Brrr

Writing my thoughts

[ryanrivers]

Mortal Kombat logo

[ryanrivers]

Triple H

(I was having issues removing the bottle cap and adding water)

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First model

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Pandora is still the GOAT

I was watching a Youtube video where someone was ranking music streaming services. One of the streaming services he mentioned was Pandora which I haven't heard in years. It was one of my first experience using a streaming site besides Grooveshark.

If you don't know what Grooveshark is, think of it as an illegal version of Spotify. It was a good alternative to downloading music. Actually one of Grooveshark's features was allowing you to download songs, so I guess it was more of a preference. I didn't stick with Grooveshark for long because it made my computer ( a bummy Windows XP) unbelievably slow.

Pandora's selling point was its radio algorithm. The purpose of the radio feature is to play songs similar to the original song/album you want to listen to while throwing in some songs that'll slightly deviate from your taste to help you discover new songs.

The only catch was that its a radio based streaming service, so if you only wanted to listen to a specific song - too bad. Also, because it was free it came with ads. I didn't have ad-block at the time (Did they even have that back then? ), so whenever I was in the zone with whatever I was listening to, I would get blue ball'd by a 30 second ad every 3-4 songs. Another thing was that you only had a limited amount of skips. If I recall there was 5 skips an hour or a day. If you use all five, you're stuck listening to whatever Popa Pandora wants to play. However, you could get around this by starting a new radio station, but the skips carrier over, so you had to use them wisely.

Regardless, I still enjoyed Pandora. To me, it was like an online radio station where the DJ knows what you want to hear. It was a foreign concept to younger me. I should make it clear that at this point in my life, my only sources for music was the car radio, TV, party DJs and whatever peer-to-peer file sharing application I was using at the time.

I gotta say, despite Pandora having one thing - radio streaming- it did it really well. Its like the website that practiced one kick a thousand times. Now compare that to current radio features on other streaming services. The radio station will play songs that you heard a bunch times due to it being linked to your "Liked songs" playlist and the songs that are supposed to help you discover something new are not compatible with what you're looking for. The only positive is that the radio will pull non-single songs, which Pandora didn't really do.

I still remember my old sign in. I checked my collection and I'm catching a wave of nostalgia about what I used to listen to. Drexciya, Devin the Dude, MF Doom, J-Dilla, XXYYXX, Craig David, Curren$y... The site has a new look, but still works the same as it did nearly two decades ago.

[ryanrivers]

Whittaker vs. Reinier de Ridder

I knew Robert Whittaker wasn't going to win. He's apart of the older generation of middleweights that was "meh" in terms of talent.

The low level of competition at that time is the reason why I refuse to say Israel Adesanya championship run was "legendary". Half of his fights he couldn't even knockout his opponent regardless of age difference, Jared Cannonier, or low fight IQ, Marvin Vettori.

Speaking of the Vettori, he lost his fight last week against a Branden Allen, another fighter I believe is not good.

Im kinda glad that the previous generation of middleweights are getting washed out for new blood. They provided some good fights, but looking back on the highlights it was mostly against bums.

Apart of me wants to include Dricus Du Plessis in the mix of the older generation, but he toes the line. His upcoming fight against Khamzat Chimaev will determine how good he truly is.

[ryanrivers]

Garcia vs Romero

Out of the three fights on this card, I thought this was going to be somewhat decent - it ended up being boring like the other two fights, but at least there was a knockdown!

I dont have much to say here.

Ryan Garica didn't have a pulse tonight and Rolly Romero could've did a little more, but I understand because Ryan would've caught him one time and sat him on his ass. However, that is something the old Ryan would do. The person we saw tonight is a man whos coked out and hops on twitter to ragebait.

Its whatever though. Ryan seemed content with his loss and Rolly was blasé during his interview, stating Ryan can run it back with Devin Haney (AKA Huggy Haney).

This whole card was a snooze. Im going to sleep.

