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Thank you to everyone who voted – welcome to the Punchsports Pagoda – Rowdy Ringsports end of decade awards results I’ll start by noting my method for calculating winners, because this will come up in the discussion. For awards with two tiers of voting, first place votes were worth 2.01 poitns, and second place votes were worth 1 point. The decimal is to weigh ties toward the nominee which received more first place votes. For awards with three tiers of voting, first place votes were worth 3.04 points, second place votes were worth 2.01 points, and third place votes were worth 1 point. Several of the awards were so close that the scoring weight that we chose actually decided the winner! I’m going to proceed through the categories in the order that makes the most narrative sense for this post. I want to begin with the birds-eye view, so our first award will go to MMA Story of the Decade: Women in MMA  PSP voters decided that MMA story that defined the 2010s was the rise of WMMA. The story of the WMMA era really begins just before the decade began proper, on August 15, 2009, with Strikeforce: Carano vs Cyborg.  This was the first time a WMMA fight had headlined a major card. Strikeforce took the angle of promoting the marketable (read: horny boy favourite) Gina Carano in against the not conventionally attractive Cristiane “Cyborg” Santos (later Justino). The matchup suggested a cynical “Beauty vs the Beast” angle, with a whiff of pro wrestling. The fight itself wasn’t anything special, with Cyborg showing some less-than-stellar technique en route to taking a first-round TKO of the fan favourite Carano. This match showed that these women weren’t playing around:  Foxy boxing this was not. February 2010 saw Canadian Sarah Kaufman quietly defeat Takayo Hashi on a Strikeforce Challengers card to win the inaugural Women’s Bantamweight championship. This came without the fanfare and hype of Carano vs Cyborg, but this is the true beginning of the 2010s WMMA story. Kaufman would go on to defend her belt once via a slam KO over Roxanne Modafferi before losing it to Marloes Coenen. From Coenen it would pass to Meisha Tate, whose first defence was booked for March 3 2012 against a the then relatively unaccomplished 4-0 Ronda Rousey, who had secured the title shot on the back of four lightning-fast arm bars and a truckload of online trash talk.  Tate vs Rousey had even more hype than Carano vs Cyborg, and this time the fight lived up to the hype. There was genuine animosity between the fighters. The wrestler Tate charged right into the clinch with the judoka Rousey, and was immediately reversed for her troubles. Within a minute, Tate’s arm was hyper-extended in Rousey’s famous arm bar, but Tate managed to escape and take Rousey’s back. It was a back and forth fight, by Rousey secured a second arm bar for a grizzly-rear end submission finish at 4:27. It’s genuinely a good fight (with sloppy standup), if you don’t mind watching a girl’s arm get repeatedly mangled. This was the fight that reportedly changed Dana White’s mind about women in the UFC. He had previously said some pretty misogynistic things about WMMA, but Rousey turned him around. White would be cage side when Rousey would defended her title against Kaufman with a 54 second arm bar in August 2012, and as part of the UFC acquisition of Strikeforce, White declared her the UFC Bantamweight champion shortly thereafter. Meanwhile, 2012 saw the launch of Invicta FC, the all-female MMA promotion. Women’s MMA didn’t begin in 2009 – it simply didn’t get significant attention before that. All that time there had been divisions of female fighters getting paid 100/100 on the undercards of regional shows or having to go back and forth to Japan just to get fights. Invicta managed to get all of these women in one place, pay them some decent cash, and give them a spotlight. They seized the opportunity. The first handful of Invicta cards are must-watch MMA. Invicta 2 alone has 2 UFC champions and 4 UFC title contenders on it. The fights are full of blood and heart, because the fighters knew that they might not get another chance to show what they were made of. Invicta developed divisions from scratch and the UFC absorbed those divisions nearly whole cloth. On February 23 2013 (just shy of 3 years after Sarah Kaufman had won the inaugural Bantamweight title), Rousey made her UFC debut against Liz Carmouche. A fun fact – Liz Carmouche was actually the first woman to enter the octagon as a fighter, and the UFC’s first openly gay fighter! Liz put up a good fight which saw her grab a nasty looking chin lock,, but Rousey secured the arm bar at 4:49. She would then defend her title in a rough three round rematch with