A lot of grumbling is going on in regards to Kimbo Slice’s crappy cardio and his complete lack of a ground game. And that’s fair: the man has work to do to live up to his hype. But who’s to blame for that hype? i’d lay that at the feet of Gary Shaw and CBS. Slice is doing his best to sell himself, but he’s never claimed to be anything other than what he is: a good street-fighter who is still learning MMA. Gary Shaw is the one saying that he’d beat Mike Tyson.
But there’s been a lot of hype for Kaitlin Young as well. The odd thing is that almost none of it came from EliteXC: Shaw was too busy hyping Slice and Gina Carano to worry about doing any more than claiming that Young was a game opponent for Carano. Bloggers for several sites got interviews with the 22-year-old college student and published breathless reports of her prowess in striking and on the ground. It was reported that she’d knocked 3 opponents out in one night, owing to her extensive Muay Thai training, and that she’d be better on the ground than Carano because she’d participated in some grappling tournaments.
The fact that the three girls she knocked out that night were all participating in their first event? Or that her 4 KOs were against women who now have a combined record of 4-5? Not important, even though Carano has beaten well-known fighters like Tonya Evinger and Julile Kedzie. What about the fact that her first MMA event was a short 7 months ago? Not an issue, even though Carano has been fighting and training MMA with one of the best camps in the world for 2 years. And what about that Muay Thai training? Young is 3-2 in amateur competition, while Carano was 12-1-1 as a professional and the first American woman to win a Muay Thai championship in Thailand.
Much was made of a video, circulated by Young’s camp, of her flipping tires and puling a truck across a parking lot, even though she is clearly the smaller and weaker of the two. Not to mention that the last mixed martial artist to be featured doing so-called “caveman” training was Young’s teammate at the Minnesota Martial Arts Academy Sean Sherk, who was subsequently stripped of his title for testing positive for steroids.
In hindsight, it’s no surprise that Carano dominated the fight from beginning to end. While her shooting schedule for American Gladiators clearly shortened her training camp and left her overweight and out of breath during the fight, she had more than enough strength and skill to take out Young. When fighting on the ground, Young attempted one strike and no submission attempts. Working from her back, Carano on the other hand, quickly brought her leg up to attempt a gogoplata submission - a relatively advanced technique. By the fight’s end, the only damage done to Carano was a little smeared mascara, while Young looked as though she’d been hit by a truck. But this wasn’t exactly a surprise: Carano was up against a smaller opponent with less experience who was facing top competition for the first time in her first televised fight. Who can win in that situation?
The blogosphere likes to view itself as free of many of the sins of the mainstream media. But bloggers are just as likely to fall for a convincing story-line in the face of overwhelming evidence as anyone. When a likable fighter talks herself up, we listen without questioning what she says. We like to be skeptical of what we hear from the news outlets, but we must apply that skepticism to our own work as well.
Originally posted on Bloody Elbow. Comments closed for this version.
We live in what people like to call an information age. Every day we are bombarded with so much new information that we can’t help but learn new things. And with this new information, one might think that we’re all getting more informed.
But it turns out that ignorance is a constant. Every time some new set of facts destroys an old bastion of ignorance, the explosion flings ignorance in every direction so that people can start saying new stupid things.
Case in point: UFC 82: Pride of a Champion this past Saturday night. Anderson Silva, the reigning UFC middleweight champ defended his title against the former (because the promotion died) Pride welterweight (middleweight: 183 lb.) and middleweight (light heavyweight: 205 lb.) champ Dan Henderson. Even though Silva was much bigger, a much better striker, and a more accomplished submission grappler, fans of the Pride Fighting Championships picked Henderson to win, and claimed all over the internet that his two appearances on the Olympic wrestling team and his two Pride belts meant that he was going to walk over Silva.
And while that doesn’t seem terribly outrageous to an outsider, it makes absolutely no sense in mixed martial arts (MMA). Let’s break down why, and bust up some pockets of ignorance:Greco-Roman Wrestling is an amazing sport, and many of the techniques used by wrestlers are directly applicable to MMA: takedowns, takedown defense and grappling are three of the most important skills an MMA fighter needs. And when it comes to takedowns, very few people can stand very long with Dan Henderson. But the problem is that wrestling isn’t a combat sport. While there are a lot of combat elements, and while wrestlers are definitely tough people, the point of the sport is not to injure or submit an opponent. Wrestlers are playing for points or position. There are no striking or submission techniques taught in wrestling.
That’s not to say that there aren’t a lot of successful wrestlers in MMA. In fact, it’s just the opposite. But the wrestlers who make it to the top of the sport do so because they cross-trained with some kind of striking (Muay Thai, boxing) or submission grappling (Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu (BJJ), Judo) techniques. The wrestlers who don’t are the kind of boring fighters you see far too much of: taking their opponents down time after time without damaging them. Sean Sherk is a prime example. Matt Hughes on the other hand has trained heavily in BJJ and is an exciting fighter with good ground and pound and better submission skills. But while Hughes makes good use of his wrestling in MMA, it’s in a supporting role to his submission and striking game. The takedown sets up the submission, but the takedown isn’t the submission.
