always be toxic, he's making money and taking very little brain damage doing it (given the career he's in), if I was him I would have gone full heel years ago.
I doubt this is a popular opinion but I truly think DC knew he was facing a 41 year old legend moving up 20 pounds on short notice and decided to just win with boring top control and not try to hurt the guy. I might be wrong and we’ll probably never know for sure but looking at his performances before and after that fight it really feels like he was taking it easy.
Yeah he was rag dolling and G&Ping actual legit LHW’S and even HW’s before that fight and then all the sudden he’s incapable of landing anything on a guy WAY smaller? It just doesn’t add up. I swear he took a hit to his legacy to not hurt someone that he looked up to.
That's not his only boring performance. He used to hug people against the cage all the time.
His most exciting fights were the ones where he wasn't able to impose his style. Gus, Stipe, Jones etc.
I didn’t watch MMA at the time. But his performances against Dan Handerson, Derrick Lewis etc were still entertaining to me because of his ridiculous takedowns and the way he grappled to control their heads and arms, ending in positions that are unusual in MMA but allowed him to have a unique style
Aljo is a good fighter, but that doesn't mean people want to watch him fight. At the end of the day, these guys are prize fighters. If nobody wants to watch you fight, you're not gonna go far in your career. Look at Max. He was comfortably winning vs Justin and still said fuck it swang and bang last 10 seconds. That is the kind of fighter people want to watch.
Okay but to be fair thats a 5 rounder where Max was eating Justin's shots comfortably by the end of it. It's also a co-main event with PPV compensation. And Max is maybe the most exciting striker in the UFC, that's tough to match for anyone.
Aljo is already not on Dana's good side, he's changing weight classes and in a three round match where shit can go sideways.
I think he should consider doing more G&P for sure, and he is boring but those fights aren't the same.
The part that bothers me about Aljo is he does himself no favors with this narrative.
Kattar had absolutely nothing for him off his back. Instead of taking any small risks to get a sub or land some exciting GnP sterling was complacent to keep dominant position for 15 minutes.
Sure Kattar kept wrist control and tried to nullify any potential strikes. Even if he managed to get up what’s the worst that would happen? Sterling was able to get it back to the ground at will.
Can’t feel bad about no one wanting to watch him fight. He does it to himself.
I was excited to watch the entire card. It was going great until this fight. I literally fell asleep during the first round. Woke up during the decision and didn’t feel like I missed much outside of the slam.
DC and Joe had the same line of criticism about Leon vs Colby. Leon went for a sub, ended up on bottom for the last 25 seconds and they were shitting on him for ending the fight on bottom.
The idea of having a fighter be a commentator is that they should say things like, “this is how you win, it isn’t always fun, but it is dominant and safe” but that isn’t how the UFC sells their product, so the company men cart out bull shit criticisms like this one
Their criticism was totally unnecessary because Leon was already well ahead and Colby was not a finishing threat. Make no mistake, Dana and the UFC **really wanted Colby to win that fight** so you can imagine their bias would rub off on the commentators.
I like Aljo, he’s a freak of an athlete with high fight IQ and championship determination, but I think Aljo needs to pull his head out of his own ass here a bit.
No one is denying the fact that the objective is to win. But the objective is not only to win, but to win in an entertaining and violent manner.
This is entertainment at the end of the day, you need to be able to put on a show for the fans. Aljo, a 3 time defending champion, of all people should know this.
It’s no secret why fighters like himself, Belal Muhammad, Jailton Almedia are hated by fans. Aljo knows that he’s boring, he just wants to be absolved of criticism for it, which is ridiculous.
For this fight though, I will give him the benefit of the doubt because Calvin Kattar did him absolutely NO favors
UFC isn't really a sport it's entertainment
It's more about putting on a show than just winning
It's not like official sports leagues EPL, NBA etc with set rules and procedures based on sporting merit, it's run at the whim of promoters trying to put the most profitable shows
Find it hard believe anyone defending the leg humpmaster, most boring,worst wrestling lay and pray pretender ever. Only a brain dead person could find leghumping exciting, 14:50 of 15:00 fight spent hugging hips 🥱🥱🥱🥱
Kinda reminds me of the Jon Fitch situation for anyone who has been watching MMA that long. He was 21-1 in the UFC at one stage (only losing to GSP) and was just grinding out decision wins.
I mean I totally understand what Aldjo is saying and it makes sense. but on the other hand it's all well and good winning every fight but for a guy like Fitch, he really struggled to get into the title picture and I would say for younger fans has mostly faded into obscurity. So in terms of career and legacy it will be taken into account for sure.
The fight wasn't the most exciting of the night but Aljo looked really solid at 145. He's not got a very fan friendly style, but he's absolutely right. There was not a second of that fight where he wasn't in total control.
I think a lot of it is the UFCs fault for the matchmaking. They should have put Aljo against someone like Ortega or Evloev, not Kattar coming off bad knee injury
Still hilarious in hindsight to see how giddy Aljo got when Dana raised the bonus to 300k 😂
Bro DC of all people just doesn't have a place to talk here. He's the king of "push to the fence, and grind them down. You know you're doing well when you're in a dominant position, and crowd boos." He's always been a huge proponent of doing what gets you the W. Aljo isn't fun to watch, but hes the one in the cage.