Tate, promoted on top of a drama-filled season of The Ultimate Fighter, which featured both male and female bantamweights. Rousey’s real tear then began – she defeated Sarah McMann, Alexis Davis, Cat Zingano, and Bethe Correia in 2:10 combined fight time. The hype surrounding Rousey at this point was hyperbolic. She was all over the mainstream media. Joe Rogan sobbed rapturously when recalling her smashing of Bethe Correia. She sold PPV buys. She drew attention. The real test for WMMA was when Rousey had her face kicked off by boxer Holly Holm in front of record attendance in Melbourne, Australia. Coming into the fight Rousey was basically re-enacting Rocky 3 to Holm’s much more polite version of Clubber Lang. She was devoting all of her time to media, and she had probably bought too much into her own hype. Holm hadn’t shown UFC audiences anything particularly dangerous, but as a world-champion boxer she had the perfect toolset for piecing up and finishing a fighter who charges forward into the clinch. Rousey’s career was pretty much over (the infamous pooping in the woods incident followed, and she went off and married a tiki-themed turd golem), but the UFC’s women’s divisions survived. The belt passed from Holm to Meisha Tate, and then to Amanda Nunes in the headlining bout of UFC 200. Meanwhile the UFC had established first a strawweight division, and later flyweight and featherweight divisions. Strawweight was long dominated by Joanna Jędrzejczyk, a Polish kickboxer who was for some time the sitting champion with the longest reign, and who some analysts identified as the best technical striker in the UFC. Flyweight has more or less been entirely owned by Valentina Schevchenko since its launch. Featherweight was founded entirely as a platform for revisiting 2009 and feeding underprepared fighters to Cris Cyborg. Rousey and Cyborg really defined much of the rise of MMA, and their big losses, Rousey to Holly Holm, and both of them to Amanda Nunes, were close runners up for performance and upset of the year awards in this poll. Today, despite the weirdness and occasional gross sexualisation of WMMA promotion, MMA has somehow become one of the most gender equitable professional sports in the world, perhaps behind tennis. No other pro sport sees men and women sharing the same stage and spotlight. That 2009 Strikeforce bout between Cyborg and Carano gave momentum to WMMA. It showed that women were here to fight and that women could carry a card. In hindsight I don’t feel that it foreshadowed what was to come. It had the feeling of a mere spectacle that would fade into the history books with the other carnie freak shows. But the women fought to stay. And they won. That’s the story of WMMA in the 2010s. Fight of the DecadeUFC 189 – Robbie Lawler vs Rory MacDonald 2.  Something about this fight draws purple prose out of me, but only a direct statement gets to its merits: Robbie Lawler vs Rory MacDonald 2 was an absolutely brutal contest which pushed every limit that combat sports can offer. It had blood, it had pain, it had radical swings in momentum, and it had the significance of the UFC welterweight title propping it up. And that it was a rematch (I forget this sometimes, as the first fight was good, but not memorable) meant that there was virtually no feeling-out period. So for 4 rounds MacDonald used his sharp outside kickboxing to, for periods, control and even hurt Lawler; Lawler punished MacDonald with his famous hooks. The fight had internal drama with neither fighter wanting to be the first to break eye contact at the end of the 4th round.  MacDonald likely had a decision victory within reach going into the 5th, but those Robbie Lawler punches proved too much. A hammer blow to the bridge of the nose sent MacDonald reeling, and then he oddly folded up into a defensive shell on the canvas until McCarthy waved off the fight. The finish is what secured my vote, because it’s a singular moment in my mental MMA files. MacDonald isn’t out. He just sort of... crumples. Someone who had only seen the last moments of the fight might speculate that MacDonald had given up, but the fight tells a different story. MacDonald and Lawler had exchanged hell for 4 rounds and 55 seconds to that point. MacDonald had experienced the worst that one of the world’s heaviest punchers could offer, and he was still there. Besides, is this the face of a man who gives up on the last lap?  My best guess is that MacDonald, his nose and sinus shattered, simply reached some human physical limit which no amount of heart and willpower could carry him beyond. His body shut down from the accumulated abuse of the previous 21 minutes. It refused to cooperate any more in this insane contest. It’s this moment of complete exhaustion of the limits of human capacity which makes this fight truly special.  