Another week of no big events so I’ll just touch upon some MMA news.
HYDEN BLOG: Potential Diaz brother fights, Jared Cannonier, and Paul Daley
Diaz brother fights
Dustin Poirier has said that he’d like to fight Nate Diaz on the same event that Jorge Masvidal would Nick Diaz. Those are certainly fights I’d like to see, though I shudder to think about the way MMA media will fawn over Masvidal if he regurgitates any more well-known expressions that get passed off as something he coined. On an unrelated note- Look for my brand new The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly shirts from my TeeSpring store.
Anyhow, both of these potential fights would be extremely interesting because of the four men involved. The Diaz brothers always bring it, and Poirier and Masvidal match up very well against them. I would give the edge to both Poirier and Masvidal, mainly because Poirier is well-rounded and an intelligent fighter, though it would be a close fight, and Masvidal has been fighting somewhat continuously while Nick hasn’t fought in five years.
These two fights would be a great way to top a cable card or could really strengthen a pay-per-view card. Either way would be great, though we know the UFC would have them headline a PPV card because they almost never have two big fights of this magnitude on their cable cards.
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Jared Cannonier
Despite losing three of his last four fights (including his last two), Yoel Romero is expected to face UFC Middleweight Champion Israel Adesanya at UFC 248 in March. Based on the records, I’d much rather see Jared Cannonier face Adesanya than Romero.
Cannonier is scheduled to face Robert Whittaker at UFC 248 but he’s won three in a row. That means more to me than whether Romero is a bigger threat or anything like that. Unless Cannonier was given first shot at the title and passed, he should be getting the chance here. Records have to matter. Cannonier is the most deserving.
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Paul Daley removed from analyst job
Paul Daley has been fired from his analyst job with Bellator for going off-script with his comments about Michael “Venom” Page only fighting cans.
Multiple things are true here, as is usually the case with these things.
One, MVP has been fighting almost exclusively cans, or guys who shouldn’t be in the cage with him. Hell, there’s been plenty of jokes made about that. There’s a couple of big names thrown in there but generally the guys MVP fights have never been heard of before fighting him and you never hear of them again.
Two, Daley had his chance to fight MVP and chose to try to wrestle him instead of engaging him on the feet like he claimed he wanted. That doesn’t invalidate his criticism of MVP fighting guys under his level. However, it does show that MVP doesn’t only fight guys that are a clear level below him.
Three, this proves that Bellator is acting like your typical corporate sports league in that they want your vanilla type of commentary. There’s a reason that Inside The NBA on TNT is widely considered to be the best pre and postgame show out there. Charles Barkley and Shaquille O’Neal tell it like they see it. Do I agree with everything they say? No, but I respect their honesty. I don’t want to hear a bunch of generic platitudes when I’m watching a game. Nor do I want to hear somebody trying too hard to be edgy or anything either. I like realness, I want your honest opinion, not what the corporate overlords want you to say.
I understand that you can have too much realness, Bellator isn’t going to allow anyone to just dump all over the product. However, you can find a balance between being real and being a corporate shill. If a fight sucks, say so. Hell, even just a quick apology for the fight being a pile of garbage is better than mindlessly going on about how great or exciting everything is.
It’s hard to say how Daley would be as an analyst if he were given a chance to hone his craft a bit more, but this doesn’t bode well for what kind of commentary we’re going to get if they sacked him after this. Hopefully this wasn’t the full reason why they got rid of him but only time will tell.
Comments and suggestions can be emailed to me at hydenfrank@gmail.com and you can follow me on Twitter at @hydenfrank
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