Sadly for Edwards the reality is that while he can certainly improve his wrestling he's always going to be at a disadvanatge vs someone like Fitch under the current setup. Lil Nog's recent fights are the classic example of that, you can see that compaired to his Pride days when he was happy to fight off of his back he's put alot of effort into avoiding takedowns and escaping the ground. Even though he's had a fair bit of sucess the upshot is that he's had to become a more defencive fighter, fewer big shots standing and far fewer sub atempts on the ground. The reality is that the strenghts fighters have pre MMA almost always remain their strenghts thoughout their career. Werdum is never going to be a great kickboxer, Edwards is never going to be a great wrestler etc. You favour one area of fighting over the others and it feeds though and changes the entire sport, the wrestler has an advanatage not just in top control but standing because his opponant is has to worry about being taken down even if he's more capable of finishing on the ground. Personally I think that along with the judging part of the answer is longer fights, keep the 15 min contests for lower guys on the undercard but when it comes to big fights on the main card go up to 25 mins. We often hear top control being scored so highly justifed by claiming it wears down an opponant, well lets see it because alot of the time I think the reverse is true and its the wrestler wearing himself out trying to steal a decision.