All the time I hear people say something along the lines of “I used to follow MMA but the fights just aren’t as good as they used to be back in the day.” I could ask if they’ve seen Lawler-MacDonald 2, but I already know the answer. Knockout of the Decade Jorge Masvidal takes out Ben Askren in 5 seconds.  Masvidal was 2019’s Breakout Fighter of the Year and Most Improved. This KO, also 2019’s KO of the year, is the cherry on the sundae. Askren talked some poo poo leading into this fight. Masvidal was coming off of a really good KO of Darren Till, and had some hype behind him too. After taking 2018 off he was aiming to open a new chapter which had for some time been defined by split decision losses (vs Henderson, Larken, or Iaquinta) or upset losses on his way to the top (vs Toby Imada). His career, 32-13 going into the Till fight, was shaping up to be comparable to someone maybe like Dennis Kang or Joaquim Hansen – a dude who was in some good fights, and was definitely a great fighter, but who would never break through to the top of the sport in terms of ranking or prominence, and who would be forgotten by all but the most obsessive MMA fans. Against Till, Masvidal showed a new, aggressive style, and it paid off. He earned the spot against the undefeated Askren underneath Amanda Nunes and Jon Jones on the UFC 246 card. Even there, it felt as if Masvidal, often too willing to fight his opponent’s fight, was being brought in to hand his momentum to Askren. Most pundits predicted one of two outcomes – Masvidal would play a cautious outside kickboxing game and if things really went his way, get a late finish, or Askren would go for the takedown to use his folk wrestling style to leg ride and punch his way to a decision, or just maybe a submission. After the fighter introductions, Masvidal casually leaned against the cage. When the fight started, Askren took the centre... and well you’ve all seen it. Let’s watch it together:   There it is - the fastest KO in UFC history and the Knockout of the Decade. Submission of the Decade UFC 216 – Demetrious Johnson Sub Ray Borg (Suplex Arm Bar)  This is a great submission but without as much story behind it. Johnson was on the longest title fight streak in UFC history, but at the time also feuding with the UFC executives over his role with the company and his compensation, and Dana White had threatened to close flyweight division. He was also at the point in a dominant champion’s run where he was getting criticism for not facing strong opponents. Borg is a decent fighter, and he had earned his title shot, but he was still an underwhelming matchup for Johnson at this point in his title reign. He had virtually no success against Johnson over the fight, which was late in the 5th round when this footage begins:  Yep. Johnson just hucked his challenger up into the air and armbarred him before he landed. The other things I’ll add on this award. First, note that DJ’s other 5th round arm bar, against Kyoji Horiguchi at UFC 186, was 3rd place. Second, I want to note that The Korean Zombie’s twister over Leonard Garcia, which lost by only about 8 points, had a commanding lead for much of the voting period. Performance of the Decade UFC 206 – Cody Garbrandt def. Dominick Cruz  LobsterMobster had a good post in the nomination thread which I’ll insert here: quote:Extremely disappointed in myself that I forgot about one of the funniest things in MMA history. This is really the setup to this fight, because before his fight with Garbrandt, Cruz had spent much of his career beating Garbrandt’s teammates at Team Alpha Male – Joseph Benavidez, Urijah Faber, and T.J. Dillashaw. Cruz’s mix of slick footwork, accurate strikes, and well-timed wrestling just kept besting the “premiere” small guy stable in MMA. He had recovered his belt by taking a split decision from Dillashaw in his return fight in early 2016. He looked as good as he ever had Garbrandt, 11-0 with 4 KOs in 5 UFC fights, and a cool Cancer Boy story, was next up. The problem was that Garbrandt had established himself as a bit of a brawler who would win fights by trading and catching his opponent in the pocket, not as a particularly evolved fighter with a complicated game. He had punches and he had power, but he hadn’t demonstrated any of the tools that anyone assumed would be necessary to beat Cruz. The lead up to the fight did not give much hope either. Cruz, always a great talker, showed that Cody was not the sharpest tool in the shed, with a Tobias Funke-esque aptitude for trash talk. Pretty much everyone assumed that Cruz would run circles around Garbrandt in the cage as he had on the mic. On fight night, well, Garbrandt was the slickest guy