[ryanrivers]

Valspar '25

I started watching Golf last year. No real reason, I just wanted to give it a shot and I ended up enjoy it. Watching it is very calming and puts me in meditative state. Unlike other sports, theres no yelling and no one is running all over the place. Golf has a chill vibe, the players are relaxed and the commentators are soothing.

I watch it on ESPN plus where it shows multiple broadcast that are separated in two categories; featured group and featured hole(s). At first I was solely watching featured holes. I liked the areas that had water surrounding the hole. The broadcast makes sure to showcase a lot of the scenery. It wasn't until recently when I stared to watch the featured group broadcast, so I can start to memorize some of the players. At first it was hard to separate a good player from a bad one. When I started watching specific players, it started to become noticeable when watching their short strokes. Some people made it look easy, while other lower ranked players had trouble. Watching the good players like Mcilroy and Scheffler makes me appreciate the sport more.

Today I was watching the final round of the Valspar Championship and It was exciting watching Viktor Hovland beat Justin Thomas on the last two holes. Im not familiar with those two, but I do plan on watching highlights of their previous games along with highlights from the other players that finished within the top 10 as they were hitting some very tricky shots!

[ryanrivers]

Steveson vs Hendricks

While scrolling youtube, I see in my recommendations a thumbnail of Gable Steveson, which reminded me that I forgot to tune in to watch the college wrestling championship. Then I read the title of the video which is "Gable Steveson STUNNED by Wyatt Hendrickson in final", which took me by surprised.

I followed Steveson loosely. I know he is good wrestler and the matches I saw him compete in he won effortlessly. However, when watching the youtube clip where it showed the final minute of the match, Steveson had trouble defending a shot from his opponent Wyatt Hendrickson. Hendrickson ended up on Steveson's back, which resulted him gaining 3 points making the score 4-5 Hendrickson. It was a nice takedown - a very smooth transition!

Kudos to Hendrickson for getting the W.

I wonder whats next for Steveson. I know WWE is out of the question considering he was cut. I don't know if he has the chops for the UFC. Whatever he decides to do, I wish him luck!

[ryanrivers]

Fundora vs Booker

I would've missed this if it wasn't for a commercial I saw 20 minutes before the fight started.

The only other time I have seen Sebastian Fundora was during the Fury/Wilder 2 undercard. I didn't pay much attention to him and neither did the broadcast because throughout his fight, they kept cutting to Deontay Wilder entering the venue and being escorted to his room. My only take away from Fundora was "Wow, he's really tall!"

When I watched the commercial for this fight I was like "Wait a minute, I recognized that tall guy!"

During Fundora's ring walk, one of the commentators compared his height to a basketball player - which is topical since March Madness is currently in its second round as of this fight. The comparison got me thinking of college athletes that couldn't go pro in their sport or have actually competed at a profession level but was very short lived, and tried to compete in MMA. I can go on, but I think I'll save this topic for another time.

With Fundora being so tall, I would've thought Chordale Booker would try going for the body, but he rarely did that. Fundora walked Booker down the whole time and finished the fight by the fourth round.

Although it wasn't competitive, I thought it was fun seeing Fundora dominate. I want see Fundora fight someone who will apply pressure to see how he handles it.

Did I mention Fundora is tall! He is the tallest current boxing champion at 6 foot 5 and a half according to the PBC broadcast! Did you know that?!

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Covington vs Buckley

Former fanboys of Colby Covington are now stating he was never good all of a sudden. Since the aftermath of Covington's fight with Leon Edwards, It seems that the fanboys stopped drinking the kool-aid. They're now willing to admit that the admiration for the fighter is due to his persona - which he needed because he had no personality.

Colby is not only a bad fighter, but a boring one too! Don't believe me, watch any of his fights throughout his UFC career. Most of them are just him taking his opponent on the ground and maintaining the top position for five rounds.

The only exciting fights he had were his two fights with Kamaru Usman. I thought that we were going witness something that could lead to more interesting fights. His next fight with Jorge Masvidal disproved that.

I remember there were people on twitter that were entertaining the idea that he could beat Khamzat Chimaev. Crazy!