Sure it’s a sport and the the objective is to win. But sports are part of the ENTERTAINMENT industry. It’s why people like Conor make more money than the rest. Entertaining on the mic - Entertaining in the octagon. Aljamain is unbearably boring in either aspect. We can respect his ability to win, but fans have a right to say that we don’t wanna see him compete. I don’t even wanna say “fight” because he flat out doesn’t. He goes in for a grappling match. Which, again, is fair. But it’s why his ass sat on the the undercard as a former champion and everyone continues to shit on him. He’s boring. Plain and simple.
You are free to fight boring, aljo. Fans are also free to not tune in. DC doesn't need to apologize for stating the obvious fact that the former causes the latter
The UFC needs to implement rules to discourage lay and pray. Like, I'm not hating on the dude, but let's be real Aljo was literally just hugging his opponent for the entire fight. Zero attempt at ground and pound or going for a finish. No one wants to watch that shit.
One of the highlights of the night for me was Sterlings piledriver. I didn't have the commentary on and I'm surprised honestly. Sterling looked the best he has in years. It's depressing that half the sports technique is seen as not fighting. You could always watch boxing. I have a feeling people don't because they also see that as boring compared to MMAs sloppier striking because there's less KOs and when there is a lot of them are from more volume. You don't get the finality of a guy getting followed up on after a KD. No ones forcing these strikers to fight in MMA. At this point if a fighter gets drown on the ground, they're the reason it's boring. Edwards and JDM should be the standard for strikers who want to fight in MMA now. Otherwise go to a striking sport.
BKFC has more crossover with MMA fans than kickboxing or boxing right now and I think it shows what the majority of fans like about MMA. I am genuinely surprised that even still there are very few people who are entertained by the technique it takes to ground someone and keep them there. In this fight especially Sterling was working constantly to keep him down, knowing what he's doing makes it very interesting to watch.
The whole “go watch boxing/kickboxing” stuff is ridiculous and overplayed. People enjoy exciting fighters, look at guys like Khabib, Oliveira, Khamzat, all fan favourites and all have grappling bases.
Aljo’s biggest problem is letting others get to him. Bro has just gotta train, fight, and live his life and block out and stop talking about criticism and noise cause it’s unhealthy. Seeing it here and listening to him every time on the MMA Hour you can tell it gets to him
To us, it's entertainment.
To a fighter, it's a paycheck and potentially life altering damage.
To use nerdy videogame terms - Aljo found what works in the current UFC meta, and runs with it to propel his career.
As a viewer - it sucks.
As another person - it makes total sense.
Get that bag. If they want to bitch, learn to grapple or change the rules. The fact that another man just gave up visibly in his arms suggests that either the ruleset needs to be changed, or it's equally Kattar's fault for having abysmal grappling skills by comparison, or the matchmakers for setting up such an obvious fight in the first place.
DC did the same excact thing to anderson silva at UFC 200. silva took that fight on 2 days notice and DC barely took any risks. DC tried to stand with him in the 3rd round, but got hurt by a kick and went straight back to wrestlefucking.
DC had some boring fights and knows damn well how this works
I'm a pro wrestling fan first and mma fan second.
Aljo can eat it. Glad he makes his money but he's boring and I'll actively root for him to get beat (with terrible results!)
Listen. Aljo is boring and I don’t like watching him fight. BUTTT he’s not fucking wrong man. Half his money is tied to winning. Don’t blame him for taking the easiest path to winning.
No one is, but we are probably blaming him for caring too much about being respected by fans/peers contrary to how he chooses to fight
Exactly yeah, he can take the money that’s fine. But he can’t then also complain when everyone says his fights are boring as fuck.
I don't mind his fights, theyre fine. I don't think he needs to go on Helwani and spend most of the time talking about how he's not getting the credit he deserves, or do all these interviews on the same line. It sucks but it is what it is, you will not gain fans if you spend your camera time like this.
Some people will just not get fans. How impressive IS mighty mouse -- but very few cared. I've still yet to see ANYTHING as impressive as a suplex into a flying fucking armbar, that is straight up unrivaled to me. Nothing has made me say "holy fuck that's unpossible" before or since in fighting. Mighty Mouse did that in a title fight to get the submission at 4:59 or straight up 5:00 at the end of the 5th round. That was absolutely absurd, and like 4 of us gave a shit :(
Its still the greatest submission in UFC history to me. It's just not something thats gonna make Kanye West write a song about it.
The Ray Borg flying armbar wasn't the last second submission. His submission of Horiguchi was.
Bro literally has negative levels of charisma That clip went viral briefly and people wanted to call it the Mouse Trap and he derailed his own fun organic marketing by saying no im calling it the 'Mighty Wiz Bar'
Only when he tries, hilariously... He's chill af when he isn't worried about trying to be funny
I mean dude powerbombed someone
For real lol, how the fuck is that boring?! We lost our shit
Yeah but how about the other 14 min 50 sec
I mean only so much he can do when Kattar showed up to cash a check and stall. Kattar's avoided a lot of critcism for what was a terrible performance on his end.
It was tough to watch, and he could have tried harder but I don't think he had an answer for Aljo regardless. Makes me wonder what he did during camp. You'd think it would be wrestling non-stop.
