Bendy Bruce

And engaged his mouth before his brain. Now lets all crucify him until the end of eternity as if this singular moment will forever define him.

coming out of this guys mouth is next level stuff. I’ll give him this though: It does not seem to matter who you are, he hates on everyone equally. The mans just swinging a verbal bat in a big circle and anyone within its radius is fair game.

it helps if the Judges actually watch the fight, as the commentators made note of

and yet frankly I found the arguments put forward more than reasonable. Most especially the point about "The champs advantage" which I admit, is a part of the rationale I have for saying it was not a Robbery. I have to agree that based on strict judging criteria, Reyes won this fight. However in terms of momentum, he was well on the way to losing it. On the other hand, lets recall Conor Diaz II, which in my opinion was roughly similar, in as much as Conor was fading fast and Diaz was gaining momentum. In that fight, it went to Conor, I assume because correct judging rules were applied. So at the very least, consistency is lacking.

Jones sure as hell did not "edge" the 2nd round, and the strike differential bears that out. but I’m ok with Jones getting the nod, because it was that close, and coupled with the fact that momentum was clearly with the Champ as the fight wore on, then I think if the challenger leaves it in the hands of the judges with a close decision, you simply cannot complain when it does not go your way. Having said that, fire the idiot judge who was asleep at the wheel.

They are obfuscating and side-stepping a very serious issue of incompetence. And it’s not just the fans who are up in arms, it’s the actual fighters, and even the commentators who observed on-air one of the judges not even watching the fight he was supposed to be scoring. Take ownership Texas and fix your sh!t.

it is a serious role and there absolutely should be accountability when they clearly perform a sub-standard and incompetent job.

He is a champion caliber fighter and showed that against an extremely talented and hungry fighter in Reyes. Don’t get me wrong, there is very little I like about Jones, in fact he’s pretty much the antithesis of everything I believe in, but the fact remains he is a great mma fighter, with or without drugs.

to me that’s the swing round. On a purely technical level, I think you have to give it to Reyes, but having said that by that stage of the fight you could already see there was a clear momentum change taking place, which continued to grow for the next 2 rounds. I can’t argue a close decision call to Jones but the judge who went 49/46 needs to be fired for either gross incompetence or blatant corruption.

but on the other hand, I certainly can’t claim with any certainty that he isn’t clean. What I can say is that he certainly was not clean in the past. I’ll admit, I find his preachy gun-loving rhetoric extremely messed up and it does not inspire any confidence that this guy has a legit moral compass.

I think in a purely technical sense, Reyes probably did win (very narrowly) due to his strong start. The stats pretty clearly show he almost certainly deserved the first 3 rounds, and no way did he lose the last 2 by more than a point each. On the other hand momentum of the fight only ever went one way, with Jones starting to slowly dominate more and more. There is a school of thought that if you are fighting the champ and leave a close decision in the hands of the judges, you can expect them to give it back to the champ. The actual score one of the judges gave to Jones was pretty absurd though.
Personally, I would love to see a rematch and I think it is deserved considering just how close it was. Perhaps the fairest result would have been a draw.

and watching how Jones implements his game-plan over the last couple of fights, I just cant’ see it working against guys with the size and power some of them posses at HW. Having said that, he may find a genuine speed advantage allows him to pick them apart but I just can’t see his pressure game working the way it does at LHW, which dramatically changes the dynamics. The thing is, I know it is very fashionable for champions in a given division to move up and claim the whole champ champ superlative, but it has never been something I have personally been fond of, largely because of the amount of hyperbole that comes with it (greatest ever eh Rogan?) and largely because I actually prefer to see a champion defend and dominate in the division they truly belong to be in. For that reason I’d be more than happy for Khabib to stay at LW, even if it means he ends his career undefeated.

what does Jones actually want? I can’t escape the feeling that if he had really wanted to step up to HW he likely would have done so before now. I suspect he may prefer the idea of getting Adesanya to step up to LHW as it may be much more within his comfort zone. Also, lets say Jones beats Stipe, he very likely would then face the possibility of fighting Francis or even Volkov, which frankly I think would both be scary prospects for him, ie. fights I think he could well lose.

though to be fair, this is in the spectrum of deliberate self delusion