Why are there no Irish fighters in the UFC?

theboxingclinic

Xlami wrote: »

Sorry hate to go off the point but does anyone know if CW still plan to have a show in Dublin this year?

Ya I think rosi sexton is fighting ais daly on that card

cruasder777

Pride Fighter wrote: »

What's this semi-pro lark you're on about? Conor is a pro fighter with a record of 9-2 and a 5 fight win streak. Also people who know MMA and have been watching it for years know anything can happen. Joe Mercer beat Tim Sylvia, who would have thought that. Most MMA people know that once someone has knockout power they can beat anyone with one punch. I dont know how Conor would do in the UFC, he has a blue belt in BJJ I think, maybe a purple, so its not as if he has no grappling as you were saying. Also your statement about Muay Thai is false, he trains muay thai, I think he was with Chupasart for a while. But I think if he laid a glove on any of the UFC LW's they'd go to sleep.

So you admit hes a novice at grappling ?

Do you seriously think a blue belt or even purple BJJ belt can compete on the ground with a guy like George St Pierre or an ex olympic wrestler like Maguire ? (At the top level he will be fighting guys who have been training in BJJ for 20/25 years, often since they were 6 yrs old)

Training at Muay Thai is a huge gap from being an international class fighter, Im being realistic here.

I hope the guy does well, but hes all round game has huge weakness when compared to top pros.
This is not personal to the guy, we dont produce world class fighters because to be a world class grappler you have to start very young, we dont have that culture in Ireland.

Semi pro refers to not making enough to fully live on as opposed to the likes of St Pierre who make millions and train 6 hours a day full time and have world class boxing coaches to improve their striking.

As I said, its another level.

cowzerp

cruasder777 wrote: »

Training at Muay Thai is a huge gap from being an international class fighter, Im being realistic here.

You've said this many times!
Boxing is the main striking system used by mostthe champs in the UFC, add to this basic Muay thai knowledge and your striking is sorted-of course all MMA fighters should know some of everything but certainly the elite fighters win more using Boxing than Thai-even the thai boxers like Anderson Silva use more Boxing than Thai, Conor while Boxing is his main tool can Kick, Knee etc to a proficent level but if he knocks you out with his hands will you say his kicks are not up to scratch?!

Your post's remind me of listening to Joe Rogan

More weapons don't mean better, better at using what weapons you have is better.

pablohoney87

Crusader watch one of connors more recent fights against kornik and come back with your opinions about his ground game.
as for your comment about semi pro. Why not look up the history of guys like shane carwin pat Barry and even the great gsp when they first arrived in the ufc let alone before they got there
and on one final note. Your mate mcguire has massive holes in his stand up that will be exposed against the top level so i wouldn't nit-pick

mannequinhands

cruasder777 wrote: »

So you admit hes a novice at grappling ?

Do you seriously think a blue belt or even purple BJJ belt can compete on the ground with a guy like George St Pierre or an ex olympic wrestler like Maguire ? (At the top level he will be fighting guys who have been training in BJJ for 20/25 years, often since they were 6 yrs old)

Training at Muay Thai is a huge gap from being an international class fighter, Im being realistic here.

I hope the guy does well, but hes all round game has huge weakness when compared to top pros.
This is not personal to the guy, we dont produce world class fighters because to be a world class grappler you have to start very young, we dont have that culture in Ireland.

Semi pro refers to not making enough to fully live on as opposed to the likes of St Pierre who make millions and train 6 hours a day full time and have world class boxing coaches to improve their striking.

As I said, its another level.

All martial arts have to adapted to deal with mma traditional boxing stance leaves your face open with mma gloves, traditional muay thai leaves you open to take downs, being a wrestling or bjj ace is all well and good but in grappling comps you dont have to deal with somebody trying to smash your face. Having a certain skill set is all well and good but only if it can be altered to the mma game .To be honest i think the difference is America, Brazil ,Canada, and even the UK just have higher level mma gyms at the moment .We just need time for it evolve more.

cruasder777

Ok , I will agree to disagree with some posters on here, otherwise we will go around in circles.

In three weeks my mate Jack Mason(17-9-0), one of the most experienced fighters out there, is fighting Chris Fields who is one of the top Irish fighters (8-3-0)

I think Jack has to be a favourite.

http://www.sherdog.com/fighter/Jack-Mason-15426

http://www.sherdog.com/fighter/Chris-Fields-46747

cruasder777

Barry.Oglesby wrote: »

Whoa. Cool it On the Alex Reid hate. He might be more commonly in the pages of OK magazine now but back before most people knew what mma was he was training and fighting. He was also dead nice to me in London about 8 years ago when I went to train there. A gentleman and a good pro.

Alex is a nice guy.

Check this out lol, after all that Alex submitted him in 2 mins lol when they fought. Great acting by all parties lol


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yg7_gYZuRE8&feature=related

Stephen_King

cruasder777 wrote: »

Ok , I will agree to disagree with some posters on here, otherwise we will go around in circles.