anyone had ever seen Garbrandt took the title via unanimous decision from Cruz in what was essentially a perfect fight, and we all welcomed in our new era with a Bantamweight champion with one-shot KO power and next-level cage control. Cody then proceeded to run chin first into his opponents’ fists for his next three fights. My only explanation is that before the fight someone had injected Cody with brain chemical which slipped past USADA’s tests. Thank you Ronald Reagan. Upset of the Decade UFC 162 – Chris Weidman def. Anderson Silva  The scene: a packed bar on a humid summer night. All eyes are on the screen as a lanky Brazilian in yellow shorts dismissively dances around an American wrestler. The wrestler has been conservative this round, but he suddenly lunges with a combination – left-right; the Brazilian slips the punches effortlessly; right backhand, left to the chin. The Brazilian drops. The bar roars in agony, except for one weirdo at the back who jumps up shouting YES! FREEZE FRAME “See that weirdo in the back? Yep, that’s me. You’re probably wondering how I got here...”  This is a difficult upset for me to write because I had picked Weidman to beat Silva at least two fights out from his championship performance. For much of the voting Bisping beating Rockhold and Holm KOing Rousey were leading the voting. These two had stories behind them – big ones, with huge stadiums, and lots of pain and blood and failure and hilarity. Weidman’s win over Silva is a bit of a black hole of narrative because the median MMA fan had little idea about him. How could an undefeated prospect not have attention? Because Anderson Silva was loving magical at his peak. I don’t want to clog up this post too much with images so I’ll just link to Forrest Griffin’s summary of what it was like to fight Anderson Silva. Silva fought like he was the hero of a video game. His most recent win over Stephan Bonnar, at light heavyweight, featured Silva practically ignoring Bonnar and his attacks for 4:35 of a round and then finishing the never-KOed Bonnar with a flying knee to the midsection seemingly at will, perhaps because Silva was bored with the fight. This was the guy who the casual fans knew, and who got them out on that muggy July night. Anderson Silva brought the magic. But Chris Weidman was not Stephan Bonnar. The Serra-Longo prospect had every tool he needed to do the job: top-level wrestling, ADCC-level grappling, defensively sound boxing, a chin good enough to take him to 9-0, an expensive dog, and a veal parm. But he hadn’t managed to get out of the shadows and get attention yet. When Weidman grounded Silva and beat him up in the first round, the casual fans weren’t dismayed because Silva could get fight out of a hole. Silva had been roughed up by Dan Henderson for a round, for example, and then showed razzle dazzle in the second. But the KO was a KO. MMA badposters were going on about how it was a fix, or that Silva got cocky and got caught, never mind that Silva’s counter strategy, with a taunt-and-bait contingency plan, is what had carried him to the top of the sport. This also killed the long drawn out hype around a Silva-GSP superfight, and a more recently discussed Silva-Jones matchup. Silva would lose a rematch via catastrophic leg injury after losing the first round similarly. GSP would years later scoop up Silva’s lineal title (after several upsets) and retire several years down the road. Weidman had sent ripple effects into two other weight classes, and it closed the door on a mainstream truth about the state of MMA. More significantly, Weidman killed the magic, allowing the long unchanging middleweight division to move to new places. Coolest Fighter of the Decade Mark Hunt Barely Less Cool Fighter of the Decade Max Holloway  Look at that chart! This is why I set up tiebreaker mechanisms! Hunt took it with 40.36 points to Holloway’s 40.30. I’ll give them each a paragraph because they’re a great pair to take this award. Hunt was PSP’s long favourite fighter, taking the award 2013-16. He’s great because of his amazing late career resurgence. Hunt had been a K-1 Grand Prix champion, famous for crazy wars with Jerome Le Banner before pivoting to MMA. He fought for a bunch of titles in Pride, ending Wanderlei Silva’s famous win streak and putting Fedor into some serious trouble. He started the 2010s in a bad place, though, having lost 5 in a row (his record now 5-6), including a KO loss to Melvin Manhoef. His contract with Pride had been acquired by the UFC, and the UFC wanted to buy him out – to pay him not to fight. But Hunt had the contractual leverage, and demanded that the UFC put him in the cage. He lost via straight arm bar to Sean McCorkle, an internet troll whose UFC record would be 1-2. The