MMA Catch All Thread.

The WEC's minor league status also works in reverse. You might see some good young talent get its start there. But you also got to see the end of Jens Pulver's career. It hasn't been a pretty sight.

I used to say that WEC was the minors for UFC and, to some extent and in some weight classes, that is somewhat true. That said, I would put Faber, Torres, and Condit against UFC fighters in comparable weight classes.

I think it is fairer to say that they are a farm league for heavies, but the majors for the lighter weight classes.

Also, as inexperienced as Brian Stann was, I think he would still be able to beat the snail snot out of Kimbo and give away 30 pounds doing it.

Enix wrote:

The WEC's minor league status also works in reverse. You might see some good young talent get its start there. But you also got to see the end of Jens Pulver's career. It hasn't been a pretty sight.

Losing to B J Penn the way he did pretty much destroyed his confidence. Penn will do that to you. He's a dangerous man.

Yes, yes he is.

I got into MMA through TUF5, when Penn and Pulver were coaches. Pulver was always working his ass off, and Penn was hanging out, looking puffy.

Fight night rolls around. I figure Pulver's a lock to win.

But Penn looks buff as hell and ready to chew off his own arm if he needs to. Pulver looks like he just got off a three-day bender. And the results, well, ... that's why Pulver's probably done.

Penn is one of my favorite fighters. He has amazing skill. His dexterity is just amazing. I feel his biggest weak point is his condition though.

His fight against Hughes where he dominated the first 2 rounds and gassed in the 3rd really showed that to me.

I'd say the one fighter I'm most impressed with from a conditioning standpoint has got to be Clay Guida. He's not a particularly spectacular practicioner, but he wins purely by keeping the pace high and having better conditioning than his opponents.

He definitely needs to improve his ground and pound game and his submission/submission defense, but he can't be gassed.

Reading the comments about Lesnar made me realize why I don't like him - aside from his cocknballs tattoo - I don't think of him as a balanced fighter, I just see him as a humongous monster who has cinderblocks for fists. Kinda along the lines of a much bigger Tank Abbott from the olden days. Hopefully, either Nog or Mir will beat him.

I would add KenFlo to the list of guys who are in Guida's class of scrappy and tireless. That dude has come A LONG WAY from his TUF1 days. I'd gladly pay money to watch either of those two fight. Marcus Davis could be on that list as well.

Also, with Faber losing, hopefully that will put an end to the WEC PPV talk. I love me some WEC VS cards as they're usually FULL of entertaining fights, but no way I'm going to drop PPV money for one...the UFC PPV every 3-4 weeks has turned into an extra bill of late...and after the last 2 cards, it isn't a no questions asked purchase anymore.

-Ray!!!

Lesnar is a Greg Nelson student (Nelson is my kru's classmate) so I was told I really ought to root for him, but I just couldn't do it. He's pretty classless and I still have this misguided idea of the nobility of sport. If you can't act like a decent human being, I want to see you get your ass handed to you by someone who does.

TexasRay wrote:

Hopefully, either Nog or Mir will beat him.

From a competition standpoint, I agree. They're both much more interesting fighters.

From a business standpoint, though, Brock Lesnar is the best thing that's happened to the UFC in a while, especially since Chuck Liddell has won once and Tito Ortiz hasn't won bupkus in two years and Randy Couture joined AARP. The sport needs a big star, and Lesnar gives them a name brand that puts butts in seats and buy PPVs.

Lesnar is a lot like Tyson - big guy, scarier than hell, not a great fighter. People grumbled about plunking down PPV money for a one-round fight, but folks did it because you didn't want to miss a Mike Tyson beatdown.

I don't know what fights you folks have been watching, but the quality of fighting has never been better. Even without Liddell or Ortiz, the sport hasn't suffered one bit. Skillwise, it is hard to make the argument that any fighter of the Liddell generation, even in their prime, could take on the likes of a BJ Penn, GSP, or Anderson Silva. And though I'm sure that there are a few folks that watch the fights because they have a fanboy attachment to a particular fighter, the majority of the folks I know who watch the sport do so because they enjoy watching the fighting.

