I made a short twitter message about the Fedor Rogers fight, and I got a lot of feedback from it, so I thought I should elaborate when I got some free time.
What I said in the message was that I thought Fedor got exposed a bit.
What was going through my mind after the fight before I wrote that tweet, was that I was surprised that Rogers was able to easily reverse Fedor, despite the fact that he's not a very experienced grappler. The conventional wisdom was that if Fedor could get the fight to the ground he would be able to finish it quickly, but obviously that wasn't the case.
Rogers wasn't able to hold Fedor down and only landed a few clean shots, but I couldn't help wonder what Lesnar would have been able to do with that position.
I think part of Rogers' success there lays in that he's very powerful and athletic, and also that he's just such a huge guy. At 230lbs I absolutely believe that Fedor is the very best in the world, but at 265 I'm not sure if that weight difference is not too much of a disadvantage. For sure he's one of the top 3 pound for pound fighters in the world, and determining who is number 1 is really just a matter of opinion and speculation. The truly amazing thing about Fedor is that he has gone through his career as a heavyweight undefeated except for one cut, yet he could easily fight at 205 or possibly even at 185 if he really wanted to get crazy. That just shows you what a special fighter he is.
At heavyweight when guys like Lesnar or Rogers get up as big as 265 at the weigh in and maybe 20lbs over that during fight time I really wonder if these gigantic super athletic guys with better grappling like Brock might be able to exploit that size advantage where Rogers couldn't.
I've always been, and continue to be a huge fan of Fedor. I love his style, I love his no frills approach to training, and I love his emotionless approach to combat. Objectively though, I think there are some exploitable holes in his striking that we saw a little in the Arlovski fight, and the size disadvantage he has against the best big men might be a big problem if they were to meet as well. He's not perfect, but he sure is fun as hell to watch.
Really I would love to see Fedor fight anyone in the UFC, but if I had my choice I would want to see him fight Anderson over Brock. I think they are much closer in weight, and I think it could be an incredible fight.
The UFC pays me, and it's an honor to work for them, but I am and always will be a fan of all mixed martial arts. I watch it all, including all the HDNET fights, K-1, boxing, etc.
I have never been told to alter my opinions, and if it comes out of my mouth whether you agree with it or not, it's my opinion and not the talking points of my employers. There was a lot of talk after my twitter post, and I just wanted to clear things up as much as possible.
A lot can be lost in 140 characters. In the future I'll try to avoid confusing comments like that without elaborating on what I meant.
I don't know about the Fedor/Anderson thing, but aside from that he made some good points.
Nogueira vs. Velaquez has been confirmed
On what card? Damn that's a tough match for Cain, most likely an L. He can't knockout Congo (or Rothwell really), he's not knocking out Nogueira. Nogueira sub inside 3, then hopefully Mir/Nogueira 2.
