Here's my longer analysis of UFC 168 other than, "Whoa, Chris Weidman is a badass."
Dustin Poirier looked great when he clobbered Diego Brandao. I like Poirier quite a bit as a fighter, he's the kind of quirky guy that I visualize I'd be if, y'know, I was a savage killing machine.
Dan Miller pulled off a great submission against Fabricio Camoes but I can't help think that he's past his prime. Despite Joe Rogan saying that Miller gets better after every loss, I don't think that's true. Miller has got a good skill set, he's a tough fighter and I like watching him fight . . . but I don't see him getting to the top of the heap. Whenever he's had that big fight that might put him into title contention, he's lost it. Unlike Martin Kampmann, I don't think this is because he chokes, but because he fights at lightweight and it's the toughest division in the UFC. You've got to be razor sharp to make it . . . and a little luck doesn't hurt, either. Miller keeps coming up short against top five fighters and this performance doesn't change my opinion.
Uriah Hall played a very good counterstriking game against Chris Leben. Hall didn't throw very much, but when he did, ouch. I'm still not sure if Hall has the kind of toughness it takes to be a mixed martial artist. He's clearly got the skills and oodles of physical ability, but you've got to be a really tough guy to succeed in the sport and I'm still not sure he has it.
As for Chris Leben . . . man, we love you, Chris, but you've lost four straight. You're slow and you aren't hitting with the power you once had. Your chin is going, too. Your take a shot to deliver a bigger shot style only lasts as long as your chin does and it's going, if not gone. Please, Chris, retire. Go to your gym in Hawaii and train dudes and hang out on the beach. It's that time.
I wasn't sure if Travis Browne was the real deal. He is. He's murdered Gabriel Gonzaga, Alistair Overeem and now Josh Barnett. He's going to get a shot against Fabricio Werdum for a title shot against Cain Velasquez - if he beats Werdum, he richly deserves it. Good luck, Travis.
Miesha Tate . . . you should have stuck to the gameplan. But time and again you dove head first at Ronda Rousey. Unsurprisingly, Rousey then dumped you on your head and tried to break your arm while punching you in the face. Surprisingly, it took more than two rounds for Rousey to sink in that armbar. Had you not been so intent on grappling and tried to strike from the outside, not giving Rousey nearly so many changes to break your arm . . . well, you didn't do that and you lost. You're probably not going to get another title shot as long as Rousey is champ.
But, damn, Ronda, I've said in the past how you're a creep, but you still are. You have no concept at all of how human beings act. Here's a brief lesson, again.
People you train with for six weeks on a reality TV show aren't your family. Even if they were, Tate didn't say anything bad about them. If you were referring to her pranking you and your coach, that's humor, not a personal, hateful insult. You're a creep and I really, really hope that Holly Holm comes into the UFC or that Sara McMann with her Olympic caliber wrestling can beat you just to wipe the smug smile off your face.
I mean, here's the thing with Rousey's dominance - she's currently a big fish in a small pond. Rousey is the first really world class athlete to get into women's mixed martial arts (with the exception of Cris Cyborg, who is in another weight class and promotion). You look at the credentials of a fighter like Miesha Tate, and almost all of the women in that generation of women's MMA fighters, none of them have world class athletic achievements. So, Rousey came in from judo with world class physical prowess and is steam rolling the older school of fighters who don't have her athleticism.
We saw the same thing with MMA, too, when guys like Mark Kerr got into MMA - he was this world class athlete and he just messed up dudes until other world class athletes came into the field. Ronda Rousey is the Mark Kerr of women's MMA. Kerr won his first eleven fights, dominated the UFC 14 and 15 tournaments and the early Pride FC fights. There's a lesson here, I think. Unless Rousey gets out of the game, soon, she could well be remembered with all the fondness of Mark Kerr, if Kerr was a giant asshole.
It's changing fast, too. Holly Holm is in MMA, now, and before she was in MMA, she proved herself as a boxer with multiple world championships to her credit. You can see the same thing with Sara McMann - a silver medalist at the 2004 Olympics, so clearly a top notch athlete.
It is quite possible that Rousey's dominance will be contexutalized in the ongoing professionalization of women's mixed martial arts. Or, at least, I'll provide that contextualization, with some snark because I don't like Rousey.
