It's not a matter of surprise. I would have bet that Guida would get the decision after it was over. It's a matter of the very strong feeling that the better fighter was Pettis and it wasn't too terribly close. This is the exact same feeling you get when watching John Ruiz clinch his way to a heavyweight championship. It's clear that he wasn't actually better at any aspect of boxing than his opponent except for clinching and didn't have the normal level of shame about it that would usually have prevented someone from "winning" in such a cheap and boring way.
Did Pettis have better striking than Guida? Of course, Pettis' striking is ****ing awesome. Did he have better grappling than Guida? Perhaps but Guida was pretty comfortable maintaining top position and not only avoided being submitted but successfully limited Pettis to just one actual submission attempt. Did Pettis have the better wrestling? No absolutely not. Guida got that fight down to the ground pretty much whenever he wanted. So on the three elements of the sport its a draw, and the one that Pettis gets the nod in was the least important. Now if Pettis goes away and improves his takedown defense then I'd imagine he'd beat Guida pretty comfortably. But he hadn't, so he didn't.
Quite possibly the most pretentious sentence I have ever read. Its a sport not a bretchian play; the whole point of it is that there's clear rules and that each participant is trying to win according to those rules. What your understanding of a fight is irrelevant to the discussion of who won or lost if it deviates from the Unified Rules. Here's how the Association of Boxing Commissioners defined a 10-9 round - "2. A round is to be scored as a 10-9 Round when a contestant wins by a close margin, landing the greater number of effective legal strikes, grappling and other maneuvers;" In every single round the margin between the two fighters was Guida's takedowns. Grappling was even, Pettis was doing a GREAT defensive job off his back but Guida had neutralized the offensive threat with his submission defense - fight metric have him at one actual submission attempt with no sweeps. And as for striking, while Pettis looked the better in the brief standup exchanges both Fight Metric and Compustrike have Guida landing more power strikes while Fight Metric has him landing more overall. According to the rules that both men agreed to fight by, Guida won the fight. It really is as simple as that. There was no misinterpretation at all. Now feel free to disagree with those rules, but you can't retroactively impose on a match a completely different ruleset by which it was conducted as you can't take into account how the fighters would change tactics in reaction. And to be honest I don't see how you change the rules of MMA to make Guida not win that fight without significantly altering the fundamentals of the sport.
If the fundamentals of a sport are incoherent and incapable of accounting for a persons attempt at finishing a fight, then the fundamentals are wrong. I'm not at all confused with the rules. I've been saying they are broken for years now. That someone would be willing to take a position which supports the rules that are in place means that you fully buy into the idea that that the rules are conducive to something we called a fight. Well, the rules are somewhat flawed and should be changed to account, not for contemporary ideas, but for contemporary KNOWLEDGE about ground fighting for the sake of implementing rules which encourage fighters to be victorious via submission or knockout. In order to do this, there needs to be better understanding of grappling from the perspective of bjj control.
MMA is a sport. It's obviously codifed to the point where it no longer resembles a fight. That's as welcome a development as how the codifying of the various forms of football stopped it resembling the mad, unstructured kickabouts on fields that preceded them. And in any case what Guida did would win a fight. I don't remember seeing any fights end by triangle choke but seen plenty end by one guy holding the other down until he calmed downed. The fact that the guy on the bottom continues to squirm and try to escape doesn't change that. Besides, regardless of your 'modern knowledge' I'd imagine that Guida would win even if you scored that match as a grappling contest - he got more takedowns (which do score in jiu-jitsu funnily enough), passed Pettis' guard on several occassions (which again scores in jiu-jitsu) and had clear top control for most of the fight (which again scores in jiu-jitsu). And of course the rules could do with tweaking, all sport's rules evolve over time. But I don't understand what changes to rules you could implement that makes Guida not the winner of that fight. He landed more strikes, he landed more power strikes, he completed more takedowns, he completed more grappling manouvers, he maintained dominant position for virtually the entire fight. From a scoring perspective it really wasn't that close.
That is how you choose to view the fight. You fully buy into the ideology of the scoring and I'm sorry that you are incapable of thinking outside of that ideology. According to you, a guy is in control while on top, even when he is being choked out. If you don't see the folly in that logic, I can't help you. If you can see the folly in that logic, then the next step is making sense as to why the guy on top got choked out. Could it be because he was being controlled by the guy on the bottom? Hmm. If that is true then what is the dynamic of a fight where the guy on top passes full guard as a result of a missed sub attempt, but the guy on bottom recovers and gets the guy on top back in full guard? Well holy ****, that means the guy on top can make the easiest transition from full guard to half guard over and over again and win a fight based purely on passing. But, what does it mean if the guy building up all these points all of a sudden gets caught in a leg triangle? Then doesn't that mean we have to go back and re-examine what is going on? I mean, maybe the guy on bottom is missing the triangle over and over again, but is in such control that he is able to regain full guard and attempt the triangle again and again until he lands it. :think Who is in control in this situation? I thought so.
Except that never happened. If Pettis had been going close with numerous submission attempts or sweeping from the bottom then yes I would have scored it for him. Look at Torres vs Johnson on Compustrike Torres Johnson 0/1 Takedowns/Attempts 5/5 3 Submission Attempts 0 3 Dominant Positions 4 Now compare that to Guida Pettis Guida Pettis 6/7 Takedowns/Attempts 0/0 0 Submission Attempts 1 3 Dominant Positions 2 I scored Torres-Johnson 29-28 to Torres because he was being more effective off his back than Johnson was on top. That just simply wasn't the case in this fight. All the facts back that up.
Jim Miller for the next shot and then my man Clay... some love him (me) some hate him arty He had a game plan and it worked. Pettis is a much better striker than Clay and would have kayo'd him if it stayed on the feet, it didn't... Clay won an easy 30 - 27. Lynchburg
Some people totally misunderstood Rogan when he said 'He's going for a triangle attempt'. Koa give us a break
1.05 of round 1 was a solid triangle attempt. The end of round two, there were two solid armbar attempts. One which Guida countered, and one which was pretty much sunk in. Round 3, Pettis actually landed the most effective strike of the fight in the form of a right hand. It wasn't overwhelming.. If you watch the fight, you see an underwhelming performance by Guida in that he does nothing to try to end the fight outside of round 3 where he took Pettis' back where he never even attempted an rnc.. Guida did absolutely nothing to try to end that fight outside some extremely, extremely wide, looping right hooks that missed the mark by about 3 feet in round 2. He did manage to land a decent looping right in round 2 which had no effect on Pettis. It's like I said before.. I see no reason to award either fighter a win for the fight. One guy had takedowns but was for the most part completely controlled on the ground. Pettis had Guida's left arm straightened out and in position for kimura lock from the guard nearly the entirety of the ground fighting, and he was constantly attacking from the bottom. IMO that is good enough to offset the takedowns. Striking on the behalf of Guida on the ground was negligible. He landed shoulder strikes and whiped his hair a bit. Thats all.. I still cannot emphasize how important it is for me to see fighters try to end the fight. The dynamic of this fight was one where Pettis would have been better off simply stalling for the sake of being stood back up. Punishing fighters for trying to end a fight and having such an active guard is just silly. I think you should watch the fight again. Tell me where it is exactly that Guida attempts to finish the fight. Where were Guida's submission attempts? When did he have Pettis in trouble with his gnp? How can you justify calling that a win?
