CM Punk Never Really Had a Shot at Winning in the UFC

In his MMA and UFC debut at UFC 203 on Saturday night, CM Punk got beaten up. Drubbed. Shellacked. Dominated. Mollywhopped. Trounced. Clobbered. Crushed. Thrashed.
You get the idea.
The 37-year-old former professional wrestler walked toward his opponen…

In his MMA and UFC debut at UFC 203 on Saturday night, CM Punk got beaten up. Drubbed. Shellacked. Dominated. Mollywhopped. Trounced. Clobbered. Crushed. Thrashed.

You get the idea.

The 37-year-old former professional wrestler walked toward his opponent, Mickey Gall, and never saw the double-leg takedown coming. Gall simply waited for Punk to come too far forward, ducked under and drove through, planting him against the fence before picking him up and slamming him to the ground.

A vicious barrage of ground strikes opened up a series of guard passes, and before long, Gall was on Punk’s back looking for the submission. It was only a matter of time before the 24-year-old New Jersey native, a veteran of two professional fights and several amateur bouts, eventually sunk in the rear-naked choke for the finish.

At no point did CM Punk offer anything other than defense, and even that was limited. Gall needed just over two minutes to land, per FightMetric, 20 strikes, pass to dominant positions three times and attempt two submissions. 

The most striking thing about the bout wasn’t that CM Punk lost—he was a heavy underdog and few had picked him to win—but that anybody, anywhere thought the fight would go any differently than it did. What happened when CM Punk and Gall met in the Octagon is exactly what you should expect to happen when an actual professional MMA competitor fights a neophyte hobbyist.

To be clear, this isn’t a value judgment about whether CM Punk deserved to be in the UFC, whether he should have gone through with the fight or what kind of person he is. Some media members, such as ESPN’s Arash Markazi, thought that making the attempt to fight professionally was inspiring.

In his post-fight speech, CM Punk emphasized this. “Believe in yourself. Sometimes the outcome isn’t what you desire it to be, but the true failure in life is not trying at all. I know it sounds preachy and kind of weird coming from a guy who just got beat up, but f–k it—this is the time of my life” (warning: Video contains NSFW language).

That’s not a bad sentiment, and if the hundreds of thousands or millions of people who heard it derive some motivation to pursue their dreams from CM Punk’s attempt to fight professionally, good for them. The world probably won’t be a worse place because people decide to try harder.

With that said, what happened in the Octagon plays out in gyms across the country every day. There are levels to MMA. It’s not just about effort, and it’s genuinely farcical to pretend that’s all that matters.

Gall beat CM Punk because he’s more skilled.

This is what I want to do, man,” Gall said at the post-fight press conference (warning: NSFW language). “Since I was 16, every decision I made in my life was towards being here.”

Think about that for a moment. No matter how hard CM Punk worked in the 21 months since the UFC signed him, a time marred with various injuries and layoffs, he was never going to make up the gap in skill in that brief period. He was effectively an amateur making his debut.

Let’s say, very conservatively, that Gall spent an average of 10 hours a week in the gym in the six years he trained to be a professional fighter before CM Punk ever started to seriously work in MMA.

That’s at least 3,000 hours that Gall has spent on the mats drilling grappling and wrestling technique or rolling, hitting pads and working striking drills, sparring, and generally learning what it takes to be a professional fighter. He spent much of that time working with the Miller brothers, a pair of veteran fighters who know what it takes to compete at the highest level.

CM Punk was working from behind even before he stepped through the doors at Roufusport. 

I’ve sparred with professional MMA fighters and professional kickboxers, and even when they were going light, they put a beating on me. Why?

They were better athletes, sure, but mostly they knew so, so much more about both the basics and the intricacies of fighting. They had a deeper understanding of technique in both variety and application, their fundamentals were sharper and they knew how to control the fight-or-flight response that threatens to overwhelm you and force you into making bad decisions in stressful situations.

Even the very worst professional fighters have invested thousands upon thousands of hours in developing those skills, and that’s not a gap that anyone, no matter how dedicated they are, can make up in 21 months of training, even with a good team.

That’s exactly what CM Punk was trying to do against Mickey Gall, and more than a statement about who deserves to be in the UFC or whether the UFC should be booking fights purely to draw eyeballs, this was a referendum on how much better professional fighters are at what they do than everybody else.

