(Dan Miragliotta explains to Guida the maximum amount of miles allowed to run in the octagon without penalty.)
After a brief hiatus, Dana White has returned with the daily dose of heartbreak that is the Danavlog to remind us all of the downsides of being a f*cking fighter. Thankfully, not all of us take the phrase as literally as Brazilians do. But the main lesson we took away from today’s episode is simple: what you don’t pay in gym fees, you will more than make up for in blood. Nick Catone, Joey Gambino, and Ross Pearson were just a few of the men to walk away from their bouts with some gruesome lacerations and another (or in Gambino’s case, a first) loss on their record. A tough day at the office indeed.
“Boring,” and “sucked” were just a couple of words that White used to describe the five round affair between Clay Guida and Gray Maynard, a sentiment that most fans seemed to agree with when all was said and done. And regardless of who you thought won that fight, you could probably understand a little bit of Gray’s frustration with the Steve Prefontainian conundrum that Guida brought to the octagon. This frustration became all the more apparent when the two met backstage, where some less than positive remarks were exchanged between the two camps. Oddly enough, it all began when Guida uncharacteristically complained about the judges decision, despite the fact that Napoleon was closer to conquering Russia than Guida ever was to finishing that fight, or even attempting to for that matter.
(Things start to get interesting around the 8:26 mark.)
I know this will earn me a lot of hate (then again, what doesn’t), but when you want to jab and jog your way to victory, as was obviously Guida’s plan going into last Friday’s fight, I can’t really empathize when the judges bite you in the ass for doing so. Relying on the judges to determine the correct outcome of a fight (especially one that was that close) is akin to career suicide in MMA considering their time-tested incompetence, so Guida has no one to blame but himself (and maybe Greg Jackson) for the inevitable result of doing so. I say this as a Guida fan.
Just check out the Fightmetric stats if you want to see how close of a fight this truly was.
Granted, Fightmetric results don’t often tell the whole story, but my God, talk about an abysmal efficiency rate. All of the rounds were decided by such a small difference that it would be hard to make the case that either fighter was clearly deserving of the judges nod. So basically, who you feel won the fight likely comes down to your view of the terms “aggression” and “octagon control.” I’ll give Guida this, he implemented a frustrating gameplan that Maynard had little to no answer for the first couple of rounds. As things progressed, however, Guida just fell short in terms of effectiveness. Let the cries of “TUF noob” and “incompetent jackass” begin.