In three weeks my mate Jack Mason(17-9-0), one of the most experienced fighters out there, is fighting Chris Fields who is one of the top Irish fighters (8-3-0)

I think Jack has to be a favourite.

http://www.sherdog.com/fighter/Jack-Mason-15426

http://www.sherdog.com/fighter/Chris-Fields-46747

He may be on experience but Chris is a very underrated fighter. He trains like a demon-I think Jack may be in for a surprise when this comes around.

mannequinhands

cruasder777 wrote: »

In three weeks my mate Jack Mason(17-9-0), one of the most experienced fighters out there, is fighting Chris Fields who is one of the top Irish fighters (8-3-0)

I think Jack has to be a favourite.

http://www.sherdog.com/fighter/Jack-Mason-15426

http://www.sherdog.com/fighter/Chris-Fields-46747

Sorry to go off the topic here but is there anywere i can see these fights in oz e.g tv channel or internet

kainer2

mannequinhands wrote: »

Sorry to go off the topic here but is there anywere i can see these fights in oz e.g tv channel or internet

The Cage Warriors fights will be live online on MMAJunkie.com

cruasder777

pablohoney87 wrote: »

Crusader watch one of connors more recent fights against kornik and come back with your opinions about his ground game.
as for your comment about semi pro. Why not look up the history of guys like shane carwin pat Barry and even the great gsp when they first arrived in the ufc let alone before they got there
and on one final note. Your mate mcguire has massive holes in his stand up that will be exposed against the top level so i wouldn't nit-pick

John Maguire has massively been working on his stand up game, hes off on a months training camp abroad working on striking.

Pound for pound hes the best British fighter by a mile and a seriously good prospect.

monkey8

To address the origional question, the lack of top quality wrestling has got to be the main weakness for irish fighters.

take conor mcgregor (not fair to single him out but he was brought up already) for example versus rising uk star john hathaway.

mcgregor would get destroyed by deigo sanchez due to his far superior grappling skills but hathaway has obviously benefited from the top notch freestyle wrestling coaches at london shootfighters and was able to get a decision against sanchez.

people say to look out for the teens but they will come up against the exact same problems unless the wrestling problem is addressed in ireland

cowzerp

The kids are learning bjj and wrestling from a young age and there is plenty of wrestling here now compared to 5 years ago, it's not the same as a 18-30 year olds learning it and then been expected to perform top level at it with a few years training.

pablohoney87

cruasder777 wrote: »

Pound for pound hes the best British fighter by a mile

Are you joking? Bisping, daley, duffy even hardy, probably sass hatheway are all ahead of him in the p4p rankings.
He did well in his debut against a poor opponent. A guy who couldn't beat clay harvison. I don't expect to see him in the ufc much longer unless he seriously ups his stand up or ability to finish decent fighters

cruasder777

pablohoney87 wrote: »

Are you joking? Bisping, daley, duffy even hardy, probably sass hatheway are all ahead of him in the p4p rankings.
He did well in his debut against a poor opponent. A guy who couldn't beat clay harvison. I don't expect to see him in the ufc much longer unless he seriously ups his stand up or ability to finish decent fighters

I said he was the best prospect and in my opinion pound for pound UK fighter, Daley has a record of 29-11-2, please dont make me laugh about him or the others being better fighters then Maguire.

Maguires is 17-3-0 The guy who he fought in his debut had a decent record.


Bisping is a quality fighter, but unable to step up to a world class level when he was tested. his record is 23-3-0, he has lost against opponents with pretty average records and hes 4 years older then Maguire.

I believe in terms of grappling Maguire is in a different league then any other British fighter, if he can get his stand up game right he is a potential world champion.

The difference is Maguire is only fighting at 85% of what hes capable of, up until recently he never even trained to the max.

Keep watching, you will eat your words.

pablohoney87

You said he was pound for pound the best British fighter by a mile. Yeah if you look at daly and maguires records there's a massive difference in the quality of opponent.
I hope i do eat my words and we can only wait and see. Who's his next opponent anyway?

Xlami

cruasder777 wrote: »

I said he was the best prospect and in my opinion pound for pound UK fighter, Daley has a record of 29-11-2, please dont make me laugh about him or the others being better fighters then Maguire.

Maguires is 17-3-0 The guy who he fought in his debut had a decent record.


I believe in terms of grappling Maguire is in a different league then any other British fighter, if he can get his stand up game right he is a potential world champion.

The difference is Maguire is only fighting at 85% of what hes capable of, up until recently he never even trained to the max.

Keep watching, you will eat your words.

Crusader you're back tracking and eating your words left right and centre here. I'm not trying to take anything away from Maguire because I'm a fan of his but I don't understand how you can say he's Brittish p4p number 1. Sure no poster even mentioned Etim, Watson or Mann(Best British grappler IMO) Semtex has the best record in British MMA history in terms of who he's beaten and I also thought John and his brother trained with him for a bit. Maguire while still young has achieved very little and never faced a top level grappler. I know Maguire is a good grappler and looked great against Amasinger but we'll see how he does when he steps up in class.

Mellor

cruasder777 wrote: »

Bisping is a quality fighter, but unable to step up to a world class level when he was tested. his record is 23-3-0, he has lost against opponents with pretty average records and hes 4 years older then Maguire.

Wanderlei Silva, Dan Henderson and Rashad Evans.
Massive lol at refering to these as "guys with average records".
Its about who you fights, not just getting the win.

Ray Mond

Crusader I think u haven an f'en clue to be honest just because Daley has that record u think maquire is better would u give over ... As for Conor he's defo one of the top prospects in ire and uk ur comparing him to the likes of gsp and bj , do u not know that Conor is only 23 still very young and still learning he's beating every 1 that gets put in front of him and impressively, don't start running ur mouth when u know jack shhit, have u seen his last 2 or 3 ifights he showed great take down defence as well as grappling skills in those , I agree that wrestling wise irish fighters need to really up it if they will get far but as I said Conor is only 23 and IMHO I think he will be up there in the future give him 2 or3 years and he'll be in tje ufc and he'll still be young at 26...

SevereMMA

Mellor wrote: »

Wanderlei Silva, Dan Henderson and Rashad Evans.
Massive lol at refering to these as "guys with average records".
Its about who you fights, not just getting the win.

Rashad's record is better than Andersons, and Anderson is the best fighter ever in my opinion