In the course of my career covering MMA, I’ve spent a fair bit of time in the sport’s elite gyms. I’ve watched practices and individual training sessions at Tristar, Jackson Wink MMA, Kings MMA, Black House and Team Alpha Male.

What watching those practices has made clear is how high the level of technical skill to be even a mediocre professional fighter really is. You grasp how many things they’ve worked on and trained for and their sheer depth of skill; what we see in the cage is just a minuscule fraction of their total knowledge. If you’re a fan of MMA who appreciates technique, it’s genuinely awe-inspiring to watch fighters hone their craft.

What’s even more striking, if you watch a session or two, is the realization they do that every single day, and usually more than once.

Think about how that knowledge compounds over time, the little tricks and details and intricacies they pick up in the course of thousands and thousands of hours.

A guy like Gall, who has spent his entire adult life in that kind of environment, has forgotten more about fighting than CM Punk could have possibly learned in the 21 months since they UFC signed him in December 2014.

That’s not an insult to CM Punk. It’s not hating on him to point this out. It’s not to say that he shouldn’t have gone through with the fight or that he shouldn’t have spent the last couple of years pursuing this goal, if it was a dream of his to fight as a professional. Good for him to get paid, presumably handsomely, for following his dreams.

It’s just a statement of fact, and it doesn’t care how you feel about it.

The competitors we see in the UFC are the product of years and years, thousands of hours, of focused, dedicated training. Everything they do routinely in the cage, from double-leg takedowns to jab-cross combinations to guillotine chokes, requires an incredible amount of skill to pull off. They’ve all worked hard and they’ve all followed their dreams to get there.

This fight, whether you think it was a farce and an insult to the sport of MMA—I’m not one of them—or an inspiration that will drive you to try harder to achieve your goals, should reinforce the audience’s respect for what professional fighters do each and every day.

 

Patrick Wyman is the Senior MMA Analyst for Bleacher Report and the co-host of the Heavy Hands Podcast, your source for the finer points of face-punching. For the history enthusiasts out there, he also hosts The Fall of Rome Podcast on the end of the Roman Empire. He can be found on Twitter and on Facebook.

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TJ Dillashaw Knows Full-Well Dominick Cruz Does Not Want A Rematch

tj-dillashaw-dominick-cruz

[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXmW-IB5Fog[/embed]

TJ Dillashaw is a former UFC bantamweight champion and is still regarded as one of the top contenders to the belt.

But he doesn’t believe Dominick Cruz wants any part of a rematch.

Earlier this year, Cruz bested Dillashaw to regain the title he never lost. Several injuries left Cruz on the sidelines and the UFC was forced to strip him of the belt.

Now that he’s back, Cruz has targeted bouts with Jose Aldo, Demetrious Johnson and even Cody Garbrandt over a rematch with Dillashaw.

“You know, it’s funny – so as soon as Cruz was calling out (Urijah) Faber and didn’t want to fight me, I understood. Whatever. That happened. And then as soon as that fight was over, Cruz is talking about how he wants to do a super fight against Aldo,” said Dillashaw, during a recent interview with Submission Radio. “Well Aldo wants (Conor) McGregor, so that’s not going to happen. Then he was saying he wants to do a super fight against Demetrious. But Demetrious was hurt and already had a fight lined up, so he couldn’t do that either. So if he couldn’t run away from the weight class and not fight me, what’s he gonna do? Jump to No. 8? Would he rather fight the No. 8 ranked guy instead of fighting the guy he should fight? He doesn’t want to fight me, man.

“He knows how tough that first fight was, he knows that I have a legitimate chance at kicking his ass and he just doesn’t want that to happen. He wants to try to make as much money as he can, while he can and stay on top. But I’m motivated now more than ever to get my belt back and he knows that, man. I’m coming for it. So I think that’s the biggest thing that worries me the most. He’s going to do as much trash talk as he can to try and entice people to want this Garbrandt fight so that he can try to stay on top, because he knows he’s going to be able to take Garbrandt apart as well too. That guy is a little bit too flat footed for Cruz. Cruz knows what he’s doing. He’s smart, man. He gets under people’s skin, he picks the fights that he wants. I mean, he just got to fight Urijah Faber, made him look like a fool, and he knew that fight was going to go that way when he should have been fighting me instead.”

Dillashaw added that he plans to sit on the sidelines and wait for Cruz unless the UFC would create an interim belt for him to compete for.