Thus, Henderson’s Olympic-caliber wrestling gave him an opportunity to set up his other skills, but Henderson isn’t a great Jiu-Jitsu fighter, nor is he a great striker. People make a big deal out of his “unorthodox striking,” but what they really mean is that he’s awkward and slow with his punches, has poor boxing defense and gets by on strength and a good chin.
As for his Pride belts, that’s a bit of a story. The now-defunct Pride Fighting Championships was home to many of the top-ranked fighters in MMA. but it’s now been established that the Yakuza - the Japanese Mafia - were a joint owner of the promotion, and that at least one fighter was asked to take a fall. That’s not a huge scandal in professional sports, but it makes it impossible to know how many other fights may have been rigged. What we do know is that Pride never tested its fighters for drugs or steroids (except two shows in Las Vegas), and that many of their superstars have failed to perform once coming to the UFC with its more rigorous testing.
In addition, it has been widely recognized that the referees and judges at Pride events were prone to both nationalism and racism in their judging. A gaijin competing against a Japanese fighter needed to win by knockout or submission, because decisions most often went to the hometown fighters.
With all of that in mind, it’s hard to put any stock in the record of any particular Pride fighter. Anderson Silva went 3-2 in Pride, but hasn’t gone past the second round in his last 6 fights in the UFC winning decisively by knockout or submission each time. Quinton Jackson was 12-4 in Pride and lost twice to Wanderlei Silva when fighting for the Pride middleweight (205 lb.) championship. Wanderlei lost in both of his fights in America with drug testing, once to the smaller Henderson, and once to Chuck Liddell, the former UFC champion who lost decisively to Jackson. The performance of Pride fighters coming to the U.S. has been poor overall, but the unevenness in their performance is the most telling factor: obviously there were things affecting who won and lost in Pride that aren’t factors in the UFC. With the success of Silva, Jackson and Antonio Rodrigo “Minotauro” Nogueira, there were obviously great fighters in Pride, but something was fishy.
This is not to suggest that Henderson is a cheater or a steroid user. It just makes it impossible to know for certain why he was winning, or why other fighters he faced won or lost.
But the end result of all of this is that Silva defeated Henderson in the second round by rear naked choke. He looked much better on the feet, avoided any real damage when on the bottom during the first round, landed devastating blows in the second round, and exposed exactly how bad Henderson’s submission defense was while working for the choke. In short, he completely dominated Henderson.
So with all of that information out in the open, MMA fans will be prepared the next time a former Pride fighter or an accomplished but not well-rounded wrestler shows up in the UFC, right? Well, maybe. But there are already new stupid things going around:
I’m doing the best I can to correct these issues, but it’d be great if everyone could just spend a few minutes each day figuring out what he or she is ignorant of so that the rest of us wouldn’t have to waste time telling them. Thanks.
Well, I only managed to correctly pick 5 out of the 9 fights, but it turns out I did about as good a job as the bookies, so I don’t feel too bad.
As mentioned, I got to take my first trip to Hooters. I had a sandwich that was labeled “Probably Iowa beef” which I should have taken as a warning, and it was disgusting. Maybe the menu should read, “probably meat.” They were showing fight on plenty of TVs and you could kind of hear the play-by-play over the crowd, but as usual it’s the people that let you down. Our waitress seemed like a nice kid, but she was really dumb. Like criminally dumb. Like I expected her to set down our drinks upside down dumb.
There was an idiot sitting in our line of sight (sporting some very prominent man-boobs) that seemed really upset that people would root for Anderson Silva against Rich Franklin. When Rich came out he yelled, “Amurica! Whooooo!” and when Silva came out (to much applause from the local crowd) he booed. When the crowd quieted I said loudly, “Don’t boo until after he gets done kicking Rich’s ass.” Sadly, I don’t think he heard me.
Speaking of which, Silva completely destroyed Franklin. At the end when he had him up against the cage, Silva was mixing kicks, knees and punches in one of the most devastating displays of punishment I’ve ever seen. It looked like he was dismantling a toy or something. Hopefully Franklin will go back to teaching or something, because he’s just not in the same league as Silva. For fun, here’s a clip of Silva knocking out Tony Fryklund with a standing elbow. Ouch.
It was also a bad night for Franklin’s Jiu-Jistu coach, Jorge Gurgel, who spent two rounds on the ground eating leather. I’m gonna suggest that Rich get back any money he paid this guy until Gurgel can prove he knows what a closed guard is.
Brandon “The Truth” Vera let me down with his 3 round dirty dancing session with Tim Sylvia. Vera’s kicks looked great, but he didn’t seem like he had a game-plan for handling Sylvia’s reach advantage other than to hug him for 15 minutes. Evidently the truth is dull.
Stephan Bonnar proved that steroid abusers can have cardio too, surviving a rear naked choke attempt to make it into the second round where he bea the crap out of Eric Shafer on the ground.
Speaking of steroid abusers, former professional “wrestler” Brock Lesnar was on the PPV to announce that he’d signed with the UFC. For those of you who don’t watch grown men play dress up to act out childish melodramas, take a look at this awesome picture of Brock. That’s one unfortunate penis-looking tattoo between his boobs. And it’s also good evidence of why steroid use should come with a lifetime ban from all sporting events. Even if that gorilla stops filling his veins with human growth hormone today, do you think that extra hundred pounds of muscle might give him an unfair advantage in the future?
Anyway, it was a pretty good night of fights - what did everyone else think?
