Do you remember how you felt on the night of May 2, 2015?
If you were a boxing fan, or one of the hordes of non-boxing fans, who shelled out cold hard cash for the most hyped fight since Ali-Frasier I (the REAL fight of the century for a lot of reasons) you probably felt cheated. You saw a virtuoso and mostly defensive performance by the most skilled boxer of his generation and the one man who was considered a credible threat to him had no answer for it. Pac-Mayweather had been hyped for more than 6 years and at the end it was a gigantic dud. I remember Pacquiao at the end of that fight: dejected and disappointed.
We all knew how he felt because we felt the same way.
We had actually believed that Pacquiao would either win, or at LEAST be able to draw Floyd into an entertaining fight. We were horribly wrong. Mayweather had not only avoided the firefight we all hoped for, but he didn't even come out of his defensive shell to finish off a fighter that he had hurt more than once. It was a typical Mayweather performance: technically brilliant but viscerally unsatisfying.
We swore we would never fall for it again.
"Never", we cried in unison, "will we allow our money to go to another exhibition by Mayweather!"
We kept our word for a little while.
Mayweather's next fight (his supposed retirement fight) against Andre Berto was almost universally derided. Despite Berto's championship past he was considered unworthy of a mega-fight with Mayweather, having lost 3 of his last 6 fights. Fans stayed away in droves and the fight was reported to sell in 500k range, Floyd's lowest total since his fight with Carlos Baldomir in 2006. Floyd limped into the sunset on the back of another boring decision, this time against an opponent whom not many believed in. We thought that was the end.
Yet here we are.
Floyd is once again in a hyped fight against a ridiculously overmatched opponent. This time, however, the sports world is enthralled.
I haven't gone out of my way to watch any of the pre-fight trash talk but it really hasn't mattered. Everything Conor and Floyd say is regurgitated by every sports outlet imaginable and every vitriolic slur they hurl at one-another ends up in front of me somehow. The reason I don't watch it is because I have learned that it generally has very little impact on the performance of the fighters themselves. Since Ali we have learned to associate verbose confidence with in-ring dominance. In real life that isn't always the case. Joe Louis, due in part to his sensitivities of the racial prejudices of the time, was extremely quite and reserved. Larry Holmes was famously inept at public speaking. Marvin Hagler was known for letting his fists speak for him, as was Julio Cesar Chavez. MMA has been loaded with fighters who were piss-poor at trash talk: Jose Aldo, Chuck Liddell and Randy Couture are some notable examples but I could name several dozen more.
The reason we are drawn to trash-talking fighters who can actually perform is because they are exceptionally RARE.
All fighters say publicly that they will win but only half of them are right. As for the talk of fighters "getting inside their opponent's head" and "winning the first round", the real truth is that most fighters at the PPV level are too mentally strong to simply fall apart because of their opponents verbal sparring. Fighters have to get by on their technical and physical merits, no amount of talk will get you victory by itself. The devil is almost always in the details and they are often overlooked by most fans in favor expletive-filled soundbites.
The tactical breakdown of this fight is fairly easy. Most of the conversations I have had with fight fans go something like this:
Fan: "You never know man! McGregor is quick!"
Me: "Quicker than Pacquiao or a young Zab Judah?"
Fan: "He can hit hard too!!"
Me: "Harder than Canelo or Cotto?"
Fan: "But...but he's tall and rangy!"
Me: "Like Diego Corrales whom Floyd knocked down 5 times?"
Fan: "Uh...something about heart..."
Me: "Arturo Gatti"
Usually they give me a blank stare at this point and stop talking about it. The inescapable fact is that there isn't a physical or tactical attribute you can give Conor McGregor that Floyd hasn't already faced in the ring from a much more experienced boxer. The principles of striking change completely when you take away the legs of Conor and put 10-ounce gloves on him. He has also shown issues with his pacing in MMA fights: sprinting at certain points only to need a break later. The 12-round, 3-minute structure of a boxing match against a fighter with impeccable cardio would be a challenge in and of itself for McGregor.
On the tactical side, McGregor generally wins fights by being the faster fighter and controlling range. Controlling range is the hardest thing to do against Floyd Mayweather. Mayweather is a master at keeping the fight where he wants it. He is generally either hitting his opponent, or somewhere where his opponent can't hit him. Conor's "chin-high, arms-out" style of controlling range in MMA would be met by plenty of left hooks in a boxing match with Mayweather. The versatility that keeps MMA opponents guessing about his next move will be seriously curtailed when he only has two weapons at his disposal. I've actually had MMA fans ask me if spinning back-fists are illegal in boxing: yes they are, ANY hitting with the back of the glove is illegal in a boxing match.
As for speed: McGregor will finally find himself being the slower man come August 26.
I have heard the arguments about how Conor might make a fight out of it. They usually give a list of qualities Conor has (his power, his unusual angles etc.) with the assumption that Floyd will unprepared for them.
Let's switch sports for a moment.
Jake Shields is a phenomenal grappler. I've always been a fan of his old-school pressure game and felt it myself when I competed against him at Pan-Americans when we were purple belts. He has a great takedown, an amazing ability to control from dominant positions, and a wicked guillotine. He has won a ton of grappling events against some of the best in the world at his weight class and even took a bronze at ADCC in 2005 at the expense of Leo Santos.
When Jake took on Marcello Garcia at PSL he got smoked. Marcello pulled guard and went for some subs before getting single leg and tapping Jake with a guillotine from top position. It was the first time (to my knowledge) that Jake had ever tapped in a submission competition. There is a video on youtube of Jake and Marcelo rolling gi (where Garcia has an even greater advantage) and it looks like a lion rolling with a house-cat.
None of that makes Jake a less stellar grappler. The paragraph I wrote of his credentials is 100% true. He just isn't as good as a THE BEST POUND FOR POUND GRAPPLER OF HIS GENERATION!! I don't disagree with people who list Conor's abilities as a boxer, I just don't believe he has any boxing abilities that are as good as the GREATEST BOXER OF HIS GENERATION. The distance between Jake Shield's credentials as a grappler and Marcello Garcia's credentials are miles apart, the distance between Conor (never even had a pro boxing match) and Floyd (undefeated since the '96 Olympics and a 15-time world champion) can only be measured in lightyears.
"When will people stop doubting McGregor!?! He's proven the doubters wrong every time!!"
I've read some version of this tweet several thousand times in the past month. People seem to have an idea that McGregor has made a career out of beating opponents no one thought he could overcome and that Floyd is just another fighter in that vein. While it's true that Conor's LIFE has been an incredible underdog story (welfare recipient becomes a world-famous millionaire due to his determination) the numbers don't support that interpretation of his actual fights. McGregor has been the betting favorite in ALL BUT ONE of his UFC fights. The only time he wasn't was against Aldo, where he was a SLIGHT underdog. Against Nate Diaz he was -400 before being upset, the only time his supporters lost money. The truth is that McGregor has almost always come into a fight as the clear favorite and has only underperformed once. The Cinderella Man image his fans seem to have of him has been a solely"outside of the ring" phenomenon.
