Paddy has potential, he just needs to clean up his defense. He's a little bit open, and takes too many shots, and he'll pay for that the higher he climbs the ranking. However, I'm quietly optimistic about his career, and think he plays his cards right, and doesn't rush he could potentially challenge for a belt. I just feel he's getting pushed a little bit too soon because of all the hype behind him.

That's exactly what Lopes needed. That first round, he was close to finishing Silva on the ground. There's an argument for 10-8 in that first round, it was a brutal first round for Silva. However, he did impress me with the escape, and the fact he didn't seem too bothered once he did escape. However, there was definitely times in that beat down the ref looked like he was going to stop it.

Second round, and Silva started to settle in. However, I think that was just because Lopes wasn't trying to take him down, and instead was trading with him and waiting for a over commitment. Then, of course that spinning elbow.

Honestly, Silva is good. However, he over commits way too much. Also, he spams spinning stuff way too much. Spinning back fists or elbows are suppose to be a surprise, not spammed predictably as they should inherently be unpredictable.

I wouldn't be surprised if Silva recovers from this and goes onto having a belt in the future. As long as he learns from this fight. Lopes on the other hand, what a dog. Absolutely one of my favourite fighters, and a chin of steel.

Obviously Volk is an elite fighter, and everyone pretty much struggles against him. However, Lopes looked somewhat desperate at times in that fight. I think the fights outcome is going to be based on Silva's takedown defense. I don't think Lopes is winning this fight on the feet. I think Silva is way too dangerous and slick for that.

We haven't really seen too much of Silva on the ground, and it has been proven time, and time again you need to have a somewhat decent game on the ground to be able to challenge at the top for any extended period of time. Take a look at Ruffy as an example.

If I was going to bet on anyone it would be Silva, but that's because he's dangerous. However, Lopes has a chin, and cardio to grind a win here especially if he can take this to the mat.

Yeah, I'm not touching the main event. I fancy Lopes if he can get the takedowns, otherwise I think Silva will smoke him. We haven't really seen Silva tested in the grappling yet so there's some questions there. He's shown he is decent enough, and Lopes hasn't always looked the best at getting it to the ground against the elite.

I don't know what to think so I'm just probably going to avoid this one. Definitely going to be a banger of a fight

Not liking many of the matchups for the next event. From first glance it looks to me like a lot of favourites will be winning, which doesn't leave a whole lot of space / value for under dog picks. What your guys thoughts?

His fighting career has been over for a while. It has been pointed out before he isn't the same person he was when we was on the rise. Conor made the most money out of any MMA fighter ever. It took the fight out of him. I can't say I blame him for that though, if I was worth millions I probably wouldn't want to continue getting punched in the face either.

I'm feeling fairly high on Nassourdine Imavov, which just makes me want to place a moneyline on him....it's fairly tempting. I think he has a good chance, and I'm fairly confident, which usually doesn't end well for my pockets .

I missed the fights due to not paying attention to start time. So, I've been catching up on highlights only. Seems like it was a good event though?

He could be a +1000 underdog or a -1000 favourite, and still could go either way. You just don't know, although he's one of the more entertaining fighters once he finds his momentum.

The odds have been crazy recently. Basically including any type of favourite in your accumulator doesn't make sense with odds like 1.05, 1.10, 1.18 commonly being the odds. Especially when favourites win around 60% of the time. Of course if you've got a keen eye for underdogs it's great.

I think from now on I'll be making it a point to mix other sports on the accumulator. Obviously, football being one of them, but the season is only now starting back up (thankfully). It's quite common where I've got 7/8 fights on my betting slip, and one fighter lets me down. Usually, the heaviest favourite of them all . Also, we've had some blatant weight misses recently which are just hard to predict, unless you're betting after the weigh ins, but honestly that's usually when all the value is lost. You want to be betting a week before the event if you want to try to get any sort of value, then a lot of fights get cancelled, and some bookies prevent you from cashing out etc.

Seem to come in waves (Currently hasn't been one posted in a few hours). Not all that sophisticated either. Likely just one person that's got a automatic captcha solving system, creating accounts from randomly generated usernames and then has a script for posting.

