Author: Ben Fowlkes

Twitter Mailbag: Jon Jones’ Next Challenge, Hall of Fame Issues, and More

Filed under: UFCIt’s time again to sort through the old Twitter mailbag, pausing every so often to separate out hate mail and letters to Santa, then dig right in to all those thoughtful questions of yours.

In this edition, we examine rankings, Hall of…

Filed under:

It’s time again to sort through the old Twitter mailbag, pausing every so often to separate out hate mail and letters to Santa, then dig right in to all those thoughtful questions of yours.

In this edition, we examine rankings, Hall of Fame status, and what the weight classes of the future could look like. And don’t worry, we also find time to talk TRT and suggestions for getting your significant other to watch MMA with you. If you want to ask your own question or just look at cell phone pictures of my dog, find me on Twitter @BenFowlkesMMA.

@mma_fan1 twitter mailbag: who do you think poses more of a threat to Jones, Machida or Evans?

They’re two very different threats, obviously, but I think Evans has the potential to be more problematic. Machida’s style, while it can be confusing and frustrating for a lot of fighters, doesn’t seem like it will be quite as effective against a guy with Jones’ reach and quickness. Evans’ wrestling ability gives him a better chance to nullify Jones’ length, plus he’s sparred with the guy and knows at least a little something about what it’s like to mix it up with him. Then again, Evans has been known to get a little too emotionally jacked up in fights, and it’s hard to imagine any fight being more emotional for either of them than a final Jones-Evans showdown.

Mostly though, I think that fight has to happen so we can stop talking about it (and so the UFC can stop shoving Evans in the cage after every fight Jones wins). The Machida bout feels more like a placeholder than a legitimate title fight to me, but that also has something to do with the fact that Machida is 1-2 in his last three fights. Call me crazy, but don’t most guys have to do a little better than that to get a title shot? I guess not if they have the sense to wait around and let the other fighters hurt themselves. Another brilliant tactical move by that elusive Machida.

@TheMayoGuard how far away is nate diaz from a lightweight shot considering all the guys that are top 5 he beat or wrecked

I realize rankings are a funny thing, and your top five might not be the same as mine, but I really can’t name too many top lightweights who have been beaten and/or wrecked by Diaz. He submitted Guillard a couple years ago, sure. And yes, Takanori Gomi did seem thoroughly wrecked after his loss to Diaz at UFC 135. Then again, Guillard wasn’t top five when Diaz beat him and neither was Gomi. Other top lightweights like Gray Maynard and Clay Guida both own narrow decision victories over Diaz, so I’m not sure where that puts him. If the 155-pound division wasn’t so stacked, two or three wins would probably be enough to earn him a shot. But with the way it’s looking now, he’s going to have to stack up the victories and wait his turn.

@keenanpress Time yet for a cruiserweight division in the UFC, especially if you tack on the strikeforce heavyweights?

You know what the best argument against adding a cruiserweight division is? Well, probably the proliferation of the lighter weight classes, which already strain the average fan’s ability to keep them all straight. But you know what the second best argument against the cruiserweight division is? Cain Velasquez.

The current UFC heavyweight champ falls in the 240-pound range, and he doesn’t seem to have too much trouble against the big boys. If you established a cruiserweight class at 230 or 235 pounds, Velasquez could easily cut down and fight there too, and what would be the point of that?

As for the Strikeforce heavies, I say bring them on. The UFC could certainly use guys like Daniel Cormier and Josh Barnett right about now, and it wouldn’t need to create a new weight class just to make room for them.

@dannyrube If GSP beats Condit & Nick Diaz beats Penn, does Dana White take the risk of making GSP/Diaz again? If so, does it headline?

This is exactly the thought process White should have gone through back when he decided on how he was going to shuffle things around in the first place. And who knows? Maybe he did. Maybe he realized right away that he was putting himself in a position to quite possibly end up with the exact same fight he’d started with, but he figured that by then maybe Diaz would have learned his lesson about the importance of press conferences.

But yes, if GSP and Diaz both win, then the UFC pretty much has to match them up again. It’s still the fight that fans want to see at welterweight, and it will only gain momentum if they both win and look good at UFC 137. That’s the good news. The bad news is, what happens if GSP and Penn both win? Then White will really wish he’d thought it through a little more carefully.

@MaxWdeVries if Chael does beat Silva, what is left for him to say?

Probably something along the lines of how he’s the best there is, best there was, and best there ever will be. And this time people might actually believe it.

@jclamarca Since the series is 1-1-1, is it a bit premature to say Maynard/Edgar is over? What about a 4th fight ‘rubber’ match?

