Joseph Benavidez – I did not see that one coming whatsoever. Miguel Torres was the class of the division for so long that no one could have ever guess that he would lose to someone like Benavidez. He had the reach advantage, the experience advantage, and had been improving his striking with Mark DellaGrotte. However, Benavidez charged ahead and stifled just about any offense that the mullet could muster and dominated Torres from bell to bell. We can only assume that a rematch with Dominick Cruz is on the docket.
Dominick Cruz – Speaking of the new banntamweight champ, Cruz impressive dispatched of Brian Bowles using a jumpy, movement based style that left me confused. You’ll have to excuse me if I don’t beleive that it will work against someone who is an equal athlete to him, but for the moment he is the champ. Expect the aforementioned rematch sooner than later.
Scott Jorgensen – How about that guillotine? He lifted Chad George up off the ground and than let him go and left him laying on the floor. With that performace, Jorgensen enters the top five at 145 and will likely need just one more win before getting his title shot.
Stock Down
Miguel Angel Torres – Things are looking grim for the former champ. There was a time where Miguel was at the bottom of the pound-for-pound top 10. Now, he is coming off two consecutive losses and has seemingly been passed by three separate fighters at 135. Will he ever gt back to being dominant? It’s not looking good.
Jens Pulver – It seems like I’ve wrote this column six times now. Pulver remains a legend of the sport, but simply can’t cut it anymore. He came out with a terrible gameplan. He knew that Javier Vasquez wanted to take him down, but instead of concentrating on his sprawl, he was throwing kicks. It didn’t make much sense. Now a loser of 9-of-13, you’d have to assume that he is done as a fighter and will concentrate on coaching.
The WEC – With the move to pay-per-view coming, the best thing that could have happened to the WEC was the fighters that already have name recognition winning. Guys like Torres and Brian Bowles winning was an important step towards creating stars that can headline money making cards that aren’t named Urijah Faber. However, they now have to start all over again with Cruz and Benavidez. Not good.
It appears that everyone in the world has put their two cents into the recent conversation about the state of the closed guard. Recently, Bloody Elbow put up another article with people’s thoughts about it. The one that I would really like to look at is the words of Japanese lightweight Shinya Aoki. This whole thing started when Jon Fitch said that the closed guard is dead, but mentioned Aoki as someone you still uses it well.
However, that didn’t stop Aoki from agreeing with Fitch.
I heard Jon Fitch said “The closed guard is dead in MMA” oh,yes,yes,i agree! absolutely Yes!!
Long time closed guard means present my lose by decision to opponent. If I am closed position, I have to recover quickly.
Pressure of sweep & submission…..but it is prolog of stand.how can I stand again from guard? it is united technic of submission, sweep,and stand…..We need groud technic to stand again. Do you know it?……….Sorry I can not explain it perfectly,,,it….I want to say “MMA IS MMA.”MMA is not “striking + Ground”…so , it is called as MMA!!
While Aoki’s english is suspect, his point remains correct. The best course of action in a modern day MMA fight is to stay off your back at all times. Fighters who have good wrestling are simply too good to allow the space necessary to pull off a submission from the bottom.
However, there is some merit to being able to work from the bottom. I’m going to make a bold prediction here, but I think we are going to see sweeps become a lot more common over the next few years. The sweep is the quickest way to improve position from the bottom for guys who don’t want to stand back up. If BJJ guys start focusing more on the ability to sweep rather than submissions from the bottom, they could turn it into a more frequent occurrence, and maybe even a serious weapon.
For those who aren’t as skilled, the bottom game is going to equate to the ability to stand back up. The fact that there are so many wrestlers who still don’t look like the have the ability to stand back up is amazing to me. Wrestlers simply need to learn to hip escape, or at the very least make sure that they don’t get taken down.
Is the closed guard dead? Kinda. It’s dead in the way that Royce Gracie used it back in the day. There is no more waiting for your opponent to make a mistake. There is an effective way to use the guard, and that is finding a way to sweep or stand.
Something funny happens when you live every single day of your life covering MMA. You begin looking at every fight you see like it’s in a cage and people are trained fighters. When we saw Rick Porcello chuck Kevin Youkilis to the floor, Jason called it what it was: A judo throw. When Jorge Posada fought earlier in the year, I got a ton of crap for commenting on his unintentional sprawl.
