Fedor retires from MMA

[Julius Seeker]

Fedor lost to Antonio Silva due to doctor stoppage after the second round. After Fedor won the first round in a war of brawling, Fedor attempted to go to the ground with Silva. After throwing off submission attempts, Silva managed to full mount Fedor and g'n'p him for about two or three minutes before Fedor reversed it into a leg lock; the round ended before Fedor could do any real damage with it. The fight was ended at the end of the round due to Fedor's eye swelling shut.

Where Fedor made mistakes; he should have kept it standing as he was a better striker; but better on the ground than jiu jitsu black belt who cuts weight from 285, when you weight 230? Antonio Silva ups his record 16-2. In the first round Fedor missed several opportunities to land a huge punch, he has slowed down a lot from his older days; although this has been seen since the late Pride FC era.

The crowd was very upset with the decision to stop the fight.

After the fight Fedor thanked the crowd for their love, and stated that the fight went wrong in the very beginning, he couldn't get into the mindset. Then he stated that this was probably the time to hang it up. The crowd was even more so to have Fedor announce his retirement. Although I agree it is for the best, he shouldn't become another Sakuraba.

My thoughts, he will probably remain my favourite fighter to ever compete in MMA for a good long time: This is a sport where most fighters don't even last in good pro-level for 3 years; Fedor's legacy is that he was the top MMA fighter in the world for 7 years, and went an entire decade without losing a fight. While not the best anymore; He is the greatest of all time, and probably will remain so for a very long time. In 2002-2006 he was often compared to a cyborg, because it seemed unhuman what he could do.

[Julius Seeker]

Update, both Strikeforce and M-1 representatives think that Fedor will change his mind, and that due to the nature of the loss (swelled eye), that he will probably be the top replacement fighter in the tournament. His injuries looked bad, but were not severe enough to sideline him; no broken orbital bone, which was feared.

Would he have come back and won the third round? Who knows? Even at this stage in his career he could probably bomb anyone out given the right opportunity. I can understand why a guy like him does not want to continue, and feels this is the opportune time to end. He also lost in the World Sambo tournament last year in the quarter finals, he won all of them he fought in between 2000 and 2007, but lost his first in many years in 2008 in the semi finals. With a 13 year fight career in various sports, and approaching 35 years of age, now might be good. Finkelstein and Coker (M-1 and Strikeforce) may sound flattering, but really sounds to me like they wish to exploit his popularity some more. He is a very well liked fighter, and has a lot of fans around the world; he sells shows. It's time to focus on being the family man now.

[Joe]

I saw that fight. I was disappointed. That's one of the things I wish UFC would change. A time limit on ground and pound. I still like boxing better but let's not debate over which is better. Two completely different sports.

[MentalMillenium]

One of the few things I hate about modern MMA is all the ground-and-pound. It's why my favorite fighters are strikers like Cro Cop who can end a match before it turns into, in the immortal words of Penny Arcade, "twenty minutes of sweaty dick punching".

[Joe]

Hehe! Too true, that Penny Arcade. You think you'd see their best techniques....only to see them in a missionary for the entire round. Rinse, Repeat.

[Kupek]

"I love football, but I hate all of those running plays."

[Julius Seeker]

I blame the change from a square ring to a circular fence/cage; it much favours different techniques. Certainly strikers benefit a lot more from the ring; it is much better tactically. It depends on the grappling style for an octagon though, guys that can throw their weight around a lot benefit from pressing smaller guys into the fence, and strikers will have a much more difficult time cornering them. I predict that within 5 years, all the top guys will fight exactly like GSP, because that is the optimal strategy for the octagon. The ring was better, there wasn't really an optimal strategy; unless you were really good at everything and had a psychopathic mental state, like Fedor in 2002-2005 (and arguably until his fight with Arlovski or later).

Cro-Cop, I think that after his foot injury at the end of 2006 he was ready to hang it up; and then he got offered a large amount of money, and figured "What the hell."

Looking back on the old tapes from the middle of the last decade, yes, MMA was better and more varied back then.

[Joe]

"I love football, but I hate all of those running plays."

I don't mind the ground game....as long as strikes are eliminated. Loved watching clips of pure grappling on the ground. But adding the elbows and punches changed it. And as Seeker mention, the cage is used as tool for pure brute strength over technical skills (see BJ Penn vs Fitch 3rd round). You couldn't do that in the days of Pride.

K1 is my favorite MMA sport, BTW.

[Julius Seeker]

K-1 is awesome.

Jerome LeBanner vs Ray Sefo from 14 years ago (ends in brutal -jaw shattering- KO):

[Joe]

Rua got beat pretty bad last night, I read. Seemed like he was conceding the fight already and just trying to survive from those who watched it.