The time of registration and when they post the content seem to be fairly consistent.

Ngannou . They've brought a few over recently, one of them obviously fighting this weekend as the main event. However, I don't think Teixeira is much different from what we've already got. He might win against Lewis, but I don't think he's anything that's going to take the world by storm.

He might climb the rankings quick just because of the lack of depth in the division, but outside of his clear advantages in height and reach he isn't all that technical like the rest of the division.

Unfortunately, we need a decent amount of new comers, because the division is stale from top to bottom. Tom, clearly is a very skilled fighter, but it almost seems wasted because there isn't anyone that's really going to challenge him. If he loses his belt, it'll be from something unexpected, then he'll get the rematch and win it back. I don't think anyone's going to out skill him in the division currently.

NO, THANK YOU!

In all seriousness, I think this will just take away from the actual discussion on the forum, and probably actually result in hindering it.

I truly hope that his wife, kids and family can find peace eventually. His wife seems genuinely a good person, and of course Jota as well. This was probably one of the more unexpected and touching losses in football. Obviously, a great football player, but genuinely seemed to be one of the nicest guys around. It's just a massive shame, especially with the reports on how it happened.

The only issue is some days there's several threads that get removed, occasionally there will be a random sort of concentrated 'attack' where we're removing 20+ posts, so could potentially just end up clogging up the boards if they aren't removed, and they display a notice.

I like the idea of messaging all those that have visited a topic that's been removed as malware though. I would probably do this manually if I knew who visited the topic. I might potentially, start warning those that have replied to the thread before it was removed.

They do tend to get removed before most users see them due to the community having a sharp eye and reporting them!

Must be some refinements to the merit generation for sources gone wrong? theymos about to get some overtime

I thought my userscript broke.

I'm hoping we at least get to see Topuria's take down defence, and potentially submission defence. If all we see is him stalking Oliveira before knocking him out, I'll be a little gutted. I want to see Topuria in a war, his fights are a little too clean for me to back him or want him to win.

I'm not a massive fan of fights which end instantly due to a KO, compared to those that go a few rounds, and are competitive. The competitive side is what makes them exciting. Topuria and Holloway was decent, you just didn't feel Topuria was in any sort of danger so despite it being somewhat competitive you could just see he was winning from the start pretty much, despite getting out struck volume wise.

No. Of course they can improve. There's many examples of this over the years. It's quite typical that new users don't really care too much, and then change their mind as the forum grows on them, almost becoming a sort of second home to a lot of users here.

People in general deserve second chances. People develop over time, and typically learn from their mistakes. However, this varies from user to user, and I imagine most signature campaign managers would take this case by case instead of automatically ruling out users based on their past posting habits.

So, don't give up. Continue to improve, and if you contribute significantly to the forum, more than the noise you may have created before. People will notice, and generally be willing to forgive and move on.

actmyname hasn't been active in a while though,so getting the trust removed might be difficult. However, this is another point other users should take into consideration when evaluating a user.

If it is a decline of Burns it's pretty damn rapid. He looked fairly decent against Khamzat, and nearly won the fight. I'm pretty sure he stunned Khamzat, I just don't know how close it was to a knockout. He did seem to sort of face flat the mat though. Although, he hasn't looked nearly as good since, but the Khamzat fight wasn't 10 years ago. I do find though, in MMA when you drop off, you fall off a cliff.

Morales might just be that good.

Every week I seem to get let down by 1/2 fights. I didn't watch last nights though, due to other commitments. I'll review the tape and see how far I was from actually nailing it. Seems like Thiago Moises and Matheus Camilo are the ones to let me down this week.

I've seen the result of the Thiago Moises and I knew it was one of the more risky ones, but I guess I can't argue with that result

Here's my predictions for this week:

Denise Gomes
Thiago Moises
Matheus Camilo
Nursulton Ruziboev
Rodolfo Bellato
Michael Morales
Over 1.5 Luana Santos vs Tainara Lisboa
Tecia Pennington

I'm staying away from the other fights. Too close or just not worth the risk. Paul Craig always has the potential to pull off a upset, due to his grappling ability. However, I think most fighters are now aware of this and can avoid it.