The best is last! Weidman and Silva.
Weidman is a monster. There's a growing narrative out there that Weidman got lucky, again, against Silva. This is bullshit. Weidman checked Silva's kicks hard enough to break Silva's leg. This is a technique people can learn and use - it doesn't often result in a break, but it can. Ernesto Hoost was very good at it during his stint as the greatest kickboxer in the cosmos. It was a technique that Weidman studied because Silva's leg kicks hurt him in their first fight. Not luck.
I mean, seriously. Weidman has fought Silva twice, now. Both fights went to the second round, but in both first rounds, Weidman dominated Silva. In both fights, in the second round, Weidman conclusively finished the fight. There was no point in either fight when Weidman was in any trouble! Neither victory was luck. In both cases, Weidman was the dominant fighter and in both cases he finished the fight. He didn't "get lucky". He won. In both cases, he beat Silva on the ground and standing. Face it, Chris Weidman is a beastly fighter. He's got great timing, a lot of power, and an excellent all-around game - he's got great takedowns, submissions, ground and pound along with excellent striking.
Anderson . . . you might want to retire. You didn't look bad against Weidman. The guy's an animal, right? But he shattered your leg. You're 38 years old and now you've got a pin in your leg. Sure, in six or nine months you'll be able to start training, again, but it will be a long time before your leg is as strong as it was before Chris broke it. It could take years, years of your fighting on a weakened leg.
I know a lot of professional fighters don't know when to quit and their last several fights are an increasingly miserable lot as they slip down the rankings, being decisively beaten by increasingly irrelevant fighters. I don't think any of us want to see that. So, please, retire. Go join Georges St-Pierre on a beach. Get a belly.
For my part, I'll be looking forward to being able to talk about Anderson Silva without the hype machine of the UFC going full blast all the time, too. While Silva has a fantastic legacy regardless of what happens moving forward, I think in the future we're going to acknowledge that he beat a lot of second rate fighters - it's easy to look good when you're crushing cans and all the best dudes at your weight class refuse to fight you because of a convenient network of personal relationships . . . so guys like Lyoto Machida and Shogun Rua stayed up at light heavyweight rather than fight their friend. So, instead, Silva fought losers like Thales Leites and Patrick Cote and Travis fucking Lutter. Yes, he beat them but let's be honest . . . it's nothing to brag about. I look forward to this day when Silva has been reassembled as a human being in the same way guys like Fedor Emelianenko and Mike Tyson have been reassembled as human beings.
So, that's my recap.
Showing posts with label chris weidman. Show all posts
Showing posts with label chris weidman. Show all posts
Monday, December 30, 2013
Friday, July 12, 2013
MMA Junkie's "Twitter Mailbag" and the strategies of Anderson Silva
Ben Fowlkes over at hardly ever says anything even vaguely intelligent, but he brought up a point about the Silva-Weidman fight. It's not a good point, but it is certainly a point.
People like me asserted that Silva held his hands down and clowned because Silva thought it was the best way to win. It wasn't arrogance, but a strategem, one that Silva had used in the past quite successfully.
Fowlkes rejoinder was, on MMA Junkie's July 11th Twitter mailbag, is that it had to be arrogance because Silva could have no doubt employed other strategies against Weidman. Silva tried this strategy, it didn't work, it clearly wasn't working, so to keep doing it was arrogance.
A few points. The fight was barely six minutes long. Something like two-and-a-half of those minutes were Weidman in total top domination. Silva had barely three minutes of striking time. My first rejoinder to Fowlkes would be that's not a lot of time to do something. It isn't like Silva said, "Oh, this didn't work, I'll try this other thing, instead!" It was more, like, "I'll clown him, HOLY SHIT I'M UNCONSCIOUS!"
Second, well, most fighters have only got a few effective strategies. Silva has four.
1. Striking from the outside. Silva is a really good striker, very accurate and with KO power. On the down side, he's not very aggressive and prefers to counterpunch.
