UFC 223 Tony Ferguson vs Khabib Nurmagomedov April 8th

who wins; Tony or Khabib?

Kevin Lee got a hold of him, so I imagine Khabib will work him over.

Great card, which hopefully will set us up for a couple good cards over IFW.

Also, your thoughts on Thompson v Till in May?

Hoping Till smashes him, as nobody wants to see Thompson v Woodley again.

Does Till have it in him to get the job done? To get past Thompson's awkward stance? Wonderboy can be very awkward, his style is very awkward

No idea, but I'm hoping he does.

Mate wants to go, but it's only down the road for him, and I don't fancy shelling out for it just before I go away for the summer.

this was too good to be true. now we've got a mismatch

amazing this has been cancelled 4 times now, so disappointed when I heard, crazy it came out on april fools too. it's a giant ask or holloway to win this, he's out of shape, didnt fight last month due to injury, short notice weight cut, undersized and outmuscled vs khabib, the whole belt situation is **** too. huge respect for holloway though, there's nota  que of ppl lining up to fight khabib on 6 days notice. ortega accepted too I heard but doesn't make sense marketing wise.

holy ****! ufc are having difficulty locating khabib and have cancelled his media duties today... probably nothing but with all the other crazy **** that's happened..

ok they found him cutting weight apparently lol, pre fight press conference just finished:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gd0bB-5X4o0

Khabib is going to maul Max so badly.

Mcgregor kicked off in New york,, Chiesa seemingly cut when Conor's team smashed the bus window, Dana saying Lobov is off the card as well.

Ray Borg got glass in his eye from the smash and won't be fighting either.

Conor has well and truly wrecked the card !!  I'm sure he will be facing hefty lawsuits from the UFC for loss of revenue from the lack of ppv buys now that the card has been dismantled.

Sure I read that Rose was a bit shook up by it all as well as she was on the coach although nothing to say she won't be fighting.

Max Holloway is out of the Main Event now as well... medically unfit to fight.

Khabib vs Anthony Pettis apparently !!

Surely not on a days notice!?

not much else they can do atm, i'd love to see felder, but pettis obviously the bigger name. makes no sense other than the name factor tho after poirier wrecked him

max was nearly at weight and was trying to keep going but the doctors wouldn't allow him...

pettis only one left to weigh in, he could be trying to make championship weight. he didn't have to weigh in after his fight against chiesa got scrapped.

would love to see felder fight khabib instead..

khabib vs al iaquinta confirmed, pettis asked for too much and it backfired lol. not likely he's getting a title shot ever again either

felder told by the athletic commission he can't fight because he's not ranked, when the rankings are complete BS and there's several fighters he should be ranked over.

holloway isnt ranked at LW either and is from a weight class below yet he was allowed to fight. but then the athletic commission said he didn't look well when cutting weight so called his weight cut off, despite max's team saying it was going well and he was very close to making weight at the time, AND, NO doctors actually checked on max it was just representatives from the commission... so so dumb

this whole weight cutting thing needs to be addressed. it's making a mockery of some of these big UFC shows on fight week, decimating the cards.

in general yeah it's ruined so many fights. but with holloway he should of been allowed to continue the weight cut, no doctors checked him, in this case it's just incompetence by the athletic commission which the ufc is powerless over.
One FC have it right, they basically banned weight cutting, they measure your hydration levels throughout fight week and if you are dehydrated they wont let you fight.

really looking forward to watch Zabit fight, honestly think he is champ material, definitely contender material. phenomenal skillset, and creativity. took his dec line tiny @4.05, his Ml too juiced for me. he could easilly finish bochniak too though

wow lauzon got absolutely battered after a decent start. great fighter but i think he should call it quits after that.

This Dagestan dude looks decent.

Apr 8, 2018 -- 12:57AM, razz wrote:

in general yeah it's ruined so many fights. but with holloway he should of been allowed to continue the weight cut, no doctors checked him, in this case it's just incompetence by the athletic commission which the ufc is powerless over. One FC have it right, they basically banned weight cutting, they measure your hydration levels throughout fight week and if you are dehydrated they wont let you fight.

yeah I heard about this on the Joe Rogan podcast. UFC should adopt these rules too.

