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UFC 158 Primer: 3 Reasons to Root for Nick Diaz

At UFC 158, Georges St-Pierre will be squaring off against Nick Diaz in a tale of two very different men with different personalities but one goal: to be the UFC welterweight champion.For a very long time, the sport of MMA needed a group of champions w…

At UFC 158, Georges St-Pierre will be squaring off against Nick Diaz in a tale of two very different men with different personalities but one goal: to be the UFC welterweight champion.

For a very long time, the sport of MMA needed a group of champions who established their dominance in the sport with long title reigns, giving those divisions a familiar face and thereby humanizing it.

Fans long to have someone they can identify with in a sport where the cage itself is just as big a star as the men who fight within it. They need someone they can follow who rises to the occasion and does things they cannot, because the sport of MMA is not the purview of the ordinary man.

Indeed, it takes extraordinary men to rise to any heights in the sport, and as they rise they inspire their fans, even if in the end that inspiration is spent living vicariously through them.

These men usually come in two types: the respectable, honorable, and upright champion, who is dominant and dangerous while upholding the sport and themselves with dignity—men like current champion Georges St-Pierre.

And then there are other men who rise up, unconcerned with public perception or any false pretense of civility; tough as a coffin nail and only wanting to prove they are the best by beating down everyone put in front of them with an authority that seems like prejudice.

Men like Nick Diaz.

The UFC has been well-served by GSP, who has defended the welterweight title six consecutive times: a record for the division.

He’s intelligent, personable, friendly, utterly professional and incredibly passionate about his position in the sport—everything you’d want in a champion who has displayed the level of dominance that he has.

Really, he’s everything that Diaz isn’t. In fact, GSP is the anti-Diaz, for all the right reasons.

Diaz has been rude, unprofessional, antagonistic, and at times has displayed behavior that was awful at best and detrimental to the sport at worst.

So why should anyone root for Nick Diaz to upset GSP and become the next champion at 170?

One reason is because as much as I like GSP and love what he stands for, he has managed to take a sport that is incredibly dynamic and unpredictable and make it… well, very predictable.

He has developed a very successful formula to win his fights that plays to his considerable strengths and allows him to dominate his opposition in such a way that his performances possess a kind of mechanical, mathematical execution and conclusion.

Diaz, on the other hand, is a dogged fighter who possesses a crowd-pleasing style built around engaging his opponents on the feet via a relentless attack of punches in bunches.

Diaz is more than happy to eat a punch in order to land one, and he is constantly going for the finish.

In truth, the fact that he does have flaws—he has been knocked down on more than one occasion and he can be taken down—but ignores them for the sake of aggression lends each fight a sense of doubt and unpredictability inherent to the sport, and that is the best kind of drama in the world for fight fans.

The only thing predictable about a Diaz fight is that he is going to come forward and attack with the intent of doing serious damage; how his opponent will react to this is another exciting variable.

Another reason is that Diaz harbors a kind of attitude about being a fighter that, while seeming somewhat childish or thuggish, is also pure, unrehearsed and honest—something the fans can understand, no matter if they agree with it or not.

Once again, his flaws as a man would make him a compelling champion because he takes everything personally, and that kind of passion would be amplified if Diaz were to capture the title.

He’s often spoken of feeling slighted by the powers that be for not getting the attention he deserves; if he were to win the belt, he would be getting all the attention he could handle, possibly more.

How would he deal with it all? I have no idea, but good or bad, it would be polarizing, and that is the exact kind of thing that attracted millions of fans to the sport of boxing when Mike Tyson was king of the hill.

Finally, while GSP has helped the sport grow to massive levels of popularity in Canada and just about everywhere else, fans are no longer expecting anything dramatic from his title fights.

It’s no longer a matter of wondering what GSP is going to do to his opponents, but what they can do to him; if they can offer up anything that will take exception to the norm and give the viewing public cause to pause and consider that maybe, just maybe, a true fight might break out in the middle of a grappling match.

No one should fault GSP for playing to his strengths and it is not up to him to give fights away just to make them exciting. If no one can find a way to defeat him, then that is their problem, not his.

But in a sport that is supposed to by synonymous with excitement and unpredictability, if Diaz can upset GSP, it would help remind us why we came to love the sport so much in the first place.

And it just might set up one of the greatest trilogies the division has ever seen.

