BTG 145 - Unstoppable Champions

[Music] Hello and welcome to another episode of Breaking the Guard. On today's episode, I'm going to talk about the unstoppable champions because right now with Jon Jones vacating the belt, Tom Aspenol becoming the champ, and the results from UFC 317, we've had some major shifts. Uh, and I'm kind of excited about this new direction as far as no more double champs. It seems like the UFC's put a stop to that and we have some really dominant champs. And again, I'm going to spoil UFC 317 for you because Ilia Toporia just ran over Charles Olivera with a 232 that floored him. And then you have Panto who just steamrololled right through Kaio France. got him with a rear naked choke in round one as well. These are two champs that have won at least their past five, six, seven, eight fights. But if I go through the divisions, Islam and well, Islam's challenging up now for Maraletta, right? I think well, he's the current lightweight champ. He's obviously been unstoppable. Uh you have Morab, another guy that's been unstoppable. Jack Malena in his UFC tenure, I don't think he's lost in the UFC, so he's been unstoppable. Drius, I believe, has won all his fights that I can see in the UFC. He might have lost one of the earlier ones. Uh, Mago Aleaf hasn't lost in the UFC. Tom Aspenol has lost once to Curtis. Uh, not Curtis, I think. Yeah. Or Blades and but he beat him by KO avenged him. So other than that, although he's still a little bit needs to be tested more the rest of these, Valentino Tenchenko, she's a hard one to beat. Zang Wheelie, another one hard one to beat. Kayla Harrison has been it still needs to be proven a little bit more, but I think the early results are going to show she's going to be hard to beat. Uh, so we finally now have a roster of UFC champions that seem to be in the rightweight class and are very dominant. Islam is the only guy I think now that's challenging for a double belt. And I'm not sure that means he's going to vacate that lightweight belt to try to take Maralena's belt or the UFC is going to allow him to do that. I'm not sure cuz then if that happens then they do leave a space. Everything I just said goes to crap. Um but nevertheless it is interesting. Now, we got some really solidified champions uh in all these divisions. And again, going to UFC 317, just the amount of dominance that the champs had was crazy. The fact that um Elia was able to take out Charles the way he did is shocking cuz you know he didn't just knock him out. He was out out laid out flat. And it was really the first punch that finished him. It was a I think it was a right hook or I think it was a right hook. But that one just put him out. And then he got clipped with the left hand and another right hand on top of that and some hammer fist for extra credit. But he was stone gold out. A very impressive uh win for him. And anybody saying, "Oh, he doesn't have the power." Like, well, I think he has power to spare because uh that was really solid striking. and then with Pantoa with Kaio France was able to get onto the ground very quickly was able to get to the back pretty quickly and then didn't take him too much time to be able to finish the choke showing his grappling dominance in that division uh as well. So, two guys that are pretty hard to take out. Like right now for Ilia, they're matching him with Patty Pimbleton, which is I guess he's he has the the celebrity factor, but I don't think he's got what it takes to take out Ilia. I would be really surprised if Patty was able to do anything against Ilia. Ilia's legit good. Uh Patty, I don't know. He's gotten some good wins. He's definitely better, but I don't think he's there. I don't think he's there. He's got some size in him for sure. Patty was training at the I saw him at Extreme the other day. I mean, he's definitely walking around in the 190s. Um but I don't know if all that size is going to make that much of a difference. I think the skills are just different. Uh, you know, Charles did have one good takedown attempt and Elia was able to hip switch and reverse the takedown just before he was at the fall. Uh, he obviously has very good counter wrestling, you know, so it's not like he can just take him down when you want to. It's like that's a big problem as well with Pantoa right now. There's no one left for him. Uh, I don't know who he's going to fight in that division. He's beaten they they're putting him now with Joshua Van which he's good. He just beat Roy Ball uh in a very close gunfight like just back and forth. But Pantoa beat Roy Ball pretty easily. I don't think uh Van is going to be able to one stay on his feet that long. I mean the thing is we don't know because where ball in my opinion fought dumb. He never went for a takedown. He just stood on his feet and exchanged with Van who's a primarily a striker seemed like a bad game plan. I think it was a bad game plan. I think he should have at least threatened the takedown to get Van to lower his stance a