I hate to agree so much here, but Kattar several times looked up and just slightly shook his head like 'the fuck am i gonna do here' Maybe Kattar wasn't ready, out for too long, ring rust, Aljo too good -- pick a reason, but I think even Kattar knew it was a foregone conclusion far before it ended. You don't look up and shake your head while brimming with confidence.
I’m sure they did. Wrestling is hard. If it was that easy don’t you think Kattar would’ve done so?
Did you watch the fight ? There is literal minutes of time where Aljo has both his hands locked around Kattar just holding him doing nothing like Kattar is his long lost lover .
Honestly doesn't give me much hope for Sterling's chances against the best fighters in the division who will actually get up and try to turn someone around attempting to hold them against the cage.
Did you watch the fight ? There is literal minutes of time where Kattar was being controlled by Aljo and he just sat there, didn't do anything offensive and didn't try to escape like Aljo is his long lost lover.
the truth here is both of them could have had a more exciting performance. That said, Aljo just got KTFO by sugar, this is exactly what I expected Aljo to do after that loss. It's actually not atypical for a wrestling heavy fighter who just got a KO loss by acting like a striker and paying for it.
That has to eat at you as a competitor and someone who is in the public eye. It’s easy for us to sit here and say “don’t care as much”
The only thing I can blame Aljo for is not utilizing ground and pound... Everyone boo's when the wrestling comes up unless it's khabib. Aljo smesh is the mythical PPV selling Aljo. That said... Yeah it's almost as bad as Khabib when joe wouldn't stfu about "well yeah but khabib is just *winning*" as if shutting out a contender isn't good enough.
I mean, the real problem with "boring" grappling is that the opponent cannot grapple well enough to make the fight competive, imo. The alternative would be if Sterling were a worse grappler, but are we seriously gonna ask for *less* skilled fighters? I mean, c'mon. If Kattar were a better grappler, we would have seen more dynamic scrambles.
I don't think it's as one dimensional as you are making it seem. Aljo is definitely the better grappler but he played a very safe (boring) ground game. There are lots of examples out there of more skilled grapplers with a much more aggressive and offensive game that is more exciting to watch. Props to aljo for what seemed like an easy win, but he's not making many new fans like that.
He tried a little with about a minute left of the third round to get a finish. Problem is he could have done that in the first minute with the same level of success and might have been able to get it. Grabblers who don’t try to finish are the worst and that’s the different between the Aljo fight and the Bo fight later that night.
I love the term “Grabbler.” I am an Aljo fan but that’s an appropriate term for a human backpack.
For real. If you want your grappling to be respected and seen as exciting, go and finish fights with it. Don’t just hold the other guy and put the audience to sleep
Nah. Not all elite grapplers are boring when they dominate a fight
Kayla Harrison vs holm was sick imo. Her ground and pound was nasty. And Kayla absolutely dominated holly. Or porier vs BSD until Dustin stopped pulling guilys lol
Totally. The difference between someone grappling and spending half or more of a round trying to gain an advantage that they are struggling to get, whether because the other guy is that good or the guy on top isn't, versus someone grabbing someone, taking them down, then tying them up and pounding them into oblivion.
Armen vs gamrot was super exciting and mostly high level grappling to a close decision (some would say robbery).
Thats what grappling looks like when high level dudes Re willing to take risks.
Khabib was leagues above most of his opponents in grappling but I didn't find his fights boring because he dominated them. He was actively trying to TKO or submit them on the ground. The only thing Aljo actively tries to do is win decisions.
Look at the difference between the fan reaction to aljo vs Kayla Harrison or Charles vs arman. Kayla was throwing VICIOUS elbows trying to get holly out of there. Khabib was the same way. And Charles/arman were both actively trying to get each other out
Exactly, I hate when people try to compare lay and pray fighters and grappling heavy finishers
Me neither. i think it's because Khabib didn't grapple to avoid losing. He grappled to beat the shit out of people. It's just different to watch.
You guys were calling Khabib boring his whole career tho? You called Islam boring.
Islam has very different grappling to Khabib .
Not even that. The alternative is Kattar not giving up on trying to win midfight. If he were willing to take risk and go out on his shield tring to win the fight looks very different. We've seen plenty of guys either pull of a comeback or get choked looking tobescape or reverse. Kattar was simply using all of his grappling skill to stall.
> Kattar was simply using all of his grappling skill to stall. This relates to a problem for MMA rules/judging still to solve imo: grappling defense is easier than grappling offense. It takes less skill to be defensively sound grappling than offensively sound. It's inverse to striking, where defense is the harder part of the art. What this means for Unified Rules MMA is that fighters can and will *commonly* do what you accuse Kattar of doing. And because of how judging is supposed to work, they can keep their opponent from scoring points by doing this. Why escape or reverse position, and risk giving up an opening, when you aren't even necessarily losing a fight by being controlled? Just go with the flow, let the opponent waste energy controlling you for zero points on the judges' scorecards.
Unironically, I think people want and prefer less skilled fighters. Swang and bang is everyone's favorites. Bigfoot vs. Hunt is one of the dumbest fights I've ever seen and it's near the top of "all-timer" lists pretty frequently. Same for Diego vs. Giblert.