2. Striking from the outside plus clowning. When a fighter won't engage aggressively, Silva taunts them into striking.
3. Muay Thai clinch. Silva had murderous knees.
4. Bottom game Brazilian jiu jitsu that he employs when he's been taken down.
He has a fifth, ineffective strategy:
5. Jazz hands.
In his effective strategies, he tried three of them against Weidman. He came out, in the first, in his usual stance. He did not clown. Weidman took him down. Then Silva tried his bottom game BJJ. Weidman was having none of that and utterly controlled Silva, passing his guard pretty easily. Then, after Silva got out of a pretty rough spot with a kneebar, he got up and employed the striking plus clowning.
It's been a while since Silva has seriously gone for the plum clinch at all. I'm not sure why he's gotten away from it, but he has. However, it was the only common strategy Silva had left, though trying it with a wrestler wouldn't be the smartest move in his career, either.
I grant that the strategy that Silva committed the most to was the clowning. But he did it for around three minutes.
The hands down strategy has the very good advantage for Silva of having his hands, right there, to push away an attempted takedown, too. I think that was the primary reason Silva did it - because, no, he couldn't think of another way to win. He has four effective strategies. He tried outside striking but his raised hands left his legs too vulnerable to the shoot. His BJJ was trivial compared to Weidman's top control. Clinching with a wrestler is just asking to get taken down, and it isn't something Silva does, anymore.
I don't imagine that Fowlkes will read this, but I ask him: what is this magical new thing that Silva would do, that he hasn't done in 38 fights? Is he really learning new techniques, especially when those four strategies have been enough for him to dominate middleweight? I grant that his style has shifted, from the aggressive style typical of Chute Boxe fighters to one of the purest counterstrikers in MMA, but the development was reasonably slow. It wasn't like he just tossed out the aggressive plum clinch and developed jazz hands, it was a progression, it was incremental.
In short, there was no reason to imagine that Silva would come into the Weidman fight with a hot new strategy. He did come in with a modest revision of his hands down, clowning strategy - he's much better as using that to counter takedowns, which he also did against Sonnen in the second round of their second fight. Part of that incremental change was an even more outrageous clowning than we've seen in the past, but it wasn't a tidal change in his style. It was fairly vintage Silva, really. I think it's facile to say that Silva had lots of options and it was his arrogance that made him choose that one. I think he really thought it was the best way to win the fight, better than his other traditional strategies, because they had already failed.
I admit that Silva didn't test them very hard, but he tested none of them very hard, not even the clowning, because Weidman beat him so fast.
I suppose that is the structure of the piece, though. "Twitter Mailbag". What you do is take 300 characters that someone else has written and devote as much space as you want on a forum where you're the one in charge to refute those 300 characters. It makes it very easy to appear clever when the person could neither fully develop their point in the first place due to Twitter's character limitations while you can respond at length in a forum where you're the authority figure.
People like me asserted that Silva held his hands down and clowned because Silva thought it was the best way to win. It wasn't arrogance, but a strategem, one that Silva had used in the past quite successfully.
Fowlkes rejoinder was, on MMA Junkie's July 11th Twitter mailbag, is that it had to be arrogance because Silva could have no doubt employed other strategies against Weidman. Silva tried this strategy, it didn't work, it clearly wasn't working, so to keep doing it was arrogance.
A few points. The fight was barely six minutes long. Something like two-and-a-half of those minutes were Weidman in total top domination. Silva had barely three minutes of striking time. My first rejoinder to Fowlkes would be that's not a lot of time to do something. It isn't like Silva said, "Oh, this didn't work, I'll try this other thing, instead!" It was more, like, "I'll clown him, HOLY SHIT I'M UNCONSCIOUS!"
Second, well, most fighters have only got a few effective strategies. Silva has four.
1. Striking from the outside. Silva is a really good striker, very accurate and with KO power. On the down side, he's not very aggressive and prefers to counterpunch.
2. Striking from the outside plus clowning. When a fighter won't engage aggressively, Silva taunts them into striking.
3. Muay Thai clinch. Silva had murderous knees.
4. Bottom game Brazilian jiu jitsu that he employs when he's been taken down.
He has a fifth, ineffective strategy:
5. Jazz hands.
In his effective strategies, he tried three of them against Weidman. He came out, in the first, in his usual stance. He did not clown. Weidman took him down. Then Silva tried his bottom game BJJ. Weidman was having none of that and utterly controlled Silva, passing his guard pretty easily. Then, after Silva got out of a pretty rough spot with a kneebar, he got up and employed the striking plus clowning.