bit and uh maybe not be as effective on his feet, but he got into like a slugfest with this guy. And he did like he did damage too. It's not like he wasn't It was a competitive fight. It was probably two rounds to one maybe. Uh, you can argue, but Pantoa is not going to be an idiot and try to like outstrike a striker. He will strike enough to be able to get it to the ground, and I think he can finish on the ground. So, I I could be wrong. I don't think Van is the guy either. So like I and if I'm understanding this right, I think those two challengers are not going to really put much of a challenge for those champs. Um with Elie with Islam rather and Marilena, that's an interesting fight. Again, we have two champions facing each other there. I'm not sure how that's going to play out, how the size is going to be a factor. Islam is claiming now that he can't gain weight. Like he's only gained 2 kilos since he's been trying to fight up in weight. So, I'm not sure what he's doing. Usually, for me, putting on weight's very easy. Uh you might be overtraining or undereating. Uh but yeah, just different body types, I suppose. So, I'm not sure how the size is going to be a factor. Yeah, I know he's already a big uh lightweight, but if he's going to be stepping into a welterweight, the welterweights also cut a lot, too. So, who knows how that is going to play into effect. But the other champions, I'm not sure how challenged they're going to be. that that's why I feel like we're stepping into an era now where we're going to have potentially like seven or eight Anderson Silva streaks where we just got guys who there's no one else for them to challenge which on one hand it's kind of cool to see when you have a guy who's just so great at at the top of his game and he's able to like put artistic performances like Anderson did for many years. But it could also be terrible if everyone sees there as actually no one that can step up and challenge and then there's no anticipation for these fights because it's like well you know we know it's a foregone conclusion right it's pretty much like watching any Jake Paul fight which I've never done and you know he's going to win because he's set up to win so why would you bother watching it? I don't know if we're that extreme yet, but I could see it happening like for Morab. Gonna see it hard for anyone to beat Morab right now. Ilia, like I said, seems pretty hard for anyone to beat Ilia. Pantoa, same thing. the with the the women's I can see it happening because you know both of those women uh have lost to belts before when they regained it and so I think that division is more competitive but in this particular streak of champions they have long undefeated streaks so and they've already fought their way up the ranks they didn't just get jumped into the top. So, they earned their place. So, they've already beat people in the top 10 to get into the title shot and to win the title. So, you know, that that's interesting to me. I think uh it'll be fun to see these next couple UFC's once these uh newer champs are starting to defend their belts. Although, like I said, if my prediction is hold true, Pantoa is going to hold on to that belt. Ilia is going to hold on to that belt. Um, and I know now Kayla Harrison is going to be defending against Amanda Nunes. I don't think she's losing that belt either. Amanda's been out of the game for a while. She, you know, didn't go leave on top either from Oh, did she? I'm not sure. I I think she lost the last one she was in. But it's hard to come back into this game and do a GSP, right? Where you retire and then you just jump in for a title and win. That's if if Amanda could do that, that's pretty legit, right? Uh I mean, she is a heavy hitter and a very good striker. But Kayla has shown that she's got the the Ronda Rousey effect right now where she's just able to outgrapple everybody and force her game. Uh, so yeah. Anyhow, that that's my takes on the on the on the UFC there and at least the current champion position. I hope they still enforce a no double champ thing because like I said, if Islam is forced to vacate to fight for the welterweight belt, then they're going to need to crown a new lightweight champion. And I think maybe that will dissuade people from jumping up and down. So there's uh that. Then there was a lot of grappling events going on this weekend. The one that I was actually been watching is that Aayiga where I think it was eight teams that were competing against each other and they did like a tournament. Uh it's actually still going on in the background here, but the events are essentially over because all the teams have won. I'm going to spoil that as well. So, if you don't want to hear the spoilers for this Aiga World Series, you know, tune out. But, uh, at the end of the day, they team Casai ended up taking it all. And not in the way I thought it would go down. You had Team Williams, which was basically team New Wave, uh, and they looked like they were stacked