How is the A-level athlete "myth" debunked? Ngannou earned title shot with 4 years training.

[storeybuckle]

Define an “A-level athlete”?

A-level athlete is an athlete that is extremely athletic that plays Football, basketball, soccer and any other sport that is not fighting, etc.

Based solely on their athleticism and success in their respective sports it is easy for them to transition into fighting and become Champions with ease and very minimal training.

For example in the link provided below you can see a former NFL player/hall famer Brian Urlacher show off his athleticism and fighting prowess ( just check out the speed of technique of his punches) The skills that he used in the NFL easily translate into fighting skills


I know it sounds ridiculous that an A-level athlete can destroy a person who's been training on how to absorb punishment and give punishment and who has been working on their fighting technique for their whole lives. But that's just the way goes!?

An Olympic wrestler and or gymnast do not count as A-level athletes because their paycheques aren't big enough.

Plus it helps all the people that post on this website about A-level athletes feel better knowing that with minimal training they themselves can beat any UFC fighter with minimal training because they played football or basketball in high school/college.



(Sarcasm)

 

[opie]

5 years is quite a long time. Purists want to act like you need 5-10-15-20 years in all these major sports. Take a 20 year old Michael Jordan that was in shape from playing another sport, start him in basketball and I guarantee you that he's still a really good player at 25 years old.

It's just confirmation bias.

All the major sports have rigid training systems in place with no real way to start learning and competing after ~ age 14. After age 14, if you can't make the high school team or the college team right away, you don't get any training. After 22, there's no way to train at all.

So of course it seems like 14-22 is too late to start in these other sports -- it is. Not because of age or how hard the sports are but because there's no way to start training and competing.

In MMA, you can be 23 with no ability to make the team and just pay to train. And people do it, and they succeed.

If you could just pay $200 a month to train with the Broncos, I guarantee that you'd get some guys starting at 25 and making the team at 30.

you are not smart

 

[LATEXXX COMMANDO]

Stipe athleticism > Ngannou's

 

[8100]

Facts.

I have played soccer, and I believe without a reasonable doubt that a dude who touched a soccer ball for the very first time at age 25, will not be playing in the Champions League at age 30, especially if that dude started soccer in a country were the sport considered illegal and wasn't popular. LOL

This why I don't really respect the "GOAT" talk in MMA. It means very little. The guys fighting today, are failed athletes from other sports. They are not best possible humans who could be competing in MMA.

The sport is only 25 years old, and even younger when we consider when the rules where standardized with "The Unified MMA Rules."

I don't think people get how hard it is to make it into a pro sport that literally has the BEST athletes from around the world attempting to make it pro. The MLB, NBA, and major soccer orgs, literally have a talent pool that expands the entire world and getting a spot on a roster is incredibly difficult. Soccer in particular has an immense talent pool meaning that if you're good it's even harder to stick out. Being the best soccer player in the world is an incredible feat.

 

[8100]

Stipe athleticism > Ngannou's

This isn't even the debate, but let's say it is, that makes Stipe's win look even worse because he beat a guy he out-skilled and he was physically more athletic then and he still couldn't get a finish and gassed. This never happened to GSP, Jones, or Anderson. You seem to be making my points for me.

 

[opie]

Remarkable how people associate top Athletes with the NBA and NFL, which have nothing to do with fighting. He runs fast, he can jump with a ball, that means he would be a top MMA fighter? The best wrestlers are A level, and several Olympic champion wrestlers have failed to be UFC champs, from a sport that actually has fighting techniques, in fact wrestling arguably has the most important skill set for fighting. So no. Michael Jordan and Emmett Smith would never be UFC champions, ever. So cut the A level athlete BS, MMA just isn't for everyone and MMA has A level athletes, they just don't play with balls.

mma does not have A level athletes. mma cannot afford A level athletes

 

[whougonnacall]

Checked his wiki article it only said he trained early in his youth and then quit because an injury.

Hes not clear on it
No ones asked him
Ans now after the title fight no one will itl be all grappling based questions asked to him

 

[8100]

JDS had no prior experience in any sport before he started training in BJJ, 5 years before he became champion.

I've heard this brought up before but it only serves to prove my point that the HW division is weak and an A-level athlete can do very well or dominate it. If you're saying JDS isn't A-level then certainly a better athlete can do better then he did. Also, JDS did have some Capoeira training before he became a pro according to wiki so we have to take what it says with a grain of salt of course.

Born into a poor family, dos Santos was raised by a single mother. In order to help his family he started to work at the age of ten. He trained Capoeira throughout his teenage years before his first serious contact with martial arts happened at the age of 21, when he began training in Brazilian jiu-jitsu under Yuri Carlton. After only six months of training, dos Santos won a few jiu-jitsu tournaments in Salvador.[9][10] One year later, Dos Santos was invited to join a boxing practice by a friend, where he met his boxing coach Luiz Carlos Dórea. Dórea also trained Mixed martial arts and roughly a year after he started training boxing he had his debut professional fight.[11][12]

 

[cooks1]

We’ve all seen joke posts that say "with 6 months training an A-level athlete would dominate the sport." To a certain extent we know they're being facetious but is what we just saw too far off.


Ngannou, a guy with under 5 years training, who had no previous martial arts experience, and was formerly homeless, goes on a title run at the age of 31!

Imagine some random strong dude making it not only to the MLB, NFL, or the NBA but making it to the pinnacle of the sport. Think of some random big dude who NEVER pitched making it to the MLB at age 31 and striking out the elite hitters.

This goes to show 2 things:

HW is laughably weak

An “A-level athlete” could dominate (or do very well) in certain divisions of the sport (HW, women’s divisions.)