Make no mistake: Conor McGregor defeating Floyd Mayweather in the boxing ring would be the greatest upset in SPORTS history. Not boxing history, not combats sports history, but the entire history of professional athletics. When Buster Douglas knocked out Mike Tyson, his professional record was 30-4-1, not epic, but certainly respectable. The U.S. players who defeated the 1980 Soviet hockey team were college kids, but they had been playing hockey their entire lives and 16 players of the 20 player roster spent time in the NHL (the other 4 played for smaller professional leagues). Before they took on the vaunted Soviet team they had upset the 2nd-seeded Czechoslovakian team 7-3. Villanova made it through the grueling 1985 NCAA tournament and were seeded 8th before upsetting a talent-filled Georgetown team in the finals. Leon Spinks had 7 pro fights and an Olympic medal before he upset a faded Ali.
Pick your favorite upsets of all time and they will all have one thing in common: the other team, or individual, had been competing at the elite level in the sport for years before the upset happened and had a track record of at least some success. In boxing McGregor has neither of these attributes.
The cross-promotional nature of this fight makes it virtually unprecedented in sports history. The first UFC brought fighters together with an attempt at neutral rules that didn't favor a particular style. The whole point was that it was uncharted territory. Floyd Mayweather is the master of his craft and is stepping in against someone making their pro debut. An earlier age would have considered a spectacle of this nature to be unthinkable.
My esteemed colleague Brendan Schlub has offered to bet Max Kellerman $100,000 that Conor wins rounds against Floyd.
Think about that for a moment.
When has it ever been newsworthy that someone claims a Super Bowl team will "score some touchdowns" or that an NBA team in the finals will "shoot some baskets"? When did we as fans not expect a fight that has been hyped to this degree to be at least be marginally competitive? How did "I bet he'll win rounds" become a newsworthy headline from a fight expert?
How did the bar get so low before our very eyes?
I find comfort in reminding myself that no tax money is being spent on this fight. No hospital construction is delayed because the funds are wrapped up in this fight, no highway isn't getting built because of it. The people who have told me they have money on McGregor (2 bartenders and a car salesman this week) aren't betting their mortgage on the fight. They are putting money, that they could just as easily set fire to, on an unprecedented long-shot for fun. If McGregor wins they will have some extra cash and a great "I told you so" story.
I'm not against that at all. Just remember that 12 rounds (if it goes that far) is a long time. If it works out the way it has in the past, you won't be many rounds in before that creeping feeling crawls through your gut. That feeling that you bought into something that flew in the face of all logic. You bought a Mayweather fight expecting a legit competition and you burned your money on little more than an exhibition. The press conferences and shirtless pics are all over and you are watching yet another dud.
You will say to yourself..."never again"
Until next time.
Wednesday, July 19, 2017
Wednesday, June 7, 2017
Breakdown: Chandler vs Primus
Few fighters are as closely associated with Bellator as Michael Chandler. He has held the Lightweight Championship twice and has been the poster-boy of the promotion since his dramatic upset of Eddie Alvarez at Bellator 58 in 2011. As dominant has Chandler has looked in his past 4 fights since his 3-fight skid, there was some raising of the eyebrows when it was announced that he would be fighting Brent Primus on the most important card in Bellator history at the historic Madison Square Garden.
The reason is that Brent Primus has only had 7 professional fights and has won his last two by close, even controversial, decisions. One thing that Michael Chandler keeps pointing out when people question Primus and his challenger credentials is the fact that he was in a similar position when he upset Eddie Alvarez in 2011. It's that kind of drama that makes this fight compelling: Primus will have to repeat history in order to win.
Chandler is a tough mix of mental and physical talents. He started out as a powerful wrestler with rudimentary striking and has developed into an explosive KO machine. His right hand is absolute murder and he truly believes that he will DOMINATE any opponent he faces. In the 7 fights he has won since winning the title in 2011 he has looked absolutely unstoppable. Only Benson Henderson has gotten past the 2nd round with Chandler and most opponents find they can't deal with the champ's speed or intensity in the opening stanza. When most fighters are warming up and finding their rhythm, Chandler is already looking for the highlight-reel KO.
Primus has gotten this title fight based mostly on his submission game. His first 4 fights (2 of which were in Bellator) ended in first-round submission victories and he has only one KO to his credit. He has excellent pressure combined with slick transitions that make him a serious threat if he is able to get in good position against Chandler. He is also a GIANT for a lightweight and towered over Chandler when they faced off in Chicago. I've spoken with Chael Sonnen, who trains with Primus, and he claims that Primus is even stronger than he looks. He and his team are hoping that size provides something of an equalizer against the "wrestler strength" of Chandler.
When tactically breaking this fight down one thing is immediately apparent: the similarities between Primus' fight against Chandler and Chandler's fight against Alvarez stop at the records. Other than the fact that Primus is a relatively inexperienced underdog, he has few similarities to the young Chandler and he CANNOT fight the way Chandler did against Alvarez and expect to win. In order to understand why, we have to revisit the upset of 2011.
The major reason Michael Chandler defeated Eddie Alvarez was the fact that he came out in the first round and, literally as well as figuratively, punched Eddie in the mouth. In his previous fights Chandler had shown great wrestling, solid submissions, and basic striking. The last thing Alvarez expected was Chandler to come out throwing heat in the first round. Throughout his impressive career, Alvarez has been plagued by two tendencies: he can start slowly, and he tends to get rocked early in almost every fight. Chandler took advantage of both of these habits in their first fight and had Eddie on his heels right from the get-go. It took Eddie a couple of rounds to adjust to the new-and-improved Michael Chandler and by the time he did a LOT of damage had been done. Eddie rocked Chandler more than once in that fight, but eventually succumbed via RNC in the 4th round. It remains the latest stoppage in Chandlers career (a VERY telling statistic) and put Chandler on the MMA map.
Most sports upsets begin with the underdog starting strong and letting the other team know they aren't going to play scared: that's exactly what Chandler did in his upset of Eddie Alvarez.
Primus, however, follows this blueprint at great peril. Unlike 2011 Eddie Alvarez, Chandler is a PHENOMENALLY fast starter. Of Chandler's 13 finishes, 9 have come in the first round and only his submission of Eddie came past round two. The dude comes out of his corner like he was shot out of a cannon. As much as Primus would love to make a powerful statement in round one by taking it to the champ "2011 Chandler" style, that would probably be the worst tactical mistake he could make. Guys with a LOT more striking experience than Primus have found themselves staring at a referee's waving arms in the first round because they decided to fight fire with fire. Chandler would like nothing more than an early shoot-out and highlight KO.
The tactical weakness that fighters HAVE been able to exploit is the fact that the champ tends to burn a ton of gas looking for the KO in round one. Of Chandlers three losses two have been by decision, the lone KO coming in a rather bizarre fashion when Chandler LITERALLY seemed to go blind. In both decision losses Chandler started strong, but faded in the later rounds against experienced fighters who were able to stay mentally focused despite the physical demands of the opening rounds. Benson Henderson, a fighter known for his endless gas-tank, was almost able to pull out a win with a dominant fifth round, despite getting white-washed in the previous four rounds.
Chandler defeated Eddie Alvarez by fighting like a young gun. He used his physical talents, combined with a newfound confidence in his striking skills, to put the champ right in the middle of a fight he didn't expect. If Primus is to pull of the upset, he needs to fight like the veterans who have given Chandler trouble. The trouble is that Primus' greatest strength lies in his BJJ skills and those can be tough to use against a superior wrestler. In their wins over Chandler, both Eddie Alvarez and Will Brooks were able to stop Chandler's takedown enough to get their own striking games going. The trick for Primus is going to be getting a dominant position on Chandler while NOT falling for the deadly fists of the champion.