very heavy. Uh, Tinkasai was also pretty well stacked. You had the Ultimate Fighters team, which is the Dagistani Russian team that's wrestler heavy. Uh, there was team Eurotrash. Uh, team Alleó. I can't recall the other two teams. In any case, Williams the first day there was a lot of dominant victories like the Williams team won very clearly. Alleon won clearly. Ultimate Fighters I think they were going against another wrestling Russian type team and they won. And uh the Euro Trash I think got beat. I forgot be team but semi-finals day it was an interesting day because Tinkasai battled it out with the was it Alleó and it was a very close one I think it was 4 to3 and it was decided on the final match if I remember correctly so it was a very tight one and that One of the harder Oh, I think I got it wrong. I think Alleó fought Williams. Yes. And and Williams just barely overcame them. Uh so it was a big deal that they won. Then Ultimate Fighters team fought Alleó and that one was also close because the uh these guys were able to make a lot of these wrestling matches and the format for AI is a little weird in that you can score takedowns the whole round but you can't score anything else until the first two minutes pass. Three five minute rounds best two out of three rounds wins. I I'm not a fan of these round formats. I think they suck. I rather have one straight fight. There's a lot of situations in these rounds where like one guy has a submission and then the round ends and then it's like round one like well if you would have had just a long 10-minute round, this match would have been over and we wouldn't have to be using referees and decisions and all that. My take. Uh, in any case though, the finals, which was Team Casai versus Team Williams, I thought was going to be a closely contested battle, but it was very antilimatic. Team Casai just clean sweeped the first four matches, four wins straight, which seal a deal. And then something interesting happened which is um Kan Dwarte was supposed to fight Big Dan for the fifth match but since they had already won Kynan didn't want to compete. He's like why am I going to compete? It doesn't matter anymore which is a good point. But apparently the promoters forced him to compete or they say he was going to get paid and they probably were better not competing because it was a boring match. Uh, Big Dan and Kynan just kind of stood around wrestling each other, not really wrestling, and then I think Big Dan for some reason pulled guard at the last minute and got penalized and lost because of that. I'm not sure why he did it. uh he he tends to make these bad strategic decisions that cost him matches. But the other matches that were surpris there was a lot of like big time matchups like you had John Carlo with Roberto Jimenez which was a great fight good uh back and forth scrambles although Roberto seemed to get the better of these scrambles. Roberto got the back um a couple times and was able to win on them points. Uh so very good performance by Roberto. Uh he needs to be in that 80C next time around to compete in that division because again John Carlo is a two-time champ and obviously he has what it takes to be able to beat him. Now, the rule sets make everything. And John Carlo is notoriously a slow starter, so I'm not sure if the round format favors him versus doing a one long round where he kind of builds into it. Uh, but they had a lot of stars on this one and I honestly it's like 50 or something matches, so I'm not going to be able to recite them out, but you know, you had PJ Bar in there, you had Diego Pau in there, uh, you had good performances by Dominic Mahia. Um, so, uh, a lot of good matches. So, it's free on YouTube, so you guys can check it out and they have all the streams on there and you can just fast forward pretty easily. But uh some good action there. But I don't know. This is one of the drawbacks of this team format to me, which is this situation where you have one team that wins four matches straight. No one else really wants to compete. Like the winners don't want to compete cuz they already got the win, you know? And it's from a career standpoint, I get it. Like you don't have anything to gain. You have a lot to lose because what if you get hurt in that match? Now, uh you got hurt for nothing really. Uh especially if you're someone like Kynan who already has a name as a defending champion, fighting a challenger when there's no incentive to do it, it's not great. Uh but in any case, um I'm not a fan. Like I said, there's a lot of these team formats and they're doing rounds. I don't like the rounds. I don't like the teams. Not because I don't like teams. I actually would prefer it. It was real teams. A lot of these have mixed athletes from all sorts of countries. So, it's not really a team as it is as it is like a Final Fantasy team, right? Like I get to pick, you know, people from all sorts of different teams and make it like quoteunquote my team. To me, the appeal of a team