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.
Showing posts with label ufc 162. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ufc 162. Show all posts
Friday, July 12, 2013
Monday, July 8, 2013
Anderson Silva did not fight most of the best middleweights
As part of my series about burying Anderson Silva, I think it is important to realize that Silva didn't fight many of the best middleweights in the world, because arrogance kept them up at light heavyweight.
Fighters who SHOULD have been fighting at middleweight but can't resist the allure of being one of the big guys include: Shogun Rua, Lyoto Machida and Rashad Evans. All of these guys are about normal sized for middleweights. Much of Silva's best competition never fought him because of, well, ego and an unwillingness to cut weight.
It's hard to emphasize enough how bad Anderson Silva's competition has been. Even guys like Sonnen, who had the skillset to beat him, suffered this bizarre contempt for BJJ and a kind of mental weakness - watch the second fight, after Sonnen misses with the spinning backfist, he falls down and sits there. Like you can take a break in a championship fight! And even guys like Dan Henderson - I mean, I love you, Hendo, but I'm going to be frank, here - well, he's 6-4 in the UFC . . . and if you discount his UFC 17 wins, back in 1998, he's 4-4; that's not the profile of a great UFC fighter, Dan's best years were in Pride). And so many of Silva's fights have been against downright bad fighters, because so many of the best middleweights weren't fighting middleweight. Not just Shogun, Machida and Evans, but guys like Michael Bisping and Tim Boetsch were wasting their time at light heavyweight for far too long. But when Yushin Okami or Thales Leites seems a convincing championship title fight choice, let's face it, your division sucks.
(Even Vitor Belfort, who has been looking like a beast in his last two fights, well, we should remember his pretty . . . mediocre UFC record. If you look at his fights after his first run in the UFC (when the sport was almost nothing like what it is, now), he's 7-5 and has never had more than a two fight winning streak in the UFC. Sure, he's a good fighter, but thinking of him as a great fighter requires a lot of slight of hand.)
Compare to, say, GSP's opponents. Jon Fitch was 15-4-1 in the UFC. Josh Koscheck is 15-7. Matt Hughes is 16-6. GSP's next opponent, Johny Hendricks, is 10-1 in the UFC. But even when you compare the best fighters in Silva's fightography you find that . . . their records are pretty mediocre.
Compare THAT to the UFC records of Lyoto Machida (11-3 in the UFC) and Rashad Evans (13-3-1) - bearing in mind both fighters are fighting above their weight class!
Silva is a very good fighter. But when you look at the relative level of his competition, it really stinks and, specifically, key fighters who should have been fighting at middleweight were fighting at light heavyweight. This tendency for fighters who should fight at middleweight to fight at light heavyweight has made LHW a very interesting division, but drained MW of most of it's best talent. In many ways, MW is where fighters who can't win at LHW go, since so many LHWs are small for the weight class.
Fighters who SHOULD have been fighting at middleweight but can't resist the allure of being one of the big guys include: Shogun Rua, Lyoto Machida and Rashad Evans. All of these guys are about normal sized for middleweights. Much of Silva's best competition never fought him because of, well, ego and an unwillingness to cut weight.
It's hard to emphasize enough how bad Anderson Silva's competition has been. Even guys like Sonnen, who had the skillset to beat him, suffered this bizarre contempt for BJJ and a kind of mental weakness - watch the second fight, after Sonnen misses with the spinning backfist, he falls down and sits there. Like you can take a break in a championship fight! And even guys like Dan Henderson - I mean, I love you, Hendo, but I'm going to be frank, here - well, he's 6-4 in the UFC . . . and if you discount his UFC 17 wins, back in 1998, he's 4-4; that's not the profile of a great UFC fighter, Dan's best years were in Pride). And so many of Silva's fights have been against downright bad fighters, because so many of the best middleweights weren't fighting middleweight. Not just Shogun, Machida and Evans, but guys like Michael Bisping and Tim Boetsch were wasting their time at light heavyweight for far too long. But when Yushin Okami or Thales Leites seems a convincing championship title fight choice, let's face it, your division sucks.
(Even Vitor Belfort, who has been looking like a beast in his last two fights, well, we should remember his pretty . . . mediocre UFC record. If you look at his fights after his first run in the UFC (when the sport was almost nothing like what it is, now), he's 7-5 and has never had more than a two fight winning streak in the UFC. Sure, he's a good fighter, but thinking of him as a great fighter requires a lot of slight of hand.)
Compare to, say, GSP's opponents. Jon Fitch was 15-4-1 in the UFC. Josh Koscheck is 15-7. Matt Hughes is 16-6. GSP's next opponent, Johny Hendricks, is 10-1 in the UFC. But even when you compare the best fighters in Silva's fightography you find that . . . their records are pretty mediocre.
Compare THAT to the UFC records of Lyoto Machida (11-3 in the UFC) and Rashad Evans (13-3-1) - bearing in mind both fighters are fighting above their weight class!
Silva is a very good fighter. But when you look at the relative level of his competition, it really stinks and, specifically, key fighters who should have been fighting at middleweight were fighting at light heavyweight. This tendency for fighters who should fight at middleweight to fight at light heavyweight has made LHW a very interesting division, but drained MW of most of it's best talent. In many ways, MW is where fighters who can't win at LHW go, since so many LHWs are small for the weight class.
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.
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