Have you lost your mind? They finally settled that issue, allowing the UFC’s most talent-rich division to move on for the first time in nearly a year, and you want to see it again?! Why…that’s just…gah! Where are my pills?

@BigNate870 what will become of MMA if TRT (ed. note: Testosterone Replacement Therapy) isn’t prohibited?

Not much. Just testosterone being wildly and flagrantly abused as a performance-enhancing substance among fighters. Oh, I’m sorry. You wanted to know what will happen, not what is already happening due to hazy athletic commission standards and a hands-off approach by the UFC.

As it stands right now, there are an awful lot of 20 and early 30-something professional fighters out there who bizarrely have low testosterone levels. So they go get a doctor’s note, take it to the relevant athletic commission (many of whom hide behind medical privacy laws when asked about it), and then they’ve got the green light to artificially increase their levels of a powerful hormone. Sure, they have to stay within a certain range (or at least test within it), but that’s not so difficult if you know what you’re doing. And maybe it means they fight with something close to normal levels in their system, but it also means they got a little artificial help throughout their training camp. Is that fair?

Personally, I think you ought to fight with the hormone levels you have and not the hormone levels you want. I don’t care if your levels are low because you abused steroids or if it’s just a consequence of aging. If we don’t allow steroids, even for fighters who are getting older and weaker, why do we allow testosterone for anyone who can produce a doctor’s note? Maybe because no one — not athletic commissions and not the UFC — wants to be the first to put their foot down.

@AiricReed Is there anybody tougher to get more then one word answers from then Grey Maynard in MMA?

Yes.

@KevinMarshall How does the sharp increase in UFC events impact journalists (esp freelancers)? More events means more coverage. Are media outlets prepared to invest more time, space and money into it?

It’s a double-edged sword. As long as there are events almost every weekend, there’s no shortage of things to write about. When there’s a lull, well, then you have to do stuff like mailbag columns just to create content.

I’m more curious how it impacts the ability of fans to follow the sport. I get paid to either attend these events live or else stay home on a Saturday night and work from my couch. Either way, I’ve got nothing to complain about. But the average fan might not want to invest all that money and prime social time (more on that here). If the UFC isn’t happy with trends in pay-per-view sales, it might want to look at its own frantic calendar. Every market has a saturation point, and the UFC may have found it.

@jmhawkins You wrote last week that you watched UFC 125 with your wife. How’d you do it? I can’t even get my wife to watch Sexyama fight.

Maybe the problem is your approach. Instead of trying to convince her to watch some people she doesn’t care about bash one another’s faces in, try instead to get her to watch something like The Smashing Machine — the 2002 documentary about Mark Kerr. It’s a well made film, but more importantly it’s a film about the personal side of this sport, which can be hard to appreciate for some people if all they see at first is blood and mohawks. Kerr’s story of struggling with addiction in an unforgiving world worked to get my wife interested in the sport. Then again, she’s been known to watch almost any documentary, so maybe that helped.

@JulianPaz7 Do u think everybody is sleeping on Jorge Masvidal, I mean this should be a great fight between him n gil.

People are absolutely sleeping on Masvidal, just like they slept on him against K.J. Noons. When he brings his best stuff, he’s a nightmare for just about anybody. And you’re right, it will be a tough fight. But, even fully awake and with my eyes wide open to Masvidal’s ability, I still give the slight edge to Gilbert Melendez. He just can’t approach it like it’s his last day of work before getting promoted to the UFC.

@SlyBoston Ben Saunder’s guard looked unstoppable Sat. Do you see a time where a deadly guard like that will nullify the elite wrestler?

First of all, it’s a pet peeve of mine when people refer to various aspects of a fighter’s game as ‘deadly.’ Maybe it’s because, due to the nature of fighting, it actually could be deadly. I realize that’s not the way it’s intended, which somehow seems worse to me. It’s not quite figurative, and yet not meant literally. And yeah, I realize I’m overthinking this. But if you’re ever watching fights with me and you notice me cringing when Mike Goldberg refers to someone as a “lethal striker,” at least you’ll know why.

But back to your question. The use of the guard in MMA has changed tremendously over the last fifteen years or so, and I don’t see why that won’t continue, albeit at a slower pace. For a while it was a great offensive weapon, then the magic began to wear off as submission defense improved across the board.

No matter how good your guard is though, it’s dangerous to rely on it too much. Judges still see the fighter on top as the fighter who’s winning, even if you’re trying every submission and sweep you can think of from your back. All an elite wrestler has to do is score one takedown after another, stay out of trouble as time ticks down, and let his opponent on bottom take all the risks. It’s a good way to win decisions, even if it’s fatal for his popularity. Ah, see? Now you’ve got me doing it.