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UFC 162: 3 Ways Chris Weidman Can Beat Anderson Silva

Now that we have finally learned that Chris Weidman is the next man fighting Anderson Silva for the title, we are left to wonder just how Weidman can succeed where so many others have failed.Make no mistake about it, this is a fight Weidman can win, bu…

Now that we have finally learned that Chris Weidman is the next man fighting Anderson Silva for the title, we are left to wonder just how Weidman can succeed where so many others have failed.

Make no mistake about it, this is a fight Weidman can win, but it won’t be easy.

First off, he has to apply constant pressure to the champion; much like Chael Sonnen did at UFC 117, because trying to figure out how to beat Silva from the outside isn’t going to get it done.

Silva is a rare fighter; a man equally adept at striking offensively as he is countering an opponent who tries to go toe-to-toe with him. So what does Weidman need to do in order to pull off the upset?

There are three possible ways Weidman can get the job done, but each requires total commitment. Many great fighters have stepped into the cage with the champion, only to seem to forget how to ply the skills that got them there in the first place—as if showing up was good enough.

There has never been a champion in the history of the UFC as great as Silva because he dares to be great, so all measures against him must be equal to the task.

First of all, Weidman needs to limit the weapons of the champion as best he can and that means a relentless takedown attack for all five rounds.

The one place where the effectiveness of Silva’s best game—striking—is going to be diminished is on the ground with Silva on his back, and that is where Weidman needs to take this fight as often as possible.

Yes, he may eat some serious strikes on the way in (perhaps even suffering a KO from a well-placed counter-knee) or get some elbows from the clinch, but we know—nearly to a certainty—that he’s going to be in far more danger if he tries to engage Silva in a striking contest for any extended period of time.

If he can get take Silva down repeatedly and keep him down, he can employ the same basic plan Chael Sonnen did, but with greater effect and earn a decision victory that may not be pretty but gives him the title.

Another way Weidman can win is by taking risks and attacking Silva from the top—looking for the stoppage aggressively—whenever he takes the champion down.

This is risky, as it gives Silva room to either pull Weidman into his guard or escape to the feet, but it does allow Weidman a chance to secure a sooner victory via KO/TKO thanks to his heavy-handed ground-and-pound.

No matter what many people may think, Silva can be knocked out just like any other man and Weidman is a very strong fighter who knows how to use that strength on the ground.

One of the main virtues for going after the stoppage instead of trying to grind out a decision victory is that it lessens the amount of time Silva will have to end the bout himself. He’s proven to be the kind of champion that is dangerous in any fight, at any time, and if Weidman could get him out of there, well sooner is better than later.

And lastly, if somehow Silva manages to thwart every takedown attempt, Weidman is going to be forced to stand and exchange, which is a possibility he needs to be ready for.

Should that happen, Weidman still has heavy hands that could land given that Silva has shown a tendency to “clown” about if he feels he has an opponent who must stand with him.

That means when Weidman throws, he can’t be tentative like so many others have been. Everyone else before him seems to see Silva standing still, arms at his sides, as if it is a mirage and thus they throw tentative strikes that lack their full authority.

If Silva does that with Weidman, the challenger must throw with all his might, and throw often.

Very few fighters have gone after Silva with the intent to throw heavy leather for every second of every round. In all of his bouts in the UFC, the champion has not had anyone pressure him like that, probably because of how destructive he looked against Chris Leben in his debut.

But this is a title fight, and if Weidman cannot secure the takedowns, then he should be ready to throw everything that he can at the champion and let the chips fall where they may.

When at all possible, he should cut off the cage—far easier said than done, to be sure—and get inside Silva’s long range and work heavy punches to the body, uppercuts and then hooks.

Yes, he will have to fight like mad to combat Silva’s Thai clinch, but if he wants the title badly enough, he should be ready to expend as much energy as needed to dish out more damage than he takes and take as much damage as he must.

As incredible as Silva is, he is still getting older, day-by-day, and given how infrequently he fights, his defensive timing may slip enough for Weidman to land, especially if the challenger is really ready and has enough gas in the tank to throw over 100 meaningful punches per round.

There is a saying in the South that speaks to the idea that sometimes you fight the fight where you find it and other times you fight it where it finds you.

For Weidman, he must do both and fight like the younger, hungrier man, constantly putting pressure on Silva and never for a second forgetting that showing up is only half the battle.

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Dana White or Don King; Who Is the Best Combat Sports Promoter Ever?

