I'm in the Ben Fowlkes camp. Or, should I say, Ben's in my camp, since I was the first (in The Whole World) to make the same points Ben has made in his latest Twitter Mailbag -
http://mmajunkie.com/2014/10/twitter-mailbag-on-ufc-179-injury-shakeups-conor-mcgregors-latest-offer-and-more. Now, sure, I'm the most biased
Mark Hunt fan (in The Whole World), but reason is reason, right?
What Ben doesn't mention is that Stipe was KTFO by a guy Mark KTFO. What he does mention is this:
Ben Fowlkes said:
First of all, let’s put
Stipe Miocic
’s three-fight streak in perspective. He got there by winning decisions over Roy Nelson and Gabriel Gonzaga, both of whom seemed to completely gas out before the end of the fight, then knocking out Fabio Maldonado, who fights as a light heavyweight but probably ought to be a middleweight. I’m not trying to take anything away from Miocic – it’s not like it’s his fault that Gonzaga and Nelson couldn’t put up better fights, and Maldonado was a late and ill-conceived replacement – but
let’s admit that his case for a title shot isn’t exactly ironclad
. A win over Junior Dos Santos in December would fix that, but that seems like one more reason not to mess with that bout now.
That brings us to
Mark Hunt
, who, yes, is 1-1-1 in his last three, but in his defense a) the draw came via a
fight of the decade
against a juiced-up Antonio Silva, b) the loss came to former heavyweight champ Dos Santos, and c) the win was a
totally sweet walk-off knockout
over Nelson, who Miocic proved unable to put away. Point is, Miocic’s run is not quite as impressive as it looks on paper, while Hunt’s is not quite as bad.
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