Mushroom Slap - is every boxer like Ali now?
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Im still amazed he knocked out Griffin with that leaning punch. I kinda want Silva to hit me just because im so curious as to how hard his punches really are.
I think a lot of you are missing the point. Yes, there will be other fighters in the years and generations to come that will be just as skilled and revolutionary as Anderson Silva currently is.
The question is will fighters with Andersons skill ever be the "norm", and the answer is no.
You use the Big O to Jordan to Kobe/James example, but again the point is that in each generation there were only a couple of guys at this elite level. It's never been the "norm" for the NBA to be full of Jordans or Magics. That's why we still remember and talk about these guys today.
Also, the Royce/Kerr/Igor example doesn't apply as much.
Royce was a legend because he beat people who didn't know as much as he did. You can give him all the credit in the world for his heart, toughness, etc....but Royce wasn't a legend because of his physical tools. He beat guys who didn't know the sport as well as he did. This isn't an attack on Royce but let's be realistic, even when MMA was growing at a MUCH slower rate then it is now it only took 3 or 4 years before we saw guys like Couture, Frank Shamrock, Coleman, Don Frye, Marco Ruas, etc.....and Royce was no longer the best fighter in MMA.
Kerr wasn't exactly revolutionary either. If anything you can say Coleman was revolutionary, but again Coleman didn't exactly have physical tools that were that much better then Kerr, Randleman, or any of the other top wrestlers.
And Igor was revolutionary for a long time because he had a physical tool that a lot of guys don't have, his punching power. You couldn't learn to punch as hard as Igor did.
A better example would be Frank Shamrock. Shamrock was revolutionary because he had the physical makeup of an athlete, and at the time there was nobody in the sport who had the physical tools that Shamrock had, and that's why today people still think about how great prime Frank Shamrock was.
Yes, in 10 years from now there will be a new "revolutionary" fighter that's changing the game and beating everyone around him but that doesn't mean that every fighter in the world is going to have the god given abilities that Anderson Silva has.
Vasechkin -Mushroom Slap - is every boxer like Ali now?
+1
I'm pretty sure people only said Anderson but OK thankyou for that.
shb - wow, zuffa hype machine ftw, huh? anyone ever heard of this guy named fedor?
This has nothing to do with a "zuffa hype machine".
Yes, Fedor is still the greatest of all time but right now Silva's career is on fire. Fedor fought once in 2008 and once so far this year so right now Fedors not exactly the fighter of the year for the last two years.
Can't we possibly discuss how great another fighter is without someone waving the Fedor flag from the peanut gallery?
this thread is about anderson because his last great performance was the most recent great performance from any top p4p guy. i'm sure there's a similar thread about gsp from after ufc 100 but before ufc 101. after ufc 104, there will prob be a similar thread about machida. these guys are all great. however, many great fighters have risen and fallen during fedor's reign, and more great fighters will continue to do so, all while fedor sits atop the sport alone.
yes, anderson's standup is amazing. however, future mma fighters will be compared to fedor, not anderson. the question will be how would fighter x do against prime fedor, not prime anderson. and despite the zuffa spinjobs and the bandwagon-hopping nature of the fans, the story of the sport will always be that fedor emelianenko was the muhammad ali of mma, not anderson silva or anyone else.
"the norm, and not the exception?"
Not sure how long you have been following the sport but Anderson was a Pride drop out having several losses. He is doing great now and it will take alot to beat him. But yes, he will become the norm.
K-Dub-"T" - Eventually, but not for a long long time.
cdiorio13 - I think it might be more appropriate to say a guy like Nate Marquardt could be the norm, with Marquardt himself being in the elite upper level of that "norm".
I was thinking exactly the same thing. Nate isn't a super-athlete, but he is very skilled in all areas of fighting.
I could see the sport evolving to the point where you have to be that good to get a nationally televised fight and be considered "relevant." A day will come when the idea of filling an undercard with BJJ purple belts with mediocre wrestling and bad striking will be unthinkable.
This is a good thread, btw. It's interesting to speculate what the sport will be like in 10-20 years.
shb - wow, zuffa hype machine ftw, huh? anyone ever heard of this guy named fedor?
who?
you cant teach personal expression...
this is his way of expressing art.
thats like saying, "will everyone play like Jimmy Hendrix?"
if you say yes then you are not listening.
or like someone else said... "will everyone box like Ali"?
Viet Rounder - "the norm, and not the exception?"
Not sure how long you have been following the sport but Anderson was a Pride drop out having several losses. He is doing great now and it will take alot to beat him. But yes, he will become the norm.
Look Jordan's game in 1988. Then look at it in 1993... then take a look in 1996. He kept getting better...
Anderson was not at his peak in Pride.
Look at Bruce Lee in 1965.....looks nothing like he did in 1973.
no, there is something special about him.
jobro - Ali?
What Roy Jones Junior isn't as skilled?
Ali was more skillful than RJJ, and both guys would be first in line to tell you that. Ali was the most famous man on Earth for a while; Roy Jones Jr is a great fighter.
supersonic - Interesting question.
His hyper-calm and vision especially while stiking isn't a common trait in people. The old saying "some things can't be taught"
Now one could say as the talent pool increases a higher number of these guys would find their way into the sport so possibly more versions of him will appear.
But a talent pool into one sport or another is dependent on many variables and there is no guarantee talent pools increase, regardless of sport.
I think the guy is pretty rare
I would find a bio on him interesting to see if there is a way to track how he got this way.
awesome post. its true, look at boxing, there has been boxing for hundreds of years yet less then 10 names are ever talked about. ali, tyson, floyd, pacman,joe luis, rocky marciano, roy jones jr etc ect. mma is the same way, yet way less saturated. more people do boxing then mma so like supersonic said, its never gonna be the norm.