I remember watching him in his UFC debut against Beltran thinking, "this guy will never make it, keeps his head up too high, too small, no KO power... who is this wanna be Cro Cop?" I didn't even know he was American.
Then when he lost to Struve, I thought we would never see him again, but he's blue collar, he's a work horse, he worked his way all the way to a title contender fight with Old Arlovski after beating a LHW, and i still remember think then he could never be the champ...
Then he shocked the world and screamed in awkward silence in front of 60,000 Brazilians, "I'm the Champ, I'm the champ!" He's been the underdog in almost all of his defenses, and now, he's probably a sure fire HOF fighter, about to get his biggest pay day ever against another HOF fighter in DC.
I'm glad to say I was wrong. Stipe has slowly, progressively become my favorite fighter. He's defied the odds, become a legend, and done it as a blue collar, stand-up human being. He's one hell of a model American.
Its not like he was some mediocre fighter jumping into the UFC. Stipe was always a beast.
But I'm glad you're on the train now. Stipe is a solid guy.
He was a solid fighter, like 90% of the UFC, but he was never spectacular, he didn't have a Conor type rise, or even a GSP type rise, he blue collared his way to the top, which, in my opinion, is even more impressive.
I did. From his first fight in the UFC I saw he could be champ. He just had a very solid base. Plenty of guys are good in one area but severely lacking in others, especially new guys. Not Stipe. He didn’t have devastating KO power yet, but you could see he had very decent boxing fundamentals and the way he just took people down by touching the knee was very technical and impressive. That to me is more impressive than a 280 lbs freight train Brock just running through people.
NicolasRGC - I did. From his first fight in the UFC I saw he could be champ. He just had a very solid base. Plenty of guys are good in one area but severely lacking in others, especially new guys. Not Stipe. He didn't have devastating KO power yet, but you could see he had very decent boxing fundamentals and the way he just took people down by touching the knee was very technical and impressive. That to me is more impressive than a 280 lbs freight train Brock just running through people.
I like that he took a year away to just box. He didn’t train it once a week like plenty of fighter do, he immersed himself in it and came back a hell of a lot better.
I never thought he would be a champion tbh but he did an amazing job of becoming a great MMA striker and beating people with the fundamentals of MMA. He reminds me of a better version of Forrest Griffin.
The sport goes through such crazy phases where public opinion is ENTIRELY POLARIZED around the current champs. I remember a couple years ago when everyone was saying Werdum was a win or two away from being GOAT. I was convinced that it'd be JDS before that.
Stipe looks pretty good, though. Love the guy's attitude, too. He's a lot of fun to watch on the Embedded episodes. He's a real contrast to the city folk that live on the West and East coasts that sort of dominate television these days.