UFC again attempted to buy him out, and Hunt insisted on a fight. Hunt blasted Chris Tuscherer with a walk away KO. Then he topped Ben Rothwell, and KOed Cheick Kongo, and KOed Stefan Struve. That four-fight tear would be the longest of his 18 UFC appearances (losing to Junior dos Santos via KO (spinning hook kick) in a great fight), but he would have fight for an interim title and face Brock Lesnar at UFC 200. He also put in a fight-of-the-decade nominee performance vs. Antonio Silva, one of the best heavyweight fights ever. He retired after his last appearance in 2018, his UFC record 8-8-1 (1 NC). He had great KOs of Frank Mir, Antonio Silva, Roy Nelson, and Derrick Lewis. He fought everyone. He also continued to fight the UFC in court, alleging that the UFC knowingly allowed a pharmacologically-enhanced Brock Lesnar to enter the cage against him (he lost, frowny face). Max deserves a paragraph too. He’s an always happy guy who has awesome fights. He put together a 13-fight win streak at featherweight in the shadow of Conor McGregor. His son is cool too. Max earned the title shot the old way – winning tons of fights in a cool way – and waited patiently even while it wasn’t coming to him. He won it with grace, looking forward to future challenges, and he lost it on the last UFC PPV of the decade, with a shrug, a smile, and kind words for his opponent. It turns out that the best base for being a cool guy in MMA is to be a Pacific Islander. MMA Comedy of the Decade – The UFC 223 incident.  UFC 223 supplied maybe the most engaging six or seven hours of MMA fandom in recent memory. Note that the 2010s was the era of live streamed NSAC hearings in which we’d get to see personalities like Jon Jones, Chael Sonnen, or Nick Diaz on full display. Somehow this card managed to surpass this. I’ll do my best to summarize: The card was booked for April 7, 2018 in Brooklyn to be headlined with Khabib vs Ferguson. This was a fight for Conor McGregor’s lightweight title, which had been stripped for inactivity. On April 1, Tony Ferguson was pulled from the fight. This was the fourth time that the matchup had been cancelled, now with each fighter having been responsible for two of the cancellations. The reason for the cancellation: Tony Ferguson (known for ridiculously dangerous training methods) was wearing his sunglasses inside and tripped on a cable at a press conference and had blown his ACL. The UFC had to put out a special note that this was not an April Fool’s joke. Well that sucked, but then featherweight champion Max Holloway stepped up to fight Khabib, which showed ridiculous guts, going up a weight class on short notice to fight a big ol’ Avar wrestler. Now on April 5 the UFC had a media day as a last hype push. This is standard, as Friday is the weigh-in day, and the fighters are preoccupied. The preceding Tuesday, Khabib had a run-in with Conor’s bestie Artem Lobov in a hotel. Conor had heard about this sleight against his honoure, and hopped a private jet to New York with 20 or so random Irish dudes as quick as he could, with the presumed intention of confronting Khabib. They arrived at the media day as things were wrapping up and the Irish mob talked its way into the locked building. The fighters had been loaded onto two busses and were being shuttled back to their hotel. Conor’s entourage swarmed the bus that Khabib was on, and  Please take a moment to note Lobov in the bottom left. If anyone has the even funnier shot of Lobov realizing what’s going on, please share it. I couldn’t find it. Remember when Conor’s title had been stripped for inactivity? When both Tony and Khabib were putting together completely legitimate statements for contention and he had poo poo talked his way to the front of the line? When he was off being paid nine figures to get his rear end kicked by Floyd Mayweather? Well the money is nice, right, but he essentially couldn’t be bothered at that time to defend his title. But he certainly found the time to fly across the ocean to throw a dolly through the window of Khabib’s bus. Oh what’s that? The entire red corner was on that bus? And other people could be affected by Conor’s cocaine-addled impulse control failure? Michael Chiesa and Ray Borg were injured by glass shards and couldn’t fight Anthony Pettis and Brandon Moreno respectively. Lobov was pulled punitively from his fight with Alex Caceres. Oh, and Strawweight Champion Rose Namajunas, a child abuse survivor with PTSD, simply left the arena on foot after the incident and went completely missing for several hours, putting her rematch title defense against Joanna Jędrzejczyk into limbo (though she would eventually return, yet on weight, to defend her title). Let’s count – the dolly incident has now affected 4 fights and 