“The only way I’m gonna take another fight is if it is for the interim title cause Cruz can’t come back,” he said. “If Cruz is healthy, that’s the only fight I want. If for some reason they’re going to give up an interim belt, then yeah, I mean, I’ll fight and I don’t care who it is. The thing is, I just want me belt back.”

tj-dillashaw-dominick-cruz

TJ Dillashaw is a former UFC bantamweight champion and is still regarded as one of the top contenders to the belt.

But he doesn’t believe Dominick Cruz wants any part of a rematch.

Earlier this year, Cruz bested Dillashaw to regain the title he never lost. Several injuries left Cruz on the sidelines and the UFC was forced to strip him of the belt.

Now that he’s back, Cruz has targeted bouts with Jose Aldo, Demetrious Johnson and even Cody Garbrandt over a rematch with Dillashaw.

“You know, it’s funny – so as soon as Cruz was calling out (Urijah) Faber and didn’t want to fight me, I understood. Whatever. That happened. And then as soon as that fight was over, Cruz is talking about how he wants to do a super fight against Aldo,” said Dillashaw, during a recent interview with Submission Radio. “Well Aldo wants (Conor) McGregor, so that’s not going to happen. Then he was saying he wants to do a super fight against Demetrious. But Demetrious was hurt and already had a fight lined up, so he couldn’t do that either. So if he couldn’t run away from the weight class and not fight me, what’s he gonna do? Jump to No. 8? Would he rather fight the No. 8 ranked guy instead of fighting the guy he should fight? He doesn’t want to fight me, man.

“He knows how tough that first fight was, he knows that I have a legitimate chance at kicking his ass and he just doesn’t want that to happen. He wants to try to make as much money as he can, while he can and stay on top. But I’m motivated now more than ever to get my belt back and he knows that, man. I’m coming for it. So I think that’s the biggest thing that worries me the most. He’s going to do as much trash talk as he can to try and entice people to want this Garbrandt fight so that he can try to stay on top, because he knows he’s going to be able to take Garbrandt apart as well too. That guy is a little bit too flat footed for Cruz. Cruz knows what he’s doing. He’s smart, man. He gets under people’s skin, he picks the fights that he wants. I mean, he just got to fight Urijah Faber, made him look like a fool, and he knew that fight was going to go that way when he should have been fighting me instead.”

Dillashaw added that he plans to sit on the sidelines and wait for Cruz unless the UFC would create an interim belt for him to compete for.

“The only way I’m gonna take another fight is if it is for the interim title cause Cruz can’t come back,” he said. “If Cruz is healthy, that’s the only fight I want. If for some reason they’re going to give up an interim belt, then yeah, I mean, I’ll fight and I don’t care who it is. The thing is, I just want me belt back.”

Dana Says Sage Northcutt vs. Mickey Gall Could Be On

Just moments after spoiling the mixed martial arts debut of former World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) champion CM Punk at UFC 203 yesterday (September 10, 2016), Mickey Gall took yet another opportunity with the mic in his hands to call out a fellow fighter to throw down with. Gall called out fellow Looking For A Fight alumni

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Just moments after spoiling the mixed martial arts debut of former World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) champion CM Punk at UFC 203 yesterday (September 10, 2016), Mickey Gall took yet another opportunity with the mic in his hands to call out a fellow fighter to throw down with.

Gall called out fellow Looking For A Fight alumni ‘Super’ Sage Northcutt to a scrap at the UFC’s upcoming mega-show from Madison Square Garden in November for UFC 205.

That fight seemed to spark interest amongst the MMA fan-base, and apparently Sage’s team as well.

UFC President Dana White spoke to Megan Olivi shortly after the pay-per-view (PPV) event and revealed that the 20-year-old’s camp is also interested in throwing down with Gall:

“After he called him out Sage’s team hit me up, and they want the fight so we’ll make it happen. “

Northcutt (8-1) is coming off of a unanimous decision win over Enrique Marin at UFC 200 this past July, and is a young up-and-coming prospect who is competing in both the UFC’s 155 and 170-pound divisions.

The young Katy, Texas Native suffered his first professional MMA career loss under the UFC’s banner when he was submitted by Bryan Barberena in the second round of their contest back in January via arm-triangle choke.

Northcutt has since bounced back with a win over Marin, and a bout with Gall is certainly going to be a crucial test for both young men going forward in their professional combat careers.