@TheHarrison101 The Flyweights are rumored to be on the way. With the 135/145 divisions still developing, could they be lost in the shuffle?

Not if the UFC debuts the 125-pound division with a Grand Prix tournament to determine its first champion. Who wouldn’t love to see that? It’d be like that tournament at the end of The Karate Kid, only the fighters are half the size and sporting slightly fewer ’80s haircuts.

@michaelbond89 will Kenny Florian be in the UFC hall of fame one day for his long lasting impact to help the sport grow??

Maybe the better question is, how much does it matter whether the UFC puts him in its Hall of Fame? As of right now, those decisions are made by the UFC and the UFC alone. Florian’s been a real company man over the years, so maybe he gets in based more on that than on his fighting ability. Or maybe he does something to upset the UFC brass and he never even gets close, whether he deserves such an honor or not.

See what I’m getting at? MMA needs its own independent Hall of Fame, where induction is a more transparent process. The UFC can still have its own version and it can still put whoever it wants in there, but the sport as a whole needs to have a way of honoring the greats that isn’t dependent on company politics. As long as being disliked by Dana White is enough to keep a fighter out, no matter what the fans and his peers think of him, it will never be a true Hall of Fame that’s really worth caring about.

 

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My First Fight: Rich Franklin

Filed under: UFCBy the time most fight fans so much as heard his name, Rich Franklin was already somebody. He had a successful UFC debut with a first-round TKO of Evan Tanner, then went on to shine at the very first Ultimate Fighter Finale, where he kn…

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Rich FranklinBy the time most fight fans so much as heard his name, Rich Franklin was already somebody. He had a successful UFC debut with a first-round TKO of Evan Tanner, then went on to shine at the very first Ultimate Fighter Finale, where he knocked out Ken Shamrock on Spike TV before claiming the UFC middleweight title in his next fight.

But if you hopped in a time machine and told the Rich Franklin of 1993 — then a senior at William Henry Harrison High School in Ohio — that this UFC stuff he was watching with his friends would eventually become his career, he probably would have laughed in your time-traveling face.

“I had no aspirations of becoming a pro fighter or anything like that,” Franklin says now. “But I saw the first UFC and I was immediately hooked.”

Sure, he did a little karate. He was even his sensei’s star pupil, and he felt pretty good about it. But in Franklin’s mind, that was as far as it went. He liked sports, and he also felt like he should know how to defend himself. That’s why, when he saw the UFC for the first time in November of 1993, it was an eye-opener.

I was like really? They were going to put me against this big guy? He was at least 50 pounds heavier than me.
— Rich Franklin“I remember thinking, if I ever get into a fight on the street I’d better know how to fight on the ground, because clearly some people know a lot more about it than others. So I started doing jiu-jitsu.”

Fortunately, there was a Gracie Jiu-Jitsu chapter in Cincinnati. As a college student studying to be a high school math teacher, Franklin began learning the finer points of the ground game. One thing led to another, and soon he added some kickboxing into his regimen. It was fun, and that was enough. At least for a little while. Then his friend, Josh Rafferty (later a contestant on the first season of The Ultimate Fighter, put a simple question to Franklin.

“He said to me, ‘Look man, all you do is train, go to school, come home, and train some more. You train all day, so why don’t you try one of these fights and see if the training you’re doing is actually paying off?’ That’s why I took my first fight.”

But this was still Ohio in 1998, so it’s not as if there were major MMA events taking place every weekend. What few there were in the region weren’t exactly advertised on TV, either. Franklin and his friends had to ask around, but eventually they heard a rumor that there were regular fights at a gym in Muncie, Indiana. Franklin and Rafferty made the drive and sat through the entire event, which ended with a 6’2″, 260-pound self-described “Meat Truck” by the name of Kerry Schall putting a beating on some football player.

“I looked at Josh at the end of the night and said, ‘You know what? I think I could do this. Let’s give it a shot.’ We saw a flyer as we were leaving for another show about three months later and we decided, okay, this is the one we’ll train for.”

The good news was that training for an unregulated amateur fight in a gym in Indiana in 1998 was that you did not need to worry about cutting weight. You also didn’t need to worry about seeing a doctor or passing medicals. You simply called up the promoter and told him you wanted a fight, and then you called him up two weeks before the fight to reassure him that you weren’t going to back out. Then you showed up on fight night and waited your turn.

The bad news, Franklin soon realized, is that you had no idea who you’d be fighting. This hit home as he was sitting in the audience watching the night’s first few fights and talking with Schall, who he recognized from the previous event he’d attended.