7 fighters. Well there’s still a card, right? Just to end this thread of the story – McGregor would later turn himself into police and eventually served 5 days of community service for the incident. Oh, and the other fighters sued him. Well now back to the event. We still have a card at this point. Holloway vs Khabib – oh at the weigh-ins the NYSAC decided that Holloway was medically unfit to fight and pulled him. Now nobody knows what’s happening. First, the UFC looked to Anthony Pettis, who had lost his opponent, Chiesa, due to the bus attack. Pettis weighed in at 155.2 lb and declined the short notice fight as he would have been ineligible for the title. Paul Felder offered to fight Khabib, but the NYSAC shot that down, as Felder (an elite fighter) was then unranked in the UFC’s completely stupid and made up ranking systems. Felder’s opponent, Al Iaquinta was next tapped, and that was approved. Iaquinta had also apparently weighed in at 155.2 lb, so the NYSAC again declared him ineligible for the title. Someone at the UFC went and weighed Iaquinta’s underwear and determined that he would have made 155.0 with “the hoop,” and so he was unofficially eligible for the unofficial title. This is how it all ended. I’m sure I forgot something:  Best at Fighting 2010-2019 – Jon Jones  Jon Jones has fought everyone, he has beaten everyone, but he has also failed a ton of drug tests and is a complete turd of a human being. As a spoiler for the final section of this post, many posters predict bad things happening to him in the future. Jones’s overall style is one of rangy striking mixed with a great top game. He can KO people and he can submit people. His only loss is via a technicality. His time as a competitor in the 2010s was defined by his run-ins with USADA and the law. In the cage, it was defined by his rivalries with Daniel Cormier and Alexander Gustafsson, both of whom gave Jones a good fight before getting steamrolled in a rematch. Since his return after his 2017 turinabol suspension, he has continued to “pulse” positive test results (not his fault! I swear!) he has become a much quieter media personality, taking wins over middleweights-cum-light heavyweights Anthony Smith and Thiago Santos. Both of these fights nearly cost Jones his title. Against Smith, Jones threw an illegal knee which could have resulted in a DQ had Smith declared that he was unable to continue. Santos blew out his knees against Jones and still took him to a split decision. Jones may be on the decline, but he has sometimes seemed to be the kind of fighter who rises to the level of his opponent. Amanda Nunes and GSP nearly tied for second place, and both were leading the polls at different times in the voting period, so I’ll give them each a bump. Nunes is the UFC champion at Women’s Bantamweight and Featherweight. She has defeated every active female fighter of note, including devastating finishes of Ronda Rousey and Chris Cyborg. She has two wins over Valentina Shevchenko, the Flyweight champion. Her punching power is unparalleled in WMMA, and she’s a powerful grappler on top of that. I can’t think of any fighter who can be said to have cleaned out three divisions. The only criticism is that her opposition is sometimes weak, which is true, but when a great champion faces weak opposition, that champion should be smashing those challengers and throwing them into a dumpster, which she does. Georges St. Pierre is the greatest welterweight in the sport’s history, and on the very short list of the greatest MMA fighter of all time. His story in the 2010s has two chapters. First, he put together a string of unanimous decision wins against the best that 170 had to offer at the time, before coming within one point of losing his title to Johny Hendricks at UFC 167. For personal reasons, and because of a dispute over drug testing (GSP wanted more of it) GSP vacated his title and took an indefinite hiatus from fighting. He returned on November 4, 2017 to face Michael Bisping for the UFC Middleweight championship, which he won by third round rear naked choke, and he seems to have retired since. Perhaps the reason he’s not fighter of the decade is that his achievements are split between the -00s and the -10s. If he is fully retired, GSP takes with him many of MMA’s lineal titles: the original UFC Light Heavyweight championship (going back to Frank Shamrock), the UFC Middleweight championship, the UFC Welterweight championship, and the Pride Welterweight championship. Fighter of the Decade Conor McGregor  Professional sport is defined by the presence of an audience willing to pay for a spectacle. This is why when attempting to narrow the accolades for the best fighters of the era, I made a tripartite division. The “Best at Fighting” award