The good news is that Primus does tend to finish strong. In his last fight against Gleristone Santos, Primus overcame a slow start to dominate the third round and earn a close split decision. He needs a gritty performance like that to upset the champ. A big sign in this fight will be if Primus can walk back to his corner at the end of round three with one in the bag, if he does, he can feel pretty good about his chances heading into the championship rounds.
One X-factor is that Primus has been anything but consistent with is activity-level. His 7-fight career extends back to 2010 and he has only had more than one fight in a calendar year ONCE (2 in 2013). His last fight will be 14 months old by the time he squares off with Chandler for the biggest fight of his career. One upside for the challenger in the old tournament system was that they came in on a streak. Michael Chandler had won three fights in 2011, while Eddie had only one. The good news for Primus is that he hasn't exactly been sitting on the couch eating Cheetos for the past year. This time in the gym since his last fight might have given him a new set of tools that Chandler hasn't yet seen. Surprise might be the key in this fight against Chandler.
Here's some boxing trivia (no google now, or asking Steve Farhood, seriously that guy knows EVERYTHING about boxing): Who were Ali's previous two opponents before upsetting Sonny Liston for the heavyweight title? Give up? They were Sir Henry Cooper and Doug Jones. The reason I bring that up is because most people forget that heading into his showdown with Liston, Ali hadn't looked great in his last couple bouts. I, and a lot of people at the time, thought Jones beat him and Copper floored him with a left hook and roughed him up on the inside before succumbing to a cut in the fifth round. Neither of these guys were considered to be on the same PLANET as the unstoppable Sonny Liston. Ali, or Cassius Clay at the time, was primed to "shock the world" because people thought about what he HAD done more than what he COULD do.
If Primus can do the same, he can leap on the top of the cage and declare: "I told you, and I told you, and I told you..."
The reason is that Brent Primus has only had 7 professional fights and has won his last two by close, even controversial, decisions. One thing that Michael Chandler keeps pointing out when people question Primus and his challenger credentials is the fact that he was in a similar position when he upset Eddie Alvarez in 2011. It's that kind of drama that makes this fight compelling: Primus will have to repeat history in order to win.
Chandler is a tough mix of mental and physical talents. He started out as a powerful wrestler with rudimentary striking and has developed into an explosive KO machine. His right hand is absolute murder and he truly believes that he will DOMINATE any opponent he faces. In the 7 fights he has won since winning the title in 2011 he has looked absolutely unstoppable. Only Benson Henderson has gotten past the 2nd round with Chandler and most opponents find they can't deal with the champ's speed or intensity in the opening stanza. When most fighters are warming up and finding their rhythm, Chandler is already looking for the highlight-reel KO.
Primus has gotten this title fight based mostly on his submission game. His first 4 fights (2 of which were in Bellator) ended in first-round submission victories and he has only one KO to his credit. He has excellent pressure combined with slick transitions that make him a serious threat if he is able to get in good position against Chandler. He is also a GIANT for a lightweight and towered over Chandler when they faced off in Chicago. I've spoken with Chael Sonnen, who trains with Primus, and he claims that Primus is even stronger than he looks. He and his team are hoping that size provides something of an equalizer against the "wrestler strength" of Chandler.
When tactically breaking this fight down one thing is immediately apparent: the similarities between Primus' fight against Chandler and Chandler's fight against Alvarez stop at the records. Other than the fact that Primus is a relatively inexperienced underdog, he has few similarities to the young Chandler and he CANNOT fight the way Chandler did against Alvarez and expect to win. In order to understand why, we have to revisit the upset of 2011.
The major reason Michael Chandler defeated Eddie Alvarez was the fact that he came out in the first round and, literally as well as figuratively, punched Eddie in the mouth. In his previous fights Chandler had shown great wrestling, solid submissions, and basic striking. The last thing Alvarez expected was Chandler to come out throwing heat in the first round. Throughout his impressive career, Alvarez has been plagued by two tendencies: he can start slowly, and he tends to get rocked early in almost every fight. Chandler took advantage of both of these habits in their first fight and had Eddie on his heels right from the get-go. It took Eddie a couple of rounds to adjust to the new-and-improved Michael Chandler and by the time he did a LOT of damage had been done. Eddie rocked Chandler more than once in that fight, but eventually succumbed via RNC in the 4th round. It remains the latest stoppage in Chandlers career (a VERY telling statistic) and put Chandler on the MMA map.
Most sports upsets begin with the underdog starting strong and letting the other team know they aren't going to play scared: that's exactly what Chandler did in his upset of Eddie Alvarez.
Primus, however, follows this blueprint at great peril. Unlike 2011 Eddie Alvarez, Chandler is a PHENOMENALLY fast starter. Of Chandler's 13 finishes, 9 have come in the first round and only his submission of Eddie came past round two. The dude comes out of his corner like he was shot out of a cannon. As much as Primus would love to make a powerful statement in round one by taking it to the champ "2011 Chandler" style, that would probably be the worst tactical mistake he could make. Guys with a LOT more striking experience than Primus have found themselves staring at a referee's waving arms in the first round because they decided to fight fire with fire. Chandler would like nothing more than an early shoot-out and highlight KO.
The tactical weakness that fighters HAVE been able to exploit is the fact that the champ tends to burn a ton of gas looking for the KO in round one. Of Chandlers three losses two have been by decision, the lone KO coming in a rather bizarre fashion when Chandler LITERALLY seemed to go blind. In both decision losses Chandler started strong, but faded in the later rounds against experienced fighters who were able to stay mentally focused despite the physical demands of the opening rounds. Benson Henderson, a fighter known for his endless gas-tank, was almost able to pull out a win with a dominant fifth round, despite getting white-washed in the previous four rounds.
Chandler defeated Eddie Alvarez by fighting like a young gun. He used his physical talents, combined with a newfound confidence in his striking skills, to put the champ right in the middle of a fight he didn't expect. If Primus is to pull of the upset, he needs to fight like the veterans who have given Chandler trouble. The trouble is that Primus' greatest strength lies in his BJJ skills and those can be tough to use against a superior wrestler. In their wins over Chandler, both Eddie Alvarez and Will Brooks were able to stop Chandler's takedown enough to get their own striking games going. The trick for Primus is going to be getting a dominant position on Chandler while NOT falling for the deadly fists of the champion.
The good news is that Primus does tend to finish strong. In his last fight against Gleristone Santos, Primus overcame a slow start to dominate the third round and earn a close split decision. He needs a gritty performance like that to upset the champ. A big sign in this fight will be if Primus can walk back to his corner at the end of round three with one in the bag, if he does, he can feel pretty good about his chances heading into the championship rounds.
One X-factor is that Primus has been anything but consistent with is activity-level. His 7-fight career extends back to 2010 and he has only had more than one fight in a calendar year ONCE (2 in 2013). His last fight will be 14 months old by the time he squares off with Chandler for the biggest fight of his career. One upside for the challenger in the old tournament system was that they came in on a streak. Michael Chandler had won three fights in 2011, while Eddie had only one. The good news for Primus is that he hasn't exactly been sitting on the couch eating Cheetos for the past year. This time in the gym since his last fight might have given him a new set of tools that Chandler hasn't yet seen. Surprise might be the key in this fight against Chandler.