When the UFC was on the verge of extinction, Dana White talked the Fertitta brothers into buying the company based on the promise he saw inherent in such a dynamic and exciting sport.Since that time, he has fought tooth-and-nail to drag it out of the d…

When the UFC was on the verge of extinction, Dana White talked the Fertitta brothers into buying the company based on the promise he saw inherent in such a dynamic and exciting sport.

Since that time, he has fought tooth-and-nail to drag it out of the darkness and into the spotlight and now it stands as a legitimate rival to the only other real combative sport of note, boxing.

While White may have started off as nothing more than a man with a dream, content to let the sport speak for itself, he is now one of the top promoters in combative sport today.

But is he the best fight promoter ever?

The question is an obvious one, given the back-and-forth White has had with boxing promoters, specifically Bob Arum.

But if we are really going to pose the question, perhaps it is best to look at perhaps the biggest, most controversial boxing promoter in many years: Don King.

Of course, it’s hard to know where to begin with such a comparison; the “fight game” in the world of MMA is a drastically different thing simply because organizations rule the roost instead of the individual fighters.

Many would say that White is more company front man and manager rather than a fight promoter, and they have a point, to a degree.

But White is still in the business of selling fights, just like any boxing promoter.

To his credit, White has yet to lose a lawsuit brought by a fighter where Don King has been sued multiple times, although they were nearly all settled out of court.

So once we clear all the negatives from the table, we are left with their accomplishments, which are many.

White has turned the UFC (and by proxy the sport of MMA) into a legitimate sport with rules, regulations and a level of accountability no one thought would ever happen if they followed the sport from the early days.

Thus far, the UFC has had seven PPV events that sold over one million buys, with the highest being UFC 100, which did a staggering 1.6 million buys.

Don King has promoted some of the biggest gates in boxing history, but many of the biggest—Muhammad Ali vs. George Foreman, Mike Tyson vs. Michael Spinks, Oscar De La Hoya vs. Felix Trinidad—would need to be adjusted for “inflation” in order to get an accurate number as to just how well they did in today’s market.

But if one thing is for certain, Don King has made more millionaires than White and the UFC. For the fight between Ali and Foreman, King secured the then-record purse of 10 million dollars, way back in 1974.

Since then, King has promoted just about every big name in boxing history, including men like Ali, Tyson, Larry Holmes, Roberto Duran, Evander Holyfield, Julio Cesar Chavez and countless others.

At the end of the day, it is impossible to tell who is the best promoter. King is now 81 years old and has been in the business for well over thirty years, while the UFC is in many aspects still in its infancy.

So perhaps the real question is the simplest: who has given us the most meaningful and desired fights in their respective sports?

The answer to that question is totally selective as each fan is different; I myself feel White is the better promoter as he makes the fights we need to see more often than not.

But one thing is for sure—both men have provided us with some dandy fights.

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The Anatomy of a KO Punch

When two men square off in a cage or ring, one of the most coveted endings imagined and hoped for by both fighters is a knock out; nothing else really speaks to the realization of imposing one’s will upon another like rendering them unconscious with a …

But how does a fighter accomplish this? After all, if it was as simple as connecting a fist to the face, there would be many more knockouts in the combative sports.

Some argue that it is the virtue of superior technique while others offhandedly declare it is a matter of size—which may be the reason why so many fans believe that nearly all heavyweights are knockout punchers and lighter weight fighters are not.

As it turns out, the answers can be found on both sides of the bridge: cause and effect.

There are two ways a fighter can deliver a knockout: with many punches or a single, well-placed blow.

When addressing the former, it appears that a knockout is the result of many concussions that simply overwhelm the brain’s ability to keep the level of electrolytes balanced.

As the brain struggles to maintain the balance, eventually the amount of damage caused by repeated blows to the head outweighs the brain’s ability to sustain those levels and repair the damage.

When this happens, the brain shuts down to save up the needed energy to restore the chemical balance and heal the damage, leaving the fighter to tumble to the mat, unconscious.

But while this addresses the issue on a chemical level, there is still a great deal more to it than that.

When punches are thrown by a fighter who has been trained on how to do so properly, each blow utilizes a kind of kinetic chain of energy that starts at his feet and runs up through many major muscle groups: such as the calves, thighs, back muscles, pectorals, triceps and others, ending in his fist.

Often times, the result of such impact is the acceleration of the facial bones and cranium directly into the frontal lobes and back of the brain, causing different degrees of damage, thus stunning the brain.

