Why u think so many 30+ yr old champs/contenders?

My gut feeling is that it's a problem with training.

The top 5, and depending on division, top 10 all possess dangerous skills. World class wrestling, or elite striking skills. These people are world and Olympic champions in other sports.

I feel like young guys are "getting into MMA" too early, so they're relatively non-dangerous. It's the difference between predator and prey. The older generation who focused less on MMA... we line up the young guys and they knock another one down.

For the record, I still think it's important to train MMA fundamentals. But I think the shift away from dangerous skills is the reason that the top 10 tends to be filled with older guys.

economics probably has something to do with it. Before Reebok it was possible for a fighter to pay the bills while working toward a title shot promising bigger paydays. Between Reebok, WME, fighers leaving for other orgs and the UFC cutting fighters and staff after the sale, its starting to look like the funnel of young talent is collapsing.

Athletes hit their prime around 30. And since power is the last thing to go, the higher weight guys tend to be able to go into their 40's. 

Something that has been touched on some here, but not in depth, is experience. For most sports, people who are dominant athletes are starting early, and focused primarily on that sport by 12-14.

People can practice the foundational sports for MMA at younger ages, but they generally don't get real, in cage, experience (in the US anyway) until they are over 18.

That keeps them from getting name recognition built up at younger ages, which delays their entry into the higher levels of sports.

Just a thought, may not have any basis to it, but seems logical.

Its not till your 30s that you come into your prime. People not understanding this need to realize not everyone is on PEDs and not everyone was taking them at a young age. When testing makes a severe drop in performance it means you were prob on the juice early on and now your body can't perform the way it should naturally.

I think strength and technique still improve into 30s. Important in a grapple heavy sport

The ability to recover from hard training starts to go down dramatically around age 28. By their 30s a (clean) athlete has to alter and lessen how hard they train. 

Physically, after your mid 20s it's all downhill in terms of performances except for when it comes to strength. You can keep getting stronger until around 40.

 

It's pretty simple IMO.

The thing that separates the elite from the very good is defense.

If you look at the champs, pretty much all of them are tough to hit, tough to control, and usually tough to finish.

Everyone learns offense early on. You can practice offense against bags, mirrors, mitts, and dummies.

Defense you learn some in sparring, but you cant recreate a real fight. Nothing beats actual fight experience when it comes to defense.

Unfortunately, it's not long lived. When you get too old, you lose reaction time. And when you take too many punches, you get rocked easier.

Man strength

Male physical prime is early 30s. 

LateStart - 

Male physical prime is early 30s. 



This is not true. Test starts to take a shit around 30. Male physical prime is more like 22-27.



Men tend to be their strongest in their 30s due to the amount of years they've spent lifting. Every other measurable attribute falls off hard around 30. 



The general consensus in non combat sports is that 27 is an athlete's prime. 



Once PED (steroids and speed) testing became mandatory in baseball, it became a different sport. Home runs went down dramatically, young players dominated, old guys fell off a cliff, pitching dominated hitting, and 30 meant that a player was on the downside. 2016 was the year the drugs got better than the tests. Home runs were way up, an insane amount of pitchers are throwing 97+, older players were having career years, etc. Once the tests catch up, the numbers will go down again...until the next undetectable drug comes to the market



Over 30 and performing better than ever? Either you sucked before, or you're using something.

Bobby Lupo -
BruteDion - 
Bobby Lupo -
BruteDion - 
Bobby Lupo -
BruteDion - 
Bobby Lupo -


This is fascinating. None of those champions are really attributte based fighters. They're either very well rounded: Mighty Mouse, Stipe, Cormier, Woodley, or very good at the one thing they do: Conor and Joanna, 



Guys like Silva, Vitor, GSP, Rumble, etc. rely on their physical attributes more than a mastery of any one area of the game. 

IDK bout the that in terms of the guys you lised.

Silva is a master Muay Thai guy for mma. His mastery of striking is what cared him so long after his prime. As i said before, power is normally the last thing to go on a fighter. The first 2 things are reflexes and pure speed. His peak in thos areas were long ago. He would not still be fighting well today if he was not a master striker.

GSP was a great athlete but he was a great wrestler aswell.