Ngannou was exposed as having bad technique on the ground and standing, no cardio, and horrible fight IQ. Yet, the best UFC HW ALL TIME who was a D1 wrestler and golden gloves boxer still couldn’t knock this dude out. Honestly, I thought Stipe would win but someone would be knocked out.

This would NEVER happen in the MLS let alone pro soccer leagues in Europe. Could you imagine some random guy competing on the level of a Messi with barely a grasp of the fundamentals of the sport?

Combat sports are a different animal than other sports.

Swinging a bat, racket or club, bouncing or shooting or catching a ball, blocking or tackling (though there is a little more relevance to those things) are just fundamentally different things than punching, kicking, and wrestling. They require specific techniques that the human body is not conditioned to naturally do, and those things usually take decades to develop to the point that you are among the best in the world at it.

Homo sapiens were punching, kicking and wrestling just to stay alive for millions of years before the invention of organized sports. We have evolved to do it. It's part of our DNA. Civilized society has rendered the need for it largely obsolete, but it's all lurking there, in our genes.

That is why you can take pretty much any physically useless noob off the street, give him 6 months of quality training, and they would be able to aquit themselves quite well against the average, or even above average physically superior specimen that has not had those 6 months. It is also why the truly superior physical specimens, in a comparatively short window, can be very competitive in combat arts.

 

[nevernamed]

You'd never see somebody train boxing for 4 or 5 years and step in and compete for the title.Guaranteed. You'd never see somebody pick up hockey tomorrow and be playing in the NHL in 5 years. Guaranteed..

The Jordan example I read (starting basketball at 20 and would make the nba by 25), just LOL. are you fucking retarded?

 

[8100]

Or Michael Westbrook, former NFL wide receiver . . .

. . . went 1-1-1 in MMA. Including a loss to Mr. Ronda Rousey in Mr. Ronda Rousey's 2nd ever fight (and the win was against another former NFL player, Jarrod Bunch.)

He was 32 when he had his first MMA bout and was 36 when he had his 2nd bout. And he never lost to an absolute scrub (speaking by HW standards of course).

Also, so you think Westbrook is an A-level athlete? Why is it that people always bring up some random football player failing at this or that as proof that an A-level athlete couldn't just walk into MMA's HW division and do very well or dominate. A 36 year old man coming off a 4 year layoff losing to Travis Browne in the 3rd round is NOT something to be embarrassed about.

 

[8100]

You'd never see somebody train boxing for 4 or 5 years and step in and compete for the title.Guaranteed. You'd never see somebody pick up hockey tomorrow and be playing in the NHL in 5 years. Guaranteed..

The Jordan example I read (starting basketball at 20 and would make the nba by 25), just LOL. are you fucking retarded?

Somebody gets it, it's almost impossible to start at a late age in major sports and make it big. This is only possible in MMA (especially the HW division) because the talent pool isn't that large, heck most of the same HW's from Pride era are still around.

 

[Gluhov]

The A level weirdos are just insecure black mma fans. Lets be real.

They base their beliefs on 2 sports that are only mainstream in one country on the planet.

So in Francis' case, he was only "A Level" until he lost to Stipe, because you see an "A level" athlete doesn't lose to a white guy.

 

[Gluhov]

Oh yeah, one more thing. If blacks dont dominate a sport in America, like say baseball, mma or the quarterback position its simply because of white racism.

 

[ramair455]

mma does not have A level athletes. mma cannot afford A level athletes

I disagree - Comier is an A level athlete.
This pic really proves it - It reminds me a looking at Marshall Faulk / Barry Sanders / Emmit Smith / Randy Moss /
Those guys HOF players did not have impressive physiques what so ever. Being a A Level athlete isnt based solely on your apperance.

 

[ramair455]

Oh yeah, one more thing. If blacks dont dominate a sport in America, like say baseball, mma or the quarterback position its simply because of white racism.

This is not true - culture plays a big role in the participation of African Americans in those sports.

 

[Gluhov]

This is not true - culture plays a big role in the participation of African Americans in those sports.

True, this why there isn't more whites and mexicans in the nba.

 

[cooks1]

You'd never see somebody train boxing for 4 or 5 years and step in and compete for the title.Guaranteed. You'd never see somebody pick up hockey tomorrow and be playing in the NHL in 5 years. Guaranteed..

The Jordan example I read (starting basketball at 20 and would make the nba by 25), just LOL. are you fucking retarded?

Wrong. It does not happens as often as in fighting, for the reasons i mentioned above. But it does happen plenty.

Antonio Gates of the Chargers never played a down of football in College. He was a basketball player-not good enough to be in the NBA. Then he became a pretty decent tight end.

 

[Darkart]

At some point it should be factored that fighting and sports are different things. Fighting requires a set of self preservation skills and aggression not commonly found in activities that primarily focus on getting a ball from point A to point B. Ngannou may not ever be good enough to play midfield on Liverpool, but then again, LeBron may never be able to fight off a RNC in his life.

Lol LeBron was raised in a violent ghetto, sleeping in random people's houses his mom would leave him at. I'm pretty sure he swung a few times growing up in that environment.

 

[8100]

Well, this guy led the NFL in rushing after only a few years of playing football. Ken Norton was a champion military boxer after only about a year of training. Some guys are just gifted.....

What's this supposed to prove exactly? The fact is making it to the UFC HW belt and making it to the NFL are 2 different levels. The UFC HW division is a joke.

Also, Okoye had college experience it's not like he just came to America and got signed to a team. He was an amazing talent.

One thing I do want to mention is that people always immediately go to football or basketball when trying to disprove A-level athlete's as if we're only focusing on those 2 sports.