And if the blow is of significant force, the damage can be instantly overwhelming, shutting the brain down immediately.

When watching a “delayed knockdown”—when a fighter takes a blow or blows, moves away and then drops—what we are seeing is nothing more than a race inside the brain to cope with the damage and maintain appropriate chemical levels of sodium, potassium and calcium (the balance of which make up electrolytes), which in turn causes the man to “take a knee” and recoup his senses, if at all possible.

What is interesting is that when considering the man throwing the punch, while size (weight) helps, it is really more a matter of technique: making sure that all the muscles are properly aligned when throwing the punch, thus creating as strong a chain of kinetic energy as possible.

In a video segment with a young Mike Tyson, Larry Merchant asks the question at hand, and Tyson gives an answer that makes a great deal of sense.

“Being a big man really doesn’t matter; it has no significance. The main point is the quickness in which you throw punches and that leverage that you have in the shoulder-snap. The object of really knocking out an individual is throwing punches where he can’t see.”

Tyson goes on to show that the knockout punch is the one you don’t see coming, via distracting the opponent with shots to different parts of the body before attacking the head.

This would go a long way in explaining why the uppercut has long been a weapon that does significant damage while traveling only half the distance between elbow and knuckle.

Of course, in the end, this is a drastic simplification of the many components of a knockout punch and doesn’t explain why some men, like Mark Hunt, can take several full-force kicks to the head from a prime Mirko “Cro Cop” Filipovic as if nothing happened at all.

But then again, Hunt was starched by a single blow from the smaller Melvin Manhoef; a feat that many would mistakenly call luck or a fluke.

Odds are Hunt simply didn’t see it coming. God knows he wasn’t alone.

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UFC on Fuel 8: 3 Reasons Mark Hunt vs. Roy Nelson Is the Fight to Make

After scoring a brutal KO over Stefan Struve at UFC on Fuel 8, Mark Hunt isn’t going to have to wait very long to find out who his next opponent should be, and if the gods are fair and just, said opponent will be Roy Nelson. When Mark Hunt came i…

When Mark Hunt came into the UFC, he didn’t make such a good first impression. That happens when you lose to Sean McCorkle, a man who seems equal parts fighter and court jester.

But since then, Hunt has racked up four straight wins (three by KO/TKO), and given the current state of the division, it’s time to see if he’s got what it takes to really be a legitimate contender.

And the perfect test for him would be Roy “Big Country” Nelson.

Nelson is slated to face Cheick Kongo at UFC 159 and if wins and is in relative good health, a bout against Hunt would not only be entertaining as hell, but good for all the real reasons why fights should “make sense.”

Here are three reasons why.

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Wanderlei Silva and the 10 Most Violent Strikers in MMA History

While there is a great deal of justifiable pride to be found in the fact that MMA is the safest combative sport on the planet, when the core of our attraction to the sport is uncovered, we cannot deny the truth. MMA is a violent world, and violent men …

MMA is a violent world, and violent men take it by force, and that speaks to us on many levels.

No matter how fluid the fighters become in all aspects of the game, no matter how artistic their performances, this is still nothing more than legalized assault, no matter how celebrated or endorsed it becomes.

And when it really boils down to it, we love that.

There is something about a fighter who is so violent in a specific realm of MMA that he or she sets themselves apart from the rest of the pack—and all of the pack are carnivores in a violent jungle.

If we take this a step further, if we are being honest, we can understand why fans of the sport still cheer the loudest when a fist fight breaks out in the middle of a grappling match.

As beautiful and fluid and cringe-inducing as the world of submissions can be, there is still something absolute and total to be found in the striking world; the ultimate imposition of will that speaks to the purity of motive and clarity of intent found only in combative sports.

Submissions speak to the cerebral; we understand what happened and why because our sense of empathy demands we realize a dangerous situation…say when Frank Mir was cranking that kimura on Antonio Nogueira in their rematch.

Striking speaks to the gut; when we see a man stunned and out of time, his situation is alarming because everything else around him is moving with a speed and rhythm appropriate to the moment, while he is suddenly victim to the moment.

And that is why, for many, the difference between submissions and striking is much like the difference found when an acrobat does their business with a net below as opposed to the times they go without.

So in the spirit of restrained admiration, this list of violent strikers is offered, because of how they exist and attack—without restraint.

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