is seeing which style of coaching and, you know, strategy is best. But you can only get that if everyone's training inhouse on the same roof, right? And there's no reason why they couldn't do done this. You have I mean team Williams was almost a team New Wave or Kingsway, but they had some of their guys actually in team Casai. Um I think Olivivera was in there. Oliviveres, right? uh the small wrestler kid. He was in there and I think one of the other guys was in another uh team. So it's like seems like we could have just made one squad team new wave. You could have made one squad, you know, at Kynan and Mourinho and all those guys in there or I think Marin's Gracie Baha, but whatever. I mean there's enough teams that you can make pure teams because then there's like to me one anybody who's part of that affiliation is going to be tuning in and some of those like Gracie Baja has a huge affiliation Alto's huge affiliation they could have gotten like Zanith or something like that these big affiliations and now you have all their you know affiliate schools and whatnot wanting to watch their show. Uh, so that's one thing. And then the other thing is now there's actual stakes because even like it's not just about the money, it's about repping your team. I know back in the day Kip Kler did a Naga Prom tournament where it was four teams. It was American Top Team, Team Lurvin, um, our team Freestyle Fight Academy, and Henzo Gracie. So it was like a dual me tournament. So we went two matches. I think we were teamed up. We were faced off against Hanzo Gracie. It was all Hanzo guys. Uh we beat team Henzo Gracie. And then on the other side Lloyd and American Top Team, American Top Team won and then we faced American Top Team in the finals. And I can tell you those matches were at least as the competitor, they were heated. It was a high stakes, you know, especially since America Top Team was another Florida team and it was like a rival of ours at the time. So, we were, you know, everybody was pretty riled up. They ended up winning uh the dual meet, but it was a lot of fun and at least as a competitor, I felt very invested in all the matches because these are all my guys. But if you were to team me up with three random dudes that, you know, maybe I've competed with or, you know, I've seen around the tournament circuit, I wouldn't really care as much because it's like we never train together. We just flew into this, you know, country in the Middle East and now we're going to Mediterranean, I guess, and compete as a team. So I and you know, CJI is kind of doing the same thing. They're going by countries, which I guess is better, but then they're also getting, you know, like Hugo Darte is an Australian team. It's like, how does that make sense? Or it to me it's dumb. It's like just make it purely a team. I don't like this fan fantasy Like I I don't even know how Final Fantasy uh fantasy football style picking, you know, where you just pick, you know, whoever you want to be in your team. Like no, no, let's get real team. Like if they because you had DeAndre Corb in one of the teams I think he was in Alleó, right? It's like get all the eco guys in number one team, right? All the guys from Greg Sers. Let's let him prove his worth, right? I've criticized it, but like DeAndre is legit. He did very well here. Like there could be something to it. Let him put his squad together. You know, get the ATS guys, get the 10th Planet guys. Like there's so many great teams that have heavy rosters. There's no reason we have to final, you know, fantasy league this thing. Just make it real. I think that would be a lot better. It will also be a lot more telling on like what styles that we need to be working on, right? Is the new wave style the best or is it just for Gordon, right? is, you know, the ATOS, you know, way like Kainan being double gold, you know, is he the best or is it just, you know, it's just him. The rest of the team sucks. It's not true, but I'm just saying like, let's figure that out because not only does that help those schools because obviously if they win these things, people might want to be training with them. But it's a signal for the whole competition circuit like, hey, obviously these guys that won this thing, their team had a solid performance that beat everybody. They obviously have winning strategies and we need to start trying to emulate them or integrate them into our game. And that's only going to or we have to learn how to defeat those strategies so that we can negate them. Either way, it's going to advance. It's going to be a bigger signal to advance the all the collective world of martial arts. But if it's just random scattering of people, it's hard it's harder to read that signal. You have to be a little more clever because you have to be looking very deeply at each individ individual matchup and understand like who's coming from where. I don't know. That's my take on it. Anyhow, that's all I have for you guys. And I'll see you all next