Here's some boxing trivia (no google now, or asking Steve Farhood, seriously that guy knows EVERYTHING about boxing): Who were Ali's previous two opponents before upsetting Sonny Liston for the heavyweight title? Give up? They were Sir Henry Cooper and Doug Jones. The reason I bring that up is because most people forget that heading into his showdown with Liston, Ali hadn't looked great in his last couple bouts. I, and a lot of people at the time, thought Jones beat him and Copper floored him with a left hook and roughed him up on the inside before succumbing to a cut in the fifth round. Neither of these guys were considered to be on the same PLANET as the unstoppable Sonny Liston. Ali, or Cassius Clay at the time, was primed to "shock the world" because people thought about what he HAD done more than what he COULD do.
If Primus can do the same, he can leap on the top of the cage and declare: "I told you, and I told you, and I told you..."
Wednesday, March 15, 2017
The weight-cutting dilemma
Well, the scale turns out to to be the strongest of opponents once again.
Both Bellator and the UFC were bitten by the same bug last month: Khabib Nurmagomedov had to be hospitalized before his weigh-in and the much-anticipated showdown with Tony Ferguson vanished into thin air while THREE main-card fighters failed to make weight on our Bellator show in Oklahoma. While Brandon Girtz bravely carried on against the overweight Fernando Gonzalez (and paid the price), Steve Garcia and Kendall Grove both opted not to fight their opponents and the card had to be pulled together at the last minute.
Situations like these tend to bring opinions of the experts and the "Monday morning quarterbacks" about the hazards of weight cutting and the solutions that can fix them. Read some interesting rants and some reasonable thoughts the following week, but there are fundamental issues with any actual plan to combat the problems weight-cutting presents.
I've been following this sport since the late 90's and been competing in it since about 2000. Occasionally I get asked what has changed the most in terms of actual training and fighting. One of my most consistent answers is: weight cutting. I first saw Diego Sanchez when he fought Jorge Santiago at KOTC 37 in 2004. They were fighting at middleweight and they were not small middleweights at the time. If you had told me that Diego would one day fight Ricardo Lamas at 145lbs I would have thought you were insane. For a 185lb man, 40 pounds is over 21% of his body weight. That is a STUNNING loss for any person, let alone an athlete who is demanding a lot of their bodies.
Most fighters I started with fought in weight classes where they would be midgets today. I am 5'10 and was a fairly solid welterweight ten years ago, today I'm a good (not gigantic) lightweight. As the sport became more competitive in the mid-2000's, weight cutting techniques that were the domain of a few select wrestlers who had spent years mastering them became industry standard. Dietitians and nutritionists became a necessity for any big team and the science of cutting became a matter of desperate importance to any fighter looking to make a career.
Technique beats size, but technique AND size beats technique all by itself.
That was another consequence of the sport becoming more competitive: there were no more technical secrets. As teams got bigger and training methods disseminated, the technical advantages that gave smaller fighters an edge began to disappear. The days of Dan Severn getting caught in a triangle choke that he had never even heard of were going the way of the dodo. Every team had great BJJ training, every team had top-level muay thai, and every team had an all-American teaching wrestling. When everyone knows everything, the physical advantage of cutting more weight and being the bigger guy on fight night might be the crucial difference.
Fighters moving around the scale in boxing has been a fixture of the sport for its entire existence. The major differences between boxing and MMA are that:
1. There are fewer weight classes in MMA, and therefore more of a difference between them.
2. The grappling factor that is inherent in MMA makes the weight itself a much bigger factor.
Ask any competitive grappler and he will tell you: the difference between rolling with a guy who is 150 versus a guy who is 170 is incredibly significant. Weight changes at the world level in wrestling are comparatively rare. Buvasair Saitiev is widely considered the greatest freestyle wrestler of all time. He won his 3 olympic gold medals and 6 world championships all in the same weight class, an incredible span of 12 years.
When I met Sergio Martinez before his middleweight showdown with Julio Cesar Chavez Jr., I couldn't believe how small he was. Chavez TOWERED over him when they faced off, but when it came to the fight it didn't matter. In a sport where grabbing and holding illegal: speed kills and Martinez was the faster and more accurate fighter. In the fight he dominated the bigger Chavez for 11 rounds. Roy Jones Jr. won his first world title at 160, then went on to beat John Ruiz for a heavyweight belt, a virtual impossibility in MMA.
I worked with an actor (yeah, park cars in LA and you'll work with a LOT of actors) who was Italian, he had dark skin and wavy hair. He told me that he thought the fact that his ethnicity was somewhat vague would help him get roles playing a wide variety of characters. He soon learned that he looked kind of Latino, except when he was in a room full of Latinos auditioning for the same part. The same went for Middle-Eastern or Mediterranean: people who are BORN into a culture or ethnicity look way different than someone who is "kind of" pretending to be in it for a day. You often can't see that until you are face-to-face unfortunately.
The same principle applies to weight classes.
Benson Henderson is a big lightweight. He has always had a tough cut and he seemed at first glance like the kind of fighter who might benefit from a move up. When he came to Bellator he jumped right in against welterweight champ Andrey Koreshkov. In the press leading up to the fight, a lot of people were giving Ben a good shot of walking out with the belt. At the weigh-ins it looked like a man staring down a kid. Koreshkov, a natural welterweight, was gigantic after his cut and manhandled Ben for 25 minutes when they fought. Ben had fought at 170, but never against elite competition. That difference in level can't be overestimated.
In the UFC only 3 champions won a title after competing in a smaller weight-class for the promotion: BJ Penn, Randy Couture, and Connor McGregor. Of those 3, only Randy Couture ever defended his title, and even then it was only once (as of this writing Conor has yet to defend his lightweight belt). The fighters who have had the most sustained success in MMA tend to be comfortably sized for their weight class and couldn't drop even if they had to. The general rule of thumb is: if you can safely make a lower weight class, then you shouldn't be fighting at the one you are in.
When a fighter moves in weight to find success in MMA it is almost always DOWN the scale, and there is usually a beating that prompts it. Randy Couture moved down from heavyweight after being mauled by much bigger fighters in Josh Barnett and Ricco Rodriguez. Diego Sanchez began his stint at lightweight after being out-wrestled by Josh Koscheck and John Fitch. Kenny Florian moved to 145 after Gray Maynard rag-dolled him at lightweight. The list goes on and on. Fighters are nothing if not competitive. Once they feel that changing weight classes might give them a competitive edge, they almost always do it. No one wants to get out-muscled twice.
The simple truth is that 10-15 pounds is an almost insurmountable hurdle at the elite level in MMA. BJ Penn was the king of the lightweights in his prime, but was 2-7-1 at welter in the UFC with both of those wins coming against Matt Hughes. Robbie Lawler is a monster at 170, but was a so-so fighter at 185, compiling a record of 11-7-1. A dominant fighter at a given weight class often becomes an also-ran at the weight class above. There are a couple of exceptions (Rumble Johnson among them) but the rule still holds.