Apr 8, 2018 -- 3:33AM, razz wrote:

wow lauzon got absolutely battered after a decent start. great fighter but i think he should call it quits after that.

agree, he seemed very finished.

zabit looked sensational, one of the fights of the year, definite champion material. apparently he broke his hand in the back too warming up..

rose JJ was good, rose coming into her own now, Jj much improved also

THUG ROSE

khabab is overated, there i said it. tony ferguson would not for let khabib have that much unanswered success on the ground. and would of outstruck him standing. khabib is too 1 dimensional, he really needs to improve his striking, what happens if he meets someone with really good striking and TDD

I agree with that one Razz 100% seems as though people are jumping on the Khabib train I want to see him fight Ferguson and we'll see how good he is there imo. The last two wins for me a decent wins but they're not top top of the division opponents. Until that happens I'll stick to the side of caution. Has he got a plan b?

Another pet hate I have is the UFC ranking system. They're nothing short of scandalous. A few "experts" from the media coming together and deciding the ranking system. They need to create some sort of way making it fair for every athlete in terms of actual facts/figures.

Khabib would brutally maul Tony Ferguson.

khabib only brutally mauls ppl with no ground game. he does far less damage against grapplers he's faced.

He could quite possibily wisewords which is fine I'll be happy to be proved wrong and come back to say that. However until I see that I wont be changing my mind.

One thing you do have to consider here IMO is that it does considerably boost the UFC commercially/economically to market Khabib. Dayna has touted many a time putting on an event in Russia and it would be possible as there clearly is a demand for it to be taken there. Giving them an incentive to market big UFC stars in Russia like Khabib, who just isnt that big of a draw in America (PPV figures) similar to Golovkin for me in Boxing. Great fighters dont get me wrong but they just dont draw the audience and money matters in these spors. Step up Mr Connor Mcgregor. Unlikely however it would not suprise me in the slighest as it does make sense commerically. :)

Tony starts too slowly. he'll get mauled and stopped before he gets going. fight won't see the 3rd round imo.

how do you expect khabib to finish tony when it took 3 rounds to finish a 145lber with no ground game who actively didn't even train grappling for his last fight in michael johnson, then couldn't finish barboza who also has a very lacking ground game not to mention known cardio problems, and couldn't even finish iaquinta who again has a very suspect ground game, has a full time job outside of the ufc and has only fought twice in 3 years.
khabib has 4 finishes in the ufc and 3 of them are very low ranked fighters. shalorus was like 40, tavares was always an average fighter, and horcher... yeah no one has ever heard of him.
tony is a legitimate bjj black belt with cardio for days, sure khabib can take him down and control him but he wont be able to implement his will in the way he has over these other guys, tony will fight back with elbows and sub attempts, he will make khabib work for every second he's on top. im not sure khabib can implement his style for 5 rounds, he slowed down against iaquinta and stood for 2 rounds. khabib will not voluntarily stand for 2 rounds against tony. for me this fight is much closer to evens than the odds from last time.
what worries me about khabib is that he relies on takedowns from the clinch or against the fence, without them his entire game falls apart, he does not have greaet single legs or double legs, possibly due to all his injuries.
ufc is definitely marketing khabib big time, the fact that he is now LW champion is proof of this, he is still #1 contender in many ppl's eyes and by dana's own logic just before the fight khabib isn't the man because he hasn't beaten the man. and currently the man is tony and he is injured. this isnt to say that khabib cant win but tony matches up with him in a way no other fighter has.

I hope to zeus that dana sees the light and books this again, but I feel tehy will try to get tony another fight first. it all depends what conor is going to do right? these rumors of floyd vs conor in a boxing match in the cage with clinching allowed seems so ridiculous that it might make ufc think twice about doing this, therefore conor may be effectively forced to fight for the belt unless a gsp superfight happens or the nate trilogy as a longshot.

because Khabib took it easy on Al in the early rounds rather than savaging him from the off. he didn't want to finish a replacement in a minute because it wouldn't have been a good look for the show.

maybe I just overrated Khabib. I guess only time will tell!

and the Conor situation is a huge mess. Conor has too much leverage over the UFC because he's so rich and they pay their fighters so poorly.

I dont think he took it easy on al, he was dominating on the ground, I thought he looked a little tired from all the takedown attempts, so that's why he chose to stand. he'd broken al down a bit so it was a good time to get some experience standing against a striker. but he looked terrible on the feet imo. I thought maybe he was standing that long on purpose to try and bait conor or gsp into accepting the fight but probably not.
conor will be back, he doesn't have as much of a choice now to fight anyone other than khabib or tony. I think he has a better chance at khabib tbh, tony's too well rounded, while khabib could get sparked shooting in. hoping this year we will see these 3 fight each other

me too. I want some big fights. no ducking. I want to see Tony v Khabib and then the winner can fight Conor. book it.