You can check out the video in which White reveals the possibility of Gall vs. Northcutt here:

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Mickey Gall vs. CM Punk Full Fight Video Highlights

After more than a year-and-a-half of speculation, former WWE champion Phillip ‘CM Punk’ Brooks finally made his awaited MMA debut when he faced 24-year-old prospect Mickey Gall on the main card of tonight’s (Sat., September 10, 2016) UFC 203 from the Quicken Loans Arena in Cleveland, Ohio. The odds were skewed in Gall’s favor, and the

The post Mickey Gall vs. CM Punk Full Fight Video Highlights appeared first on LowKick MMA.

After more than a year-and-a-half of speculation, former WWE champion Phillip ‘CM Punk’ Brooks finally made his awaited MMA debut when he faced 24-year-old prospect Mickey Gall on the main card of tonight’s (Sat., September 10, 2016) UFC 203 from the Quicken Loans Arena in Cleveland, Ohio.

The odds were skewed in Gall’s favor, and the actual result didn’t fail to live up to that billing in any way. Gall immediately shot for a takedown and completed it, opening up the floodgates for a brutal beating that eventually lead to a rear-naked choke submission, forcing Punk to tap in just 2:14.

It was a chilling reality check, and confirmation for those that believed Punk simply didn’t belong to be fighting in the Octagon. Nevertheless, the star pro wrestler said it was the second greatest of his life, and would be back.

Here are the full fight video highlights of his one-sided loss:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4jlOGcsL3gE

The post Mickey Gall vs. CM Punk Full Fight Video Highlights appeared first on LowKick MMA.

Mickey Gall Wisely Calls out Sage Northcutt After Running Through CM Punk

Mickey Gall scored a huge, potentially career-making win over former WWE-wrestler-turned-MMA-fighter CM Punk, but he wasn’t just content in pocketing the win. The 24-year-old made the most of his camera time at UFC 203 and picked his next shot, aiming …

Mickey Gall scored a huge, potentially career-making win over former WWE-wrestler-turned-MMA-fighter CM Punk, but he wasn’t just content in pocketing the win. The 24-year-old made the most of his camera time at UFC 203 and picked his next shot, aiming it squarely at fellow young prospect Sage Northcutt.

“Its been crazy, there has been a lot of hate out there, not just in MMA but in the world,” said Gall following his fight (via MMAFighting.com’s Dave Doyle). “F–k the hate, man, we’re all going to be dead in 100 years…Next, I want Super Sage Northcutt.”

The call-out is a brilliant move by Gall. Despite beginning his UFC career with two impressive submission wins, he is a unique commodity in the promotion, with just three professional fights to his name and no other combat sports credentials beyond that.

In a stacked welterweight division, there are few logical on-paper matchups for him, and there is a decent chance fights with more experienced fighters would be refused by athletic commissions. 

Northcutt, however, fits the bill nicely. Having gone 8-1 in his professional career, he has impressed fans with his high-flying striking and drawn jeers with his questionable grappling. Competitively, it’s an interesting contrast of styles and promotionally, it’s a showdown between the only two Lookin‘ For a Fight products to have any level of success in the UFC to this point.

(Warning, NSFW Language)

Whether it will happen is a separate issue. Northcutt has been bouncing between the lightweight and welterweight divisions, with his most recent fight taking place in July at 155 pounds. If he decides to remain at that weight class, it would put him on a separate path from Gall, a 170-pounder.

What’s more, both men are fighters the UFC would like to groom further, and pitting them against one another would inevitably undermine the growth of one.

According to UFC President Dana White, Northcutt‘s handlers have expressed interest in the fight. That is no guarantee it will take place, however.

For what it’s worth, both men have a clear schedule at this time, with Northcutt likely recovered from his bout at UFC 200 and Gall looking fresh coming out of UFC 203. If the UFC is hurting for Fight Night main events or pay-per-view undercard matchups, they could certainly do worse than this.

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UFC’s CM Punk Experiment Gets off to a Painful Start

CM Punk’s new career as an MMA fighter got off to a painful start on Saturday.
Punk proved no match for Mickey Gall at UFC 203, as Gall wasted little time taking the former WWE wrestler down and scoring a first-round victory via rear naked choke….

CM Punk’s new career as an MMA fighter got off to a painful start on Saturday.

Punk proved no match for Mickey Gall at UFC 203, as Gall wasted little time taking the former WWE wrestler down and scoring a first-round victory via rear naked choke.

