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Getbig Misc Discussion Boards => Mixed Martial Arts (MMA/UFC) => Topic started by: SinCitysmallGUY on June 26, 2009, 06:20:49 AM
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This is a subject I've harped on many times but Cage Potato really nails it here:
If you've ever attended a live MMA event you've probably noticed that the most vocal crowd members are rarely there because they're hoping to see jiu-jitsu at its best. Even in the modern age of MMA where casual fans tend to be fairly well-educated about the ground game, a good portion of the ticket-buying public is still there for the knockouts and the beer. Not that there's anything wrong with either.
But Gurgel has become a fighter who basically plays away from his own strengths, often to his detriment. Fans and promoters want stand-up action and he gives it to them, even when it would be a better idea not to. He's a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu black belt who hasn't submitted anyone in an MMA fight in over four years. Some of that is due to the increased quality of competition that he's faced. But some of it, like the decision loss to Aaron Riley in his last UFC bout, is attributable to his single-minded focus on trying to be a kickboxer.
That seems problematic for those of us who don't want to see MMA gradually become kickboxing with small gloves. For years we've been telling detractors that the great thing about the sport is the variety of techniques and skill sets in play, though at the same time it's the "Ultimate Knockouts" DVD's on display at Best Buy. It's easy to see why and how it happens that a guy like Gurgel changes his style. Over the years he's become a pretty exciting striker. The fight with Heun was almost validation for the losses he suffered against guys he should have beaten.
MMA at its best is what a BE community member (identify yourself in the comments) called a crazy real life rock-paper-scissors collision of styles and strategies. The greatness of a particular fight comes from the drama and ebb and flow of that individual fight with its own internal logic and reference to no other bout. That is to say, a great MMA fight can certainly overwhelmingly feature only one aspect of the game, be it striking (Griffin vs Bonnar, Fedor vs Cro Cop), submission grappling (Sakuraba vs Newton, Maia vs MacDonald), or wrestling (Hughes vs Sherk, Beebe vs Wineland) but there is something truly special about a bout that transitions seamlessly from phase to phase without ever letting up on the drama (Torres vs Maeda, Griffin vs Edgar, Shogun vs Little Nog).
I hope that fighters and promoters remember that. It would be a shame to throw out the baby with the bathwater as we attempt to appeal to a mainstream mass audience.
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i agree, i love seeing to awsome ground guys going from transition to transition on eachother. the problem is like you said, alot of the audiance at ufc dont even train the ground or for that matter train anything, so they boo when 2 good bjj are scrambling for position. this is mma and that means you use a mixture of martial arts that best suit your style to beat your opponant, its sad to see a great bjj trying to slug it out with someone who has better hands then him when he could take the guy down into his world. my motto is do what you have to to win and if you do it impressivlly the crowd will enjoy it whether its on the ground or standing. maybe the people that boo the ground should go watch kickboxing or boxing matches and leave us alone
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Yeah, let's have a mandatory round for ground fighting.
::)
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another reason why japanese fans a better then the red necks of america