It's been a while since Silva has seriously gone for the plum clinch at all. I'm not sure why he's gotten away from it, but he has. However, it was the only common strategy Silva had left, though trying it with a wrestler wouldn't be the smartest move in his career, either.
I grant that the strategy that Silva committed the most to was the clowning. But he did it for around three minutes.
The hands down strategy has the very good advantage for Silva of having his hands, right there, to push away an attempted takedown, too. I think that was the primary reason Silva did it - because, no, he couldn't think of another way to win. He has four effective strategies. He tried outside striking but his raised hands left his legs too vulnerable to the shoot. His BJJ was trivial compared to Weidman's top control. Clinching with a wrestler is just asking to get taken down, and it isn't something Silva does, anymore.
I don't imagine that Fowlkes will read this, but I ask him: what is this magical new thing that Silva would do, that he hasn't done in 38 fights? Is he really learning new techniques, especially when those four strategies have been enough for him to dominate middleweight? I grant that his style has shifted, from the aggressive style typical of Chute Boxe fighters to one of the purest counterstrikers in MMA, but the development was reasonably slow. It wasn't like he just tossed out the aggressive plum clinch and developed jazz hands, it was a progression, it was incremental.
In short, there was no reason to imagine that Silva would come into the Weidman fight with a hot new strategy. He did come in with a modest revision of his hands down, clowning strategy - he's much better as using that to counter takedowns, which he also did against Sonnen in the second round of their second fight. Part of that incremental change was an even more outrageous clowning than we've seen in the past, but it wasn't a tidal change in his style. It was fairly vintage Silva, really. I think it's facile to say that Silva had lots of options and it was his arrogance that made him choose that one. I think he really thought it was the best way to win the fight, better than his other traditional strategies, because they had already failed.
I admit that Silva didn't test them very hard, but he tested none of them very hard, not even the clowning, because Weidman beat him so fast.
I suppose that is the structure of the piece, though. "Twitter Mailbag". What you do is take 300 characters that someone else has written and devote as much space as you want on a forum where you're the one in charge to refute those 300 characters. It makes it very easy to appear clever when the person could neither fully develop their point in the first place due to Twitter's character limitations while you can respond at length in a forum where you're the authority figure.
Tuesday, July 9, 2013
Little known and never enforced MMA rule against foul and abusive language
There's been a lot of hay made over whether Anderson Silva was "disrespectful" of Chris Weidman. I've argued, and I think pretty well, that, yeah, that Silva disrespected Weidman but as an intentional ploy. That his hands down wasn't so much a sign of arrogance, but an attempt to drawn Weidman into a striking match where Silva thought he'd have the advantage. But, without doubt, mocking your opponent openly is pretty disrespectful and it isn't the first time that Silva has done it.
However, MMA's rules are not particularly well enforced. Unknown to almost everyone, including, it appears, both MMA referees and the president of the UFC, is a rule that says, using abusive language in the fenced ring or fighting area is a foul.
I don't know what Silva said. Vitor Belfort didn't like it, but he didn't specify and I don't speak Portuguese. I do, however, speak English and a bunch of fighters use abusive language in the cage. I'm lookin' at you, Diaz brothers. They do it openly. Just watch their fights and even though you can't see them, it doesn't take that much lip reading to see them calling their opponents pussies, bitches, punks, faggots and various other swear words, like fuck, that are generally regarded as abusive. I don't know if Silva used abusive language - though it certainly looked like he did - but I do know that MMA . . . ignores it's own rules in this regard with great regularity.
More importantly than the question of whether or not Silva was disrespectful of Weidman, there's the issue of whether his behavior in that fight, and fights past, qualifies as a foul. I'm pretty sure that could be determined.
For my own part, I don't really care if fighters swear at each other. I find it slightly distasteful but I don't think it's a big deal. However, what I hate is when rules are enforced selectively and we have the idiocy of seeing the president of the biggest MMA organization in the world pretending he doesn't know what "respect" is in the context of martial arts. If there's a rule, enforce it. If you don't want it to be a rule, take it out. While you're at it, allow knee strikes to the heads of downed opponents. That'll also clear up a bunch of messes and be awesome.