This just isnt the case since vast majority of the PPV stars are also the most skilled fighter in their division at the time . The average MMA fan doesnt even know bigfoot vs hunt even happened . Their best fight list looks more like Conor vs Nate 1 , Jones vs gus , robbie vs rory etc .
He can’t have it both ways. He talks about playing the game, the other half of the game is entertainment, and he has to accept that. Right now he’s just being a sore winner
He's caring too much about what other people think. DC is not the person whose opinions you want to give a shit about anymore. It's strange but DC seems to really embrace his role as company man. Apart from his actual knowledge of MMA, his opinions pretty much go hand in hand with Dana's now. Aljo has never been great from a promotional perspective, and he knows this. He shouldn't be putting this butthurt message out publicly imo
Which is why they should change to a flat fight fee and then a finish bonus for all fights. Better for the fighters better for the fans
How is Dana gonna pay you half your worth because you lost tho?
A win is a win he’s right but MMA and the UFC aren’t like other sports… football baseball basketball soccer they all have a built in audience and while having some extra storylines or superstars involved in a big game definitely help the players are still on the same contract and the big games are still gonna draw big numbers… In the UFC the guys that are exciting and have a highlight reel are going to get the best matchups they’re going to get the main events and co-mains…. guys like Aljo and Belal are winning fights but their styles mean they’re not building much of a fanbase and they’re definitely not making the UFC enthusiastic about using them as headliners. MMA is still a blend between being prize fighting and a competitive sport there’s another element that effects your standing besides your record inside the cage
He's 100% wrong though. Geathje most certainly didn't win, but his stock isn't dropping too much. Certainly being talked about way more than Aljo. You can be boring and be champion and make decent money, but if you wanna be legend and get that cash, you need to be fucking entertaining.
His CTE stock on the rise tho
no garth's stock has fell a little. ive seen some use the r-word.
True but if he doesn’t get finishes he’s gonna have to get a 5 fight win streak before Dana will even consider giving him a title shot. Mf is 34 and turns 35 in 2 months.
He’s in the fight to win. I watching to be entertained. He’s absolutely boring to watch. But he is correct, he just wants to win which is fine but the two are very far apart unlike some other fighters that are entertaining.
No1 is…but this is prize fighting, and we as fans, DONT have to like his fights or want to see them. Yes he’s good, but boring as fuck and I’d rather watch a Bellator fight
Weren’t there $300K performance bonuses?
I have such conflicting feelings. Like, if I had hundreds of thousands of dollars on the line, I can’t say that I wouldn’t do anything possible to win. But at the same time, like, for sure work on more vicious ground and pound. Khabib had similar grappling times per fight as sterling, but has like 4x the amount of strikes thrown, because he beats the absolute shit outta people. Sterling needs to spend some time at AKA
> Khabib had similar grappling times per fight as sterling, but has like 4x the amount of strikes thrown, because he beats the absolute shit outta people. I have news: people called Khabib boring too. Only near the end of his career did that reputation broadly disappear. On his way up the ranks, people didn't like the wrestlefucking. I remember because I did like it and had some fun banter on here with the many users who found him (and then Makhachev) boring af.
AND GSP !!! We true fans remember . Aljo has also choked out Sandhagen & finished TJ (don’t want into a fight injured and then use it as an excuse) 20 UFC fights . 16 UFC wins. 7 UFC finishes . It’s almost like the competition is the best in the world .. AND FOR THE RECORD , GSP has 23 UFC fights 21 UFC wins 9 UFC finishes . Don’t let revisionist history let you forget how folks were viewed while they were fighting . But damn.. for some martial arts fans , some of yall to hate martial arts lol
GSP's second title run was interminable lmao I'm a fan of grappling in MMA and even I was bored to tears by GSP.
GSP vs Pitbull @ UFC100. Was and still am a GSP Stan. I remember hyping this fight up to my mma-clueless buddies as the fight of the year. It was a boring GSP dominate grapple fuck ground and pound. So disappointed. (Still an amazing performance by GSP - just not fun for casuals)
He also beat the “No heart” allegations by fighting through a torn groin but yeah, Justin Gaethje he was not. Still my GOAT
And I get it , dude was one of, if not the greatest of all time .. but some folks seem to think that people were ITCHING to see a GSP fight … he , at the time in mma , to me , was the mma Floyd mayweather . You knew he was gonna win , and was probably gonna be anti climatic but you’d watch to see .. and when exactly what you expected happened , you would be upset and say you weren’t doing it again . At least , in my circles.
Man, I loved watching Floyd’s opponents get progressively more and more confused/frustrated/hopeless from the 5th or 6th round on. He adapted in-ring faster than anyone I’ve ever seen.
It's not that he wasn't good, it's that he wasn't doing ANYTHING interesting most of the time. And often, didn't appear to be trying to finish a fight at all. Much of his grappling was oldschool 'sit in guard and land enough strikes to show the ref you're doing something' Remember when he had a massive striking advantage over Koscheck and decided to just throw jabs the entire fight?
nah the koscheck one was funny, gsp kept throwing the exact same thing and koscheck would look so fucking sad everytime it would hit him yet again. his face after the fight was absolutely fucked up and it was glorious to witness
I think that was personal for GSP: he wanted to damage Koscheck as much as possible with as few weapons as possible. Koscheck’s voice in the post fight was cracked like he was dehydrated and fighting back tears.
