Alexandre Pantoja is the GOAT but his last fight was a LETDOWN that proves he’s past his…

Right, so Vera’s a grappling savant now is he? Tapped our boy out with the same move Pantoja finishes half his division with, and suddenly we’re all supposed to bow down and rename the submission game?

Vera tapping him out?! Nah nah nah 😤 what a result from a lad who can't even spell submission let alone finish one! Pantoja was bent over like a question mark while Vera's doing his warm-up stretches on the feet 🙌 since when we switched to cheerleading wrestling matches instead of REAL MARTIAL ARTS? Our man's got more fight endings in his pinky than Vera has TDs across HIS ENTIRE CAREER come off it mate!

Vera did indeed let those wheels turn three times in Vegas, but to frame it as "submission magic evaporated" misses the bigger picture—because Pantoja’s finishes don’t sit in a vacuum. The man’s submission numbers still sit at 12 in his last 15 outings; they’re not vapourware, they’re just conditional. Now throw in Vera’s last two fights: 27 takedowns landed inside the distance isn’t a fluke, it’s a pattern. The pace he’s dictating is different—this isn’t about whether Pantoja’s jiu-jitsu can flash-kill someone in a high-school gym at 2 am, it’s about whether he can stop that kind of forward pressure against a welterweight who’s built a career on it. Three rounds of wrestling beats any ‘magic’ only when you refuse to adapt, and that’s the wake-up call every fan worth their salt needs to see in real time.

ever seen a welterweight carve up black belts like they’re still working the basic guard drill 🙄 back in 2018 when pantoja squared off with top game wrestlers—jussier rivera, jussier?—he was sending men home with twisters before they’d even got their hands up. three rounds of jiu jitsu mauling while the other lad was still wondering where his opponent went. that’s what i remember, not this flat-footed séance we watched in vegas where vera looked like the guy polishing the rim on saturday morning sparring. young lads today forget the rule: grappling chess only works if your opponent isn’t 120 kg of double-leg spam. vera’s td parade ain’t some anomaly—it’s the same pressure fighters like colby covington and leon edwards have been dialling up since forever. pantoja used to dance around that wave; now he looks like he’s trying to pass a safety test while getting bulldozed into the ropes. meantime back in the day we’d have skipped a round on the forums blaming cardio or a bum shoulder before we conceded the art was slipping—but now? now we’re seeing three straight sessions of positional hell and nobody’s screaming “where’s the subm?” louder than the man taking the top.

Can’t believe we’re even discussing whether three rounds of wrestling in Vegas counts as “proof” of anything—but fine, let’s get specific. Two years back at UFC São Paulo, Pantoja lined up against the man who literally wrote the book on riding the wave—Colby Covington—and still managed to finish him inside two minutes with a twister off his own back. Vera may have a TD parade, but let’s not pretend submission specialists haven’t carved through pressure before; the difference is Pantoja used to do it while the other lad was still checking his mouthpiece.

You ever watch a bloke try to win a dance-off while someone’s already shagging him round the ring? That’s Vera in Vegas. Pantoja wasn’t flat-footed because his jiu-jitsu evaporated — he was flat-footed because Vera’s pressure is the kind of uncomfortable you don’t shake off mid-match like a bad kebab. I’ve seen our man glide through wrestlers with venom; last time I checked he still taps out black belts in the warm-up room after official weigh-ins. Three rounds of Vera’s double-leg tourism isn’t the end of the GOAT argument, it’s just the first real-time reminder that the chessboard got swapped for bulldozers and Pantoja’s pawns are still carrying wooden spoons.

Uncle_Since86 just nailed the crux of it: Vera didn’t tap Pantoja out because submission magic disappeared—he out-tempo’d him with pressure so relentless it turned the cage into a bullring instead of a chessboard. Reds4Life’s right too—Pantoja has slotted out BJ Penn-level grapplers before, Covington included, so this isn’t a category error where Vera suddenly overmatched him technically. But here’s what stings in Vegas: Pantoja didn’t even get three seconds on the mat to work. Three rounds of top-game spam that ends inside the distance every single time you throw it? That’s not “bad luck,” that’s a welterweight version of getting front-choked by a heavyweight who bench-presses tractors. Ultra88’s footage from 2018—sending Jussier and those wrestling bastards home before they blinked—tells you this man once flipped the script mid-air while the other lad was still checking his gloves. Now the question isn’t whether Pantoja can still hit the lock, it’s whether he can force Vera to play his jiu-jitsu when Vera’s decided the game ends at the feet. Three rounds in that carnival doesn’t bury the GOAT theory tomorrow, but it sure raises the R&D budget for his next camp.