UFC on Fox 15, a card that lived up to every bit of its promise, was all about renewal. From time to time the combat sports world must refresh itself with young challengers emerging from the battered remains of their predecessors.
This was one of…
UFC on Fox 15, a card that lived up to every bit of its promise, was all about renewal. From time to time the combat sports world must refresh itself with young challengers emerging from the battered remains of their predecessors.
This was one of those nights.
The Machida era, well and truly, has finally come to an end. Let’s all welcome our new southern Californian surfer lords. And while Luke Rockhold certainly led the way, he had a cast of new characters behind him, with Max Holloway, Paige VanZant and BeneilDariush staking their claims as potential contenders.
It was a big night for the UFC’s future—but it wasn’t quite perfect. In a new post-fight series, we’ll look at the card as a whole and choose the five best and worst moments—the handful of things worth talking about on Twitter in the event’s aftermath.
Want to extend the bout from five rounds into infinity? That’s what the comments are for. Make your voice heard.
On a normal fight night I tend to wake up, look at the clock and dread the 14 listless hours I know I’ll spend waiting for the fights to finally begin. Those are truly wasted hours too—after all, nothing fills the emotional void quite like face p…
On a normal fight night I tend to wake up, look at the clock and dread the 14 listless hours I know I’ll spend waiting for the fights to finally begin. Those are truly wasted hours too—after all, nothing fills the emotional void quite like face punching.
Perhaps that’s what made this random UFC Fight Night from Fairfax, Virginia, feel so special? By the time Chad Mendes re-established himself as the second best featherweight on the planet, it was just after lunch. The whole day was still waiting to reveal itself.
Morning mixed martial arts—quite a revelation.
Of course, the entire show wasn’t perfection, even if the start time was. But what card is? In a new post-fight series, we’ll look at the card as a whole and choose the five best and worst moments—the handful of things worth talking about on Twitter afterward.
Want to extend the bout from five rounds into infinity? That’s what the comments are for. Make your voice heard.
Breaking the UFC 189 World Tour down by the numbers yields some fairly interesting results. 13,142 nautical miles. Two fighters. Eight cities. One sentient toilet. And a seemingly endless supply of both staredowns and luxury hotel rooms. …
Breaking the UFC 189 World Tour down by the numbers yields some fairly interesting results. 13,142 nautical miles. Two fighters. Eight cities. One sentient toilet. And a seemingly endless supply of both staredowns and luxury hotel rooms.
UFC featherweight champion Jose Aldo (25-1) and challenger Conor McGregor (17-2) fight for the first time in four months on July 11 in Las Vegas. But when they do, UFC fans worldwide will be primed and ready for the clash.
The promotional effort here has been unprecedented, especially for smaller fighters who have traditionally struggled at the box office in MMA. But did quantity equal quality? Is this among the best promoted fights in the sport’s history?
Bleacher Report lead writers Jeremy Botter and Jonathan Snowden, a modern-day Turner and Hooch, tackle that question below. Have an opinion of your own? Sound off in the comments.
Jonathan: For years the UFC’s bag of promotional tricks was infinitesimally small. It basically involved two tropes, tossed out in the weeks before the pay-per-view, complete with Joe Rogan and Mike Goldberg screaming incoherently and nu metal blasting in the background.
The first, and most common, was fairly simple. “Fighter X poses the greatest threat Fighter Y has ever faced.” Georges St-Pierre could have been squaring off with Fred Ettish, and the UFC would have had Rogan do as many takes as he needed to say Ettish was the toughest fight of St-Pierre’s career with a straight face.
The second, used more sparingly, was the grudge match. Think Tito Ortiz vs. Chuck Liddell. Think Brock Lesnar vs. Frank Mir. Think printing presses at the national mint running overtime and making special deliveries to Lorenzo Fertitta’s suite at the Red Rock.
At the UFC’s promotional height in 2010, the brand alone sold pay-per-views by the truckload. They didn’t need to be particularly creative—even the lesser shows of that era would be hailed as financial successes today.
Then came the crash. The WWE was driven right out of the pay-per-view business. Boxing limited its offerings to only the brightest of megastars. UFC numbers were in free fall.
It’s been a sobering time for the combat sports business—and one that’s demanded creative problem solving. WWE went with a subscriber-based web platform. Al Haymon pushed boxing onto free television.
And UFC?