However, MMA's rules are not particularly well enforced. Unknown to almost everyone, including, it appears, both MMA referees and the president of the UFC, is a rule that says, using abusive language in the fenced ring or fighting area is a foul.
I don't know what Silva said. Vitor Belfort didn't like it, but he didn't specify and I don't speak Portuguese. I do, however, speak English and a bunch of fighters use abusive language in the cage. I'm lookin' at you, Diaz brothers. They do it openly. Just watch their fights and even though you can't see them, it doesn't take that much lip reading to see them calling their opponents pussies, bitches, punks, faggots and various other swear words, like fuck, that are generally regarded as abusive. I don't know if Silva used abusive language - though it certainly looked like he did - but I do know that MMA . . . ignores it's own rules in this regard with great regularity.
More importantly than the question of whether or not Silva was disrespectful of Weidman, there's the issue of whether his behavior in that fight, and fights past, qualifies as a foul. I'm pretty sure that could be determined.
For my own part, I don't really care if fighters swear at each other. I find it slightly distasteful but I don't think it's a big deal. However, what I hate is when rules are enforced selectively and we have the idiocy of seeing the president of the biggest MMA organization in the world pretending he doesn't know what "respect" is in the context of martial arts. If there's a rule, enforce it. If you don't want it to be a rule, take it out. While you're at it, allow knee strikes to the heads of downed opponents. That'll also clear up a bunch of messes and be awesome.
Monday, July 8, 2013
No more MMA superfights! This is a good thing.
While I'm busy recapping my various feelings, Silva's loss means that all the nonsense around "superfights" is off.
Mostly, superfights are a stupid idea. If Silva wanted to fight at welterweight, he would have fought at welterweight. If GSP wanted to fight at middleweight, he would . . . assuming either fighter could either cut the weight or gain it to meaningfully participate in the other weight class. We will no longer be subjected to the spectacle of Anderson Silva wanting to fight GSP, while dodging Jon Jones. We will no longer see GSP make excuses about why this isn't the time to fight Anderson Silva, where he'd probably have twenty or twenty-five pound weight disadvantage . . . which is, no doubt, the same reason why Silva wasn't so hot to fight the bigger Jon Jones.
Now that lynchpin is pulled. Silva is no longer desireable as some sort of superfight contender. GSP won't be dodging him, Silva won't be dodging Jones. The fighters can fight at their own weight classes and I'm, generally, comfortable with that.
(Yes, I KNOW that boxers often fight above their weight classes. But boxing isn't like MMA in some serious ways, in this regard. In particular, there are several promotions that have a fair bit of credibility and because boxers have so much control over their opponents, they can sorta . . . pick and choose. And they do. Which has it's good points and bad points, but boxers fighting above their best weight is often akin to something that can never happen in MMA - it would be like GSP going over to Bellator and kicking Alexander Shlemenko's ass. It changes the complexion of fighting at different weight classes entirely if that sort of thing was possible. The UFC dominated top talent in MMA, so there's no fudging around the different promotional championships to look for different kinds of championship fights. I'm not judging the way boxing does things, but boxers do have this privilege. So when Manny Pacquiao goes up in weight, he decides, more or less, who he's going to fight, not the guys who run the promotion. This is a huge difference between how fights are made in boxing and how they're made in MMA.)
So, now Silva can either focus on a rematch with Weidman or take other fights, almost certainly as a middleweight, GSP can worry about dudes like Hendricks, Ellenberger, MacDonald - he's got things to do at welterweight, which has a large talent pool. Jon Jones can beat up more people at light heavyweight, if they can find them, or go up to heavyweight without the specter of a "superfight" looming. Let's set about that business.
Mostly, superfights are a stupid idea. If Silva wanted to fight at welterweight, he would have fought at welterweight. If GSP wanted to fight at middleweight, he would . . . assuming either fighter could either cut the weight or gain it to meaningfully participate in the other weight class. We will no longer be subjected to the spectacle of Anderson Silva wanting to fight GSP, while dodging Jon Jones. We will no longer see GSP make excuses about why this isn't the time to fight Anderson Silva, where he'd probably have twenty or twenty-five pound weight disadvantage . . . which is, no doubt, the same reason why Silva wasn't so hot to fight the bigger Jon Jones.