“We introduced ourselves and Kerry said, ‘Oh, you’re the guy I was supposed to fight tonight, but I had to pull out because I’m sick,'” Franklin recalls. “I was like, really? They were going to put me against this big guy? He was at least 50 pounds heavier than me.”

But before he had too much of a chance to dwell on the implications of this revelation, the announcer called his name and summoned him to the cage. As Schall would delight in telling people years later, after he and Franklin had become good friends, when Franklin heard his own name he simply stood up, pulled off his tearaway warm-up pants like a male stripper, and strolled into the cage, ready to fight.

So I just let it go, and the crowd — all 200 of them or whatever it was — went from screaming and yelling to completely speechless.
— Rich FranklinThe other guy, as Franklin remembers it, was not quite as excited about the whole deal.

“He looked uneasy. As soon as we stepped in the cage, he looked like he didn’t really want to be there. I looked at his demeanor and his posture and I was like, I got this one in the bag. He was in something that he did not want to be in.”

As soon as the action started, Franklin realized why. His opponent that night — Franklin swears he was known only by the name ‘Seymour’ (“I guess he was like Madonna or something. He just had the one name. He was Seymour.”) — didn’t seem like he was quite ready for an amateur fight against a man who had five years of experience in both grappling and striking at a time when most fighters still specialized in one at the expense of the other.

But even though he quickly saw that his skills were ahead of Seymour’s, Franklin wasn’t totally sure what to do about it.

“This is how dumb I was: we come out and we’re mixing it up, and I end up taking him down. I’m kind of cross-mounted on him and I have a submission, but I let it go and go to another submission, and I have a shoulder lock almost completely locked out, but then I thought, you know, I trained all these months, all these years, for a 30-second fight? I’m going to let him up. So I just let it go, and the crowd — all 200 of them or whatever it was — went from screaming and yelling to completely speechless.”

Franklin released the submission and stood up. He indicated to Seymour that he, too, should get up. This seemed to confuse everyone — especially Seymour — and even Franklin soon had second thoughts.

“He got up and we mixed it up on our feet some more, but it was clear to me that I was just a step above this level of competition. At that point, I started to feel a little bad. Like, why didn’t I just finish him when I knew I had him beat? This is kind of a jerk thing to do.”

So Franklin handed out a tough dose of mercy in the form of a knee to the gut. Seymour collapsed on the mat. The ref stepped in and waved it off. A little over two minutes after it had started, his first MMA fight was over. After the way it had gone, he wasn’t quite sure what to think about it.

“I thought it would just be that one fight. Then a couple months later somebody asked me about doing another one and I thought, why not?”

Part of his enthusiasm was just a consequence of being an ignorant youth, he says. “Early in my fight career, I really thought I was the baddest man on the planet. I was young and stupid.”

I was like, whoa, you can actually make money fighting? That’s where it first clicked.
— Rich FranklinBut it was also the fact that, for one reason or another, the high school math teacher didn’t fully appreciate the risks he was taking.

“It wasn’t until my third amateur fight, where I kicked this guy in the jaw and broke his jaw in like three places — hurt him pretty bad, actually — that I finally took a step back and realized, hey, that could have been me. These are the consequences of fighting, and you never know who you’re getting in the cage with. From that point on, you start thinking about it a little more. The reality of things starts weighing on you a little more.”

Shortly thereafter the local promoter pulled Franklin aside and politely suggested he find a bigger organization to compete in, one with fighters who might give him more resistance. That’s when a different promoter offered him a couple hundred dollars to fight in his event, and a light bulb went off in Franklin’s head.

“I was like, whoa, you can actually make money fighting? That’s where it first clicked.”

Gradually the purses and the events got bigger, and in his fourth year of teaching Franklin decided to give up his full-time job at an Ohio high school in order to pursue fighting as a career.

“Before that I’d make a thousand bucks here or there and have a little extra money to buy Christmas gifts or something. But to do this and really make money at it? That was a pretty wild idea. The sport was only just then evolving to the point where people were starting to make real money at it,” he says now. “That fourth year I took like three fights and I won and ended up quitting my job. Seems like it all panned out pretty well.”

Check out past installments of My First Fight, including Matt Lindland, Jorge Rivera, and more. Rich Franklin is scheduled to appear on this Monday’s MMA Hour which starts at 1 p.m. ET.

 

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‘King’ Mo Lawal Talks ‘Rampage’ Jackson: We’re Going to Fight Eventually

Filed under: UFCNow that “King” Mo Lawal is just a few months away from the end of his Strikeforce contract, he’s begun to eye a future in the UFC and a potential opponent to start things off against.