I'm going to both agree and disagree about Silva. He's an elite strikier for MMA no question, and during his run of dominance he was a MT specialist with a BJJ BB



Anderson hasn't won a fight in 5 years. Against Leben and Franklin, Silva was the most dangerous man in the clinch. He was frighteningly accurate. Contrast with Silva getting uppercutted by Brunson last night in a clinch Anderson initiated. Anderson stopped being a Muay Thai master in the cage over a decade ago. He abandoned his clinch game for years.



Anderson was a reflex fighter like Roy Jones. It allowed him to do all that Matrix shit and clown guys as badly as he did former LHW champ Forrest Griffin. But, once age slowed him down, he couldn't play the same game against Chris Weidman. He was just a hundreth of a second slower, but that's the difference between highlight reel defense, and being the victim of a highlight reel KO.



Anderson was also a known casualty of USADA

I agree somewhat.

But you said he relied on physical attributes. So which is it? Does he rely on them or not?

My whole post was to say he didnt rely on them because he was a master striker aswell. Im not saying he didnt rely on physical skills. Fact is he had top levels of both. He was an amazing blend of Skill meets Talent. And when old age robbed him of his talent as reflexes, he now only has his skills in the stiking arts.

Your first post said he relyed on his physical talents. So which is it?



He was an attribute guy. He gets away with that clowning vs Weidman if he was 31 instead of 38. 



The Silva that used Muay Thai so beautifully against Leben and Franklin abandoned that art when Affliction shirts were still popular. He flirted with boxing, TKD, and other TMA striking arts. 



His speed, power, and reflexes allowed him to do that. 

So his early success had nothing to do with him being amazing MT guy for mma?

It was all physical gifts? lol ok dude.

Thats why MT coaches were speaking high of him back in the day when he was walking through guys like Rich Franklin through Vitor.

If you are right that it was pure physical, then how come he lost before he was UFC champ? Did somehow over night his reflexes get better as he got older? Or was it that he started to perfect his style?



For some reason, and we can speculate as to why all day long, the 30-year-old Anderson Silva with all that Chute Boxe mileage was somehow 10x the fighter he was in Pride and Cage Rage against lesser fighters. He fought Leben and Franklin with a Muay Thai for MMA gameplan, and he massacared them in the most dominant perfomances. Then, he goes on to unify the UFC and Pride titles by submitting all time great Dan Henderson, and fucks Franklin's world up again. Apart from that weird Lutter fight mixed in there, Anderson looked perfect. 



He almost completely abandons his MT game after the Franklin rematch, and gets obsessed with boxing, the idea of fighting Roy Jones, showboating, and TMA. The version of Silva who destroyed LHWs Griffin, Bonnar, and Irwin, did it with pure attributes. He was playing Roy Jones in the Forrest fight, and he pulled it off. He fucked around against Maia and Leites, kicked Vitor's face off, had that epic Chael fight. 



Things were going great. He was beating Weidman up. He used the same boxing and clowning formula that worked against all those other guys...except, he was older, and slower, and Weidman was in his prime, and capitalized on Silva's mistake in showboating. 



Anderson got away with all that bullshit when he was younger and his competition wasn't ready to hit him when he was doing that Ali/RJJ shit. He got old. His reflexes slipped, even Ali after the suspension, in his late 20s, stopped fighting like 22-year-old Ali. 



 



 

Sop then you admit your wrong? You went from saying it was all physical to saying he did win using some MT skills.

Hogzilla -
BruteDion -

Also the age of a HW matters little compared to the other weights classes.

The last thing to go for a fighter normally is his power. If you have power(and most every HW does) then you can train, knowing that it will not be gone form you anytime soon.

This is why Fedor is not a goat cause he lost a bunch in early to mid 30's

Well that depends on how you used the term GOAT. Some people think of the most skilled person ever and on any night could win a fight against anyone ever or they view it as the most accomplished  and beat the most skilled people.

 

Using the second reasoning for GOAT I think he is the GOAt for the long list of people he beat and being a champ.

But I dont think hes the HW GOAT using the first reasoning. I think he loses to Cain and Werdum in his prime. 

He did have power but not top level power like guys like Carwin-JDS-Overeem-Igor-Mirko-Hunt but he was able to hang and beat some of the guys I listed.

He was wellrounded and as a HW that speaks volumes because there are not many well-rounded HW who walk the planet.

