Bleacher Report’s Jordy McElroy:The judging system in MMA has been a perennial topic of hot debate. Whether it’s due to inexperience or a lack of monitors, fans and fighters are fed up with controversial decisions. What if extra rounds were added to ev…
Bleacher Report’s Jordy McElroy:
The judging system in MMA has been a perennial topic of hot debate.
Whether it’s due to inexperience or a lack of monitors, fans and fighters are fed up with controversial decisions.
What if extra rounds were added to every fight?
Just think about it. What if the first championship bout between Lyoto Machida and Mauricio “Shogun” Rua went five more rounds? How about an extra two rounds in the grudge fight between Rashad Evans and Quinton “Rampage” Jackson? Machida versus Rampage?
UFC heavyweight contender Roy “Big Country” Nelson recently spoke to ESPN.com about the addition of three-minute rounds.
This would extend the rounds in every professional MMA bout to five, and championship bouts would be decided in 10 rounds.
“They want to add more championship rounds. That’s where I say switch everything to three minutes and go 10 rounds. Then you have a lot of ups and downs,” said Nelson.
By now I’m sure we have heard the big news. At UFC 130 former Light Heavyweight Champion Quinton “Rampage” Jackson will meet Matt “The Hammer” Hamill, in what will be the new main event. Both of these fighters co…
Next to UFC 129 in Toronto, the largest MMA event in Ontario is coming up on Thursday May 19th. Jones Entertainment Group is proud to present MMA Live 1: London, which will headline mixed martial arts veteran and colourful Karo “The Heat” Parisyan vs. …
Next to UFC 129 in Toronto, the largest MMA event in Ontario is coming up on Thursday May 19th.
Jones Entertainment Group is proud to present MMA Live 1: London, which will headline mixed martial arts veteran and colourful Karo “The Heat” Parisyan vs. one of Canada’s top welterweight fighters, Edmonton native Ryan “The Real Deal” Ford.
The event will take place at the 9,000-people capacity John Labatt Centre (JLC) in London, Ontario and will have a traveling MMA Expo featuring an appearance by Jon “Bones” Jones during the day of the fights.
Here are the top 10 reasons to get to London to check it out.
There’s something that never sat quite right with me in the latest round of Star Wars films—and no, I’m not talking about George Lucas’s complete inability to render believable human interaction on the screen. That’s a dead horse anyways. No, th…
There’s something that never sat quite right with me in the latest round of Star Wars films—and no, I’m not talking about George Lucas’s complete inability to render believable human interaction on the screen. That’s a dead horse anyways.
No, this is more of a storytelling problem. In Revenge of the Sith it’s established pretty clearly that Count Dooku, played by Christopher Lee (and continuing the unfortunate Lucas trend of giving major bad guys names that sound like poop) is the superior jedi to Obi-Wan Kenobi, played by Ewan McGregor. This is established over multiple confrontations and is even mentioned in a line of dialogue.
So when Hayden Christensen’s Anakin Skywalker defeats Count Dooku and rather easily at that, it would seem to establish a pretty clear hierarchy: Anakin Skywalker>Count Dooku>Obi-Wan Kenobi. That seems pretty obvious, no?
So when Obi-Wan and Anakin Skywalker fight in the films climactic final battle, logic tells us that Skywalker should defeat Kenobi handily. Instead, spoiler alert, he is handed a crushing defeat.
What is the point of this nerdy diversion?
Just to say that styles make fights, folks – even in a galaxy far, far away.
When Brock Lesnar faces off against Junior Dos Santos at UFC 131 on June 11th in Vancouver, there won’t be any mystery what the stylistic question is heading into the fight.
Can Brock Lesnar overcome Junior Dos Santos’ striking?
Of all that Lesnar has lost over the last year—his heavyweight crown, his love of red meat, the respect of the Canadian health care industry—none has been more damaging to Brock then the loss of his “aura” of invincibility. And a good deal of that has been due to just how poor Lesnar has looked on the feet in his last couple outings.
