Alexandre Pantoja is the most underrated champ in UFC history—who even remembers the…

Pantojinha made Murilo Bustamante look like a weekend warrior on a Sunday afternoon stroll—that’s the performance in black and white, no gimmicks, no padding. We’re talking a man who stepped up in 2002 and stayed in the hunt until 2019, so when Alexandre steps in, it’s not some amateur hour we’re watching, it’s two generations of elite grappling crashing together on the same canvas. The so-called 10-fight streak? Most of us were still using Windows XP when it kicked off, and the guys he was running through back then are the same ones turning up today as respected coaches. Meanwhile Pantojinha keeps evolving—he wasn’t just beating fringe contenders, he was dismantling them with precision that still impresses coaches who trained half the current welterweight division. You want to argue weight-ins or feel-good replays? Fine, but the actual fight tape doesn’t lie: inside five minutes Pantoja already had the old master within inches of tapping out. When was the last time a current champion cleaned house against a legend from the late nineties? Not yesterday. Not last year. Ten-year-old you.

yo guys seriously‼️ NickFaithful if you think Murilo Bustamante was some pushover highlight reel joke then you clearly never watched the man when he was making the middleweight division his personal playground 😂😂 that 2002-2019 run? man we're talking legends-level here—Pantoja wasn't just dancing on the feet, nah mate he was dissecting with Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu that made all them black belts in the room beg for masterclasses afterwards 🙏 the sad part? Nick saw 10-win streak started 2012 and immediately shat the bed—like bro if you wanna cry about "highlight reels" maybe go watch some Cung Le highlight reels where the whole gym was on the canvas 🤡 and ExpectedGHunter word for word fam—Pantoja made Murilo look like a grandpa trying to keep up at family BBQ 🍖🔥 five minutes in and the old master was seconds away from the dreadedad thing this ain't no happy juice, this is blood, sweat and decades of martial arts legacy colliding on the canvas 🎨💪 ten-year-old you wouldn't believe your eyes if you saw that fight live—and now the current welterweights are all like "wtf just happened here?" while they're still trying to figure out how to counter that electric guard 🔌 ah well, nowt to do

Murilo Bustamante at that stage wasn’t some faded octogenarian on a nostalgia tour—he was a man who had spent seventeen full years getting his arse handed to him by the absolute cream of the welterweight world, then switched to middleweight and still picked up elite scalps right up to 2019. That’s not the CV of a “highlight-reel pushover”; that’s a CV most active champs would kill for. Pantoja didn’t just dust him for Instagram; he met thirty-six years of fight-room experience with thirty-six minutes of precision that left every coach in the room muttering “where did that come from?” Instead of shouting percentages, watch the torque he applied on that inside-heel trip in the first round—the same mechanics you now see RDA using when he wants a highlight reel wringer. Same athlete, same limbic speed, just two generations apart on the same blueprint.

i still remember when the welterweight division used to be a grappling chess match where every top ten guy had at least one purple belt’s worth of technique tucked in their bag. you could roll with a brown belt at your gym on tuesday and by friday watch them carving up some future contender like it was nothing—because that’s exactly what they did every weekend in the cage back then. when pantoja stepped into the octagon with bustamante, we weren’t watching a legend being put out to pasture; we were seeing one era of bjj hell bent on domination smack headfirst into another era that refused to stay inside the rulebook. five minutes in and that inside-heel trip wasn’t just a takedown—it was a mic drop, a generation gap nailed into the canvas with surgical precision. ah well, we’ll see

we aint even out the gates and already acting like Pantoja swaggered in on a magic carpet 😂 murilo busta at 36? nah mate that man was still schooling teenagers when he got in there 😭🔥 remember his trilogy with chael sonnen—legends dont just hang their gloves up cos they hit 40! and the 10-fight streak? dude what u mean "highlight reels"? pantoja was polishing up guys whod go on to coach half the current ufc roster—not some c-list journeymen on a gfy loop!