All of this may change at some point, but I hope it doesn't too soon. More than half the charm of this sport now is that it, for the time being, remains an enthusiast's sport with a pretty sophisticated watching audience. The last thing it needs is to become another NFL soap opera.

My point is agnostic about the quality of the fighting and goes to the marketing of the sport.

Like you said, PC, there have been some great fights recently. But MMA, like other sports and other businesses, needs to grow or die. Lesnar gives UFC a great growth opportunity because he's a known entity outside the sport.

Sports are marketed for better or worse on personalities. Penn, GSP and Silva are great fighters, but Dana White probably wakes up in a cold sweat when he realizes that his business plan is based largely on a Hawaiian, a French Canadian and a Brazilian, two of whom barely speak English.

Ask boxing and cycling, a pair of enthusiast sports, how that no-American-champions thing is working out for them.

My point is that the UFC is already a pretty effective marketing phenomenon without Lesnar. The sport is many times more popular than it was 2 years ago and continues to grow at a prodigeous rate. It is the quality of the fights that creates the personalities rather than the other way around. And the quality just keeps getting better.

White seems to understand this. He understands that the brand equity of the UFC relies on there being a high quality fight product. And he was right to scoff at the EliteXC for being a freakshow filled with marketing fluff, but no real fighters.

Does Lesnar help? Perhaps, but only marginally. The sport itself is bigger than Lesnar. A lot bigger.

TexasRay wrote:

Reading the comments about Lesnar made me realize why I don't like him - aside from his cocknballs tattoo - I don't think of him as a balanced fighter, I just see him as a humongous monster who has cinderblocks for fists. Kinda along the lines of a much bigger Tank Abbott from the olden days. Hopefully, either Nog or Mir will beat him.

-Ray!!!

I'm thinking Nogueira will go on to beat them both. Is Jiu-Jitsu is spectacular, as was shown in his fight with Heath Herring. The only thing that Lesnar has going for him is his size, and speed for the size that he has. His condition is rather poor, also.

TexasRay wrote:

Reading the comments about Lesnar made me realize why I don't like him - aside from his cocknballs tattoo - I don't think of him as a balanced fighter, I just see him as a humongous monster who has cinderblocks for fists. Kinda along the lines of a much bigger Tank Abbott from the olden days. Hopefully, either Nog or Mir will beat him.

Mir's beaten him once already, and Nogueira is 10x the fighter Mir is, he'll take one of Lesnar's limbs home with him. As for Lesnar's physical attributes, he isn't any bigger then Shane Carwin (who actually is one glove size above Lesnar) and Carwin is a god damned animal in the cage, if anyone has future champ written all over them it's Carwin.

Don't forget: WEC 37 is free tonight on Versus. 8-10 p.m. EST, with a rebroadcast at 11 p.m.

Your money fight is Torres-Tapia for Torres' bantamweight belt. If you've never seen Torres fight, you're in for a treat. His defense against Yoshiro Maeda back in June was epic.

Brian Bowles is fighting in one of the undercard fights. Looks like WEC is grooming him to take on Torres at some point soon.

Weigh-in info here.

Paleocon wrote:

I'd say the one fighter I'm most impressed with from a conditioning standpoint has got to be Clay Guida. He's not a particularly spectacular practicioner, but he wins purely by keeping the pace high and having better conditioning than his opponents.

He definitely needs to improve his ground and pound game and his submission/submission defense, but he can't be gassed.

I agree. He brings an intensity into the cage that few fighters match. He is always pushing forward and pushing the pace.
He truly is a wild man. The hair helps with that image.
I haven't seen anything technically that made me go wow but he sure is fun to watch.

The recently announced Nate Diaz-Clay Guida fight could be very, very interesting. Diaz is as relentless as Guida, but he's pretty polished on the ground and fights great on his back. Diaz won TUF5, and it looks like he's getting the chance to step up to a pretty big fight.

A couple of my classmates at my Thai boxing gym have been trying to talk me into entering some of the fight nights down in Virginia in February. I told them I'm 42 and have a job that cares what I look like on Monday mornings.

