- Lutter was a chump. I don't want to hear it. He washed out of the UFC soon after getting his ass handed to him. Travis was never on the same stratosphere as Silva. Winning TUF means diddy squat to me. That's like trying to justify a win over Nover.
- So what if Leites had a win over Marquardt? He had no stand up and his takedown ability was average. On top of it all, Thales has no KO power whatsoever. He had zero chance of beating Silva. This was a match-up nightmare right from the start.
- My point is that the middleweight division has been one of the most shallow divisions in the sport for a long, long time, and the UFC did a fantastic job in hyping up every opponent Anderson faced. Outside the very few like Henderson, nobody in that division had the skill set to beat Silva. Of course, it didn't help that the UFC gave Silva more favorable matches than they did for GSP or Penn or Jones or etc.
-You said that the UFC used Lutter to pad Anderson's record, and my retort was that the guy was picked as the next title contender before Anderson was even champ. With that being the case how could they be padding the guy's record when they weren't even sure who he was going to fight in the first place?
-Nearly everything is a matchup nightmare against a guy like Silva. The guy was unstoppable for years. That's like saying that Fedor beating Cro Cop isn't a big deal because Cro Cop's ground game was weak. It's not Fedor's fault that Cro Cop was a one dimensional striker, and the fact that Fedor could exploit it played better to Fedor's prestige than anything else. It's the same with Leites. The guy might not have had great KO power, but he had a really good ground game and he was the only top ten guy in the UFC that Silva hadn't fought back then. There aren't going to be a ton of fighters out there with the skills to beat Anderson, and the one guy that finally did benefited a lot from Anderson severely disrespecting him and losing a ton of focus. Weidman was great enough to capitalize on that moment, but not many are. That's why Anderson has the legacy that he does.
-The middleweight division was not that shallow. Also if that's the case then Anderson straight outclassing Forrest the way he did showed his skill because he did something Rampage and Shogun couldn't do. Even then Anderson beat perennial top middleweights that have had good success in other weight classes like Hendo, Franklin, Maia, Marquardt, Vitor, and Sonnen. Even going back before his UFC run guys like Newton, Horn, and Mach were good at two weight classes as well.
It's funny you keep talking about how the UFC gave Anderson favorable matchups. Not only was the he the best fighter in the game, or at least one of them if you're ******** that it wasn't considered to be Fedor, so he was going to always be the favorite. But there is no one reasonable that you could bring up to say that the he should have fought during his title reign. I'd love to hear who you think he should have been fighting besides some of the guys you don't see as being great on his resume. Hendo again who left the UFC instead of fighting Nate for a title shot? Nate a second time when he lost to Leites and Okami for contender spots? Okami who broke his hand, so Cote filled in as a replacement? Weidman who hadn't had enough fights, and he eventually fought one he put together a good string of wins? Who are these opponents that Anderson didn't fight that he should have? You can bring up GSP, but he's in another weight class, and he had his own weight class to clean out. Bones would have been great after Weidman, but that's another weight class in addition to Anderson losing and then breaking his leg. Shields, Rockhold, and Jacare that weren't even in the UFC?
The bottom line is that there isn't anyone you could have reasonably expected Anderson to fight that he didn't. Once the UFC and Pride merged he fought everyone in the top ten except Bisping who never could win a contender match to challenge him in the first place. You can say that the middleweight division is weak as a fall back again, but it can't be that weak considering that Anderson, Hendo, Franklin, Marquardt, and Maia all have top ten wins in other weight classes besides middleweight.