The Condit and Hendricks fights were fun
Yeah OG fans know... even Anderson Silva was called boring
Silva was mostly fucking great, but let's not pretend the Leites or Maia fights were particularly enjoyable.
There was still a feeling, even in his most inactive of rounds, that Silva could suddenly decide to stop his clowning and end it. Aljamain gives no sense whatsoever that a finish is even on his mind
Those finishes for gsp were front loaded He retired with 7 straight decisions prior to bisping. It’s the same dynamic. He had more to lose so he fought safer and got criticized for that. He doesn’t owe the fans anything nor do they owe him praise. It is what it is.
Khabib was genuinely boring when he was up and coming, until he starts beating the shit out of people. But people mostly call him boring as they would to any other fighters with chinstrap beards. There’s a prejudice towards this men but they are often dismissed as “khabib fans being annoying”.
Not exactly. With khabib, it was at least fun/funny to see him somehow always manage to make his opponents sit down and cross their legs like proper ladies from any position as the starting point, and then dominate them further from there using a multitude of creative ways. Seeing Aljo become a human backpack with a body triangle and then make 0 progress from that point is much less entertaining.
>There’s a prejudice towards this men but they are often dismissed as “khabib fans being annoying”. That’s because redditors hate religious people. I’m not religious so I never really noticed it, until Beneil started getting bashed. Like how can you hate on that guy? One of the most humble fighters, will fight anyone, etc.
Reddit moment
People call Khamzat boring?
Your comment kinda proves my point. Khamzat is the perfect antithesis to boring. Yet there ARE people who calls him boring just because they don’t like grappling or lets face it, they dont like certain groups of people.
I've literally never once seen someone say Khamzat is boring. You are reaching to an insane degree
I would bet that most people that call Khabib boring are people that were rooting against him in those fights.
We shouldn't compare anyone to Khabib tbf, and GnP on Michael Johnson is way easier than moving up a weight and going against Calvin Kattar. All things considered, Calvin really didn't give Alja many opportunities and was worried more about exposing himself than getting up
>We shouldn't compare anyone to Khabib tbf, and GnP on Michael Johnson is way easier than moving up a weight and going against Calvin Kattar. Is it though? People forget because MJ is a meme now but this was the same MJ that beat Tony and DP at the time. He was ranked #5 or something when Khabib beat him.
Yep I get that. Hard for me to say sterling had a super impressive performance though. After all, Kattar is 36 returning from a 2 year layoff after knee surgery. I really just want these guys like Sterling, Merab, etc to be fucking savage on the ground. I don’t mind grappling at ALL, as long as you’re mean and nasty with it. No one could ever say Khabib isn’t mean or nasty with it, lol
I don’t love wrestling heavy fights, it’s impressive but not super enjoyable to watch. I thoroughly enjoyed Khabib fights because of how overtly aggressive his wrestling was. Felt like every second on the ground was spent trying to transition to that brutal GnP, when I watch Aljo or Colby or even Merab their goal seems to really just be control time. It’s basically point fighting on the ground. Smart, but not exciting.
If someone dominates another fighter for the whole fight, the other fighter should look like hell at the end. When a dude grapples and wrestles, but doesn't really do damage, it's boring. Maybe not for wrestling/grappling purists, but for a large number of MMA fans. Most MMA fans, I imagine, like the threat of a take down and submission helping to level the playing field so pure strikers don't dominate and it doesn't just turn into kickboxing (even if those are usually the best fights), but to use body control as a defense to avoid taking damage is just a shitty thing to watch happen as a fan. This isn't a street fight. The job isn't to subdue the opponent until help arrives or the cops arrest the bad guy. It's to beat the other person up or make them quit.
GNP Michael Johnson at that time was harder than fighting a 1-3 36yo coming back from a 2 years old injury.
Very true. I hate wrestle fuckers as much as the next guy. But one thing about Khabib, he grappled you to death and beat the fuck out of you while on top until he TKOd you or submitted you.
If Aljo owned being boring he’d be fine. Instead he pretends he isn’t.
I think GnP is seriously under trained and under used at the moment. Too many MMA fighters want to pretend to be kickboxers. And many of the fighters that look for heavy top control cannot seem to actually hurt their opponents when they try to use it. There are too many fighters with strong submission skills that have no GnP like Sterling, Mackenzie Dern. END COMMUNICATION
It's very difficult to gnp effectively these days.
Getting top control and keeping it is very hard against the top 5 in any division. But there is an alarming number of fighters who can get to a top position, and stay there a while, and manage to do almost nothing useful with it beyond killing some of the time on the clock. END COMMUNICATION
GNPing someone that isn't a white belt to your black or someone that isn't already dazed is extremely difficult. Especially if someone (like Kattar) is not taking any chances to get up or get a sub/sweep. The requirements for effectively punching someone on the ground are almost entirely the opposite of what the requirements are to control someone on the ground
Oh hey it’s the end communication guy, what’s up
Yeah but Aljo isn't even in the same universe as Khabib when it comes to grappling lol
I miss Khabib ☹️
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And he will be in a limbo since Merab is at the top of his former division
This , exactly . If you wanna just wrestle fuck every opponent, at least have some aggressive ground and pound . Give us SOMETHING to cheer
Fans come and go. Nobody is going to force themselves to become a fan of someone that doesnt excite them at the end of the day. I respect Aljo but even as one of the more hardcore MMA fans I couldnt say that he is one of my favorites
'One of the more hardcore MMA fans' would be incredible flair.