Not surprisingly, that opponent is Quinton “Rampa…

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Mo LawalNow that “King” Mo Lawal is just a few months away from the end of his Strikeforce contract, he’s begun to eye a future in the UFC and a potential opponent to start things off against.

Not surprisingly, that opponent is Quinton “Rampage” Jackson, who enjoys poking fun at the man he calls “King Ho” in interviews, recently telling our own Ariel Helwani, “I’ll fight that chump.”

Lawal had it out with Jackson in a heated conversation captured on video two years ago, and the two have chipped away at each other several times since in interviews and over Twitter. Now Lawal says he’d like to meet Jackson at the UFC’s event in Japan this February, when his Strikeforce contract is conveniently set to expire, but Jackson seems less thrilled about the prospect, according to Lawal.

“This fool Rampage calls me out, and then people get mad when I respond? He’s a b—h in my eyes, because he didn’t respond. Maybe he’ll respond later, but the word is he wants to fight [Mauricio] ‘Shogun’ [Rua]. That’s whatever. But he called me out, so I’m going to respond,” Lawal told MMA Fighting.

As Lawal pointed out, Rua already has a fight scheduled with Dan Henderson for November. If Jackson really wants to fight in front of the Japanese fans when the UFC heads to Tokyo, he could do a lot worse than to take on Lawal, who also has a strong following across the Pacific.

But, Lawal insisted, he wouldn’t even be setting his sights on Jackson if the former UFC champ hadn’t taken a shot at him in a recent interview.

“When’s the last time you heard me mention Rampage’s name before he mentioned mine?” said Lawal. “I don’t care about him. He wasn’t even on my radar. But now, he wants to say something about me, he’s on my radar now. We’re going to bang eventually.”

As for whether it will happen in Japan, and whether Lawal’s next fight will really be in the UFC rather than Strikeforce, he admitted he had “no idea.”

“Who knows? We’ll see. My contract is up in February. …I’d like to fight, but I have no idea.”

 

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What Does It Really Cost to Be a UFC Fan?

Filed under: UFCIf you’ve been feeling like the UFC is occupying a lot of your free time lately, it isn’t your imagination. The world’s foremost MMA organization is coming off a stretch of four straight events — two of them pay-per-views, and all of t…

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Brock LesnarIf you’ve been feeling like the UFC is occupying a lot of your free time lately, it isn’t your imagination. The world’s foremost MMA organization is coming off a stretch of four straight events — two of them pay-per-views, and all of them on Saturday nights — before going into the briefest little two-week hibernation leading up to UFC 137 at the end of the month.

After that, it’s UFC 138 from England on November 5, then the UFC’s FOX debut the weekend after that, and then UFC 139 in San Jose the weekend after that. Once we hit 2012, the UFC calendar only gets busier.

It makes you wonder, between the UFC’s pay-per-view offerings, cable TV events, and regular reality show installments, what’s the true cost in both money and time for hardcore fans who simply have to see it all?

For starters, take a glance at the pay-per-views. If everything proceeds according to schedule, the UFC will have put on 16 of them in 2011. They run you about $55 a pop in HD ($45 in what I like to call “regular D”), so let’s split the difference and call it $50 per event.

If you had stayed home all by your lonesome and paid for every single event without any friends or even sympathetic, MMA-loving acquaintances to pitch in, you’d have spent $800 just on UFC events in 2011. Of course, that doesn’t count the cost of monthly cable (which you need in order to watch those Spike TV or Versus events, not to mention the prelims before each pay-per-view) or monthly internet access (which you need in order to watch the Facebook prelims and, you know, read this article).

But let’s be realistic. Very few people are laying down the dough for each and every pay-per-view all by themselves. For the sake of argument, let’s say you had three friends who were just as fanatical about seeing every single pay-per-view. Let’s say the four of you split each one equally. Then you’re looking at $12.50 a pay-per-view, and $200 on the year (not counting snacks, drinks, and carpet cleaner for when your friends inevitably get drunk and spill some snacks on your floor).

That’s no small chunk of change, but most of us probably spend at least that much per year on coffee or junk food, so it’s not unreasonable, either. To put it in perspective, compare the cost to other entertainment expenditures.

UFC president Dana White likes to tout his pay-per-views as being a relatively cheap form of entertainment, assuming you can get a significant number of people to chip in. The average price of a movie ticket in the U.S. now hovers around eight dollars, which means you could see about 25 movies per year for the same price as splitting 16 UFC pay-per-views among you and your three friends.