Now, it seems like I see fights just about every week. No, I’m not talking about my raucous social life. I’m talking about MTV’s latest hit show Jersey Shore. While most of the fights get broken up pretty quickly, I was really impressed with something that happened on last week’s episode. Check out Ronnie’s skills in this little brawl:
Now, let’s take a look at what happens in this one. After the punk guy hides behind his girlfriend for about 30 seconds, Ronnie drops his quickly. Now, besides the terrible footwork, he manages to drop the guy pretty easily. After grabbing his head, Ronnie throws a pretty mean looking knee to the dome. Then, he falls into what I’m gonna call “Drunken Full Mount.” He lands some shots, but the punk guy does a good job controlling him from the bottom. What Ronnie should have done was postured up and really rained down some heavy blows.
I’m sure there will another fight on the show next week. Maybe we’ll make this a weekly thing.
I was really impressed with the WEC card on Versus last night. There were some really good fights including the public’s introducted to Jose Aldo, who could be their featherweight title holder for a long time.
The bonuses came out today, and all three went to separate fights, which is always a sign of a really good card. From MMA Weekly:
Four fighters took home $10,000 performance bonuses at WEC 44, general manager Reed Harris announced at the event’s post-fight press conference on Saturday evening.
Newly crowned featherweight champion Jose Aldo took home the Knockout of the Night bonus for his second round stoppage of three-time champion Mike Brown.
Team Takedown lightweight Shane Roller took home submission honors for his third round submission of Danny Castillo.
Fight of the Night honors went to Cub Swanson and John Franchi, who waged a three round war before Swanson cinched in a bottom of the ninth guillotine choke. Both banked an extra $10,000 for the showing.
Aldo’s victory was fantastic as he out-muscled a bigger fighter who tried to wrestle against him and failed miserably. Roller’s submission was timely, as he was in a fight could have been catastrophic if he let it go to the judges.
If you missed the fights, definitely take the time to find a replay. A real good night of fights.
Well, it looks like Dana White isn’t going to wait for Strikeforce to schedule Fedor’s first fight to have B.J. Penn defend his lightweight title. According to MMA Weekly, Diego Sanchez will get his shot against the Hawaiian on December 12th on Pay-Per-View.
After weeks of speculation, the fight is settled and so is the date.
UFC lightweight champion B.J. Penn will fight Diego Sanchez in the co-main event of UFC 107, which also features a battle between The Ultimate Fighter Season 10 coaches Quinton “Rampage” Jackson and Rashad Evans.
“B.J. is fighting Dec. 12,” UFC president Dana White stated Thursday afternoon in a video blog on BJPenn.com.
White already confirmed the bout a week ago at the UFC 102 pre-fight press conference. At the time, he said there was a chance it would headline an as of yet unannounced third November event that would be neither a pay-per-view nor a Spike TV event, leading to speculation about the oft-rumored network television deal.
Whatever the reason, a third November event has yet to materialize.
White has frequently stated, “Once we get the right offer, we will be on network television.” Apparently the right offer hasn’t yet arrived, or at least not in time for November.
There have long been rumors that whenever Fedor stepped foot into a Strikeforce ring, White and the UFC would counterprogram a huge draw like Penn or Anderson Silva on free TV. Since Silva doesn’t seem to want fight anyone right now, It was assumed that Penn and Sanchez would be the fight headlining that card. Now, You have to wonder what White still has left in the cupboard to counterprogram with. All the champions and big draws are booked through the end of the year.
As for the fight, I still am not a big beleiver in Sanchez. He has a very good ground game as long as he is on top, and showed decent elbows from the bottom in his instant classic bout against Clay Guida, but make no mistake; Penn is not Clay Guida. I wonder if Sanchez will be able to get Penn down, and if he does, Penn will completely neutralize his submission game and maybe even sweep him. B.J. is sharper on the feet as well, and will likely dominate this fight.
Brand New, one of my favorite bands since high school, is coming out with a new CD. Brand New will be releasing “Daisy” on September 22nd. However, to tide you over till then Brand New’s new single “At the bottom” has hit YouTube and officially releases on I-Tunes tomorrow.
March 7, 2010, at 3:39 pm
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