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« | Home | »

Jose Aldo continues domination of WEC Featherweight division

By Zach Arnold | September 30, 2010

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WEC 9/30 Broomfield, Colorado card line-up

Thoughts coming out of the show

Urijah Faber remains, above and beyond, the biggest star. It’s almost like he is floating above everyone else in terms of star quality.

And then, of course, we saw a real star of WEC in Jose Aldo make his fight against Manny Gamburyan look so easy. Nobody can match his head movement and instincts right now. I demand to see him against the winner of Frankie Edgar/Gray Maynard next year. Make it happen!

Bet Urijah’s happy that he’s at Bantamweight now and gets to deal with Dominick Cruz instead.

Every time I listen to Donald Cerrone talk, I feel like I need to grab the Purell and clean up from all the sleaze oozing so freely. And yet, he dominated Jamie Varner in a fight that I have no clue why Varner accepted after what happened against Kamal Shalorus in Edmonton. This eliminated Varner’s title hopes in the WEC.

Miguel Torres officially has the most awkward telephone-pole stance for stand-up in MMA. I liked what I saw from him tonight.

Message to Leonard Garcia — don’t fight a stand-up war with someone who’s far technically superior to you. Memo to Mark Hominick — you could have won that fight faster by taking your opponent down and choking him out. Try that next time. Nevertheless, a fun fight to watch but it says a whole lot about the state of MMA judging that most people watching that fight were legitimately scared that the judges would give it to Garcia. The one judge that did score the fight in favor of Garcia was named… Joe Garcia.

Topics: Media, MMA, WEC, Zach Arnold | 40 Comments » | Permalink | Trackback |

40 Responses to “Jose Aldo continues domination of WEC Featherweight division”

  1. Fluyid says:

    Has this been reported yet? I see that Jardine received an indefinite suspension after the Prangley fight due to “sportsmanship.” I didn’t see the fights. Does anyone have a clue what this is about?

    http://www.license.state.tx.us/sports/results/Results%2009-11-10%20Shark%20Fights.pdf

    • The Gaijin says:

      Fluyid – Some over zealous Texas commission “official” (re. total idiot) kept grabbing at Jardine like some hyperactive fan while Jardine was preparing to enter the cage. After Jardine was grabbed at numerous times, he (basically without looking at the person) gave them a shove to back off/stop clutching at him…unfortunately the idiot he pushed was a commission “official”.

  2. 45 Huddle says:

    The best event in September. Better then what the UFC is offering on PPV.

  3. EJ says:

    WEC almost always has the best show out of anyone regardless of the names or fighters or ppv or free tv.

  4. Should be a pretty good show. I would laugh if Aldo gets knocked off, because I think he gets far overrated by fans as being P4P – just like everyone at the WEC’s lower weight classes.

    Show has gotten zero hype though. Complete lack of interest in the WEC.

    • Steve4192 says:

      Have to agree on Aldo being over-rated. How many times do we have to see unbeatable WEC champions get waxed before we realize the lower weight divisions are still sorting themselves out. People said the same things about Faber, Torres, Bowles, and Brown that they are now saying about Aldo.

      The WEC has a ton of great fighters, but there is no historical context for these guys yet and they will probably continue to knock each other off until a true Alpha male emerges. Aldo might be that guy at FW, but he might be just another mirage who has yet to be tested.

      • 45 Huddle says:

        Exactly.

        Aldo is 2 title fights into his reign and already people are overhyping him.

        The turn around at Feather and Bantam will still continue to happen. The pace will slow down as the divisions become more established, but we are still 2 years away from finding the GSP or Silva of the lighter divisions.

        Hack, we are just finally seeing now in the bigger divisions all of the fighter competing at their correct weights.

      • robthom says:

        “Have to agree on Aldo being over-rated.”

        Sorry you boys, but he’s not.

        🙂

    • edub says:

      I see where the overhype comes from. He has destroyed everyone in his path on the way to the title, and waxed both Faber and Brown in short order. I still agree that he shouldn’t be up that high on the pfp lists.

      However, it’s gonna be an insane task for someone to beat this guy. I know anything could happen, but I don’t see Manny being the guy.

      • It was gonna be impossible for someone to beat Miguel Torres too – look how that turned out. Same with the monumental task of defeating Faber – now he’s headed to 135.

        I know people are gonna hate me saying this because they hated it the previous times, but it is still true. Mike Brown was a middle of the road 155lb fighter who became the top dog at 145. Gamburyan is now the #2 guy in the division, and he too was a middle of the road 155lb fighter. The guys who are best suited to compete at 145 aren’t there. They fight for the UFC because the UFC offers them bigger paychecks and that’s where they’re gonna go. Aldo has defended his title all of once and even if he breaks down Manny and trashes him, that brings him to a mammoth two title defenses. He could very easily get bumped off his third or fourth time out and be one of those fast burning stars, a la Andrei Arlovski. It happens.