Now that lynchpin is pulled. Silva is no longer desireable as some sort of superfight contender. GSP won't be dodging him, Silva won't be dodging Jones. The fighters can fight at their own weight classes and I'm, generally, comfortable with that.
(Yes, I KNOW that boxers often fight above their weight classes. But boxing isn't like MMA in some serious ways, in this regard. In particular, there are several promotions that have a fair bit of credibility and because boxers have so much control over their opponents, they can sorta . . . pick and choose. And they do. Which has it's good points and bad points, but boxers fighting above their best weight is often akin to something that can never happen in MMA - it would be like GSP going over to Bellator and kicking Alexander Shlemenko's ass. It changes the complexion of fighting at different weight classes entirely if that sort of thing was possible. The UFC dominated top talent in MMA, so there's no fudging around the different promotional championships to look for different kinds of championship fights. I'm not judging the way boxing does things, but boxers do have this privilege. So when Manny Pacquiao goes up in weight, he decides, more or less, who he's going to fight, not the guys who run the promotion. This is a huge difference between how fights are made in boxing and how they're made in MMA.)
So, now Silva can either focus on a rematch with Weidman or take other fights, almost certainly as a middleweight, GSP can worry about dudes like Hendricks, Ellenberger, MacDonald - he's got things to do at welterweight, which has a large talent pool. Jon Jones can beat up more people at light heavyweight, if they can find them, or go up to heavyweight without the specter of a "superfight" looming. Let's set about that business.
Sunday, July 7, 2013
Chris Weidman does not need a rematch with Anderson Silva - that's absurd
Sometimes, it's vexing that only ten people read my posts, but I'll say it anyway: Chris Weidman does not need a rematch against Anderson Silva. Weidmen, okay, I'm going to say this but it's true, Weidman dominated Silva. When Anderson held up his hands, Chris took him down. When Anderson kept his hands down, Weidman knocked him the fuck out. I am not here to praise Silva but to bury him.
Silva is, without doubt, a great MMA fighter. But let's face it, he's had just about as much luck as a man could have in his opponents. Most of his opponents would have been gatekeepers, at best, in other weight classes - and we have examples of this, such as Demain Maia and Nate Marquart. While Maia has done well at welterweight, Marquart has done less son; neither looks like championship material. The subsequent careers of people like Patrick Cote and Thales Leites should indicate, as well, how absolutely mediocre many of Silva's opponents have been. Travis Lutter didn't make weight for their championship tilt - he didn't make weight for a championship fight! - and he was weak and slow during the whole fight. Yushin Okami has always been a C+ fighter, good at nothing in particular, but he's big and strong.
His notable wins are against Dan Henderson, a fighter whom I adore but has never been able to do as well in the Octogon as in other promotions, a pre-TRT Vitor Belfort and the workmanlike champion, Rich Franklin. When one looks at the killer's row that every other champion (with the exception of heavyweight, which has always been the weakest division) has faced, Silva's opponents have been, generally, a sorry lot.
The only person who had Silva really threatened, before Weidman, was Chael Sonnen. But Sonnen's contempt for Brazilian jiu jitsu cost him the first fight with a bare two minutes to go and Sonnen's mental collapse during their second fight lost him the battle, there. Sonnen had all the physical skills to beat Silva but few of the mental ones. Sonnen chokes at the highest levels of competition.
Silva's non-middleweight fights are worse. James Irving? Who cares? Oh, then there is the mediocre Stephan Bonnar - an amusing fighter, at times, but why on earth was he in the same fucking cage as Anderson Silva? Silva's luck abounds with his opponents. (As it did with Forrest Griffin, too, who fought a stupid fight, winging shots, overreaching as Silva danced around him, rather than using his greater size and strength to take it to the ground where Griffin could have won the fight. But, nope, Griffin dispensed with the kind of strategy that allowed him to beat Rampage and decided, instead, get into a fist fight with Silva! If he'd fought that way against Rampage, the fight would have ended the same way. Lucky, lucky Silva.)
