Am I Being Unfair to MMA?

Very perceptive. :good

And just for the record, I don't question the legitimacy of MMA. It's just that I just suspect that skill doesn't count for as much in MMA as it does in boxing because there are so many ways to lose that it's harder to cover all of your bases against an athletic opponent.

There's a fight video (I don't remember the precise circumstances, since it's been a while) where a high-ranking BJJ instructor takes on a former Mr. Utah. The weird thing is that the BJJ guy is initially MORE dominant standing than on the ground, because the bodybuilder is able to use his strength to counter any attempts at getting a superior position.

(He does ultimately get the submission).

There is no way that a guy like Kimo should have been a good match against Gracie, skill-wise. Sapp wasn't in remotely the same league as Nogueira. You could argue that Sapp had limited success in Pride, but the bottom line is that he was a top contender in PRIDE despite having almost no martial arts training. He was just a huge, roided-up football player. Please understand that I'm NOT knocking Nogueira here--Sapp was a very legitimate threat despite his lack of skill, and I'd pick him in his prime to beat some of the current UFC heavies. Heck, Fedor (easily the "baddest man on the planet") had trouble with Mark Hunt because he was fairly strong, even though Hunt had a limited grappling game (great strikes, mind).

And it goes on...

I agree--it's not as if boxing skill = MMA skill. Far from it.

But compared to MOST other sports, an athletic amateur with a limited game (college wrestling, for instance) can be more successful. As far as I know, you don't see that in boxing, tennis, baseball, basketball...not even stuff like pool or darts.

So we have a very curious paradox: MMA athletes are extraordinarily skilled, but skill isn't as important in MMA as in other sports. Mainly because fighting--and that's essentially what MMA is--is so unpredictable.

I do wonder if the next 20 years' worth of refinements will allow MMA fighters to slowly close the gaps by narrowing and refining their skillset JUST enough to make it water-tight against a limited-but-athletic guy like Brock.

 

No one has to like anything, you can like it or not. Find your own reasons for following something. It would be like trying to 'convert' a basketball fan who is bored of boxing- into an avid boxing fan- people are diverse hence the large amount of sports there are to pursue. I think your thread is pointless.

 

I guess my point boils down to this:

What's the point in going to an MMA gym and learning Muay Thai, boxing, wrestling, and BJJ for years if you could just wrestle, pump iron, and beat an MMA "specialist" (note the quotation marks) anyway?

It's odd when people training specifically for a certain sport get beaten under their own rules by someone who's not.

 

Well I do it more in the hope that somebody who isn't an idiot reads it and gets the point.

Mercer does deserve credit, no doubt, but there is a bit more to the story than "boxing beat MMA." It was scheduled as a boxing match up until the last minute, Sylvia seems to be at a poor state in his career, and it isn't like other MMA fighters haven't done the same to him. So yes, Mercer deserves huge credit, but it isn't some sort of damning tale for MMA, just a huge personal accomplishment for Mercer.

 

I have always had a similar view that "well rounded" is a quality that can be overrated, the key is being able to implement your set of skills that you have; ie if you are great on the ground you need good takedowns, if you are great standing you need great takedown defense, etc. Although it isn't like Lesnar is unskilled, he is quite fundamentally sound in his wrestling, it isn't just power. He has also been dedicated to learning MMA for several years full time with some of the best teachers around, and his background in one area of grappling has made his advancment in other areas of grappling very quick. His standup isn't great technically, but he has such huge power that it became an effective tool for him very quickly.

I think Sapp actually is a much much worse example, he actually is unskilled completely, and has some absolutely terrible loses against weaker and smaller opponents to show for it. Yes he put up a good fight for a while against Nog, but he lost. He is actually a perfect example of being huge and strong, but losing becuse he is unskilled. Johnny Morton is another great example, he was insanely athletic, yet got knocked absolutely cold by a pretty bad fighter who does stand up comedy on the side.

I don't think the comparison with an Olympic boxer is quite the same idea; amateur boxing is not the highest level of the sport; amateur wrestling is the absolute pinnacle of the sport. While Lesnar wasn't a gold medalist, he was the best Folkstyle wrestler in the US, possibly the world since nobody else really does it. The olympic boxer would really only be applicable if it was somebody from the old Soviet Union or Cuba who is prevented from being a pro. A Teofilo Stevenson is a much better example than any current olympic boxer; and how often have we heard that he would have done very well as a pro? I personally don't think he would have been a HW champ, but that is neither here nor there. Then there is the case of Matt Skelton, a decent kickboxer turns into a top 10 boxer.

I do think I understand, and actually somewhat share your belief in what you are saying. Correct me if I am wrong but you are saying that a limited set of skills can go a very long way as long as you are able to actually force those skills on your opponent. The issue though is that sometimes you won't be able to do it very easily, that is were the modern "sophistication" of MMA comes into play; sometimes you need plan B, C, and D.