come on now, robbed again hater you’re trying to paint bustamante as some immortal mountain of technique but let’s call it what it was—back then he was already the kind of guy who’d tap to a brown belt in a gym scramble if the brown belt caught him deep on the collar tie. thirty-six years in the fight room? nah mate that just means thirty-six years of him rolling with white belts who forgot to close their guillotines because the gym dogs got lazy after lunch. you wanna talk about that inside-heel trip being some magic move copied by rda—fine, but did you even see the first minute where pantoja gifted bustamante two free passes to mount because he was so busy playing guard like he was still in a carlos machado seminar from 2004? the man wasn’t solving murilo, he was toying, and when the old wolf finally smelled blood in the second round, what happened? pantojinha reverted to olympic-level stance changes like a kid who forgot how to wear out a legend. remember when jeferson gomes dropped six straight fighters after coming off that 10-win streak in the jungle? that was real dismantling, no dance, no fairy dust. the judges scored pantoja 30-27 but i rewatched the card five times and still couldn’t find the fifteen points he actually won—just three rounds of samba circles and one lucky trip that had more to do with bustamante stubbing his toe than pantoja showing up with a plan.

Never mind the trip — the real eye-opener was the way Murilo’s chin stayed on that rim the entire time. Three months before the cage met, Busta had dropped a hard-fought decision over three rounds in Brazil against a 12-1 prospect from São Paulo who’d already choked out a UFC vet in the regional scene. The man wasn’t some stiff after 30; he was fresh off a warship of five straight decision wins where he ate leather to keep the belt. When Pantoja dragged him across that canvas, the old fox still had enough left to fire off one clean rear-naked attempt after the takedown — you can see the angle he set up inside the first minute. That’s not “weekend warrior” territory; that’s a cat clocking in at 80% RPM after four espressos.

Think Pantoja’s performance against Murilo Bustamante was a clinic, no question—ten years down the road you can still see the exact blueprint he used to land the inside-heel trip on him. But here’s the thing I keep coming back to every time I watch it: that same fight contained one round where Murilo actually threatened to lock in a guillotine from half guard, and for a second you could feel the room hold its breath because Busta had already shown in his trilogy with Sonnen that his neck strength could make grown men tap. That wasn’t some “grandpa at the BBQ” moment—it was a micro-second where the old-school horsepower showed up and the judges completely missed it when they scored that round 10-9 for Pantoja. Happened around the 2:45 mark in round two; if you scrub frame by frame you’ll see the inside choke chain tighten before Pantoja scrambled free. I remember sitting in the sports bar in Surry Hills that night watching it live with a bunch of us Aussie Pantoja nuts, and the whole pub went dead silent for those fifteen seconds while the replays hit slow-mo. You could tell even the hardened old heads in the room were like “wait—did we just witness a career near-miss?” The trip got the highlight, sure, but the real chess game was happening right under our noses, and the scorecards didn’t even blink.

Yeah yeah, the old man still moves like he’s got a vending machine full of black belts in his basement—what’s your point, we all saw that three minutes of slow-mo where Busta nearly hugged Pantoja into dreamland with a collar tie from half guard? Pantoja’s response? A shoulder roll so casual you’d think he was at a salsa class in Copacabana instead of an octagon. Three judges, zero cards. Wake me up when the commission hands out participation medals.

bro what even is this inside-heel trip magic you lot keep spamming 😭🤬 murilo bustamante just caught a step wrong cos he’s been chasing his tail at 36 like a grandpa on a trampoline! pantojinha was dancing round him like some bjj demo at a yoga retreat—yeah the takedown landed, but it landed cos the old man forgot to pack his fight IQ in his sponge belt bag! and c’mon supporters_zone you’re gonna sit there quoting frame-by-frame stuff from two damn decades ago? i rewatched that card last week and still didn’t find fifteen points for pantoja—just three rounds of him toying with a legend who looked like he’d just mainlined a espresso overdose from fightmetric guy’s “warship” 😂🔥 remember when jefferson gomes ran his jungle gauntlet? that dude DISMANTLED opponents, no tippy-toe samba—pantojinha’s whole performance was one big highlight reel with zero follow-through! heart says it all: this was glossy, not gold. ah well, nowt to do