It’s reinvented its promotional model as well, focusing for the first time in years on the individual fighters instead of the brand. It’s turned Ronda Rousey into the sport’s biggest crossover attraction—and the promotion is following that success with a concentrated push for Irishman Conor McGregor. And it’s working.
Maybe it’s too much of a good thing at times. But it is a good thing. McGregor has emerged as the sport’s next big thing, despite weighing just 145 pounds. That’s a pretty big deal, Jeremy.
Jeremy: I think the one point to keep in mind, since Rousey and McGregor are our two test cases, is that they are very good at self-promotion. Rousey used her mouth to get the important fight she wanted (Tate), but since then, she hasn’t needed to talk much. That’s because she makes people dead in mere seconds. That speaks for itself.
With McGregor, yes, he’s getting over, and he’s doing it by acting like the crazy person he appears to be. But as you hinted at, it feels like too much of a good thing. I attended the second leg of the World Tour here in Las Vegas, and let me tell you that it feels like an eternity ago. It was last week. Nearly every single day since then, we were bombarded with faceoffs and press conferences and with what McGregor would do to Aldo and what Aldo would not do to McGregor.
It was sensory overload. Tickets went on sale halfway through and were sold out quickly, and yet the carnival train continued rolling. By the end of this thing, I was exhausted and actually less interested in the fight than I was when it started. I am thankful we have a few months before it happens, because I’m sure I’ll be frothing at the mouth to see it by that point. But right now, I’m World Toured out.
Jonathan: I thought the World Tour was brilliant from beginning to end. The creative team behind UFC’s Embedded, Dana White, UFC’s senior vice president of production and operations, Craig Borsari, and the VP of production, Chris Kartzmark, have a lot to be proud of.
Together with a crack staff of shooters and editors, they’ve put together nine compelling mini-documentaries, each one a variation of the overall theme. McGregor vs. Aldo is more than an athletic contest. It’s the final word in a battle of wills, one we’ve seen play out over the last couple of weeks all around the world.
Remember, the World Tour isn’t just for the hardcore fans watching each and every episode. It is also designed to generate buzz and excitement in each of the UFC’s core markets. Sure, it sold out the venue days ago. But how many more fans will be pumped for this on pay-per-view, Globo in Brazil or TV3 in Ireland? I’d wager a lot.
Jeremy: You’re right on both accounts. It wasn’t designed for hardcore fans and media who have no choice but to watch, discuss and report on every stop. It was designed to promote the UFC’s biggest fight of 2015 in major markets. And if I can take anything away from this tour, it is that the Embedded series is the best thing the UFC currently produces. It takes the things we used to love about the Primetime series and amps them up, making them even MORE current and fresh. I love that, and I think Embedded needs to be a regular part of the pay-per-view experience, and it needs to be a regular feature on Fight Pass.
All I’m saying is that McGregor’s and White’s stuff grew a bit tiresome when repeated daily. I still believe this is the UFC’s biggest fight of the year, unless it magically signs Gina Carano and pits her against Rousey. And I’ll be all over this fight come July. I’m just a little burned out on it right now is all.
Jonathan: Everyone is talking about McGregor for obvious reasons. But, to me, Aldo was the star of the show.
For years he’s been an enigma. We’ve all watched him destroy anyone foolish enough to challenge him in the cage. But we’ve never really gotten a feel for what he’s all about.
You and I even sat right next to him at breakfast when Zuffa was heavily promoting him as the standard-bearer for the WEC—but the language barrier made it really hard to relate to him in any organic way. Thanks to UFC Embedded, I really think I’m starting to get Aldo. He’s prickly, proud and yet a big kid at heart. He’s human.
Showing him as such means that this isn’t just Conor looking to take the strap from the longtime champ. It’s both bigger and smaller than that. It’s a collision of two proud men, two athletes suddenly fighting for their legacies. It’s mesmerizing—and the best job of fight promotion UFC has ever done.
After years of speculation, Brock Lesnar finally put MMA fans hoping for his return out of their misery. There will be no second act for Lesnar, at least not in the cage.
Instead, the WWE champion told ESPN’s Jonathan Coachman he was pulling the …
After years of speculation, Brock Lesnar finally put MMA fans hoping for his return out of their misery. There will be no second act for Lesnar, at least not in the cage.
Instead, the WWE champion told ESPN’s Jonathan Coachman he was pulling the plug on his MMA career.
“It was a very hard decision at this stage of my career,” Lesnar said. “The fighter inside me wants to compete. The father and husband—I’m an older caveman now. I make wiser caveman decisions. So, I’m here to say my legacy in the Octagon is over.”
