Breh, with all due respect, I don’t think you understand what “better Jiujitsu” means.
Barboza is a brown belt under Ricardo Almeida while Conor is A brown belt under John Kavanaugh. This means neither one had BJJ as their base, aka came in the game as a World Class black belt like Maia / Jacare. They are both guys who took BJJ to supplement their well-roundedness. This is their gi rank, which doesn’t exactly translate to Nogi. And Nogi is not exactly mma.
There are plenty of pure BJJ guys who failed miserably in MMA and were pummeled by average guys, even on the ground. Marcelo Garcia who was an all-time great was destroyed, and never fought again. If you watch Garcia on his daily Nogi rolls with mma and bjj greats, he absolutely trashed them. Another great example was Traven vs Mir. In a pure grappling setting, Mir would be trashed in pure bjj roll, but the focus of bjj and mma is different. Conversely, there are guys who are technically only purple/brown level but can grapple and defend great in mma match.
I know Conor was tapped by Nate. But Nate also came in the game (TUF 5 - though he had a “buzz” and with WEC) already a brown/black level grappler. I really think you are underrating Conor’s bjj quite a bit here, lots of great bjj guys have came out and vouched for him. He’s also done quite well in European IBJJF (pure grappling) Nogi tournaments at purple belt, and that’s the level you start to see really good guys who are already basically beating black belts. I am not a Conor fan, but these are facts.
