I also think you're kinda forgetting that MMA is a sport, and not a fighting style. There are tactics that one would use in a controlled environment that wouldn't be good to try on the street, and vice versa. Although the method of being cross trained(like Bruce taught in JKD), has been proven the most effective of all. You wanna know grappling and striking, else you're gonna run into someone eventually who will exploit the holes in your game and wreck you. Jon Jones didn't train long, but he's also genetically gifted and built for the sport. He has the size, speed, reach and leverage to pretty much manhandle the best of his class. He's an exception, but also an athlete. Brock Lesnar, once again, also an athlete, and is physically built for the sport but not mentally due to his fear of getting hit. Had he trained for MMA in his younger years and incorporated more striking and hard sparring into his regimen, he would've done much better. You also can't really hold that loss against Couture because he had come in that fight undersized around 215-220 with Lesnar stepping in that cage round 280+ easy after rehydration, not to mention he had a year+ worth of ring rust and was already well into his 40's. I can't stand when people base a fighter's entire career off of how they perform when they're much older and declining.
As far as Steven Segal
He's always been known as one of the biggest frauds and bullies in the martial arts world. Couture would fukking murder dude. Segal would only step to stunt men and co stars on set, but when legit martial artists called him out throughout the years he'd be on
Gene Lebell choked him out and made him piss himself for bullying people on set and hell, even fukking JCVD pulled his skirt up, if Couture accepted best believe Segal would have every excuse to back out.
BJJ is watered down?
More like modified to be more effective in actual combat situations, from the street to the ring. shyt's been beyond field tested from jump. This is kinda why it dominated in the early style vs. style ufc events where you had all sorts of TMA people. If that's the case, why didn't cats like Steven Segal come out the woodwork and dominate?
Also, I think you're buying way too much into McGregor's hype train
Oh wow, he's fast and has heavy hands
We'll see how he can try to close the distance against Aldo, but I think he's gonna get kicked and knee'd to shyt trying.
It's gonna be hilarious to see that train get derailed real quick..