With his career officially over, it’s time to turn our attention to his legacy. Bleacher Report lead writers Jonathan Snowden and Jeremy Botter, MMA’s version of Starsky and Hutch, tackle the only question that matters in the wake of this stunning announcement—how will MMA fans remember Brock Lesnar?
Jeremy: So, Jonathan, Brock Lesnar decided to pull the plug on a return to mixed martial arts, announcing he’d signed a new deal with the WWE on SportsCenter (of all places) today. Which is kind of sad, in my opinion, because covering Lesnar fights was a whole lot of fun and I was kinda looking forward to doing it again.
But those days are gone. And now that he’s finally, officially not returning to the Octagon, we can safely look back and figure out what his legacy was, and how he’ll be remembered in the fighting world. The popular Internet opinion seems to be that he was never any good, was handed a title shot because of his popularity and only won fights because he was much bigger than the guys he fought.
But is that true? I don’t think it is. Not entirely, anyway. But I’d like to know what you think.
Jonathan: Popular Internet opinion is, invariably, wrong. Always and forever.
There have been a lot of gargantuas in the UFC Octagon, literally from the very first bout in the sport’s history. In that fight Gerard Gordeau proved bigger wasn’t necessarily better by sending poor Teila Tuli’s tooth flying across the arena—and great fighters have been repeating that lesson over and over again for 21 years.
No, it wasn’t Lesnar’s size that made him a UFC champion. After all, Randy Couture had beaten bigger before falling victim to what he called Lesnar’s “hamhocks.” Instead it was a rare athleticism, combined with rare wrestling chops, that made Lesnar such a standout.
Size, of course, was part of it. But it was the way Brock moved at 265 pounds that made him special. No heavyweight in MMA had ever been that fast, that strong and that skilled. Some had combined two of those attributes into a championship package—but never all three. Not until Lesnar.
When he was at the top of his game, before diverticulitis and the beginning of the fall, we had the pleasure of watching something we may never see again. Brock Lesnar wasn’t just good. At his best, he inspired awe. That, Jeremy, is a powerful feeling.
Jeremy: I’ll never forget that first fight with Frank Mir. Yeah, Lesnar lost that one in the end, which actually ended up being for the best because it gave Mir ammunition and led to the biggest PPV fight in UFC history.
But the thing I’ll never forget is that moment when Lesnar got Mir on the ground, then pounced on him. Mir started rolling. And in a flash, Lesnar spun around on top of him, keeping dominant position. I watched that one moment on replay at least 100 times that week. I’d never seen such a big man move so very fast. It was breathtaking.
And you’re right about about Brock’s size alone not being the thing that helped him win. That’s just an excuse people use because they don’t like him, or they don’t like that he was a fake rassler invading their precious, pure sport. The reality is that Brock came into a sport and very quickly became adept at it. I can’t help but wonder what it would’ve been like if he were graduating college in 2009, going straight into mixed martial arts. I think we’d be looking at an all-time legacy heavyweight.
Jonathan: No one talks about that first Mir fight as a positive these days, but at the time it was a revelation. Every fighter I talked to for months wanted to discuss Lesnar. Because, even though he lost, it was obvious right away that he was a different kind of beast.
Brock had a sheer animal instinct that is a rare gift. His body just reacts, a split second before an ordinary man’s would.
You could see it in college, when he literally cartwheeled his way out of trouble before pinning the University of Pennsylvania’s Bandele Adeniyi-Bada in the 2000 NCAA wrestling tournament. A similar athleticism was on display as he charged across the cage after knocking Heath Herring silly in just his second fight in the UFC.
In 20 years, when people write about Lesnar’s place in UFC history, these small moments will be forgotten. Instead, he’ll be reduced to a line on a ledger sheet, a financial story instead of an athletic one. And that’s only part of his story.
Jeremy: You’re right. Lesnar’s legacy as a draw will be what people remember the most. His athleticism and accomplishments have mostly been whitewashed already, anyway, in favor of “he doesn’t like getting punched,” as though not enjoying being punched by Cain Velasquez is something unique to him.
He was a financial wonder for the UFC, bringing in millions of new fans who have since disappeared because there is nobody else like him on the UFC roster. Conor McGregor is something like a Brock Lesnar, and he very well may be the UFC’s biggest star by the end of this year. But he weighs 145 pounds. Brock Lesnar was a giant of a man with charisma and speed and an intensity unmatched by anyone else I’ve ever seen. He was a man who learned a difficult sport fairly quickly. He wasn’t an expert, but he picked things up remarkably fast.
