John McCarthy Explains Recent Remarks About Michael “Venom” Page
“Big” John McCarthy came under some backlash, when he made some comparisons between Michael Page, and Anderson Silva. Now he defends those remarks, and explains what he meant.
McCarthy is one of the most well-respected figures in all of MMA. From his time as one of the best refs in the game, to helping in the early days of the sport’s development, he has seen it all. That is why, when he gives his opinion, most people tend to listen.
However, there was a circumstance recently, that drew some backlash. McCarthy was working his current role as a commentator, at Bellator 237, when he made comments about Michael “Venom” Page. MVP was beating Shinsho Anzai, when Big John said that the Englishman had a better record than Anderson Silva.
These comments from John McCarthy were confusing to some, considering the accomplishments of Silva. On the other hand, many people think MVP has been fighting people who are…less than challenging; the only exception being a TKO loss to Diego Lima. Nevertheless, John doubled down on these comments, on a recent episode of his podcast Weighing In. Here, he explained what he meant.
This is what he had to say:
“I’m not talking about Anderson over his entire career,” McCarthy explained. “If you want to break his career into sections, I can say this and say in the beginning, his first 16, 17, 18 fights, whatever you want to go by, Anderson Silva had decent competition at times, good competition at times, bad competition at other times. He fought and lost to Daiju Takase. Takase was 4-7. His first 20 fights, he’s 16-4, somewhere in tehre. He fought good fighters in Jeremy Horn. He fought guys like (Hayato) Sakurai, but Sakurai was a 170-pounder. He was small. so to say that’s a big win…It’s a good win over a good opponent but he’s fighting way out of his weight class.
“MVP has fought one fighter with a losing record his entire career and that was his second fight,” John McCarthy continued. “Every other fighter he’s fought has had a winning record. So you can’t sit there and say, and all i hear is they’re giving him cans. If you don’t like Michael Venom Page, fine, you don’t like him. I’m telling you he’s one of the most exciting fighters I’ve ever seen. That’s just as simple as it gets. He is exciting to watch. He is fun to watch, He puts on a show.
“Now has he had bad fights? Yeah,” McCarthy said. “He’s had fights where you go he didn’t do what he was supposed to do in that fight, he wasn’t able to perform. and won against a guy, Fernando Gonzalez, a very tough fighter and a guy that who fought guys that Anderson Silva fought.
“you look at MVP and you match them up correctly,” McCarthy concluded. “MVP has 18 fights so I was going off of him having 17 fights, it matches up very well. It does not mean that MVP’s career can be matched against Anderson’s career at this moment.”
What do you think about these recent comments from John McCarthy?