Congrats to Joaquin Buckley. People are saying that he is one of the most improved fighters. Ehh, ...I kinda see it.

[ryanrivers]

Paul vs Tyson

When this fight was cancelled back in July due to an Ulcer, I was a bit skeptic. There are several causes of this disease, one of them being stress. Before the news dropped as to why Mike Tyson had an Ulcer due to poor eating habits, my dumbass started jumping to conclusions. I though that maybe Mike might be secretly having some doubts about his fight against Jake Paul.

This fight is a big risk low reward for Tyson. You're taking on some punk kid half your age and the whole world is expecting you to dominate due to your illustrious career of being a killer in the ring. If Mike wins by decision.... thats okay, because people will just write it off as Mike being 100 years old. HOWEVER... if he were to get knocked out, that'd be bad for his image.

Think about it. Outside of the people who actually followed his career when he was active, you got a big chunk of people who only heard about what hes done in the 80s-90s from either word of mouth, friends, family members, youtube essayist, and stubborn oldheads. Whenever people hype an athlete, artist, musician, etc from at least two decades ago and claim that they'll dominate the current era that were living in, it creates a lot debate, but it also adds mystic. Think of it like people who claim Micheal Jordan as the greatest basketball player ever, and is also better than Lebron James (Im one of those people by the way!).

Then again, I talked to people outside the internet and alot of them don't expect much, and stated that Tyson will win and that this fight is a joke.

One thing I noticed is that there is very little racist banter amongst online spectators days before the fight as opposed Floyd Mayweather vs. Logan Paul. If I had to guess, its probably due to Mayweather having streaks of being a loathsome guy whether its in or outside the ring.

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Post fight

Alot, of people - older people - who were rooting for mike, claiming that he would destroy Jake, are now backpedaling saying he's old - which is true.

When Mike felt Jake's power, he stopped charging at him. I feel like if Jake was a more experience boxer he would've sensed that and knocked him out.

Overrall the fight was just okay. When Mike started being reserved, I was checked out, but I kept leaning over my seat whenever he got wobbled.

Oh, by the way, the Netflix stream was ass through out the card.

[ryanrivers]

Plant vs McCumby

Last Saturday, Canelo Alvarez fought Edgar Berlanga. You can tell Canelo is no longer in his prime, but nonetheless it was a good fight. While this event was going on, down the street was UFC Noche at the Sphere.

When I heard that these two events were going on. I thought it was going to be a repeat of the last time UFC had their PPV event the same day of a Canelo fight back in 2019. On MMA's side, It was UFC 244: Jorge Masvidal vs Nate Diaz for the BMF title, and on the boxing side, it was Canelo vs Sergey Kovalev. Despite Canelo having more star power, DAZN stalled the event until UFC was done with their title fight. I remember this day vividly, because I was watching both events simultaneously. While UFC was having a boring main event with Masvidal toying with Diaz and ending in a doctor stoppage, the DAZN broadcast kept cutting to both boxers in their room laying on the couch half sleep.

However, that wasn't the case this time around. Both events were on the same day, but neither side had to delay their main event. UFC's main event, Sean O'Malley vs Merab Dvalishvili started right after Canelo's fight. I didn't watch UFC Noche outside of the main event, but from what I heard it was the same as any other PPV but with better video effects due to being at the Sphere.

Dana White really tried to hype this as "the greatest event ever!". He was so confident in that statement that he was charging $1,200 for the cheap-seats, but not confident enough to disclose the PPV buys days after the event (UFC hasn't consistently disclose this information as much as they use to). I guess the numbers weren't better than Canelo's 650k PPV buys.

Anyway, the fight that I was most interested in was Caleb Plant vs Trevor Mccumby. I've been following Plant since he won the IBF title back in 2019. He's fun a character. After losing his fight with Canelo, I thought he was going to be a hallow version of himself and soon retire, but he didn't. He ended up knocking out Anthony Dirrell in his next fight. Dirrell was old, but still, it looked like Plant got his mojo back after the Canelo loss. Then, he fought David Benavidez (Canelo's current boogieman) and lost via decision. Plant was outmatched, but didn't get knocked down, so thats gotta count for something, right?