Or, at $18 per month, you could pay for almost an entire year’s worth of Netflix (assuming you want DVDs in the mail and instant streaming — and be honest, you do), which would allow you to stay home and watch a theoretically unlimited number of movies (even if you have to wait an extra few months to see Real Steel).

If you’re the type who feels like Hollywood never measures up to real-life sporting events, however, you could buy tickets to about eight major league baseball games or about four NFL games, depending on the team, the seat, and how you go about acquiring them. Of course, that doesn’t factor in parking, refreshments, or stadium pickpockets, though it does get you out of the house in a way that UFC pay-per-views don’t.

But it’s not just money that fight fans invest in order to keep up with the UFC — it’s also a great deal of time. Those 16 pay-per-views in 2011? Those clock in at around three hours each, which adds up to 48 hours — two whole days — spent watching grown men beat each other up.

Add up this year’s Fight Nights, UFC Live events, TUF Finales, and UFC 138 on tape delay from England, and there’s another 10 events at two hours each, including commercials. Then there’s the one-hour UFC on FOX, for a total of 21 hours spent watching the UFC’s free events. Add in another 22 hours spent watching two full seasons of The Ultimate Fighter, plus the one hour prelims before each pay-per-view event, and what you’re looking at is 107 hours spent watching the UFC alone in 2011, and that doesn’t even include little extras like Facebook prelims or Countdown shows.

If you’re curious, that’s almost four and a half full days in front of the TV. But as general sports fandom goes, that’s not even necessarily so extreme.

For instance, over the course of the NFL’s 17-week regular season, you could easily watch three full football games every Sunday, plus another one every Monday night. At around three hours per game, that’s 204 hours a year. Factor in three weeks of playoffs, plus the Super Bowl, and you’re up to about 237 hours, or nearly 10 full days.

One major difference is that the 10 days of NFL viewing is packed into about five months, whereas the UFC’s 4 1/2 days is spread out across the entire year. But then, NFL games take place mostly on Sundays, when people are more likely to be home anyway, whereas UFC events are almost exclusively on Saturday nights, when people are more likely to go out in search of some form of social life. The NFL is also almost entirely free to watch, if you don’t count the toll that sitting through all those commercials takes on your mind and spirit.

So what does it all mean? That depends on your perspective. If you’re a lonely but dedicated fight fan doing it all by yourself, it means you could be taking a date to the movies almost once a week for what you’re spending to watch the UFC alone at home on Saturday nights, and in the end you’d still have about seven extra hours to spend perusing online dating sites or improving your personal hygiene (perhaps some combination of the two would be best).

If your UFC fandom goes hand-in-hand with your social group, you might only spend as much on pay-per-views as you do on pizza every year, and at least it’s in the company of friends who will tell you if you have sauce on your face.

Whatever you’re spending, and however long it’s taking you, get ready to put in more time and money next year. The UFC isn’t slowing down. Not as long as its fans are still willing to do what it takes to keep up.

 

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Firas Zahabi Breaks Down Kenny Florian’s Loss: ‘We Weren’t Able to Adjust’

Filed under: UFCTrainer Firas Zahabi was encouraged by what he saw out of Kenny Florian early on in his UFC featherweight title fight against Jose Aldo on Saturday night. But ultimately, Zahabi told Ariel Helwani on Monday’s MMA Hour, their team just c…

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Trainer Firas Zahabi was encouraged by what he saw out of Kenny Florian early on in his UFC featherweight title fight against Jose Aldo on Saturday night. But ultimately, Zahabi told Ariel Helwani on Monday’s MMA Hour, their team just couldn’t keep up with Aldo down the stretch.

“Aldo did a beautiful job of adjusting in the second, and I feel that our side had to adjust as well to keep the match going in our favor, but we weren’t able to adjust,” said Zahabi, who works with Florian at the Tristar gym in Montreal. “Aldo’s a brilliant fighter and he had a brilliant counter to our attacks and he just did a great job.”

The unanimous decision loss to Aldo was the third failed bid for a UFC title in Florian’s nearly nine-year MMA career, and now the 35-year-old fighter faces some difficult questions about his future. As for how he’ll decide to answer those questions, Zahabi said he doubts even Florian knows just yet.

“I feel we did everything we could to prepare him for Aldo and Kenny’s going to have to let his mind take some time off, clear his mind, then make that decision for himself afterwards,” Zahabi said, adding, “I don’t think he’s decided yet.”

As for Zahabi, he must quickly turn his focus to his most celebrated fighter, long-time friend Georges St-Pierre, who puts his UFC welterweight title on the line against Carlos Condit at UFC 137 on October 29.

