English Other Sports / Fitness / Recreation

Hello everyone,

John Kavanagh wrtes in his book.

"Stylistically, Rafael dos Anjos was nothing we hadn’t seen before. To put it in simple terms, he’s a bit like a southpaw version of José Aldo. Dos Anjos had been on a good run of form, during which he defeated the likes of Anthony Pettis, Benson Henderson and Nate Diaz. In terms of his status as a champion, I felt he had done well to capitalize during a ***stale period*** for the lightweight division. No fight is easy at this level, and we would train accordingly for the significance of the occasion, but my belief was that Conor’s superior skills would result in one-way traffic and another first-round finish in our favour."

http://www.dictionary.com/browse/stale?s=t

3.having lost novelty or interest; hackneyed; trite: a stale joke.
4. having lost freshness, vigor, quick intelligence, initiative, or the like, as from overstrain, boredom, or surfeit:
He had grown stale on the job and needed a long vacation.

I'm not sure what "stale period" implies here.
If "stale" is used with the meaning 3 or 4, why is it said that "No fight is easy at this level".
If fights are not easy, I think they should be interesting to watch.

Thank you.