BruteDion - 
Bobby Lupo -
BruteDion - 
Bobby Lupo -
BruteDion - 
Bobby Lupo -
BruteDion - 
Bobby Lupo -


This is fascinating. None of those champions are really attributte based fighters. They're either very well rounded: Mighty Mouse, Stipe, Cormier, Woodley, or very good at the one thing they do: Conor and Joanna, 



Guys like Silva, Vitor, GSP, Rumble, etc. rely on their physical attributes more than a mastery of any one area of the game. 

IDK bout the that in terms of the guys you lised.

Silva is a master Muay Thai guy for mma. His mastery of striking is what cared him so long after his prime. As i said before, power is normally the last thing to go on a fighter. The first 2 things are reflexes and pure speed. His peak in thos areas were long ago. He would not still be fighting well today if he was not a master striker.

GSP was a great athlete but he was a great wrestler aswell.



I'm going to both agree and disagree about Silva. He's an elite strikier for MMA no question, and during his run of dominance he was a MT specialist with a BJJ BB



Anderson hasn't won a fight in 5 years. Against Leben and Franklin, Silva was the most dangerous man in the clinch. He was frighteningly accurate. Contrast with Silva getting uppercutted by Brunson last night in a clinch Anderson initiated. Anderson stopped being a Muay Thai master in the cage over a decade ago. He abandoned his clinch game for years.



Anderson was a reflex fighter like Roy Jones. It allowed him to do all that Matrix shit and clown guys as badly as he did former LHW champ Forrest Griffin. But, once age slowed him down, he couldn't play the same game against Chris Weidman. He was just a hundreth of a second slower, but that's the difference between highlight reel defense, and being the victim of a highlight reel KO.



Anderson was also a known casualty of USADA

I agree somewhat.

But you said he relied on physical attributes. So which is it? Does he rely on them or not?

My whole post was to say he didnt rely on them because he was a master striker aswell. Im not saying he didnt rely on physical skills. Fact is he had top levels of both. He was an amazing blend of Skill meets Talent. And when old age robbed him of his talent as reflexes, he now only has his skills in the stiking arts.

Your first post said he relyed on his physical talents. So which is it?



He was an attribute guy. He gets away with that clowning vs Weidman if he was 31 instead of 38. 



The Silva that used Muay Thai so beautifully against Leben and Franklin abandoned that art when Affliction shirts were still popular. He flirted with boxing, TKD, and other TMA striking arts. 



His speed, power, and reflexes allowed him to do that. 

So his early success had nothing to do with him being amazing MT guy for mma?

It was all physical gifts? lol ok dude.

Thats why MT coaches were speaking high of him back in the day when he was walking through guys like Rich Franklin through Vitor.

If you are right that it was pure physical, then how come he lost before he was UFC champ? Did somehow over night his reflexes get better as he got older? Or was it that he started to perfect his style?



For some reason, and we can speculate as to why all day long, the 30-year-old Anderson Silva with all that Chute Boxe mileage was somehow 10x the fighter he was in Pride and Cage Rage against lesser fighters. He fought Leben and Franklin with a Muay Thai for MMA gameplan, and he massacared them in the most dominant perfomances. Then, he goes on to unify the UFC and Pride titles by submitting all time great Dan Henderson, and fucks Franklin's world up again. Apart from that weird Lutter fight mixed in there, Anderson looked perfect. 



He almost completely abandons his MT game after the Franklin rematch, and gets obsessed with boxing, the idea of fighting Roy Jones, showboating, and TMA. The version of Silva who destroyed LHWs Griffin, Bonnar, and Irwin, did it with pure attributes. He was playing Roy Jones in the Forrest fight, and he pulled it off. He fucked around against Maia and Leites, kicked Vitor's face off, had that epic Chael fight. 



Things were going great. He was beating Weidman up. He used the same boxing and clowning formula that worked against all those other guys...except, he was older, and slower, and Weidman was in his prime, and capitalized on Silva's mistake in showboating. 



Anderson got away with all that bullshit when he was younger and his competition wasn't ready to hit him when he was doing that Ali/RJJ shit. He got old. His reflexes slipped, even Ali after the suspension, in his late 20s, stopped fighting like 22-year-old Ali. 



 



 

Sop then you admit your wrong? You went from saying it was all physical to saying he did win using some MT skills.



Are you Autistic, or just dense? He stopped using MT 10 fucking years ago.