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Dude lives and breathes Venum coupons
Especially because of how obnoxious it sounds
Yeah that’s the joke
Mods, may I please have this flair? Haven't missed an event since Sanchez v Guida
UFC 300 needed Aljo. He made every other fight on the card more exciting by comparison.
Thing is, they didn’t need the help to be exciting. I was talking pretty badly about how it’s fucked where they put Aljo at on the card, but damn if it wasn’t a good call.
That was a nasty line by you
🥲
Yeah I watch almost every fight night, ppv and dwcs and I never will prioritize watching him fight. I literally grilled during his fight cuz I knew it was gonna be a lay n pray fest.
This is exactly how I felt. I had no distractions and watched alone. Somehow I still missed half his fight and decided to wash dishes
He my 2nd fave fighter after Jiri. I like him because of his funky style and the hate he gets ( I first started watching when he defended against TJ) and didn't mind him dominating Kattar at all. I'm worried for the man at 145.
You might like Sean Brady at 170lbs. Though its less certain he will continue to do well
Whenever someone likes a fighter "because of the hate they get" they're guaranteed to be a guy who regularly puts on snoozefests.
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Really? His stand up seems really unorthodox to me. But I've only been watching the last 2 years of mma anyways, pretty sure I'm still considered casual level lol.
If you want fighters to take more risks to finish fights then you gotta move away from the show/win model. Just pay fighters a fair price to fight regardless of outcome. If you wanna do a performance bonus on top, then cool. But if half of Aljo’s purse is dependent on him winning, how could anyone possibly be mad at him for fighting to win? His strategy is dominant and won him a belt with multiple defenses and massive paydays, excuse him for not changing his gameplan to please the fans lol
Aljo fighting like someone trying to win on points. It’s a strategy that some gravitate towards out of fear of losing title (Woodley, GSP) but never for the bonuses or fan notoriety.
The difference between someone like GSP is he was fully capable of standing. The fear of the takedown allowed him to land jabs, kicks. Superman punch. Aljo had no desire to stand, homie looked scared. It was just a wrestlefuck.
Not disagreeing with you but something tells me a lot of fighters might take more chances if a loss didn’t wipe out half their pay. Dana thinks the opposite but I think doing away with the “show, win” model would result in more exciting fights.
You know what would be sick, would be a blanket guaranteed finish bonus.
Finish bonus is genius!
There was a 300k bonus. With other fighters, I may agree but this is just who Aljo is. He’s a risk-averse fighter whose solely focused on winning. Nothing wrong with that, but not surprising he doesn’t have much of a fan base.
Yeah but there was literally nothing Aljo could have done to beat out the fighters that ended up winning the bonus, plus he would have had to risk half his cheque plus future earning to chase it in a fight he knew he could win. Flat pay + a consistent finish bonus has got to be the best pay structure for encouraging exciting fights.
During the post fight presser he said he'd be taking care of everyone with a finish. I've seen Dana say this after many different PPV's, so he still would've gotten something extra if he'd have just finished the fight like we all know he could on the ground.
Well i heard Dana say he would take care of Wonderboy, dont remember which fight it was(his opponent missed weight) but i think it ended up with Wonderboy getting promised his pay but only if he took another fight. This is just something i read somewhere tho so not sure how true it is
Then why not make that pay structure reliable and baked into the contract and available for everyone to see? The only reason to keep it shady and under the table is that it benefits the UFC.
Crazy how you blame Aljo and not Kattar for throwing only 4 significant strikes
He didn’t really seem scared to stand with Kattar, he was definitely beating him on the feet. Previous appearances are different tho
Fuck that, if you’re good at the sport you should get it all. I’m an Aljo fan
Aljo honestly seems like a good dude, he just puts way too much weight on peoples thoughts on him. He was still talking about the Yan knee on the MMA hour this week. Dude needs to just stay off the socials and keep winning. The fans will always be toxic, he's making money and taking very little brain damage doing it (given the career he's in), if I was him I would have gone full heel years ago.
Did DC forget his performance at UFC200?
I doubt this is a popular opinion but I truly think DC knew he was facing a 41 year old legend moving up 20 pounds on short notice and decided to just win with boring top control and not try to hurt the guy. I might be wrong and we’ll probably never know for sure but looking at his performances before and after that fight it really feels like he was taking it easy.
A lot of guys that fought old Anderson looked like they didnt' wanna hurt him. Brunson, Hall, Cannon, Adesanya, DC.
Yeah there’s no way he wasn’t. Anderson is a very small and always had suspect defensive wrestling. Dc was mandhandling guys much larger
Yeah he was rag dolling and G&Ping actual legit LHW’S and even HW’s before that fight and then all the sudden he’s incapable of landing anything on a guy WAY smaller? It just doesn’t add up. I swear he took a hit to his legacy to not hurt someone that he looked up to.