Furthermore, what Silva did he did for a reason. It was not hubris or arrogance. In the first round, when Silva had his hands up, Weidman took him down and beat the shit out of him. Silva has had, traditionally, good head movement, and with his hands down, he was in a much better position to stuff Weidman's takedowns. Silva has won fights with shadow punches but it was clear Weidman had trained against that - he was not hurt by Silva at all. But the strategy that Silva employed was out of necessity. He needed his hands down to stay on his feet, which he needed to do to win, and he clowned around to try and get Weidman to charge in, swinging, so he could catch him with a shadow punch. Alas, because for perhaps the first time in Silva's career, he fought a fighter who had actually prepared to fight him (including, apparently, dealing with Silva clowning him), one who had prepared to fight the fight that Silva fights . . . and he dominated. Weidman dominated on the ground, he dominated standing up. Weidman is the better fighter, or at least he was this time.
Rematch with Silva? Yeah, Weidman beats Silva up in the first round, knocks him out in the second. There is no need for a rematch. Weidman ran away with it.
Silva is, without doubt, a great MMA fighter. But let's face it, he's had just about as much luck as a man could have in his opponents. Most of his opponents would have been gatekeepers, at best, in other weight classes - and we have examples of this, such as Demain Maia and Nate Marquart. While Maia has done well at welterweight, Marquart has done less son; neither looks like championship material. The subsequent careers of people like Patrick Cote and Thales Leites should indicate, as well, how absolutely mediocre many of Silva's opponents have been. Travis Lutter didn't make weight for their championship tilt - he didn't make weight for a championship fight! - and he was weak and slow during the whole fight. Yushin Okami has always been a C+ fighter, good at nothing in particular, but he's big and strong.
His notable wins are against Dan Henderson, a fighter whom I adore but has never been able to do as well in the Octogon as in other promotions, a pre-TRT Vitor Belfort and the workmanlike champion, Rich Franklin. When one looks at the killer's row that every other champion (with the exception of heavyweight, which has always been the weakest division) has faced, Silva's opponents have been, generally, a sorry lot.
The only person who had Silva really threatened, before Weidman, was Chael Sonnen. But Sonnen's contempt for Brazilian jiu jitsu cost him the first fight with a bare two minutes to go and Sonnen's mental collapse during their second fight lost him the battle, there. Sonnen had all the physical skills to beat Silva but few of the mental ones. Sonnen chokes at the highest levels of competition.
Silva's non-middleweight fights are worse. James Irving? Who cares? Oh, then there is the mediocre Stephan Bonnar - an amusing fighter, at times, but why on earth was he in the same fucking cage as Anderson Silva? Silva's luck abounds with his opponents. (As it did with Forrest Griffin, too, who fought a stupid fight, winging shots, overreaching as Silva danced around him, rather than using his greater size and strength to take it to the ground where Griffin could have won the fight. But, nope, Griffin dispensed with the kind of strategy that allowed him to beat Rampage and decided, instead, get into a fist fight with Silva! If he'd fought that way against Rampage, the fight would have ended the same way. Lucky, lucky Silva.)
Furthermore, what Silva did he did for a reason. It was not hubris or arrogance. In the first round, when Silva had his hands up, Weidman took him down and beat the shit out of him. Silva has had, traditionally, good head movement, and with his hands down, he was in a much better position to stuff Weidman's takedowns. Silva has won fights with shadow punches but it was clear Weidman had trained against that - he was not hurt by Silva at all. But the strategy that Silva employed was out of necessity. He needed his hands down to stay on his feet, which he needed to do to win, and he clowned around to try and get Weidman to charge in, swinging, so he could catch him with a shadow punch. Alas, because for perhaps the first time in Silva's career, he fought a fighter who had actually prepared to fight him (including, apparently, dealing with Silva clowning him), one who had prepared to fight the fight that Silva fights . . . and he dominated. Weidman dominated on the ground, he dominated standing up. Weidman is the better fighter, or at least he was this time.
Rematch with Silva? Yeah, Weidman beats Silva up in the first round, knocks him out in the second. There is no need for a rematch. Weidman ran away with it.
Facile reporting interpretations of Silva vs. Weidman
I also find it very interesting how superficial the fight analysis is - no one is really saying that Silva put his hands down for a reason, to help him sprawl out against Weidman's shot. When Silva had his hands up, Weidman took him down. When Silva had his hands down, he was able to sprawl out from the shot. It's the dilemma that a striker fights a grappler. If a striker unloads on the grappler, they've basically got one chance to win - a "puncher's chance". Alternately, they can try to develop a strategy to stop the takedown from happening. Silva did something he'd done before, something he did against Chael Sonnen and Forrest Griffin. Put your hands down to push against the shoulders of a wrestler coming in for the shoot while trying to goad them into a fist fight.