Against Mccumby, Plant was slipping and sliding all over the place in the beginning. He then got the ringrust knocked out of him as he was knocked down in the fourth round. After that, he started putting pressure on Mccumby. Both fighters were taunting each other throughout the fight. They were really playing it up for the audience, and they were loving it, and so did I. Plant won the fight via decision.

What will be next for Caleb Plant? Who knows. All I know is that he isn't ready for a rematch with Canelo or Benavidez.

[ryanrivers]

UFC 305: Du Plessis vs Adesanya

My first thought when watching this fight was that the Israel Adesanya from 2019 - 2021 would've put Dricus Du Plessis away by the second or thrid round. The guy eats off people who rush him. However, Its clear that Adesanya is declining.

I noticed something was off in his last fight against Sean Strickland but I was too caught up in the fact that he was losing in the cards and didn't consider it due to the fact that his first loss against Alex Pereira in the UFC was a fluke. I call it fluke because Pereira was saved by the bell before getting knocked out. In the second fight, Pereira was in the same situation, but Adesanya was able to follow through with the finish.

I gotta give credit to DuPlessis. Although, I mentioned that the old Adesanya would've put him away, Du Plessis was his best opponent besides Pereira. During Adesanya's title run, he went against people who might not have won, but should've at least give him a hard time. However, when fight night rolls around, they're a completely different fighter that fails to reach expectations. Du Plessis had all the tools that Adesanya's opponents had and actually used them. He had Marvin Vettori's wrestling, Robert Whittaker's finesse (although he did have it during his fight with Adesanya, it didn't matter due to him being chinny), and Yoel Romero's aggressiveness.

It'll be interesting to see whats next for Adesanya. Maybe Kamaru Usman? Ehh, maybe not. Wishful thinking. I know what I don't want to see in the future, and thats Du Plessis vs Strickland 2!

[ryanrivers]

Anderson vs Bakole

So it finally happened. Jared Anderson received his first L this past weekend.

I knew this was coming due to his blasé attitude towards boxing. Whenever his promoter, Top Rank, showcased interviews with him, the biggest take away was that he was going to retire in his mid-late 20s. When I heard this, I didn't believe it. When someone talks about retirement they don't really mean it, its just a way to hype people up to watch their fight due to FOMO.

I like Jared. Not because Top Rank wont stop shoving him in our faces and being heralded as the next american heavyweight that'll bring the belts back to home soil. I like the way he fights and how he dominates his opponents. However, there was a some cracks revealed in his previous fight with Ryad Merhy back in April. He got dinged with a few headshots that made him wobbly. He still won by decision, but I recall some folks saying he can't handle adversity.

Before his fight with Martin Bakole, people were betting against Jared despite being the favorite. From most of the boxing circles I frequent, the consensus was that the fight was a toss up.

When the fight began it was clear that Jared was out of depth when he had his first knockdown of his career in the first round. I didn't know who Martin Bakole was before the fight, but the guy wasn't some can for Jared to feed off of. Jared lacked technique to fend off his opponents barrages of haymakers to the point where the ref stopped the fight in the middle of round 5.

I hope Jared refines himself before getting back in the ring, because that was embracing to watch as a fan of his.

I think its best Jared Anderson puts a pin on his fight with Jared Miller - the battle of the Big Babys - until he gets a few more tune up fights.

[ryanrivers]

UFC 304 : Edwards vs Muhammad 2

When Leon Edwards had his second fight with Kamaru Usman, I thought he was gonna get curb stomped. I was wrong.

When they had their third fight, I thought Leon Edwards would lose since he won the last fight by a fluke. I was wrong.

When Leon Edwards fought Colby Covington, I thought Colby would finish him within three rounds. I was wrong. This one was the most disappointing. Colby was fighting scared for most of the fight and didn't wrestle as much as he should have. The Colby that fought Usman the first time would've had no issues with Edwards.