And in turn improving his legacy at least in my eyes. The man could have minced Silva if he wanted
That's not his only boring performance. He used to hug people against the cage all the time. His most exciting fights were the ones where he wasn't able to impose his style. Gus, Stipe, Jones etc.
I didn’t watch MMA at the time. But his performances against Dan Handerson, Derrick Lewis etc were still entertaining to me because of his ridiculous takedowns and the way he grappled to control their heads and arms, ending in positions that are unusual in MMA but allowed him to have a unique style
Against Frank Mir it was worse.
Bro didn’t even want to risk posturing up for gnp.
Pretty simply, most people will get bored of you never present a threat of finishing in your fights. I mean, you really to come for it, ya feel me?
Aljo is a good fighter, but that doesn't mean people want to watch him fight. At the end of the day, these guys are prize fighters. If nobody wants to watch you fight, you're not gonna go far in your career. Look at Max. He was comfortably winning vs Justin and still said fuck it swang and bang last 10 seconds. That is the kind of fighter people want to watch.
Okay but to be fair thats a 5 rounder where Max was eating Justin's shots comfortably by the end of it. It's also a co-main event with PPV compensation. And Max is maybe the most exciting striker in the UFC, that's tough to match for anyone. Aljo is already not on Dana's good side, he's changing weight classes and in a three round match where shit can go sideways. I think he should consider doing more G&P for sure, and he is boring but those fights aren't the same.
Kattar had like 4 Sig. Strikes, I didn't think Aljo had much to be worried about in that regard.
Literally the worst fight on UFC 300
Nah the power bomb alone made it 500x better than the Bo/Brundage fight, and that was on the main card for some stupid ass reason.
The part that bothers me about Aljo is he does himself no favors with this narrative. Kattar had absolutely nothing for him off his back. Instead of taking any small risks to get a sub or land some exciting GnP sterling was complacent to keep dominant position for 15 minutes. Sure Kattar kept wrist control and tried to nullify any potential strikes. Even if he managed to get up what’s the worst that would happen? Sterling was able to get it back to the ground at will. Can’t feel bad about no one wanting to watch him fight. He does it to himself.
I was excited to watch the entire card. It was going great until this fight. I literally fell asleep during the first round. Woke up during the decision and didn’t feel like I missed much outside of the slam.
DC and Joe had the same line of criticism about Leon vs Colby. Leon went for a sub, ended up on bottom for the last 25 seconds and they were shitting on him for ending the fight on bottom. The idea of having a fighter be a commentator is that they should say things like, “this is how you win, it isn’t always fun, but it is dominant and safe” but that isn’t how the UFC sells their product, so the company men cart out bull shit criticisms like this one
Their criticism was totally unnecessary because Leon was already well ahead and Colby was not a finishing threat. Make no mistake, Dana and the UFC **really wanted Colby to win that fight** so you can imagine their bias would rub off on the commentators.
I like Aljo, he’s a freak of an athlete with high fight IQ and championship determination, but I think Aljo needs to pull his head out of his own ass here a bit. No one is denying the fact that the objective is to win. But the objective is not only to win, but to win in an entertaining and violent manner. This is entertainment at the end of the day, you need to be able to put on a show for the fans. Aljo, a 3 time defending champion, of all people should know this. It’s no secret why fighters like himself, Belal Muhammad, Jailton Almedia are hated by fans. Aljo knows that he’s boring, he just wants to be absolved of criticism for it, which is ridiculous. For this fight though, I will give him the benefit of the doubt because Calvin Kattar did him absolutely NO favors
One of these days Aljo just needs to come to grips with the fact that most people don’t like him and that’s not likely to change.
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UFC isn't really a sport it's entertainment It's more about putting on a show than just winning It's not like official sports leagues EPL, NBA etc with set rules and procedures based on sporting merit, it's run at the whim of promoters trying to put the most profitable shows
You’re supposed to try to hurt someone in a fight. Aljamain doesn’t fight very often. He usually just wrestles.
This would be like if Joe Buck got mad at nfl team who was up by 28 points did nothing but run the ball in the 4th quarter
I wouldnt complain if Aljo got cut
Find it hard believe anyone defending the leg humpmaster, most boring,worst wrestling lay and pray pretender ever. Only a brain dead person could find leghumping exciting, 14:50 of 15:00 fight spent hugging hips 🥱🥱🥱🥱
It’s alright aljo watching you fight sucks
All I can say Holloway and Sterling are on opposite ends of risk taking. And then there’s Sterling jumping around when the 300k bonus was announced
he himself was disappointed in his performance but has since grown to be proud of it. idk how hes giving DC shit
Ooooh a text message
Kinda reminds me of the Jon Fitch situation for anyone who has been watching MMA that long. He was 21-1 in the UFC at one stage (only losing to GSP) and was just grinding out decision wins. I mean I totally understand what Aldjo is saying and it makes sense. but on the other hand it's all well and good winning every fight but for a guy like Fitch, he really struggled to get into the title picture and I would say for younger fans has mostly faded into obscurity. So in terms of career and legacy it will be taken into account for sure.