[Julius Seeker]

It was by Jones, who is one of my favourite MMA fighters right now simply because he is a guy who fights both differently and successfully. Although I didn't see the fight myself either.

[Flip]

Id love to see the UFC start a ring division, that would be awesome. With it already being the most popular and money making MMA corp, im sure they could snag the best ring fighters from around the world and make it a success. I'm tired of the sweaty ball punching grappling cage guys, too.

[SineSwiper]

Grappling is part of the game. Ground striking is part of the game. Boxing and kickboxing are part of the game. You would defeat the purpose of MMA if you removed any of those elements.

Yes, sometimes there's a lot of ground game. But, it depends on the fight. I've seen games where there's a lot of boxing. Hell, I love watching some of the karate fighters.

I remember one I was watching one of them on UFC (don't remember who; might have been Kikuno), where he's faced off with a grapple and punch opponent. The guy was a dodge specialist. He hardly attacked; he just dodged everything and pissed off his opponent. This lasted three rounds. After he was confident that he threw off his opponent's mental state, he beat the shit out of him. It was amazing to watch.

[Kupek]

I think you're talking about Lyoto Machida. Some of my friends hated watching him fight, but I liked it. It didn't bother me that he spent a lot of time dodging his opponent - he's very good at it. And, as his fight against Thiago Silva demonstrated, he's aggressive when he gets an opportunity.

[Julius Seeker]

Grappling and the ground game are indeed a part of MMA; but the problem is that the octagon and the ring favour different techniques, as discussed above. The ring generally allows for more skilled fighters to succeed.

Machida is one of the very few examples of a fighter who benefits from the octagon; he wouldn't be able to back and sidestep away like that in a ring. Ultimately, he is a striker where 9 of his wins came by decision, and 5 by KO/TKO. Don't get me wrong, I think he is an interesting fighter due to his different style; but I doubt people would want to see MMA striking go down that route as the major style.

[Kupek]

The ring favors fighters more skilled in striking. It is completely disingenuous to say they are "more skilled" in general.

I do agree, by the way, that the cage favors grappling. Having sparred MMA in both a ring and a cage, and as a grappler, I know that it's easier to pin a person to the wall, and use that for control and takedowns. You can sorta pin someone against the ropes, but you can't put as much of your weight into it and remain balanced.

People don't like watching what they don't understand. While most people don't have any experience in a striking discipline, it is more obvious what's going on.

Addendum: by the way, I've always thought that PA comic does the same thing to MMA that I know that Gabe and Tycho get frustrated with when it is done to videogames. That is, make fun of or pass judgement on something from a position of ignorance, while making no attempt to actually learn.

[Julius Seeker]

I probably can't state it any better than Nick Diaz without going into great detail, so:

Diaz believes that the ring is superior to the cage for MMA.

"I think this is the wrong idea and Japan should stay with the ring and the rules that it goes by," Diaz said. "They shouldn't give up what they've got going. I think the rest of the would should adjust to it. I think that it favors the more technical fighter and the more technical aspects of mixed martial arts and it's going to favor the better fighter and the more mixed martial arts aspect of the sports instead of the athletic part. You know, I think it's really important how they yellow card people and there's no elbows. You are going to have to punch down onto your opponent and in which case the guy on the bottom can make some space and try to get up and it's the same space that your trying to make to punch.

"It makes for transitions, it makes for action, it makes for the martial arts. It makes for the martial arts aspect to come out in the sport and for people to see who is actually who is the best mixed martial arts fighter. That's what's really important.

I will also add the finishes/matches results in the last 5 Pride events vs the last 5 UFC events. The major differences being that Pride had yellow cards (10% deduction from pay for stalling/inactivity) and a ring, and UFC has an octagon. If you'll notice, the top level octagon events are about three times more likely to end in a decision than top level ring events. While some decision fights are amazing and show high levels of skill, this is generally not the case. Usually the greatest amount of skill is showed when a fighter dismantles and finishes their opponent.

Pride Ring - 83% finishes, 17% Decisions
Pride 34 - 8/8
Pride 33 - 7/8
Pride 32 - 7/8
Pride 31 - 7/9
Pride 30 - 5/8

UFC Octagon - 42% Finishes, 58% Decisions.
UFC 128 - 5/12
UFC 127 - 4/12
UFC 126 - 6/11
UFC 125 - 5/11
UFC 124 - 4/11

Many, many of the decisions in the UFC are the result of fighters pushing others to the corner between the floor and the octagon wall, or against the octagon fence, or just simply dancing around and avoiding engaging; these are the three techniques that are much less effective in the ring. These octagon techniques also tend to be the most effective methods of fighting; this makes other techniques, which I feel require more skill, to be less effective. It also makes for a more uniform set of matches; there's less variety.

