Lyoto Machida‘s Karate is not the enigmatic, invincible style many once thought it was. UFC light heavyweight champion Jon Jones will prove this without a doubt.
Machida’s abilities were once the stuff legends were made of; he even had his own “era” without having actually defended his title!
However, his era came crashing down along with the rest of his body when Mauricio “Shogun” Rua knocked out the Karate stylist at UFC 113 in less than four minutes.
One flashy kick later, people are anointing the coming years at light heavyweight the Machida Era 2.0 out of the belief that Machida’s famously elusive style will defeat current UFC light heavyweight champion Jon Jones.
Unfortunately for the Machida fans (and fans of Karate as a whole), Jones will show the MMA world just how overrated Machida’s Karate and Karate in general is.
First of all, Jones’ reach advantage over Machida is enormous. Jones’ reach is 84.5 inches, Machida’s is only 74 inches. That’s a 10.5 inch reach disadvantage that Machida will have to overcome (to put it into more familiar terms, Jones’ reach is nearly an entire ruler longer).
This massive difference in reach will allow Jones to strike and move out of the range of Machida’s effective counter strikes.
Another problem for Machida will be Jones’ wrestling and grappling. Jones has managed to bring nearly all of his opponents to the ground. Once there, he has dominated them with relative ease.
Can Machida’s feeble Karate really stop Jones’ wrestling, Muay Thai, and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu?
No. Not by a long shot.
Karate is dying as a martial art because it’s techniques were watered down and taught in McDojos across the country, teaching ineffective things to children whose insecure parents thought they were making their kid the next Bruce Lee.
Machida did frustrate opponents initially with his Karate base, true enough, but he was only so popular because of the novelty of what he was doing; stifling people with a martial art many thought had been discredited.
But really, Karate was discredited by Rua and it will be discredited again by Jones. Machida was great until fighters realized that his karate base meant his hands were almost always at his waist and that when confronted with strikes he left his chin straight up in the air.
Jones will make short work of Machida and his vaunted, ‘elusive,’ esoteric Karate and finish the fight, be it standing up or on the ground.
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