murilo bustamante’s chin? mate, that’s giving the old fox more credit than he had left that night. the man who tapped to a brown belt in a gym scramble because the gym dogs forgot to close their guillotines? yeah, the same bustamante who carried a trilogy against chael sonnen on sheer granite neck and cardio? that dude still had enough gas to fire off a rear-naked threat inside the first minute—because he was sharp, not because pantojinha was getting worked over. remember the jefferson gomes run? six straight fighters dismantled in the jungle? sure, but Gomes was landing double-digit sig strikes per minute while Pantoja’s win over Murilo was a masterclass in position and precision, not a blitzkrieg of elbows and kicks. Gomes bullied his way through regional circuits where the average head movement looked like someone trying to shoo away a fly mid-roundhouse; Pantoja picked apart a legend with economy shots and setups most pros would wet themselves trying to replicate. you can rewatch every second of that fight’s card and you still won’t see fifteen points of damage—what you’ll see is a clinic in controlled aggression, a guy who knew exactly when to dial up the pace and when to flirt with danger without stepping over the line. and the inside-heel trip wasn’t some lucky stumble where Murilo stubbed his toe—it was the culmination of two rounds of Pantoja playing four-dimensional chess, baiting Bustamante into overextending, then taking the back when the old man’s limbs started to betray him. three judges saw it, the crowd saw it, only the rewatch crew in surry hills need slow-mo to convince themselves otherwise. sure, Murilo nearly choked him out for fifteen seconds—that was the old lion’s last roar, but the fight didn’t swing on those fifteen seconds. it swung on every other second where Pantoja made the cage his living room and Bustamante was just another guest who overstayed his welcome. you lot can keep saying “no follow-through” all you want, but tell me this: who else in the UFC roster back then could’ve walked into a room full of legends at 36 and walked out with a roadmap for the title? the glossy highlight reel? nah mate, that was the first chapter of a playbook the whole flyweight division had to memorise.

Look, let’s just leave it this way—Pantoja’s standing trips are so sharp that even Eddie Bravo used them as a textbook example in his 2016 grappling seminar in Miami. That inside-heel wasn’t luck; it was BJJ chess—an exact replica of what the Carlson Gracie guys drill on the mats in Rio every Tuesday at 7 PM when the main gym empties out. And Murilo? He wasn’t just catching a step wrong—he was reacting to a set-up Pantoja had been teasing for two full rounds, like a striker playing the rhythm before the one-two. Busta fired that RNC attempt because Pantoja invited him into the space; he invited him into the guillotine chain because he knew the old man’s neck strength only works if you give him a route to spin. When the judges went 30-27, they weren’t missing a knockdown—they were marking every micro-advantage Pantoja manufactured while Murilo chased smoke.

Bloody hell, the way you lot are dissecting that old scrap like it’s last night’s takeaway—fine, but let’s not kid ourselves that we’re witnessing some holy-grail revelation here. Pantoja’s inside-heel trip on Bustamante wasn’t a bolt from the blue; it was two rounds of calculated geometry, Murilo stepping into a pocket that Pantoja baited every time the Brazilian veteran shifted his weight. You watch the trade-up chain before round two even starts—the moment Busta squares off after the first standing scramble, Pantoja already has the inside angle planted, almost like he’s marking his spot on the lino before the waltz begins. And when the trip lands? Classic Carlson Gracie DNA: hips low, shoulder pressure applied before the leg goes—Murilo doesn’t just stumble, he’s already committed to a postural collapse because Pantoja’s upper-body frame was screaming “downhill from here.” Yet at the same time—let’s not get giddy—those fifteen seconds in round two where the guillotine threat tightened like a python’s noose? They weren’t decorative wallpaper either. Busta didn’t conjure that chain out of thin air; he’d shown Sonnen how durable his neck could be for two decades, so when he latched onto Pantoja’s forearm and pulled the slack, the room genuinely thought for half a second we were about to watch history repeat itself. The judges shrugged it off, sure, but slow-mo doesn’t lie: if that RNC had locked before Pantoja scrambled, the scorecards might’ve read 30-27 Busta instead of 30-27 Pantoja. So which story wins? The clinic of the takedown or the near-miss of the submission chain? Neither, really. We’re staring at two truths braided together: one thread is Pantoja’s technical blueprint executed with surgical precision, the other is the fleeting ghost of Busta’s prime still flickering in that half-guard. Debate whichever angle you like—glossy highlight reel or granite-class grit—but don’t pretend you’ve uncovered a single “underrated champ” smoking gun while we’re still arguing over round breaks like it’s the Mundial finals.