After Petrino’s loss to Anthony Smith over the weekend, I feel like there is a clear pattern of young up-and-comers without a rank attached to their name getting schooled by the old guard perennial top 15, who are for some reason never given much of a chance by anyone before the fight happens to actually win, but when they do, everyone suddenly starts acting like it was a foregone conclusion, with the prospect being “rushed” or “an overhyped bum” and the gatekeeper a “tough fight for anyone”.

I love an old underdog winning just as much as anyone and that might be why I remember these instances more than I remember the times when the prospects actually broke through the gate, with the only examples I can think of recently being Erceg over Dvořák and Phillips over Munhoz, but numerous instances of gate being kept immediately pop into my mind:

Rozenstruik/Gaziev Hermansson/Pyfer Poirier/Saint-Denis de Lima/Tafa Magny/Malott Green/Dawson Barboza/Yusuff Dalby/Bonfim Ige anytime fighting down and now Smith/Petrino as well

So that begs the question for me: Are the underdog wins just more memorable and there’s just as many prospects breaking through, or are there just not as many great prospects capable of that anymore? Or is the gap between ranked and unranked fighters that wide?