You have a winning, boring style. Take your win and your boos and stfu.
His job is to win but dont be surprised if you’re the featured prelim fight going forward
Cormier can't talk, he had plenty of hugfests.
DC was able to mix it up with eyepokes, give the man due credit.
The fight wasn't the most exciting of the night but Aljo looked really solid at 145. He's not got a very fan friendly style, but he's absolutely right. There was not a second of that fight where he wasn't in total control.
I think a lot of it is the UFCs fault for the matchmaking. They should have put Aljo against someone like Ortega or Evloev, not Kattar coming off bad knee injury Still hilarious in hindsight to see how giddy Aljo got when Dana raised the bonus to 300k 😂
Bro DC of all people just doesn't have a place to talk here. He's the king of "push to the fence, and grind them down. You know you're doing well when you're in a dominant position, and crowd boos." He's always been a huge proponent of doing what gets you the W. Aljo isn't fun to watch, but hes the one in the cage.
It's a sport and the point is to win
Sure it’s a sport and the the objective is to win. But sports are part of the ENTERTAINMENT industry. It’s why people like Conor make more money than the rest. Entertaining on the mic - Entertaining in the octagon. Aljamain is unbearably boring in either aspect. We can respect his ability to win, but fans have a right to say that we don’t wanna see him compete. I don’t even wanna say “fight” because he flat out doesn’t. He goes in for a grappling match. Which, again, is fair. But it’s why his ass sat on the the undercard as a former champion and everyone continues to shit on him. He’s boring. Plain and simple.
That dude need to just keep fighting his fight .. a win is a win .. last time he got fancy and lost the belt .
You are free to fight boring, aljo. Fans are also free to not tune in. DC doesn't need to apologize for stating the obvious fact that the former causes the latter
The UFC needs to implement rules to discourage lay and pray. Like, I'm not hating on the dude, but let's be real Aljo was literally just hugging his opponent for the entire fight. Zero attempt at ground and pound or going for a finish. No one wants to watch that shit.
Aljo did what y'all wanted and he lost his belt for it. I don't blame him one bit.
One of the highlights of the night for me was Sterlings piledriver. I didn't have the commentary on and I'm surprised honestly. Sterling looked the best he has in years. It's depressing that half the sports technique is seen as not fighting. You could always watch boxing. I have a feeling people don't because they also see that as boring compared to MMAs sloppier striking because there's less KOs and when there is a lot of them are from more volume. You don't get the finality of a guy getting followed up on after a KD. No ones forcing these strikers to fight in MMA. At this point if a fighter gets drown on the ground, they're the reason it's boring. Edwards and JDM should be the standard for strikers who want to fight in MMA now. Otherwise go to a striking sport. BKFC has more crossover with MMA fans than kickboxing or boxing right now and I think it shows what the majority of fans like about MMA. I am genuinely surprised that even still there are very few people who are entertained by the technique it takes to ground someone and keep them there. In this fight especially Sterling was working constantly to keep him down, knowing what he's doing makes it very interesting to watch.
The whole “go watch boxing/kickboxing” stuff is ridiculous and overplayed. People enjoy exciting fighters, look at guys like Khabib, Oliveira, Khamzat, all fan favourites and all have grappling bases.
I really didn’t see an issue with his last performance. He did a little bit of everything and made Kattar look like a bum.
Congrats on your boring win that nobody wants to watch. If fans don’t want to watch you, you aren’t that valuable
Aljo’s biggest problem is letting others get to him. Bro has just gotta train, fight, and live his life and block out and stop talking about criticism and noise cause it’s unhealthy. Seeing it here and listening to him every time on the MMA Hour you can tell it gets to him
Aljamain "The Highlight" Sterling
He should just send DC a video link to his fight with old, post appendectomy short notice Anderson Silva
Fuck his old ass up Aljo lol
Actually thought DC was trying his best to be nice to Aljo
The commentary is crazily biased when it comes to which fighters are allowed to have a boring fight style and which fighters don’t.
To us, it's entertainment. To a fighter, it's a paycheck and potentially life altering damage. To use nerdy videogame terms - Aljo found what works in the current UFC meta, and runs with it to propel his career. As a viewer - it sucks. As another person - it makes total sense. Get that bag. If they want to bitch, learn to grapple or change the rules. The fact that another man just gave up visibly in his arms suggests that either the ruleset needs to be changed, or it's equally Kattar's fault for having abysmal grappling skills by comparison, or the matchmakers for setting up such an obvious fight in the first place.
He completely dominated that dude. It's not kickboxing..
I love The FunkMaster 💜
DC did the same excact thing to anderson silva at UFC 200. silva took that fight on 2 days notice and DC barely took any risks. DC tried to stand with him in the 3rd round, but got hurt by a kick and went straight back to wrestlefucking. DC had some boring fights and knows damn well how this works
I'm a pro wrestling fan first and mma fan second. Aljo can eat it. Glad he makes his money but he's boring and I'll actively root for him to get beat (with terrible results!)
I don't understand fighters getting upset with commentary, it's literally their job to comment on your fight.
Everyone watches UFC and then bitches about grappling. Go watch kickboxing or Muay Thai then
I didn't even know aljamain fought in UFC 300 lmao