St-Pierre, who Zahabi still considers to be the world’s best pound-for-pound fighter (“Of course I’m biased, like all coaches,” he admitted), was originally slated to take on former Strikeforce welterweight champion Nick Diaz before Diaz angered the UFC by no-showing a couple press conferences, which led to Condit replacing him in the main event.

The GSP-Diaz bout’s champion-versus-champion angle might have been more interesting “from a marketing perspective,” Zahabi said, “but in terms of skill, I think it’s even harder with Carlos.”

“He has good knees and good kicks. He’s more of a diverse fighter standing up. And if you look at his record, he’s very good at finishing. He’s just got a few more threats. Diaz has a different style of boxing, which made him more of a threat with the hands, but I find that in terms of Muay Thai, we have to adjust for more of a Muay Thai fighter and less of a boxer.”

Of course for St-Pierre, who has defended his title with four straight decision victories, the most common criticism concerns his perceived inability or unwillingness to look for the finish. Many fans and pundits accuse him of playing it too safe, but Zahabi said he encourages his fighter to put those matters out of his mind altogether.

“I think he has to focus on the process, not worry about the outcome, and let that part take care of itself. If he starts trying to finish him I think he’ll have a harder time finishing him. He’s just got to let it happen. I think that’s the secret to finishing.

“When you’re looking to knock the guy out, you telegraph more. You come out of your game plan. You start taking more risks and you start skipping steps. If you want to finish a guy, in my opinion, you have to go through all the steps, just keep adding more pressure, adding more attacks, tying your moves together until you get that finish. You don’t have to jump to the end. You have to take every step along the way to get to that end.”

Whether GSP can get to that end against Condit, who hasn’t been finished since 2006, remains to be seen. If the bout ends with another decision win for the current champ, however, don’t be surprised if many fans focus exclusively on the result, no matter what the process might have entailed.

 

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Falling Action: Best and Worst of UFC 136

Filed under: UFCUFC 136 brought us two title fights, at least one colossal upset, and a post-fight interview that would have made Ric Flair stand up and say ‘Woooooo!’

Now that it’s all over, time to sort through the wreckage in search of the biggest …

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Frankie EdgarUFC 136 brought us two title fights, at least one colossal upset, and a post-fight interview that would have made Ric Flair stand up and say ‘Woooooo!’

Now that it’s all over, time to sort through the wreckage in search of the biggest winners, losers, and everything in between.

Biggest Winner: Frankie Edgar
Dana White compared his fourth-round knockout victory to a Rocky movie, but that’s not terribly accurate, since you can actually understand Edgar when he speaks. Also unlike Rocky, Edgar’s series of battles with his nemesis only got more and more exciting with each installment, and without any help from Mr. T.

Thanks be to Crom that this trilogy is finally over, though. Edgar’s win put the final stamp on it, and hopefully also convinced the last few holdouts that he is indeed the one true lightweight champ, so they can stop waiting for the messiah that they seem to think is still out there somewhere. Between his defensive wrestling skills, his mongoose-like quickness on the feet, and now his thoroughly proven ability to get knocked around like a ping-pong ball early and still come back with a ferocity, he’s not only a tough opponent but also a rarity among UFC champions. Jon Jones, Georges St. Pierre, Anderson Silva — they’re all dominant almost to the point of being predictable. That’s one problem Edgar hasn’t had lately, and it’s refreshing for the fans even if it’s not the best thing for his face. Most importantly, with the Gray Maynard chapter in his life now closed, both Edgar and the UFC lightweight division can officially move on. It’s about time. Even Rocky needed fresh faces to fill the same old storylines.

Biggest Loser: Melvin Guillard
I’ll admit that I didn’t see how he might possibly lose to Joe Lauzon. From the look of it, neither did Melvin. He seemed to think this was little more than a showcase fight for him, which would explain why he attacked with reckless self-confidence right off the bat. After he jumped straight into a left hand from Lauzon all the air went out of his balloon in a hurry. It was as if you could actually see him suddenly coming around to the shocking realization that this fight wasn’t won the minute he signed the bout agreement. Arguably no one at UFC 136 had as little to gain or as much to lose as Guillard did with this fight, but I still say that it was the right move to take it. If you can’t beat Lauzon, you probably don’t deserve to be UFC champion, and this fight showed exactly why. Despite all his physical tools — and he has a bunch — Guillard still doesn’t have the mind of a champion. Not yet, anyway. If he can learn the appropriate lessons from this experience, there’s still hope. But if he doesn’t get the message this time, I fear he never will.