So we understand WHY MMA fighters make drastic weight-cuts: for the most part it works in their favor. It's when it doesn't work on the promotional level, as it didn't work out for the UFC and Bellator last month, that everyone freaks out. The problem is that none of the solutions are particularly effective, let's look at a few:
1. Modification to the existing classes
This happens every so many years in wrestling. Quite a few years back a wrestler (I believe it was at the University of Michigan) died of kidney failure while cutting weight. They immediately gave wrestlers an additional allowance to their weight limits to give them some breathing room. The issue became, and will always become, one of simple math and risk/reward analysis. If the weight classes are 170 and 160 for example and you give them a 3 pound allowance, a fighter who is light for 170 might be tempted to make that extra drop to 160 now that he has a 3-pound cushion. A modification of weight classes doesn't really do anything if the motivation to risk and cut remain the same.
2. Same day weigh-ins
This has been bantered around a lot in MMA. The issue is that it takes a process that is already risky and attempts to limit the risk by making it more risky, make sense? Its a double-down strategy (much like banning IVs) in that it makes the recovery time shorter with the idea that fighters won't want to drain themselves too badly and will cut more safely. The fundamental flaw is two-fold: the first (which I will go into more later) is that fighters are ALREADY risk takers. The idea that commissions will essentially DARE them to push their limits will be met with most fighter obliging and almost killing themselves to make weight and fight on the same day. The second flaw is that in most cases the fights will suffer and promotions therefore have little incentive to get behind the idea. Koreshkov fought Douglas Lima in a rematch last year. They gave a great fight and Lima walked out with a KO win. Both guys are giants (especially Lima) and I find it hard to believe either one of them would have had the energy to go past the first round without the proper time to re-hydrate. Watching two exhausted guys stagger around the cage is TV death and that would happen a LOT if fighters were required to weigh in the same day as their fights.
3. Adding weight classes
Some have advocated adding weight classes, therefore encouraging fighters to cut less because they have a belt to fight for that is closer to their natural weight. The issue with adding weight classes is that MMA promotions already have enough trouble building stars with the number of weight classes that already exist. Adding weight classes and then finding a champion and a pool of fighters to challenge him/her would be an unbelievably daunting task. The UFC already gets flack for the number of interim titles they hand out, imagine that with 3 or 4 more weight classes added to the field: you could get a belt at Target and fans would lose patience with the diluted talent pools.
4. Putting pressure on teams to "keep fighters in line"
Nobody likes coaching a fighter who doesn't make weight. The fighter looks bad, the team looks bad, and it costs everyone money. The problem is that, as much as MMA is becoming dominated by big teams (AKA, ATT, Jackson-Wink etc.), weight cutting is generally a matter of individual discipline. A coach knows when a particular fighter is or is not training, but they don't know when or how much they are eating. They also don't know exactly WHAT a fighter is eating, or whether they are doing those extra weight-cutting runs that are necessary for the ones who have trouble. I've seen fighters kicked out of gyms for not making weight and not being disciplined, but there is a little a coach can do to encourage a fighter to make weight other than stand next to him on the scale and deal with the angry stare of the promoters as they don't make it. This isn't the NFL. There are no such things as team fines and fighters are under no obligation to stay with a particular team. A fighter who is berated for missing weight will often just leave for greener and less-strict pastures, but it doesn't help anyone at fight-time.
5. Some medical test leading up weigh-is to determine whether a fighter's cut is safe
I hear this one a lot. It's kind of the MMA version of an old man screaming "someone should do something about this" at a pothole in the middle of the street. Who would administer these tests and what exactly would they be? Would an outside agency be in charge of it (expensive) or the promotion (improper)? When would they be done? What would the consequences be? There is no hard and fast rule for what kind of body type will or will not make weight. Douglas Lima is probably the biggest welterweight I have ever seen and is SHREDDED, yet he has always made it. Fernando Gonzalez looks like a thick lightweight and has failed on the scale multiple times. The "just look at him" argument falls flat when you look at the actual numbers. Weight cutting is also a matter of long-term discipline combined with last minute suffering. A fighter in the middle of camp might be well-overweight and still make it because they have the timing mastered, others are only a few over the night before and fail to shed the crucial pounds. I've seen very little rhyme or reason to who does or does not make it, I only know the the ones who DON'T make it rarely right the ship and tend to be dogged by weight issues their entire careers.
The undeniable truth is that weight cutting is an inherently dangerous part of an inherently dangerous sport. The nature of MMA and the athletes that compete in it is one of "big risk=big reward". To ask people who willingly get punched in the face for money to NOT take a physical risk that will give them a demonstrable advantage is an exercise in futility. I hate it when weight cutting issues cause a card to fall apart at the last minute, its a headache for the promotion as well as the fans. Hopefully a solution in presented in the near future but so far it looks like an arms race, and those tend to go on for a LONG time.
Both Bellator and the UFC were bitten by the same bug last month: Khabib Nurmagomedov had to be hospitalized before his weigh-in and the much-anticipated showdown with Tony Ferguson vanished into thin air while THREE main-card fighters failed to make weight on our Bellator show in Oklahoma. While Brandon Girtz bravely carried on against the overweight Fernando Gonzalez (and paid the price), Steve Garcia and Kendall Grove both opted not to fight their opponents and the card had to be pulled together at the last minute.
Situations like these tend to bring opinions of the experts and the "Monday morning quarterbacks" about the hazards of weight cutting and the solutions that can fix them. Read some interesting rants and some reasonable thoughts the following week, but there are fundamental issues with any actual plan to combat the problems weight-cutting presents.
I've been following this sport since the late 90's and been competing in it since about 2000. Occasionally I get asked what has changed the most in terms of actual training and fighting. One of my most consistent answers is: weight cutting. I first saw Diego Sanchez when he fought Jorge Santiago at KOTC 37 in 2004. They were fighting at middleweight and they were not small middleweights at the time. If you had told me that Diego would one day fight Ricardo Lamas at 145lbs I would have thought you were insane. For a 185lb man, 40 pounds is over 21% of his body weight. That is a STUNNING loss for any person, let alone an athlete who is demanding a lot of their bodies.
Most fighters I started with fought in weight classes where they would be midgets today. I am 5'10 and was a fairly solid welterweight ten years ago, today I'm a good (not gigantic) lightweight. As the sport became more competitive in the mid-2000's, weight cutting techniques that were the domain of a few select wrestlers who had spent years mastering them became industry standard. Dietitians and nutritionists became a necessity for any big team and the science of cutting became a matter of desperate importance to any fighter looking to make a career.
Technique beats size, but technique AND size beats technique all by itself.
That was another consequence of the sport becoming more competitive: there were no more technical secrets. As teams got bigger and training methods disseminated, the technical advantages that gave smaller fighters an edge began to disappear. The days of Dan Severn getting caught in a triangle choke that he had never even heard of were going the way of the dodo. Every team had great BJJ training, every team had top-level muay thai, and every team had an all-American teaching wrestling. When everyone knows everything, the physical advantage of cutting more weight and being the bigger guy on fight night might be the crucial difference.
Fighters moving around the scale in boxing has been a fixture of the sport for its entire existence. The major differences between boxing and MMA are that:
1. There are fewer weight classes in MMA, and therefore more of a difference between them.
2. The grappling factor that is inherent in MMA makes the weight itself a much bigger factor.
Ask any competitive grappler and he will tell you: the difference between rolling with a guy who is 150 versus a guy who is 170 is incredibly significant. Weight changes at the world level in wrestling are comparatively rare. Buvasair Saitiev is widely considered the greatest freestyle wrestler of all time. He won his 3 olympic gold medals and 6 world championships all in the same weight class, an incredible span of 12 years.