“In life you go big or go home,” Punk told UFC color commentator Joe Rogan in the cage when it was over. “I just like to take challenges. This was a hell of a mountain to try to climb. I didn’t get to the summit today, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to give up. It doesn’t mean I’m going to stop.”

It was impossible to blame Punk—who retired from professional wrestling in early 2014—for wanting to try his hand at legitimate fighting. He has long been a regular spectator at UFC events and his love for the sport has always seemed sincere.

But at nearly 38 years old and with no competitive athletic experience to speak of, it was always unrealistic to think he could transform himself into a UFC-level fighter with less than two years worth of training.

Gall himself underscored that point again and again while making the media rounds this week. Indeed, Punk’s willingness to have his first-ever fight take place in the UFC had been divisive among fans:

Once the bout got underway, Gall made Punk look every bit the rookie he was.

The 24-year-old New Jersey native dropped low and took Punk down with double-leg during the bout’s opening moments. From there, he landed heavy shots from inside the guard until transitioning to Punk’s back during a scramble.

Gall continued to land winging punches from both sides until Punk (real name: Phil Brooks) opened his defenses enough to allow the choke attempt. It took two tries—once with each arm—but Punk ultimately tapped out after just two minutes, 14 seconds of total action.

Afterward Gall, who was making his second appearance in the UFC, used his time on the mic to call out another of the fight promotion’s pet projects—Sage Northcutt.

“This might [have been] a gimmicky fight, but I’m no gimmick,” Gall told Rogan. “I’m not going f—king anywhere.”

For Punk, some positives came out of this experience, if you chose to look hard enough.

Gall outclassed him inside the cage, but the professional wrestler’s presence alone made this UFC card feel special.

He flashed his theatrical chops at the weigh-in, staring Gall down during their faceoff and then grinning to the crowd as the other fighter retreated from the stage. When Punk’s walkout music hit inside Quicken Loans Arena in Cleveland, Ohio, it felt like a legitimately cool moment.

The size of the spectacle didn’t appear to swallow him and he seemed more excited than nervous to make his MMA debut on such a big stage. Again, he grinned and glowered at Gall as he walked to the cage, stopping just shy of the Octagon door to turn and fire up the crowd.

The actual fighting part of the job still seemed to elude him, but the showmanship and entertainment aspects of the fight game clearly came naturally to him after so much time spent in the world of professional wrestling.

Punk also told Rogan his MMA career won’t be one-and-done.

“I’ll be back, believe it or not,” he said. “This is the most fun I’ve ever had in my life … I know there’s a lot of doubters but, listen, life is about falling down and getting up. It doesn’t matter how many times you get knocked down, it’s about getting back up.”

To see Punk so quickly and easily defeated by Gall was not necessarily a surprise, after all. He came into this bout as a 3-to-1 underdog according to Odds Shark.

Since signing a multifight deal with the UFC in December 2014 he relocated from Chicago to Milwaukee to train at the gym of renowned coach Duke Roufus.

The training footage that emerged as the fight drew near—in the form of a documentary miniseries produced by the UFC and at least one live social media event—had not been impressive. Punk still looked like a middle-aged man who had only recently taken up fighting.

He looked, frankly, like a guy who would lose a fight to any actual UFC fighter in about two minutes.

That’s exactly what happened, even though Gall only just qualifies as a “UFC fighter,” despite looking good in his pair of Octagon appearances. The fight company found him on UFC President Dana White’s internet reality show and brought him in for the express purpose of fighting Punk.

Once it’s all said and done, however, it might turn out it was Gall who used Punk to springboard himself to a successful UFC career, not the other way around.

It’s anyone’s best guess whether Punk will actually make good on his promise to fight again. It’s possible, however, that his second fight should not be in the UFC. The organization already had to make a special effort to go out and find Gall in order to give him a halfway competitive opponent—and things still didn’t go so well.

Is it even possible the UFC could find someone less qualified for Punk to fight the second time around?

No, it would likely be better for everyone if Punk’s MMA career proceeded along more traditional lines from here. If the guy has any hope at all of fashioning himself into a workable professional fighter, he should do it on the independent circuit.

He should ink a deal with a smaller promotion and take some lower profile bouts against opponents of his own experience and ability levels. If he is serious enough about the sport and talented enough to string a few wins together, then bring him back to the UFC for a second chance.

Otherwise, there’s likely no point in him pursuing his newfound fight career any further.

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