Best Pro Wrestling Promo: Chael Sonnen
Telling Anderson Silva that he “absolutely suck[s]”? That’s just Sonnen doing what’s expected of him at this point. Challenging him to the MMA equivalent of a loser-leaves-town match? That’s him cranking up the volume to 11. You know how you can really tell that Sonnen isn’t just borrowing a page or two out the pro wrestling playbook, but rather photocopying the whole thing and sleeping with it under his pillow? Go watch his post-fight interview with our own Ariel Helwani, where Sonnen not only claims to have the largest arm in West Linn, Ore. (a town known for the enormous arms of its citizenry, no doubt), but also finds reasons to say the name of the city he is currently in over and over again. For example, when talking about his challenge to Silva, Sonnen said, “If you accept, I will wait until Super Bowl weekend. But if you reject I will walk over there and whip your ass right here and right now in Houston, Texas.” See what I mean? All he’s missing there is a crowd to go crazy at the mere mention of their city. You have to think he’ll get that rematch with Silva, whether it’s on Super Bowl weekend or not, and then he’ll have to deal with the real-life consequences of this fantasy-land schtick. His performances in the cage thus far have bolstered his case well. It should be interesting to see whether he can stick to that script against the champ.

Most Depressing: Kenny Florian
You know how when you’re a kid they tell you that you can be anything you want to be, as long as you want it badly enough? Yeah, well that’s all crap, and the continuing saga of KenFlo proves it. Nobody wants to be a champion more or has worked harder to make it happen than Florian, yet again he comes up short. He didn’t choke. He didn’t make any obvious mistakes. He was just not quite good enough to beat Jose Aldo, just like he was not quite good enough to beat B.J. Penn. There’s no shame in it. Florian is still better than 95% of the guys in two weight classes. He’s had a great career even without the belt, and he has a future as a commentator and analyst whenever he wants it. It’s just that he’ll probably never be a UFC champion, which must be hard for a guy like him to swallow. It’s sad to think that, at least with some things and for some people, wanting it and working for it aren’t enough, and never will be. But if your consolation prize is a lucrative career and the respect of your peers — both of which Florian currently enjoys — then you’re doing pretty well. Even if it may not feel like it right this minute.

Still Predictable, But in a Fun Way: Leonard Garcia
You know what you’re getting with this guy, but it just doesn’t get old. In the rematch with Nam Phan he actually maintained his composure and discipline in the early going and resisted the urge to brawl. When that didn’t seem to be working too well, however, he had no problem flipping the switch and going into full-scale freakout mode. If only he hadn’t freaked out too much too soon, he might have managed to put Phan away. Even with the decision loss he at least reminded the UFC why he’s worth keeping around, record be damned.

Most Disappointing Trend: Demian Maia‘s Submission-less Streak
Remember when Maia was the last great hope of pure jiu-jitsu in MMA? His striking was perfunctory at best, his takedowns consisted of pulling people into his half-guard, and his finishes were all GIF-worthy displays of technical superiority. What ever happened to that guy? Now that he’s a proficient striker and a competent wrestler it’s as if all that submissions whiz stuff was in another life. He’s now gone seven straight fights without hearing the glorious sound of a dejected opponent tap, tap, tapping his way to defeat. He’s gone 4-3 during that same stretch, and against some very tough opponents. I realize his jiu-jitsu isn’t exactly sneaking up on anyone at this point, but it did seem like a greater threat back when it was the only one he had.

Biggest Matchmaking Headache: Gray Maynard
“The Bully” has had two consecutive shots at the title, yet come away empty. Now what do you do with the guy? He’s still likely to beat most of the top contenders in the lightweight division, but not likely to make much of a show out of it. Whoever you put him in against had either be a good enough wrestler to force him to do something other than suffocate them from the top, and if they’re that good you probably don’t want to waste them in a non-title or non-contender bout. Maybe the best option is to put him up against Nate Diaz next. Those two have a history, and neither is within sniffing distance of a title shot right now. Maybe they can sort things out for themselves while the rest of the division moves toward resolving the bottleneck at the very top. Just don’t expect much in the way of pre-fight interviews from those two.

Jury’s Still Out On…: Stipe Miocic
Expectations are high for this heavyweight, and he’s not doing much to lower them by showing up in a pair of Cro Cop shorts. As expected, he looked like he could do just about anything he wanted to do to Joey Beltran except put him away. That’s not necessarily a knock on Miocic. Neither Pat Barry nor Matt Mitrione could find that guy’s off switch, so there’s no shame in letting him go the distance. Still, Miocic seemed to fade in the later rounds, and didn’t have near the sense of urgency about protecting his own face that you’d like to see from fighters at this level. He could very well turn out to be the prospect of the future, but he’s clearly still got some work to do.

 

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