When I met Sergio Martinez before his middleweight showdown with Julio Cesar Chavez Jr., I couldn't believe how small he was. Chavez TOWERED over him when they faced off, but when it came to the fight it didn't matter. In a sport where grabbing and holding illegal: speed kills and Martinez was the faster and more accurate fighter. In the fight he dominated the bigger Chavez for 11 rounds. Roy Jones Jr. won his first world title at 160, then went on to beat John Ruiz for a heavyweight belt, a virtual impossibility in MMA.
I worked with an actor (yeah, park cars in LA and you'll work with a LOT of actors) who was Italian, he had dark skin and wavy hair. He told me that he thought the fact that his ethnicity was somewhat vague would help him get roles playing a wide variety of characters. He soon learned that he looked kind of Latino, except when he was in a room full of Latinos auditioning for the same part. The same went for Middle-Eastern or Mediterranean: people who are BORN into a culture or ethnicity look way different than someone who is "kind of" pretending to be in it for a day. You often can't see that until you are face-to-face unfortunately.
The same principle applies to weight classes.
Benson Henderson is a big lightweight. He has always had a tough cut and he seemed at first glance like the kind of fighter who might benefit from a move up. When he came to Bellator he jumped right in against welterweight champ Andrey Koreshkov. In the press leading up to the fight, a lot of people were giving Ben a good shot of walking out with the belt. At the weigh-ins it looked like a man staring down a kid. Koreshkov, a natural welterweight, was gigantic after his cut and manhandled Ben for 25 minutes when they fought. Ben had fought at 170, but never against elite competition. That difference in level can't be overestimated.
In the UFC only 3 champions won a title after competing in a smaller weight-class for the promotion: BJ Penn, Randy Couture, and Connor McGregor. Of those 3, only Randy Couture ever defended his title, and even then it was only once (as of this writing Conor has yet to defend his lightweight belt). The fighters who have had the most sustained success in MMA tend to be comfortably sized for their weight class and couldn't drop even if they had to. The general rule of thumb is: if you can safely make a lower weight class, then you shouldn't be fighting at the one you are in.
When a fighter moves in weight to find success in MMA it is almost always DOWN the scale, and there is usually a beating that prompts it. Randy Couture moved down from heavyweight after being mauled by much bigger fighters in Josh Barnett and Ricco Rodriguez. Diego Sanchez began his stint at lightweight after being out-wrestled by Josh Koscheck and John Fitch. Kenny Florian moved to 145 after Gray Maynard rag-dolled him at lightweight. The list goes on and on. Fighters are nothing if not competitive. Once they feel that changing weight classes might give them a competitive edge, they almost always do it. No one wants to get out-muscled twice.
The simple truth is that 10-15 pounds is an almost insurmountable hurdle at the elite level in MMA. BJ Penn was the king of the lightweights in his prime, but was 2-7-1 at welter in the UFC with both of those wins coming against Matt Hughes. Robbie Lawler is a monster at 170, but was a so-so fighter at 185, compiling a record of 11-7-1. A dominant fighter at a given weight class often becomes an also-ran at the weight class above. There are a couple of exceptions (Rumble Johnson among them) but the rule still holds.
So we understand WHY MMA fighters make drastic weight-cuts: for the most part it works in their favor. It's when it doesn't work on the promotional level, as it didn't work out for the UFC and Bellator last month, that everyone freaks out. The problem is that none of the solutions are particularly effective, let's look at a few:
1. Modification to the existing classes
This happens every so many years in wrestling. Quite a few years back a wrestler (I believe it was at the University of Michigan) died of kidney failure while cutting weight. They immediately gave wrestlers an additional allowance to their weight limits to give them some breathing room. The issue became, and will always become, one of simple math and risk/reward analysis. If the weight classes are 170 and 160 for example and you give them a 3 pound allowance, a fighter who is light for 170 might be tempted to make that extra drop to 160 now that he has a 3-pound cushion. A modification of weight classes doesn't really do anything if the motivation to risk and cut remain the same.
2. Same day weigh-ins
This has been bantered around a lot in MMA. The issue is that it takes a process that is already risky and attempts to limit the risk by making it more risky, make sense? Its a double-down strategy (much like banning IVs) in that it makes the recovery time shorter with the idea that fighters won't want to drain themselves too badly and will cut more safely. The fundamental flaw is two-fold: the first (which I will go into more later) is that fighters are ALREADY risk takers. The idea that commissions will essentially DARE them to push their limits will be met with most fighter obliging and almost killing themselves to make weight and fight on the same day. The second flaw is that in most cases the fights will suffer and promotions therefore have little incentive to get behind the idea. Koreshkov fought Douglas Lima in a rematch last year. They gave a great fight and Lima walked out with a KO win. Both guys are giants (especially Lima) and I find it hard to believe either one of them would have had the energy to go past the first round without the proper time to re-hydrate. Watching two exhausted guys stagger around the cage is TV death and that would happen a LOT if fighters were required to weigh in the same day as their fights.
3. Adding weight classes
Some have advocated adding weight classes, therefore encouraging fighters to cut less because they have a belt to fight for that is closer to their natural weight. The issue with adding weight classes is that MMA promotions already have enough trouble building stars with the number of weight classes that already exist. Adding weight classes and then finding a champion and a pool of fighters to challenge him/her would be an unbelievably daunting task. The UFC already gets flack for the number of interim titles they hand out, imagine that with 3 or 4 more weight classes added to the field: you could get a belt at Target and fans would lose patience with the diluted talent pools.
4. Putting pressure on teams to "keep fighters in line"
Nobody likes coaching a fighter who doesn't make weight. The fighter looks bad, the team looks bad, and it costs everyone money. The problem is that, as much as MMA is becoming dominated by big teams (AKA, ATT, Jackson-Wink etc.), weight cutting is generally a matter of individual discipline. A coach knows when a particular fighter is or is not training, but they don't know when or how much they are eating. They also don't know exactly WHAT a fighter is eating, or whether they are doing those extra weight-cutting runs that are necessary for the ones who have trouble. I've seen fighters kicked out of gyms for not making weight and not being disciplined, but there is a little a coach can do to encourage a fighter to make weight other than stand next to him on the scale and deal with the angry stare of the promoters as they don't make it. This isn't the NFL. There are no such things as team fines and fighters are under no obligation to stay with a particular team. A fighter who is berated for missing weight will often just leave for greener and less-strict pastures, but it doesn't help anyone at fight-time.
5. Some medical test leading up weigh-is to determine whether a fighter's cut is safe
I hear this one a lot. It's kind of the MMA version of an old man screaming "someone should do something about this" at a pothole in the middle of the street. Who would administer these tests and what exactly would they be? Would an outside agency be in charge of it (expensive) or the promotion (improper)? When would they be done? What would the consequences be? There is no hard and fast rule for what kind of body type will or will not make weight. Douglas Lima is probably the biggest welterweight I have ever seen and is SHREDDED, yet he has always made it. Fernando Gonzalez looks like a thick lightweight and has failed on the scale multiple times. The "just look at him" argument falls flat when you look at the actual numbers. Weight cutting is also a matter of long-term discipline combined with last minute suffering. A fighter in the middle of camp might be well-overweight and still make it because they have the timing mastered, others are only a few over the night before and fail to shed the crucial pounds. I've seen very little rhyme or reason to who does or does not make it, I only know the the ones who DON'T make it rarely right the ship and tend to be dogged by weight issues their entire careers.