[Kupek]

I think you severely underestimate the skill required to control an opponent against the cage.

By the way, you can't claim that the cage favors grapplers because it's easier to control an opponent against the cage wall at the same time as claiming that it's easier to avoid your opponent in a cage. They're mutually exclusive. It's easier to avoid your opponent in a ring, because if you get pressed up against the ropes, your opponent can't use it against you as much as a cage wall.

It's also worth noting that the UFC cage and the Pride ring are not an apples-to-apples comparison for ring versus cage since the UFC cage is bigger. A UFC cage is about 30 feet from wall-to-wall, and about 23 feet from ropes-to-ropes in the Pride ring. That means that the UFC cage is about 745 square feet, and the Pride ring is about 530 square feet.

[Joe]

Removing the elbow ground and pound would be nice. There's almost no time to react to that. Who knows what the fight would have been in Penn/GSP 2.

Perhaps I'm biased for the Pride rules. Nick Diaz bringing up that point just strengthens my view on this.

[Kupek]

Pride didn't allow elbow strikes to the head, but it did allow all kinds of knees and kicks to a grounded opponent, including head stomps. (Source.)

[Joe]

Yeah, I knew that. A bit easier to defend compared to someone smothering your face while he throws an elbow for good measure.

[Julius Seeker]

I think you severely underestimate the skill required to control an opponent against the cage.

By the way, you can't claim that the cage favors grapplers because it's easier to control an opponent against the cage wall at the same time as claiming that it's easier to avoid your opponent in a cage. They're mutually exclusive. It's easier to avoid your opponent in a ring, because if you get pressed up against the ropes, your opponent can't use it against you as much as a cage wall.

It's also worth noting that the UFC cage and the Pride ring are not an apples-to-apples comparison for ring versus cage since the UFC cage is bigger. A UFC cage is about 30 feet from wall-to-wall, and about 23 feet from ropes-to-ropes in the Pride ring. That means that the UFC cage is about 745 square feet, and the Pride ring is about 530 square feet.

Obviously it requires a skill to hold an opponent against a cage, while striking him repeatedly; but my problem is that fighters use this and weight to win fights. These are not fights I am interested in watching.

The terms I am using are not mutually exclusive because they are not absolutes.

The parameters of a Pride ring vs a UFC octagon are not apples and oranges when comparing the two; rather they illustrate part of the problem.

A good illustration of what I mean by technical skill vs simply pushing the opponent to the cage and striking; note the fight between Fedor and Rogers. When examining individual skill sets between the two; in any type of fight, boxing, Muay Thai, wrestling, jiu jitsu, sambo, etc... I would argue that Fedor wins every time against Rogers; in other words, as a martial artist, Fedor heavily outclasses Rogers. Viewing their fight; when they were engaged in the open, Fedor was VASTLY outperforming rogers in both striking and grappling; as soon as it hits the fence, the weight and size advantage of Rogers comes into play; these were the only times when Rogers was actually winning because he lacks the skill set to do much else against Fedor in other situations. Had the fight been in a ring, at the 1 minute point, Fedor would have thrown Rogers and possibly finished the fight by the 2 minute mark. Rogers had one thing in mind in the fight, "push him to the fence".




Which fight do you want to see?

[Kupek]

Or, you know, as skilled as Fedor is, he had little experience with a cage.

[Julius Seeker]

It is doubtful experience would have played much of a role as the same thing happens to fighters with lots of experience; ie, watch how a vastly more experienced Gegard Mousasi lost a boring 25 minute decision against King Mo who kept pushing him to the fence. Weight was the major factor. I suppose with experience, Fedor could have learned that he could have very easily won a decision and avoided the fence as well if he danced around more; I don't feel that is a preferable fight to watch.

[Kupek]

You say "vastly more experienced," yet Mo was an NCAA All American wrestler. His wrestling was far better than Mousasi, and he exploited that.

[Julius Seeker]

Mousasi has fought wrestlers before and since. The fact remains, King Mo was a heavier guy who kept pushing Mousasi to the fence in order to accomplish a very very boring 25 minute decision. Not something that would have happened between these two fighters in a ring; also not something that any spectator really wanted to see.

[Kupek]

He used his wrestling to control Mousasi, which I found entertaining because I'm a grappler.

[Joe]

Remove the cage. Jesus. And you'll see that it becomes mostly skill vs skill, not retard strength pinning another guy to the wall.

[Kupek]

So... if I assume you're correct and I'm wrong, I'll see that you're correct and I'm wrong. Brilliant.

[Joe]

Nick Diaz does it again. Fist to face. The man is starting to get hit more often though. He got dropped but the man's jaw is granite and was able to KO the guy with 3 seconds to spare. Good stoppage by John McCarthy.