I, like a lot of people who are a bit unimpressed with the way the heavyweight division has been going in UFC had high hopes for Ciryl Gane. A few French people I know online have exhibited absolute delight at the fact that a Frenchman was looking like the next up and comer in the big boi division. However, this past weekend's main event was a standing around snooze-fest that really let me, a lot of fans, other MMA fighters, and even Dana White down. Had there been a crowd in attendance I would imagine that they would have started booing as for 5 rounds this fight looked more like a dancing contest.
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It's difficult to say exactly what either man had in their gameplan here but it appeared as though they were definitely interested in not getting knocked out, which is understandable. However, this meant that for the entire 25 minutes they basically kept one another at a distance, throwing jabs that had little to no effect if they even made contact at all and the amount of feigned punches that were halfway thrown easily outnumbered the the amount of actual strikes thrown.
There were only 7, that's right, seven total strikes that were not thrown from distance. There were almost zero takedown attempts, and a vast majority of the strikes were leg kicks. I will admit that by round 3 I was not even actively watching the fight anymore, and instead was looking at basketball stats on my phone while the fight continued on in the background.
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In round 5, at which point if there had been a crowd would have been boing deafeningly, there was a grand total of 16 strikes thrown combined from both men. If weak as hell leg kick attempts are your thing then you would have loved this fight, but for most of us, we hope a slightly more action. The real winner in this thing was Herb Dean, who basically had the day off because of this fight and if you had the audio on during this fight you can hear Dean tell the fighters that "you gotta work!" on multiple occasions. When the referee starts needing to remind the fighters that this is a televised prize fight you know the match is just awful.
Other fighters, such as Jon Jones, who will be joining the heavyweight division soon felt the same way that I did and he actually tweeted these words while the fight was still going on.
" These boys better get used to pushing the pace, all this standing around ain’t gonna fly when daddy comes home."
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Can Jones, at 240lbs now, shake up the division? I hope so!
While I feel that his comment about "coming home" is extreme arrogance seeing as how Jones has never fought at heavyweight, he isn't wrong. Neither of these guys looked like they were even trying to win. They looked like they were both trying to not lose.
Ciryl Gane ended up winning the match by unanimous decision and I can assure you there was no performance bonus that headed his way. Despite the win, I think that he seriously damaged his future in the UFC by failing to engage or turn this into an entertaining match at all. While this could just be a mistake on the part of the webmaster (there are a lot of mistakes on the UFC website) Gane went down in the rankings but Rozenstruik went up?
If they got the names wrong and it was actually Gane hat was meant to go up I certainly don't think that jumping 3 places is justified at all. Perhaps someone over at UFC needs to be replaced because there have been a ton of errors on the site lately to the point where it isn't really even a reliable source of information despite being the official site for the UFC.
So if you were subjected to this "dancing contest" that had periodic half-assed attempts at hurting their opponent, I will apologize for both men that were actually involved. This might be the most boring fight that I have seen in a year and I was really looking forward to it when it was announced. I thought that Gane was going to be the "next big thing" and really shake up the division but if his performances don't improve in the future, I don't believe that this is ever going to happen. I would be willing to bet that he gets one more chance to prove himself and Dana White is probably going to have a very serious conversation with him because both of these guys, and especially Gane's stock dropped a LOT in the eyes of the fans on Saturday. A win's a win, I know... but in the end this industry is about making money and people aren't going to pay to see crap like this.
Dude! That was a good post 🍌. I enjoyed the screenshot of the ranking that added a little bit of extra info, too bad somebody got a job at UFC and can't do it properly haha, yep it should also be Cyril not Ciryl. Also agreed if there were an audience, there would have been some booos. All the usual medias are trying to defend Gane right now, saying he did enough and that Jarizinio should have pushed the pace. Truth is, it was Lewis vs Ngannou all over again. Take some damn risk!
I thought that too but when i looked for it all the sites have it spelled Ciryl.
It doesn't matter though, this is a minor point, at least it isn't whatever Khabib's last name is :P
This weekend's matches should be barn-burners but then again, I thought thatthe Gane thing was going to be top drawer as well.
Oh shit you are right!!! Well my bad, I won't edit my comment though, I still believe the internet is wrong and I am right haha.
I am as excited as chritmas time, I slept few hours, and I will try not to drink myself into oblivion and pass out before the main!!! See you tomorrow for the debrief, are you gonna write a post?
I probably will write a post. I'm sure others will too so i'll probably read their first just so we can avoid redundancies
I support this initiative 100%
Alright, well my post did not pay, but it's ok, that's part of the game, I am still enjoying other people's content so far!
Can't wait for yours, please tag me in so I get notified when you post!