        But until the WEC equalizes pay for its fighters to the UFC level, the guys who can make the weight and are the best athletes aren’t going to bother. Matter of dollars and cents. And to pretend that Aldo could go up to lightweight and demolish everyone without breaking a sweat because he’s taking out people like Mike Brown? Delusion.

        • 45 Huddle says:

          Featherweights will still fight in the UFC.

          But not Bantamweights. Those guys are naturally too small to even take a chance at Lightweight.

  5. David M says:

    Aldo has the athleticism of a world-class boxer instead of the athleticism of a world class mma’er, which is to say he possesses the explosive quick burst that technique can’t account for.

    When you are much faster than all your opponents and not lacking in power, fighting becomes pretty simple. Manny presents some stylistic problems for Aldo because of his freakish strength and tenacity to get takedowns, but Aldo is so fast in every direction that I have a hard time imagining Manny will be able to get near him without eating lots of kicks and knees and eventually getting KTFO.

    • 45 Huddle says:

      That’s just BS.

      Watch many world class boxers wrestle and they would look about as unathletic as a golfer competing in a real athletic competition.

      Boxers do best what they do. Which is box. They aren’t automatically given some extra athleticism.

      • David M says:

        Now you are intentionally (or otherwise) confusing technique and athleticism. Roy Jones could be in an amateur wrestling match and you would still be able to see how athletic he is from how fast he moves.

        To pretend that the level of speed of mma fighters is what it is amongst boxers is silly.

        You know what Anderson Silva, GSP, Aldo, Edgar, Jon Jones, Lesnar, and Fedor have that almost none of their opponents have? Explosive speed. GSP isn’t any better technically than Jon Fitch, but he made him look like a 3rd tier fighter just because he can always get off before Fitch. Why was Anderson Silva able to humiliate Forrest Griffin and Chris Leben when those two guys give everyone else a tough fight? Speed. Why did Urijah Faber look clueless against Aldo? He just wasn’t nearly fast enough to do anything to him.

        You can pretend all you want that top level mma fighters are as athletic as top level boxers, but anyone with eyeballs is able to decipher who is fast and who is slow, and mma is much more suited to slow fighters than boxing is. Luckily as the purses in mma keep going up, the sport is attracting more great athletes instead of just tough guys.

        • edub says:

          Your just thinking of top level vs. top level, and not in the right way. Highlevel boxers have been competing in their craft for a lot longer that Mixed martial artists which might make them look faster. I don’t see it, and your probably in the minority.

          You could also relate this to other sports. Football players look faster than basketball players. Basketball players look faster than baseball players. Sprinters look faster than everyone (boom-tish)… It’s all a matter of perception.

          I happen to think anyone that can make Urijah look slow is damn fast (Aldo), but I also think anyone who makes Malignaggi look slow (Khan) is damn fast too. To me Lesnar looks a lot faster and explosive than either Klitschko, but that’s because of the contrast in styles.

          There is no way to know which sport contracts the athelet with more “explosive” speed, because anybody you name in either sport I would have a rebuttal for.

        • David M says:

          Respectfully Edub, I don’t really understand what your point is, and you have some logical leaps in your post that don’t make too much sense.

          You say that boxers have been competing in their craft for longer and thus look faster, and then say you don’t see it, and that if I see it and you don’t, I must be in the minority.

          The thing about speed is, it isn’t a craft; you either have it or you don’t. Jon Jones hasn’t wrestled longer than Matyushenko, but he looked much faster. That wasn’t due to any technical acumen, just genetics. I don’t think it is hard to compare speed across sports; GSP just visited the Philippines and said Pacquiao was the fastest man of hand and foot he had ever seen. Certainly GSP has trained with a broad enough range of mma fighters and boxers to be able to compare their relative speeds; I really don’t get how you think it is so hard to compare across sports.

          I have seen enough punches thrown in boxing and mma to know who has faster hands most of the time, and it isn’t the sport of Tim Sylvia.

          That doesn’t mean there aren’t amazing athletes in mma; GSP is one of the best athletes I’ve ever seen in any sport; so is Lesnar, so is Aldo, so is Randleman, so is Vitor. My point merely is that on average, boxers have a lot more speed than mma’ers, and that when a mma’er does have that high-level of speed, it is a monstrous advantage because most of the competition is several levels below athletically.

        • edub says:

          Ok let me come at this from a simpler angle, because I’m not smart enough to give a good lengthy description.