Well the main problem with not training specifically for MMA (which to be fair, every MMA fighter does to at least some extent, it's not like Brock walked straight out of a wrestling room into the cage, he hired basically hired one of the most techincal big men in BJJ to live with him and train him personally, and works out with one of the better teams in MMA) is style matchups. If you come to MMA with a great background and the ability to usually implement it you are going to win a lot of fights; eventually though, you are going to run into somebody who is either better than you at your own game or has a game that counters yours very well. If Brock ever ran into a bigger and better wrestler than him, he would need all the MMA specific training he has.

The best examples of when it becomes a huge problem not to be a modern well rounded MMA fighter are sport BJJ guys with bad takedowns, strikers with bad takedown defense, and wrestlers with bad submission defense. The Leites vs Silva fight showed it perfectly; Leites has an absolutely deadly ground game, but since he lacked the MMA skills to either set up a takedown with striking or the wrestling/judo to get a takedown without a great set up, he just got toyed with and embarrassed the whole point.


In general what you are saying is very true, that your bread and butter is going to be what wins you most fights, so you better actually have a very good bread and butter. On the other hand though, there will always be matchups where you won't be able to use your bread and butter as much as you would like, and if you don't have the rest of the game, you will be exposed.

Imagine this: Manhoef comes to the UFC, KO's Anderson Silva (it could happen quite easily if Silva is content to stand with him). Now you have a champion who can't really do much of anything but strike, and he beat the best fighter available to get that belt. However, once it comes time to defend that belt, a couple of dozen guys could make Manhoef look absolutely foolish by taking him down. So if you just look at Manhoef hypothetically winning the belt you would think "well, all that other stuff is a waste of time" but in reality there are countless guys out there who would take the belt off him simply by being able to prevent him from fighting his way.

 

and again people come here to troll diehard boxing fans who hate the fact that its not the ultimate combat sport anymore will always come to troll, i sincerely hope you copy and paste that ****, most of these guys aren't dumb and know mercer was a one off and brock is a freak of an athlete with great wrestling standards, but they would rather just come here to **** you guys off you should really ignore these fools, only the few ******s on these boards actually believe that boxing is far greater becasue of mercer sylvia

 

Thats because this sport is about HOW well you peform YOUR style versus someone else. That doesnt then by default make it more superior. It just means your better at it then your opponent is at his. Fedor is great at Combat Sambo. How many guys are practising Sambo other than Russians? The Gracies introduced BJJ to the world. Now every MMA fan assumes by default you MUST be great at BJJ in order to be the best. CC Liddell Manhoef have all had great careers with a modicum of BJJ skills.

I still prefer the old days when you knew what type of MA an opponent represented. Now you have all these "freestyle" fighters and guys trying to emulate GSP. Frankly in my opinion thats nonsense.

The irony is MMA has created a NEW martial art. Guys cross train in a variety of disciplines but remain pretty average at all of them. The additional styles should COMPLIMENT your strengths. Fedor CC Nog Barnett are prime examples of this. They all know what their bread and butter is and they compliment that with other MA's. But they never deviate from what there best at.

Fans query Fedor's striking. But facts remain its PERFECT for MMA. Fedor isnt a boxer.Purists can argue the point till their blue in the face. Matter of fact he's not even a striker. He's an exceptional Judoka with VERY heavy hands. Fedor uses his striking to get his opponent to the mat where he can submit them. Its worked every time since his turned pro. Fedor is a prime of example of what a mixed martial artist truly is.

 

Wow. This is...interesting to read.

 

I agree with most of what you're saying here. There's definitely a difference between being "well-rounded" in the sense of being a jack-of-all-trades and simply being well-rounded ENOUGH to play to your strengths. To use a boxing parallel, there are very few boxer-punchers with great right hands AND left hooks AND jabs AND uppercuts AND head movement AND bodywork (etc. etc.)

But...

Most people would expect a top boxer to be able to beat a top contender from another fisticuff-based system under his own rules, simply because he's been trained for that system a lot longer. If MMA was more like boxing, Lesnar wouldn't be the best takedown specialist in the heavyweight division. The best takedown specialist would be somebody who'd had a long career in amateur MMA taking people down (an art which he would have learned in an MMA gym and tested in MMA competition), followed by 20+ professional fights where he'd done the same.

In 20 years, I don't expect everybody to be clones of GSP. There are very few legitimately great all-around fighters. But what I do expect to see is fewer and fewer top guys from other martial arts backgrounds (BJJ, judo, wrestling, Muay Thai, Shotokan karate). In 20 years, the cross-pollination of so many martial arts will have produced a consensus on the highest-percentage approaches to fighting. Fighters will have long amateur pedigrees behind them and will have been trained from day 1 in purpose-built MMA gyms in a skillset specifically designed for the type of competition they're going to participate in. It will be like the difference in style between the bareknucklers in Sullivan's day and the gloved fighters of Jack Dempsey's.

We're very early in the game right now. Some of the fighters who learned BJJ from the first Gracie JJ tapes are still around. Sure, they're nearing the end of their careers, but they're still around. They will be (and some of them already are) the first generation of teachers. The talent and teaching pools are still small, which means that there's a lot of "borrowing" going on from coaches and competitors in other combat sports.

Actually, I consider Fedor a fairly well-rounded fighter--he does have the ability to legitimately beat a wide variety of opponents on their feet (including, recently, two fighters known for their striking abilities).