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Originally Posted by roaddawg  That was actually something Page said himself which makes sense when you think about casual UFC fans who aren't likely to watch fights that happen in other orgs. This is the same reason why guys like Fedor, Overeem were also unknowns (for casuals). Obviously the hardcore fans knew everything about these guys.
To them both Page and Silva came in as unknowns fighting their heros. Noone (amongst casuals) really expected Silva to beat Leben not even some fighters (Koscheck comes to mind).
Also very few casuals expected Rampage to beat Liddel in the UFC. I still remember how the crowd reacted. It went something like OMG WTF just happened (like when Silva beat Griffin).
Amongst the casuals its my belief that neither Silva or Rampage Jackson were suppose to win there respective UFC debuts. The only logical reason for the write offs imo was due to a lack of knowledge (ie they didn't know who the fug these guys were).
I would love to have seen the fighter polls on who fans thought would win. |
I'm not saying you are completely wrong, because there is some truth to what you are saying. But I also think that people were expecting Liddell to win because after the first loss to Rampage, he went on a 7-fight win streak (against guys like Couture x2, Ortiz x2, Babalu, Jeremy Horn, and Vernon White), winning every single fight by KO or TKO.
Meanwhile, Jackson went 7-3 with some brutal losses to Wandy and Shogun.
Also, there was the whole speculation that Pride fighters were juicing...
Man, I miss the old days of Pride vs UFC. I hope some other promotion will rise up and rival the UFC. It would help the fighters, fans, and sport immensely to have some competition.