What I’ll remember about Lesnar is that an illness prevented him from being what he truly should have been, and I hate that. I hate it.
Jonathan: Diverticulitis is the great unknown. You can’t discuss Lesnar without it, but you also can’t pinpoint for certain whether it’s the primary culprit for his fall from grace.
I agree that no one likes to get punched. But you can’t deny Lesnar’s adverse reaction to fists flying his way was straight up comical. Meme-worthy even. How much of that was a result of his injuries and difficulty training? Or how much was simply a man not quite being 100 percent suited for his chosen sport?
Either way, it lends an air of mystery to Lesnar. No one can truly say how amazing his career might have been if not for his health problems. Would he have been the best to ever step into the cage? Or had he peaked already, the rest of his fighting life destined to disappoint?
We can’t answer those questions definitively. That’s why we’ll be arguing about Brock Lesnar and his legacy for a long time. And that’s OK—that’s what fans do with the great ones.
Jonathan Snowden and Jeremy Botter cover combat sports for Bleacher Report
Not much of consequence happened at UFC Fight Night 62 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Not much of consequence could have.
It’s become tradition for the UFC to travel to Brazil, find the cupboard bare of fighters with even a semblance of name recognition an…
Not much of consequence happened at UFC Fight Night 62 in Rio deJaneiro, Brazil. Not much of consequence could have.
It’s become tradition for the UFC to travel to Brazil, find the cupboard bare of fighters with even a semblance of name recognition and simply toss together a collection of random parts and hope for the best. Sometimes it’s a good time, with spectacular finishes making fans forget they are watching fighters they’ve never heard of. Sometimes, it’s a dreadful, never-ending morass.
Sometimes, it’s both.
In a new post-fight series, we’ll look at the card as a whole and choose the five best and worst moments—the handful of things worth talking about on Twitter or at the water cooler if you are reading this from 1962.
Want to extend the bout from five rounds into infinity? That’s what the comments are for. Make your voice heard.
Just six years separate Demian Maia and Ryan LaFlare chronologically, but in their chosen profession, that might as well be a lifetime. The gap between them, stylistically and in the cage, is nearly unfathomable.
Maia is the last of a dying breed…
Just six years separate Demian Maia and Ryan LaFlare chronologically, but in their chosen profession, that might as well be a lifetime. The gap between them, stylistically and in the cage, is nearly unfathomable.
Maia is the last of a dying breed in mixed martial arts—the specialist. While most modern fighters come up in the sport perfecting, to various degrees, a number of disciplines and techniques, Maia is the master of just one. Brazilian jiu jitsu has, and always will be, his calling card.
It’s an art that led him to much early success in the UFC. Before LaFlare had even begun his own professional career, Maia was in the midst of five consecutive submission finishes. Almost five years ago, he made it to the top of the hill, only to have the king, Anderson Silva, send him plummeting right back down.
Since that loss, Maia has pieced together a 7-4 UFC record. Not bad, but hardly the calling card of excellence. Is there a place in the sport for a 37-year-old man on a one-trick pony? Former UFC bantamweight champion and current Fox Sports 1 analyst Dominic Cruz joins me to discuss both Maia’s fight against LaFlare Saturday on Fox Sports 1 and his long-term prospects in the volatile world of MMA .
Jonathan Snowden: While it’s easy to disparage a fighter like Demian Maia, the truth is, this sport was built by fighters utilizing a single skill set.That wasn’t part of the sport. It was the whole point. Who would win a real fight between a karate guy and kickboxer? Could a taekwondo artist leap into the air to spin kick a wrestler?
We answered those questions in the glorious early years, arriving at a combination of wrestling, submissions and Thai boxing that has formed the “MMA house style.” But like most people forced to concentrate on a multitude of things at one time, modern fighters tend to be good at everything but great at nothing.
Demian Maia is different. He’s great at Brazilian jiu-jitsu. He’s barely passable in any other facet of the game. Can that get it done in 2015? Things were going well seven years ago. What happened?
Dominic Cruz: What happened is, people said, “Screw going to the ground with this guy. He’s going to submit me. I’m going to strike with this guy and see how it goes.” And once they figured out that he gets tired if you force him to strike for three to five rounds and that he’s not comfortable striking on his feet, they started beating him.