They are also saying that Silva was arrogant (someone even used hubris) in the fight. It wasn't arrogance on Silva's part. He had done this very successfully in the past. (And with middling results, too. Demian Maia and Thales Leites refused to fall into the trap, which gave us weird, boring fights with Silva clowning to the point of absurdity.) The difference between the clowning with Demian Maia, Thales Leites, Chael Sonnen and Forrest Griffin is that Chris Weidman has knockout power. This dude hits hard, he can knock dudes out. But the strategy Silva used he used against other fighter's, too, guys who definitely had the ability to beat him, like Sonnen.
Almost no one seems to have seen this. It's the mystique of Silva. The UFC has told us so often, it's been a constant loop, that Anderson Silva is an unbeatable killing machine, the greatest fighter of all time, blah, blah, blah. This mystique has been a tremendous boon to Silva's career but as a result we don't really talk about the giant hole in Silva's game - wrestling - and how really good takedowns and a really good takedown defense change a fight. We talk about it all the time with other fighters. GSP fights a great striker, they frequently aren't that great because they're always worried about the takedown. Or how Johny Hendricks can really swing bombs at dudes because he's so hard to take down. Likewise, it is taken as normal when a very good striker fights a takedown artist that the striker's striking is going to be messed up. This dilemma is well-known and well understood. It's why Sonnen did as well with the striking as he did against Silva, it's why Weidman knocked Silva out, it's why Silva didn't put away Maia and Leites. But to mention such things is to ice skate uphill against the UFC hype machine who has presented Silva as immune to the normal forces that shape fights.
Of course, it is no news to me that reporters suck. Most of my posts are about how badly reporters suck, one way or the other. You're probably not going to get very far as an MMA writer if you critique the UFC's hype machine. Since almost no one wants to talk about the extent to which they are effected by advertising, to go against the UFC's hype machine is to align yourself against ideas that have been internalized not only by the audience but by other writers and editors of MMA journals. You're stuck, like me, out here in the fringe.
They are also saying that Silva was arrogant (someone even used hubris) in the fight. It wasn't arrogance on Silva's part. He had done this very successfully in the past. (And with middling results, too. Demian Maia and Thales Leites refused to fall into the trap, which gave us weird, boring fights with Silva clowning to the point of absurdity.) The difference between the clowning with Demian Maia, Thales Leites, Chael Sonnen and Forrest Griffin is that Chris Weidman has knockout power. This dude hits hard, he can knock dudes out. But the strategy Silva used he used against other fighter's, too, guys who definitely had the ability to beat him, like Sonnen.
Almost no one seems to have seen this. It's the mystique of Silva. The UFC has told us so often, it's been a constant loop, that Anderson Silva is an unbeatable killing machine, the greatest fighter of all time, blah, blah, blah. This mystique has been a tremendous boon to Silva's career but as a result we don't really talk about the giant hole in Silva's game - wrestling - and how really good takedowns and a really good takedown defense change a fight. We talk about it all the time with other fighters. GSP fights a great striker, they frequently aren't that great because they're always worried about the takedown. Or how Johny Hendricks can really swing bombs at dudes because he's so hard to take down. Likewise, it is taken as normal when a very good striker fights a takedown artist that the striker's striking is going to be messed up. This dilemma is well-known and well understood. It's why Sonnen did as well with the striking as he did against Silva, it's why Weidman knocked Silva out, it's why Silva didn't put away Maia and Leites. But to mention such things is to ice skate uphill against the UFC hype machine who has presented Silva as immune to the normal forces that shape fights.
Of course, it is no news to me that reporters suck. Most of my posts are about how badly reporters suck, one way or the other. You're probably not going to get very far as an MMA writer if you critique the UFC's hype machine. Since almost no one wants to talk about the extent to which they are effected by advertising, to go against the UFC's hype machine is to align yourself against ideas that have been internalized not only by the audience but by other writers and editors of MMA journals. You're stuck, like me, out here in the fringe.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)