It started against fellow man-monster Shane Carwin, who battered Lesnar to within an inch of his life in their UFC 116 tilt. Sure, Lesnar came back to win it eventually, but he sure looked shaky on the feet against Carwin that first round.
Of course, Shane Carwin is the hardest hitting fighter at HW, so fans largely have him a pass on that one. Against Cain Velasquezl however, the free passes came to a halt.
Once derided for his “pillow fists,” Velasquez absolutely shellacked Lesnar on the feet. What made it worse was Lesnar’s reaction to said shellacking. The moment fist touched face, Brock’s poise and composure went out the window. The “Baddest Man On The Planet” stumbled backwards like a drunk elephant, desperately trying to cover up before flopping down to the canvas.
It wasn’t exactly his proudest moment. And since that loss, the critics have come out in full force.
“Lesnar can’t take a punch!” “Lesnar’s chin is a myth!” “Brock hasn’t been training his striking!”
These calls more than anything have hounded him since his one-sided title loss.
And they haven’t exactly been helped by the swirl of rumors regarding his less than stellar striking training while in camp.
Case in point: Lesnar brought respected kickboxer (and high-fiver, to boot) Pat Berry into camp— supposedly with express instructions not to punch Brock in anything resembling his face. Seems kinda counter-intuitive, no?
Or how about the one where Brock fired respected MMA coach Greg Nelson, who’s worked with Sean Sherk, Matt Hughes, Nick Thompson and Kaitlin Young? All because Nelson broke the vaunted “cone of silence” surrounding Lesnar’s bout with diverticulitis.
Now Lesnar’s camps are managed by Marty Morgan, who has proven cred as a wrestling coach, but not much in the way of striking acumen.
All of this has added up to paint an unflattering portrait of the man who was and very well could be again, far and away the biggest draw in MMA today.
So leading into the fight with Dos Santos, an explosive striker with hands like Tomahawk missiles, many fans have seemingly written off Lesnar. Dos Santos will simply exploit the weakness already laid bare by Carwin and Velasquez and pop Brock one right in the squash. The fight, presumably, will then take care of itself.
Well, in a strange way, those fans are absolutely right and absolutely wrong, too.
Is it safe to write off Lesnar’s striking? In this fight, I think it is. That’s not to say Lesnar can’t improve his stand up game whatsoever, because that would be absurd. The man is a freak athlete with the dedication, time and resources to improve in any discipline he so chooses.
It’s just that in this fight, such improvement would be incidental to the outcome of the fight. In other words, Lesnar could do nothing but train boxing with Freddie Roach, kickboxing with Duke Rufus, and front kicks with Steven Seagal every day from now until the fight, and he still won’t have close to as good a striking game as Junior Dos Santos.
So if I were him, I’d throw that notion out the window all together. Since the dawn of MMA, those with mediocre stand up have compensated for it with monster wrestling. Lesnar is just the latest in a long line of champions cut from the same cloth as Mark Coleman and Matt Hughes.
Lesnar has been the inferior striker to every opponent he’s ever faced. Frank “Mur” was the superior striker. Heath Herring was the superior striker (on paper, at least). Even Randy Couture was a superior striker, TKO victory notwithstanding.
In fact, that Randy fight may have done as much harm to Lesnar as any stomach virus, at least as far as mindset goes. It convinced him he could be competitive and even victorious on the feet. The crushing setbacks of his last two fights have hopefully convinced him otherwise. Knocking out a faded (and much smaller) Randy Couture does not mean you’re ready to stand with a Carwin, Velasquez or Dos Santos.
Instead, Lesnar needs to dance with the girl who brought him: wrestling.
He’s much bigger than Junior, and likely much stronger as well. Lesnar should implement a Couture-esque game plan in this one, standing on the feet just long enough to bull-rush Dos Santos to the cage and hold him there. From there, he can work dirty boxing, takedowns, grind Junior’s gas tank down (we saw in the Roy Nelson fight that it’s not exactly infinite) and stay out of trouble.
The question in this fight isn’t, “Can Lesnar overcome the striking of Junior Dos Santos?” but, “Can Junior Dos Santos overcome the wrestling of Brock Lesnar?”