That’s what this game is. People make adjustments to your style. If you’re one-dimensional, this sport will eat you alive. If you can’t mix it up and adjust your style accordingly, this sport will expose you.
Everything is evolving super fast. You can’t be one-dimensional anymore. You have to be able to do everything and be good at every single facet of this sport to succeed. It goes all the way back to the beginning of the sport.
Royce Gracie was the guy everybody said was unbeatable, even though he was one-dimensional. He was submitting everybody, taking them down and beating them. Even though he didn’t have skills anywhere else. He forced the sport to adjust to him.
Other fighters had to evolve. They realized, “I can’t just let this guy walk across the cage and submit me.” People started working their submission defense. They started getting better at takedown defense. And they started getting better at striking. Evolution. That’s what this game is. Demian Maia needs to do the same, or else he’s going to get left behind.
Snowden: What’s interesting about specialists is the way they can achieve success in spurts but have a hard time sustaining it. Much of mixed martial arts is a guessing game; fighters and coaches trying their best to figure out what their opponent intends to do, then planning to prevent it or counter it.
With a fighter like Maia, there isn’t the same kind of pressure to prepare for an unlimited number of tricks and techniques. He’s a known quantity. That makes it easier to plan for him—and harder for him to impose his will on the fight. When you prepare for a fighter like this, one who is so exceptional in one area, I imagine you need to do things a bit differently than usual.
Are you willing to cede the ground entirely to him? Or do you do your level best to meet him in his world?
Cruz: If I’m going against Demian Maia, I can’t plan to never take him down and refuse to go to the ground with him at all. That’s silly. To be great at this sport, you have to be willing to go into any position, against anybody.
LaFlare does need to get takedowns on Maia. The key, when you’re competing against a specialist like Maia, is that you can’t give him time on the ground. You have to deny him the chance to set anything up. The longer you sit in a grappling exchange with Maia, the more adjustments he makes and the better his position becomes.
The key for LaFlare is to strike, strike, strike, dump Maia on his butt to break his rhythm, go down to the ground for maybe 30 seconds at most, then jump to his feet and start striking again. He can’t catch a submission in just 30 seconds unless LaFlare puts himself into a bad position. If he’s playing up and down, up and down, up and down, he’ll make Maia uncomfortable, even on the mat.
Snowden: With Maia, it kind of feels to me like he has different modes. He’s not a fluid all-around fighter. Instead, it’s like his mind is moving a million miles an hour when he’s striking. It doesn’t feel natural. On the mat, of course, it’s a different story entirely.
Cruz: He’s been exposed as kind of a one-dimensional fighter. He’s learning to strike. He has improved. But it’s not been enough to get him the wins that he wants.
He’s not mixing his takedowns in with his strikes correctly. He always finishes his forward striking with a shot. But he doesn’t force guys to come to him, and he’s not timing takedowns because he’s not quite comfortable enough striking to see the openings that are there. It has to flow together. He’s either striking or grappling. He’s not comfortable enough to do both at the same time.
Snowden: I wonder if we’re reading too much into this. Maybe it has nothing to do with being a specialist or a generalist. Could the difference in Maia’s level of success have everything to do, instead, with the fact he’s entering his late 30s?
We know that athletes decline with age. That’s just science. But does aging affect grapplers and strikers equally? Striking is a matter of inches and fractions of a second. It seems likely a grappler could remain relevant longer since quickness and reaction time may not be quite as important.
Cruz: I don’t think age matters nearly as much with grappling as it does with striking. Striking involves more fluid movement, more explosiveness, more quickness, speed, cardio, everything.
Grappling does have a cardio element, but if you’ve grappled your entire life the way Maia has, you can basically do it with your eyes shut. You can get knocked out on your feet, fall to the ground and still submit people because he can do it in his sleep he’s done it so much.
He can be comfortable forever in a grappling match. That’s something Demian Maia will never get tired doing. It doesn’t matter if it’s 15 minutes or an hour. He can grapple forever. That’s his comfort zone.
That’s something he needs to concentrate on—keeping it where he’s comfortable. Every fighter should focus on that in my opinion. Each fighter needs to keep the fight where he’s most comfortable and where the other guy is freaking out.
Some fighters can be comfortable in a variety of places. For Demian Maia, it’s one.
Jonathan Snowden covers combat sports for Bleacher Report.
Breaking the UFC 189 World Tour down by the numbers yields some fairly interesting results.