The undeniable truth is that weight cutting is an inherently dangerous part of an inherently dangerous sport. The nature of MMA and the athletes that compete in it is one of "big risk=big reward". To ask people who willingly get punched in the face for money to NOT take a physical risk that will give them a demonstrable advantage is an exercise in futility. I hate it when weight cutting issues cause a card to fall apart at the last minute, its a headache for the promotion as well as the fans. Hopefully a solution in presented in the near future but so far it looks like an arms race, and those tend to go on for a LONG time.
Wednesday, January 25, 2017
Fix(in) Bellator
I had someone tweet me after the “fix” talk started post Tito/Sonnen that I should say something to silence the critics. I immediately wrote back that I doubted my word would mean anything. The great part about conspiracy theories is that they can be expanded or contracted at the discretion of the believer. If I spoke out against a fix, then it could stand to reason I was in on it and my word wouldn't prove anything.
My tendency is to lay out my personal logic in these instances and see if THAT has any effect on people’s opinions. I am not a naturally trusting person. As a result I require logical arguments when someone is trying to influence my opinion (makes me an anomaly these days). AllI can I can do is explain how I see it, no more and no less.
I’ve written something like this before. It was after the Kimbo/Ken fight when there was another accusation of impropriety. It’s on the MMA Community Forum somewhere if you want to look for it. I explain there the consequences for a promotion that is caught fixing a fight. I won’t go into great detail here other than to say it would be DISASTROUS. Not “our main guy getting his ass kicked” disastrous, rather “the FBI raids your offices and subpoena all of your employees” disastrous. Fixing a fight is a crime (fraud technically), and any promotion that engages in that is risking its promotional future as well as jail time for its guilty executives.
The nature of MMA makes a fix, from the promotional side, a fairly ludicrous idea. There are few checks on a promotions authority when it comes to matchmaking. A fighter doesn't have to win to get a title fight. Nick Diaz lost to Carlos Condit in an interim title fight. It didn't matter at all, his next fight was GSP for the title. Nate Diaz famously chokes out Conor McGregor in a massive upset. Whats his next fight? A rematch that Conor wins. Will we see a third? Maybe: its all up to Dana and no one else.
It isn't a UFC phenomenon either. Ken Shamrock gets KO’d in the first round against Kimbo Slice and yet still headlines what is (so far) the biggest show in Bellator history against Royce Gracie in his very next fight. In the Bjorn years Roger Huerta gets a fight against Eddie Alvarez despite not winning a Bellator tournament and coming off a loss to Pat Curran. Fixes would have made all of those fights easier to justify, but they weren't necessary. There is only one promoter and one matchmaker for each promotion. If they want a fight made it doesn't matter what happened before, they do what they want.
In this particular case it’s almost impossible to find a motivation for Bellator to fix this fight in the manner in which it played out. Tito was retiring, that was a done deal for months. Bellator had actually gotten decent milage out of Tito: 3 fights (including a title fight) and excellent ratings. Chael was a recent and highly touted signing. They got a ton of mainstream press from Chael and the guy is promotional gold. There is virtually NO advantage to fixing a fight on behalf of a fighter who will NEVER fight for you again. Chael was the guy who had (and does have) a future in Bellator. He signed a multi-fight deal with Bellator and having him start off wth a loss was not a good thing for the long-term health of that deal. A fix that involved the retiring guy losing to the guy who can stick around and make money for Bellator makes a LOT more sense.
“But”, the critics say, “what about the big sendoff for Tito at the end? The screens and the speech, that TV gold moment that producers live for? Isn't that worth a few backstage deals?”
That’s pretty easy: the sendoff was going to happen either way. The screens were (obviously) pre-programmed and the plan, win or lose, was that Tito would do his final walk up the ramp and that we would have the credits rollout over his exit. The only x-factor was gone over at the production meeting the day day before: how would we handle the exit if Tito lost? The plan was that I would interview Chael who would (please God please) say something gracious about Tito now that the fight was over, then interview Tito so he could give his sendoff to the fans before walking into the video sunset. Would it have been as uplifting? Certainly not. Were there a zillion more variables with a Chael win considering the toxic press conference? Absolutely, but the sendoff would have been as good as we could have managed under the circumstances. Fixing a fight in order to get a good 5 minutes of TV is akin to robbing a bank because you're behind on your cable bill: the reward doesn't exactly match the risk.
So bearing in mind the facts that:
- a fix is an UNBELIEVABLE risk for Bellator
- a fix is completely unnecessary from a matchmaking point of view
- a fix engineered by the promotion would have favored the OTHER guy
I think its safe to say that Bellator didn't have anything to do with influencing the outcome of the Tito/Chael fight.
So the only other option is that the fighters themselves conspired to fix the fight for their own reasons. My immediate response to this is an emphatic: why the hell would they do that?
The consequences for the offending fighters (should they be caught) are similar to the ones faced by a promotion that fixes a fight: they are liable for fraud and might do time in addition to having their legacies ruined. Such an act must have a comparable reward in order to justify it and, just like with Bellator, finding a suitable reward is pretty hard.
The only two reasonable motives a fighter would have to fix a fight would be to:
- ensure winning a fight that would be otherwise un-winnable.
- a massive payout by betting on oneself if the loser is the heavy favorite.
Think what you want about the fact that these two guys met in the twilight of their careers, but the truth of the matter is that it was a winnable fight for either guy. The conventional wisdom was that Chael had slightly better technique, but Tito was the bigger and physically stronger fighter who had also been more active recently. The odds favored Chael, but the last line I read was 2/1. Two to one is hardly “retire on a Caribbean island by putting money on yourself” kind of odds.
Tommy Toe Hold (if i can call a cartoon character an actual person) already tweeted a mock conversation between Chael and Tito about fixing the fight. As funny as it is, it DOES point out the absurdity of these two guys coming together to fix a fight considering the unbridgeable gap between their personalities.
Part of the reason the “fix” talk seems plausible to some is the attitude portrayed publicly by Chael Sonnen. He has been involved in shady practices including money laundering and failed drug tests. In true “American Gangster” fashion, Chael revels in his misdeeds rather than repenting. He went so far as to say he was “mostly clean” leading to to his fight with Tito and that he was only convicted of the criminal acts they “caught him doing”. Most fight fans would wager that if there WAS a fix in an MMA fight, it would probably involve Chael Sonnen. One thing to know about Chael is that the “Chael P. Sonnen” act drops pretty quickly when you are with the guy outside of the camera’s eye. He jokes about PEDs, but signed a contract that costs him 500k if he gets caught using them. He is loud but not stupid and a fix would destroy any hope he would EVER have of finishing his MMA career in the black.
Another definite roadblock to a fix would be convincing a guy like Tito Oritz to go along with it. Chael often says the things he says with a wry smile that indicates that even HE doesn't really believe them. To him its all theater: it sells tickets and gets eyeballs on him where they belong. Tito, love or hate him, doesn't feel the way. I started my MMA career at Team Punishment 16 years ago and can say with absolute certainty that he is a genuinely emotional dude.