goes to the fighter who, in the absence of that audience, has achieved the most. Jon Jones wins fights, but they’re not always entertaining, and he’s a black hole of personality. The “Coolest Fighter” is the one who does the most to deserve that audience’s love, both in their personality and how they approach the fight game. Mark Hunt and Max have endearing personalities, some meaningful personal struggles, and they consistently fight for the fans, but they fail somehow to achieve that certain degree of spectacle and crossover success. The Fighter of the Decade award attempts to identify the biggest and most influential personality in the sport when considering any and all criteria. If evaluating achievement and spectacle as a sum, Conor McGregor stands alone in this decade, with Ronda Rousey’s shadow lurking somewhere in the background. Conor gets a lot of deserved poo poo, but he has some solid in-ring achievements. He was the first fighter to simultaneously hold UFC belts in two weight classes. He established himself as an Irish superstar and spearheaded the growth of Irish MMA with the bold proclamation, “We’re not here to take part; we’re here to take over!” He parlayed this fan base into a crossover match against Boxing’s Fighter of the Decade, Floyd Mayweather, which was the biggest-selling pay per view of all time and reportedly raked in upwards of one hundred million dollars for McGregor. He has also established his own Proper no. Twelve Irish Whiskey, which is good at uh making money. He’s not the best fighter, and he’s not the best at fighting, but Conor McGregor is certainly the best at filling that role of getting an audience to pay for a spectacle. Thanks to everyone who voted and read. Post your corrections below, and add any cool images you want! Here are your predictions: quote:it will get worse
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Jan 12, 2020 21:16
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Absolutely incredible post, thank you so much for doing this. I especially liked the story about being in the Brazilian bar for Weidman/Silva 
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Jan 12, 2020 21:37
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Jerusalem posted:Absolutely incredible post, thank you so much for doing this. I especially liked the story about being in the Brazilian bar for Weidman/Silva Sorry it was a Canadian bar but it was extremely pro Silva
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Jan 12, 2020 21:43
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Thanks for doing this CommonShore. Can this be stickied and stay up for a good while/few years? It's really informative and could be helpful to new posters.
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Jan 12, 2020 22:00
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Jan 12, 2020 23:09
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Great job OP!
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Jan 12, 2020 23:10
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A note or two to add for Nunes' blurb because she really is the best women's MMA fighter thus far. She has the most wins in UFC history among female fighters (12), most title fight wins (7), most knockouts in Women's Bantamweight (6), most stoppage wins in Women's Bantamweight (8), most wins in Women's Bantamweight (11), most fights in Women's Bantamweight (12), and the longest winning streak for women in the UFC (10). Oh she's also beaten all the champions in the Women's Featherweight & Bantamweight divisions, and holds two wins over the current Women's Flyweight champion.
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Jan 12, 2020 23:36
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That armbar clip actually looks like two different clips seamlessly edited into one it's amazing.
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Jan 13, 2020 03:31
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Incredible effort, thank you. So glad you mentioned the underwear weighing, I feel it’s often overlooked when people talk about 223. e: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8qBw62FCuGg
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Jan 13, 2020 03:39
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Awesome thread thanks dude
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Jan 13, 2020 04:18
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amenbrotep posted:Incredible effort, thank you. So glad you mentioned the underwear weighing, I feel it’s often overlooked when people talk about 223. Will we ever have that kind of perfect storm of stupidity, lawbreaking and incompetence again? God I hope so, it lead to such a beautiful thread.