Before Edwards fight with Belal Muhammad began, I thought maybe I should give Edwards the benefit of doubt, because I've been on the wrong side of history the last three times. During the middle of the first round Belal took Edwards down, and Edwards didn't have an answer to his opponents grappling. It was at that point I knew he was finally going to lose.

From the second round onward, Edwards had the same demeanor as the last two rounds of his fight with Usman the second time. He looked mentally checked out.

Congrats to Belal. I know Dana wouldn't like the outcome of whoever won since both fighters are charisma black holes.

Bring on Shavkat Rakhmonov to clean up this division!

[ryanrivers]

Paul vs Perry

After Jake Paul's fight with Tommy Fury, I joked that Jake can only beat black people. This is still true after his fight with Mike Perry, who is also part black (2% according to him, so the one drop rule applies). Before you say it, no, Ben Askren doesn't count. A man who is out shape, out of practice, with bad hips would've lost to the likes of Glass Joe. Ryan Bourland doesn't count either. Who Ryan Bourland you may ask? My thoughts exactly!

All jokes aside, I still feel like we haven't seen anything different from Jake. The most notable thing is his shitty gas tank. By the second round he was breathing from his mouth that was so wide open a boxer with a good hook would've erased his chin.

In regards to Mike Perry, a man who found much success in Bare Knuckle Fighting, did a good job of representing his sport, because he damn sure wasn't fighting like a boxer. He did have a few glimpses of success. If only he did...

Im not going to finish that sentence, because its the same story for every Jake Paul fight. X should've done this, X should've done that; all because Jake's opponents are shit boxers.

Tommy Fury was able to finish the job in a split decision. I haven't heard much from Tommy since. Apparently he fought KSI a few months after and nothing else, which sounds par for the course. Tommy was more into being a celebrity than a boxer. This is evident if you watched him on the reality game show "Love Island UK" - its a guilty pleasure of mine.

Jake's spectacle with Perry came about due to his fight with Mike Tyson being postponed and rescheduled to November, and Jake wanted to stay busy and not get ring rust. I'll give props to Jake, because he could've just sat on his ass in the meantime. It shows that his loss against Tommy didn't discourage him. He is still committed to boxing... for now.

[ryanrivers]

Broner vs Cobbs

Last year Adrien Broner fought Bill Hutchison. He didn't look good, but he won the fight. During his post fight interview, you can tell that his mic skills were the only glimpse of the old Broner - whether you were a fan of it or not.

Towards the end of the interview, he called out Rolly Romero, a fighter who won his fight in 2023 against Ismael Barroso by TKO. Fans called it questionable since most of the punches Romero thrown weren't that clean. I was fine with the call considering his opponent was pushing 40 years of age and was down on the scoring cards. Before that fight, Rolly lost via TKO to Gervonta Davis in 2022. Seeing Romero have a practice/tuneup fight against Broner would've been fun. I know Broner would've lost, but still!

With Broner's fight against Cobbs, he had the same bad performance. The only difference is that he didn't win. I guess boxing judges aren't corrupt on a lower level!

When I saw Broner get knocked down in the second round, I knew it was time for him to hang up the gloves. I saw the writing on the wall back when he fought Manny Pacquiao. In that fight he looked liked he had his agility, but his input was low which made him nearly lose every round. Jim Gray even mention this during the post fight interview, stating that he averaged less than 8 punches a round and followed it up by asking Broner whats next for his career after only winning 3 of his last 7 fights. In typical Adrain Broner fashion, he had an ignorant response - the whole interview ignorant to be honest, but I think he wanted to go out with a bang since his career took a nosedive.

I dont have anything to say about Cobbs. He's just another 30 year old Journey man.

Overall, this fight was boring. Outside of the Knockdown, the only notable thing was a man, who I presume is someone from Broner's corner, asking one of the commentators what round they're on and if it was the final round or not. No one wanted to be there.