A knockout and then a proposal made it one heck of a weekend for MMA fighter Bryan Baker. Baker threw a left hook to the chin of Joe Riggs in Round 2. Riggs went down and it was all over. Baker won the special feature fight at Bellator 43. Baker i…
A knockout and then a proposal made it one heck of a weekend for MMA fighter Bryan Baker.
Baker threw a left hook to the chin of Joe Riggs in Round 2. Riggs went down and it was all over. Baker won the special feature fight at Bellator 43. Baker is now 9-1 in his last 10 fights.
He brought his girlfriend in the cage and dropped to one knee to propose. He confessed his love to the hottie and she said yes. Congrats to the love birds.
You have to give Baker big props here. This was clearly a pre-planned proposal, which means he felt very confident he would be beating Riggs.
It takes a lot of guts to propose to a girl in a live national broadcast or in front of thousands of people.
My only thoughts on this is what would he have done had he lost? No way you want to propose after losing a big fight. He would have had to wait quite a while before popping the question. I doubt this WAG would want to be with a loser.
The worst part of this video is Baker’s now fiance screaming her head off after he knocked out Riggs. It starts around the :20 mark. You can’t even hear the announcer she is screaming so loud.
Maybe she knew if he won he would pop the question. I don’t know about that, nor do I know how Baker would put up with that screeching voice.
It has been a long time coming for heavyweight contender Shane Carwin’s return to the octagon. I’m sure the massive, burly contender has some pent up frustration in those frozen ham mitts of his. His return will happen on June 11th at UFC 131…
It has been a long time coming for heavyweight contender Shane Carwin’s return to the octagon. I’m sure the massive, burly contender has some pent up frustration in those frozen ham mitts of his. His return will happen on June 11th at UFC 131 Lesnar vs. Dos Santos in Vancouver, against 2003 ADCC champion Jon Olav Einemo. After a near twelve month layoff due to injury and rehab the question is, will his back surgery play a role in his return?
The Engineer is no spring chicken and at 36 years old, any major surgery is going to effect how you perform in different ways going forward. Carwin will surely have to monitor fatigue and test run certain twists and movements in his training, but come fight night I believe the injury will play little to no role in his return.
For one, I think he has had enough time off since his surgery to really test and work those things out in his training. We all know training cannot mirror all the intensity of a real fight but in many ways for a back that is recovering from surgery training can be worse. Carwin recently provided MMAJunkie with some insight into his recovery,
He has stated before that the surgery was needed to clean up injuries that he has had since joining the UFC, and that he was in the practice of getting pain relief injections to be able to train and fight. Any solution away from that practice must be a great lift not only physically, but also mentally.
The other main reason why I don’t feel that the surgery will be a factor in his return is his opponent Jon Olav Einemo. The Norwegian is no slouch as he is best known for his defeat of Roger Gracie to win the 2003 ADCC. I come from the “what have you done for me lately” school of thought, and Einemo’s last fight was a submission win over James Thompson in late 2006.
Carwin had this to say about his opponent, “It’s an exciting fight. He’s very dangerous. He was picked as the man to beat Fedor back in the day.”
An interesting comment considering the fact that in early 2006, Einemo lost a unanimous decision to the man who ended up beating Fedor, Fabricio Verdum.
Make no mistake, this is a tough style match-up for Carwin. Being submitted by Brock Lesnar showed weaknesses in his conditioning and his ground skills. Einemo has been hand picked to exploit those weaknesses and see if Shane has evolved his game. His repaired back will be most vulnerable as he tries to defend the take downs that Jon will be shooting for all night and if the fight goes to the ground, it could be a major problem for Carwin. He has to keep this one standing.
The Engineer has had ample time to recover from his surgery. No doubt he has been testing it from every angle defending take downs and submissions in his preparation for what Einemo will bring at UFC 131. There is a real, legit chance Carwin may lose via submission on June 11th in Vancouver, but the back surgery will play little to no role in that happening.