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Jan 13, 2020 10:04
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Jan 13, 2020 18:42
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Thank you everyone for the kind feedback and suggestions. If we want this to stay as a sticky, I've decided that I'm going to edit the prose one more time to give it more of what I view as actual polish, and to add everyone's contributions to the OP. yasssssss
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Jan 13, 2020 18:47
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quote:Thank you for doing this I sent this in before I ever knew what kinda post you were gonna make. What a beautiful contribution to the forums. Sick write-up!
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Jan 13, 2020 19:01
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Thanks for the effortpost and to everyone who voted. I intended to vote but kept delaying (IRL stuff). Magazine quality writing IMO
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Jan 13, 2020 19:27
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Yeah I'm going to leave this stickied for awhile. I really love this thread
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Jan 14, 2020 01:08
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Amazing work on this thread. I voted Dada/Kimbo for top comedy because my brain has reduced the UFC 223 madness to just Conor throwing a dolly. It's like it can't comprehend how much hilarious poo poo happened with the underwear being weighed as the cherry on top.
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Jan 14, 2020 05:16
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Upset of the decade is ironically an upset to me. Thought Bisping Rockhold had that in the bag as both upset in the cage and the amount of upset Rockhold was at the presser. Upset by all definitions
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Jan 14, 2020 08:23
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I will forever view Rockhold / Bisping as the true winner because my mate put a few bucks on Bisping by KO in the first and watching his reaction in real time was priceless. That and breaking Rockhold, the smug bastard. Bisping called the shot too, iirc. Hollandia fucked around with this message at 03:38 on Jan 15, 2020 |
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Jan 14, 2020 23:02
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Yeah Weidman/Silva 1 I personally don't feel was as big an upset as Bisping/Rockhold 2. Sonnen had already given us the blueprint for beating Silva, which iirc Weidman was following pretty well in the previous round. Bisping taking the fight on like 10 days notice and having been mauled by Rockhold in their previous bout meant that nobody gave him a chance.
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Jan 15, 2020 01:27
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hey, commonshore, good thread.Memento posted:Yeah Weidman/Silva 1 I personally don't feel was as big an upset as Bisping/Rockhold 2. Sonnen had already given us the blueprint for beating Silva, which iirc Weidman was following pretty well in the previous round. fully agreed. chael had already shown what silva's weaknesses were and weidman was basically chael with none of the flaws. loads of people picked weidman to do the business. don't get me wrong, we were all absolutely floored, but it was called. it's low key, probably because of how embarrassed about how obvious it is in retrospect, but i'd say the biggest upset was tj over renan barrao. i don't think even jase took that bet and he took holm i'vm pretty sure. watching tj make barao look like he started last week and then brutally finishing him was so staggeringly improbable i don't think a single person who knew anything about the sport watched that and could believe what was going on. bisping rockhold is a close second because of how it happened. people literally laughed at bisping when he said he was going to knock his block off in one. bisping's biggest fan did not believe that. but he did.
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Jan 15, 2020 03:50
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Marching Powder posted:hey, commonshore, good thread. I picked TJ over Barao, but since I prescribe to the theory of NEVER BET ON MMA, all I picked it for was Goonweight.
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Jan 15, 2020 05:19
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I wish 2019 goonweight hadn't died. If I have time by Friday I'll look into remaking it in time for UFC 246.
Mekchu fucked around with this message at 05:27 on Jan 15, 2020 |
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Jan 15, 2020 05:24
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I think the best evidence of Bisping being the true upset is even his son told him he was going to lose
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Jan 16, 2020 13:15
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Byolante posted:I think the best evidence of Bisping being the true upset is even his son told him he was going to lose his kid always did that (except for the gsp fight)
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Jan 16, 2020 14:11
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| # ? Jun 3, 2024 09:53 |
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Yeah that's just traditional English bants
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Jan 20, 2020 07:47
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