When we were filming the “Face-Off” show between him and Stephan Bonnar things almost got out of hand several times. Once during the shoot I was listening to Bonnar berate Tito while they were sitting across from one another at a table with me. I thought I left my phone on vibrate and looked down to see that the table was vibrating. Tito was staring at Bonnar and literally shaking with anger. I could hear his teeth grinding as Bonnar was talking. Bear in mind that the cameras were on Bonnar at the time, this wasn't a posturing moment: Tito was genuinely enraged. There were a few moments like that when Tito had to be calmed down in order for the filming to continue. It made for great TV, but Tito’s never been a “turn my anger off when the cameras aren’t running” type of guy.
I wonder at what point Chael would have approached Tito about this supposed work? I presume it would have been before he called out the mother of Tito’s kids for giving head for a living. This comment only happened a day before the fight. The idea that Chael would then ALLOW Tito get full-mount on him and assume that their handshake deal to finish the fight by (bad) rear naked choke would still hold up and Tito wouldn’t punch a hole through his face is patently ridiculous. The idea that he would approach him AFTER and not expect Tito to laugh in his face or blast him is equally ridiculous.
So lets go over the nuts and bolts of the fight itself. A lot has been made of the supposed tap by Tito early in the fight. I must admit I missed it when it was live, but re-watching it I understood why: Tito isn't in a submission. Chael is clearly hunting for a d’arce choke and can’t get his arm deep enough to make it work. He cranks down to try to get Tito’s head low enough to get the choke, tries the d’arce, then goes back to the crank when he can’t get it. The moment of this supposed tap is AFTER the d’arce attempt: Tito isn't in a submission at all. Its been pointed out as evidence of a fix that Chael moves as soon as Tito “taps”. The truth is that that’s a transitional position. Chael cant crank forever in that position and the d’arce didn't work. His next submission step is to either try to take Tito’s back or transition to another front choke. He chose the latter and went for a guillotine. We all saw how that worked out.
As Tommy Toe Hold hilariously pointed out: the idea that Tito and Chael's “super-secret-code” for letting go of a submission is to TAP is insane. That people who follow the sport could think that two MMA veterans couldn't think of a better way to secretly communicate than to do THE ONE THING THAT COULD STOP THE FIGHT boggles my mind. Jesus, Tito’s right arm is UNDER his own body and holding onto Chael’s arm!! He could have easily tapped Chael in secret if he wanted to, yet he chooses to subtly tap him in the open where everyone can see him?!? You seriously need a tinfoil hat to believe that one.
The final choke has been derided as well. As I pointed out during the broadcast: it was early in the fight and therefore both guys were dry with full gas tanks. I’ve trained with Tito and have had the unfortunate experience of being under that guy. I’m telling you he is STRONG, I mean REALLY strong. The choke he finished on Chael was probably 20% technique and 80% pure strength. Every BJJ guy has tapped to a choke like that from a bigger guy and felt like a complete idiot. It wasn’t under the chin, but the pressure on the jaw and neck was enough. It wasn’t pretty for sure, but therein lies the dilemma. If the fight was a prearranged work, why finish with a bad submission?
Assuming you could script it any way you wanted to: why choose a method that would raise so many questions? It wouldn't have been any extra effort for Chael to let Tito’s arm get under his neck and get a better looking choke. He could have even passed out (or pretended to) to add that extra gravitas (I went out on my shield guys) and silence any doubters. Instead he tapped to a half-crank, half-choke and has to work very hard to convince the fans that he has another great fight left in him.
I think that’s part of the major question that is impossible for the conspiracy believers to answer: why would Chael Sonnen agree to a work that he gets absolutely nothing out of? The simple truth is that not only did he not win, he lost convincingly and quickly. He didn't have a long, difficult fight that might raise his stock in the eyes of the fans: he had exactly the opposite. I find it difficult to believe he would arrange something like that just to do his boy Tito a solid and send him off with a win out of the goodness of his heart. A true work would have involved him at least looking good (if not dominant, because hey, he’s agreeing to lose right?) before succumbing to the pre-arraigned submission.
The general logic espoused by the fix believers is that (much like the Kimbo/Ken fight) the whole thing “looked suspicious”. By that rational I can think of about 5 other fights involving Chael Sonnen that looked like works and never received a single accusation. People seem to forget that Chael has a long history of dominating a fight, then losing by submission due to a mental lapse. His first fight with Anderson Silva is the most famous example, but he had a similar meltdown against Paulo Filho and slipped up against Jeremy Horn and Babalu Sobral as well. The first fight with Silva was exactly how a work SHOULD go: Chael completely dominates Silva for 4 1/2 rounds then taps out to a submission just when it seemed that victory was inevitable. Remember that Chael tapped remarkably quickly for someone who had just put in 23 brutal minutes, it even looked for a moment like it may have been a controversial stoppage. The result: Chael’s stock goes up for making an MMA god look human, Silva keeps the title and gains fans for a gritty come-from-behind performance (many of whom left after his previous two BIZARRE performances), and finally it sets up a mega-payday rematch that Cheal was more than happy to hype. In short: everyone gained something and got paid, something you can’t find in the Tito/Chael scenario.
I am in NO way saying Silva/Sonnen 1 (or the equally bizarre rematch) was a work, I’m simply pointing out that the criteria for a work seems to fluctuate wildly. Once people get the idea that there is one, it tends to take on a momentum of its own independent of the available evidence.
As @mattwfights so eloquently tweeted:
“A guy who hadn’t fought in 3 years, who gets caught easily in submissions, got caught easily in a submission. Not shocking"
I actually read a tweet after Kimbo/Ken that read (I’m paraphrasing from memory):
“For people who don't think Kimbo/Ken was fixed: remember that Ken actually submitted Bas Rutten by rear naked choke!! Let that sink in for a second!!”
I was drinking tea when I read that and laughed so hard that I almost gave myself third degree burns. Yes Twitter guy: Ken Shamrock DID submit Bas Rutten via RNC. I won’t point out that it was virtually the same crappy rear naked he almost got Kimbo in, or that Bas wasn’t exactly a submission specialist. What I WILL point out is that the aforementioned submission happened in 1994!! Thats right: the submission this guy used to justify his fix theory in 2015 was a fight that happened 21 YEARS EARLIER!! What athlete in ANY sport is expected to perform in a similar manner to the way they performed when they were 21 years younger?!?!
That might be the unspoken reason for these theories that seem to defy logic: the fighters that are involved are past their competitive primes. We remember the fighter that they USED to be and seeing the fighter they are now doesn’t quite match up with the image we have in our heads, therefore something must be fishy. Maybe Tito gets a much better choke ten years ago or maybe Chael slips out of the bad choke if he's a decade younger, and maybe a 1994 Ken Shamrock DOES finish Kimbo Slice before his arms gas out. The truth is that we will never know because they didn't fight ten years ago, they fought in the autumn of their careers where maybe the finishes aren't as clean, or as sharp, or as satisfying.
Like the great Umberto Eco once wrote:
“The Rosicrucians were everywhere, aided by the fact that they didn’t exist.”
Ideas, good and bad, will go on as long as someone believes in them. In the digital age where every idea can find a thousand megaphones, I don't expect the conspiracy theorists to stop conspiring (ironic when you think about it). All I can do is lay things out the way I see them when I’m stuck in hotel rooms rooms waiting to call a fight for your enjoyment.
As always, feedback is encouraged.
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