There are some fights that take place in NJ. If you are from Cabin John on the Bohemia river. NJ would be closer.

Chrometech wrote:

There are some fights that take place in NJ. If you are from Cabin John on the Bohemia river. NJ would be closer.

Cabin John, MD on the Potomac actually. Though I should probably change that since I've moved to Columbia. Even still, you might be right that NJ might be closer than Virginia Beach.

In any event, I have to slim down to 172 so I can sweat down to 165 before I'm ready to even think about getting in the ring. My walking around weight is 182 and folks hit way to hard at that weight.

Paleocon wrote:

A couple of my classmates at my Thai boxing gym have been trying to talk me into entering some of the fight nights down in Virginia in February. I told them I'm 42 and have a job that cares what I look like on Monday mornings.

At what age did you start training? I'm asking because I'm very interested in taking up BJJ, but being in my mid-30's - I don't want to look like Kramer taking on 8 year olds in a beginnner's class...

TexasRay wrote:
Paleocon wrote:

A couple of my classmates at my Thai boxing gym have been trying to talk me into entering some of the fight nights down in Virginia in February. I told them I'm 42 and have a job that cares what I look like on Monday mornings.

At what age did you start training? I'm asking because I'm very interested in taking up BJJ, but being in my mid-30's - I don't want to look like Kramer taking on 8 year olds in a beginnner's class...

Well, that's kind of hard to say.

I boxed for 3 years in college, have done different martial arts most of my life, and only recently got into Thai boxing (~2 years). Not all of it is applicable, but a lot of it is. I think the sum total comes out to about 24 years of training total, but it's been all over the map.

IMAGE(http://i35.tinypic.com/2uh9zco.jpg)

Sheeeeeoooooohhhaaaahhhhh

Sinatar wrote:

IMAGE(http://i35.tinypic.com/2uh9zco.jpg)

Sheeeeeoooooohhhaaaahhhhh

photoshopped?

Last night's UFC featured a pretty nasty looking armbar...

The card as a whole was great - much better than the last several PPV's...some great subs and KO's.

I just read about that break online - holy cow...

Still - it looks photoshopped...

I've seen that break happen before. So I don't think its photoshopped. Its still in the back of my mind everytime I go for a leg kick.
Makes me really not want to get blocked.
Shin on shin really hurts.

What fight did that break happen in?

Secret Asian Man wrote:

What fight did that break happen in?

Corey Hill vs Dale Hartt from last night's UFC Fight for the Troops...the fight was untelevised, so you'd prob have to hit up the UFC site to see it.

If you get spike, the televised card was great - well worth checking out.

TexasRay wrote:

I just read about that break online - holy cow...

Still - it looks photoshopped...

Not altered at all.

IMAGE(http://i37.tinypic.com/34g38z6.jpg)

It's actually not that uncommon an injury. That's what happens when someone times a shield just right on a hard leg kick. The idea is to really drill the person's shin with that huge boney knob just south of your knee. Since your bone thickness there is about 8 times the thickness of his shin, you're probably coming out on top.

In the animation, the shield was there, but it could have been executed even more brutally if he had actualy pointed the knee toward the direction of the kick. As it is, he got a little lucky. Pointing the knee into the kick eliminates any luck factor.

This is precisely why it is important to set up shots. There is a counter to pretty much everything. Some of the counters are pretty brutally effective.

If, for instance, the kicker had set up the shot by overloading high (eg: jab, cross to the head) and then snapping the hop kick, chances are really good that the opponent would have either brought his hands up to block or taken a step back and loaded up on the leg too much to bring up the shield. That's a pretty high percentage combination that is hard to time a response to.

Great info - Paleo...very interesting.

I've seen stuff like that in the past - mainly in some old kickboxing fights that you could catch on PPV back in the 90's...I just haven't seen it in a MMA event that I can recall watching...

I wonder what the response would've been had that been a televised fight? They didn't seem to have an issue with showing the armbar/hyperextension in slo-mo, but I'd think that this would've been something akin to Joe Theisman's leg break where they showed it one time and it was pretty much never seen on broadcast tv again (I can still remember watching that).