          I think you see boxing as looking more explosive because it is a single activity with men who have been competing in most of their lives; of course Pacquiao and Mayweather are going to look faster than most people striking. My point is how can you compare that specific speed to Jose Aldo kicks, GSP’s hip movement, or Brock Lesnar’s shot as a HW. It just can’t be done.

          In my opinion Jose Aldo is faster than Floyd Mayweather, Manny pacqiauo is faster than Frankie Edgar, and Brock Lesnar is faster than Wladimir Klitschko.

          That probably didn’t explain it well enough either but its the best I can do.

        • edub says:

          Also, you don’t think maybe GSP was just saying that because it’s the politically correct thing to say?

        • david m says:

          I understand what you are saying, but I think you are missing my point. The guys you mentioned–Aldo, Edgar, Lesnar, GSP, etc are all great athletes. Whether it is their hip speed or their hand speed, they are clearly more explosively fast athletes than most if not all of the people they fight. They have the explosive burst of top-shelf boxers, whereas most mma fighters simply do not. In boxing, there are a lot more guys with great speed than there are in mma, and so speed, while still a precious commodity, isn’t as decisive as it is in mma.

        • david m says:

          in re: Pacquiao, I think I would agree with GSP that Manny is the fastest guy I’ve ever seen.

        • edub says:

          Ah, I actually get all your points. We’re just at opposite ends of the spectrum. Agree to disagree.

          You gotta figure Pacqiuao would agree. He thinks because he can box he should be the most powerful guy in the Phillipines so I’m sure his ego is huge behind closed doors.

        • david m says:

          agree to disagree is a fine resolution; if this were any other mma board on the intraweb such a conclusion would be unheard of 🙂

          I’m with you on Pac’s ego, but you can’t really blame him; the country literally shuts down when he fights and he is the Philippines’ most famous international celebrity.

        • Fluyid says:

          This is a bullshit resolution. Did either one of you at least try to call the other one an idiot? Come on.

  6. The Gaijin says:

    http://www.headkicklegend.com/2010/9/28/1718417/andrei-arlovski-out-of-k-1-world-grand-prix-now

    Welp! This is probably for the better anyways. He probably got KO’d in sparring…so I’d hate to see him try to fight K-1 when he looked as timid and unable to pull the trigger as Cro Cop in his last fight with Bigfoot.

    • robthom says:

      Unfortunately for AA he’s topped out.

      He wont ever win a title against legit comp so he might as well get paid where he can.

      He can either beat up shlubs for a pittance like sylvia, or if the money is right it might be worth becoming the punching bag of K1 as crocop is to the UFC.

      I suppose I couldn’t hold it against him if he chose the latter.

  7. IceMuncher says:

    This show snuck up on me. I didn’t realize it was on Thursday, I had assumed it’d be Saturday or Sunday.

  8. David M says:

    Nobody is going to beat Aldo. He’s a better athlete than everyone, a better striker, and nobody can take him down. Manny is going to run into a knee to his chin and will be asleep.

  9. Kalle says:

    I’m really, really looking forward to this event. So many great fighters on one card.

  10. 45 Huddle says:

    Can anything beat this WEC stuff?

  11. Zack says:

    All the best competition for Aldo is outside of WEC, but you won’t hear anyone clamoring for him to leave to fight the best competition.

  12. David M says:

    I can’t believe that all 3 judges gave Garcia even a round; he literally was outclassed the entire fight. He landed like 4 punches all fight; do judges think Big Swings do damage if they are blocked or hit air? That was fucking preposterous.

    Also Zach, Aldo’s head movement ain’t all that; his boxing is actually the weakest part of his game–he doesn’t like to be in punching exchanges; he is just so much faster than everyone else that he can avoid punches simply by moving away. He has great kicks and great foot/hand speed, but his technical boxing and head movement are not that good. When he gets more comfortable slipping punches and throwing counter shots, he is going to be ungodly good.

  13. Chromium says:

    Goddamn, this was way better than what the UFC was charing $50 for. I was disappointed with the Korean Zombie losing, and wish the could have squeezed in the Mike Brown fight, but this was a terrific show.

    Seems kind of dumb that Zuffa is unwilling to capitalize on awesome fucking fights like this for their UFC shows.

  14. Kalle says:

    Agreed. This was better than most UFC cards this year.

  15. mma clothing says:

    Aldo was amazing. WEC should be put together with UFC!!!

  16. IceMuncher says:

    Aldo is insane. He’s got more power in his strikes than the #1 LW and WW. I’m curious to see how he’d do against a top wrestler, but he might have to move up to 155 to find out.

    • edub says:

      Chad Mendes would be the perfect person for that in 2 years. He’s still too raw for that right now though. Aldo can deal with Grispi, and maybe Hominick if he get’s another big win until then. Hopefully Grispi beats Koch so we can have that fight next.

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