The cream of the crop!

The cream does rise to the top....

9:40 in it talks about how he only wanted to make money.

This thread is dumb.

Its like there aren't a whole bunch of examples ON VIDEO of huge guys getting beat by smaller guys, easily accessible on the internet. You guys are vastly underestimating the ability of a top MMA fighter.

Andre was a big huge brute of a man, but he was slow and unskilled.  In that case his size is as much of a liability as an advantage, one that a skilled MMA fighter can easily exploit.

Wait until President Jack Tunney hears about this!

I think age is gonna make or break it.

Andre was a monster when he was younger, as he got into his 30's though he was already worn out.

The guys he worked with said he could easily manhandle any of them any night of the week, but it's different if you are in an actual fight.

From The Man Show tribute.
"He was hung like a Duroflame log"

by then we will be friends.

Ill rephrase, he couldnt take a punch. Wasnt that he even had a glass jaw ie Andrei Arlovski, dude just didnt like getting hit and would clam up the minute he took a good shot.

It's funny how in this thread, the same guys will give PLUS FIVE DAMAGE and PLUS 12 DURABILITY to the pretend fighter they worship, while denigrating guys who've actually repeatedly been in real fights with numerous World Champions and contenders.

As someone else pointed out, it's REALLY obvious how many GD'ers have little to no training whatsoever in MMA/fighting. I guess they just go by feelz.

Again, as pointed out; plenty of videos available of huge guys being taken out by skilled smaller guys. Can't count the number of guys I've beaten, who spouted the whole, "All I need is one good hit" line.

Andre was huge, but being that slow is already a huge disadvantage. Don't care how big a guy is; no holds barred? Your knees aren't adamantium or whatever imaginary BS. Go to a Muay Thai gym that trains kids from a young age. Find one that's 1/3rd your size. See how many kicks to the kneecap/patellar tendon you can take.

As slow as he was, any decent fighter would've been able to evade him. As big as he was, cardio isn't going to last long.

@USMC7382

Hi, (former) neighbor.  

My parents and I were headed up 73 when I was a little kid, and we passed Andre sitting by the road on his three wheeler waving at cars.   For weeks after, I told everyone I knew about seeing an actual giant.

Attached File

Why did you quote me?

Ive fought and trained for years and still do BJJ couple times and week. I was fortunate enough to train with some of the best in the world, like Hughes, Lawler, Pulver, and Sylvia. Sylvia, while wasnt Andrea's size, was still massive and lengthy. His reach alone was terribly hard to deal with. Hell last night I rolled with a dude who was a 100lbs heavier and 4" taller than me and Im not a small guy, it definitely makes everything harder.

Big people do sometimes get beat by smaller people. It’s fiction to believe, however, that size and strength isn’t an advantage.  For every example of a littler person beating a bigger person, there are multiple examples of big people beating smaller people.

Training is a multiplier for advantage.

So is size and strength.  There is a reason why fighting sports have weight classes (note that MMA started out without weight classes and ended up with them pretty quickly).

At what point either becomes dominant is the subject of pure speculation, because there are other factors as well (some people just lack or have stronger will, for example).  I’ve seen littler folks beat the piss out of bigger dudes that couldn’t fight.  I’ve also seen little dudes get pummeled by bigger guys.

I fought a big, slow, unskilled dude in a tournament once (many years ago).  I had watched the dude fight, and figured my superior skill and stamina would make it an easy bout.  A couple of rounds in, I was kicking his ass and feeling good about myself. I walked into a punch and ended up with a bruised liver (probably some of the worst pain in my life).  That isn’t the worst beating I ever took (and it was in a controlled environment, not a street fight), but that single punch will always stick in my memory.  I was better trained, in better shape, and just plain meaner… and I got my ass kicked. On the flip side, I also got my ass kicked by a little bitty wrestler dude in a half-assed sparring session. Every time I thought I had him I ended up on the ground with him on top of me like some kind of coked up spider monkey.  That was also a humbling experience.

All that aside, pretending that size and strength aren’t an advantage is silly.

As for the question- I think any elite level heavyweight would probably kick Andre’s ass by attacking the lower body (his weakest spot) - I think fighters like Mirko Cro Cop or Fedor would accomplish this fairly easily. Littler guys (especially fighters that specialize in submission) would find this tough to impossible.  If Andre was a big pussy, he’d probably get hit a few times and quit or give up - I don’t know enough about the guy to say anything about his temperament.

My money is on the most trained fighter- but in this case, the disparity in size/strength is just huge, especially for non heavyweights, which complicates things.  Fuck, the guy had 11” wrists.

Didn't mean to specifically call you out over a lack of training, but criticizing Sapp over how he handled hits from World Champion kickboxers, while simultaneously not knowing how a pretend fighter would handle hits, is pretty ludicrous.

The other thing that holds true, is that every fighter in that size category, is just about screwed if they even drop to a knee. They're REALLY slow and cumbersome, getting back up.

No rules = head kicks/stomps allowed on grounded opponents.

I've seen the old school limited rules tournaments back in the 70s, when kickboxing in the USA began switching from just light contact point sparring, to full contact (when Chuck Norris decided to drop out of competition, while guys like Joe Lewis, Bill Wallace and numerous others who weren't afraid of getting hit full contact, went all in. Lol). In the early days, before they began formalizing the sport rules, head kicks and stomps were allowed on downed opponents, and there were several KOs that way, before the rules were revised.

The Manny Yarbrough, Teila Tuli and Koji Kitao fights show what happens to big, slow guys when they encounter smaller, faster strikers, and once they go down, they get hammered while trying to get back up, because they're so cumbersome at it.

Simple fact, is that even if some association made it possible, you're unlikely to see 160lb fighters taking on a 500+lb fighter, and the 2xx lb heavyweight contenders would be difficult for Andre to deal with, even with his size and strength.