06-26-2009, 04:50 PM
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#4 (permalink)
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True Grappler
Join Date: May 2006
Location: New York City, New York
Posts: 6,249
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Quote:
Originally Posted by hitmachine44
Good read, but this has me puzzled.
He has wins over Mezger, Overeem, Henderson, Wandy, and Sakuraba. He's pretty accomplished in MMA too I'd say.
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That's a fair point, but he struggled against a lot of the guys who really ran the sport.
If you look at guys like Monson, who's not as good a grappler as Arona, one of the reasons he's had success is that he's figured out how to translate his game.
He was definitely a top ten fighter when he was active, but he struggled with Shogun and lost to Rampage. He only really has two wins over top ten 205ers, as far as I'm concerned, and those are the wins over Alistair (who's status was low top ten, if he was in there at all) and the win over Wanderlei (which was really impressive, though he really should've finished Wanderlei, since no one else did during that time frame, it's hard to hold it against him).
That sentence kind of sells Arona short, but what I'm trying to explain is that he was never really as dominant in MMA as he was in grappling, and a large part of that is that his point-style grappling wasn't necessarily suited for MMA the way that Demian Maia's game is.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Freelancer
He'll have a major ring rust case, I'm afraid.
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Me too, which is why I'm glad he's fighting in a little show, probably against a no name. Shake the ring rust off.
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