Objectivity

The two biggest obstacles to the advancement of knowledge in MMA are 1.) The perception that dissenting opinions are driven by emotional attachments (positive and negative) to the principals in the discussion and 2.) the excessive emotional attachments (positive and negative) that people have to the principals in the discussions. It might seem hypocritical or arrogant to believe that, but what I can I do? I believe it.

As an example, look at this. It’s a logical discussion that incorporates both statistics-based points and scouting data (which is, however, driven by quantitative analysis). People generally agree that Cahill might be a bit lucky, and that as a result, his performance might not be sustainable, though the consensus also seems to be that he’s actually improved (if not as much as his basic numbers would suggest) and that given his age, more improvement could be on the way. He looks great this season, but he’s probably not that great, but he’s probably going to be very good. Fair deal.

Can you imagine a similar discussion on an MMA board? Excuse the vulgarity, but we’ll see the president of the United States licking dogshit off a hooker’s toes on Fear Factor before we see a civil MMA discussion on the subject of whether a fighter is as good as his record. You’d have camps–some people would say, “people can make all the excuses they want, but X’s record is what it is,” and others would say, “X is an overrated sack of shit, and nothing he ever did mattered.” Both sides would dismiss the legitimate points made by the other as being driven by hatred or nuthuggery, and no one on either side would learn anything from the discussion.

Speaking for myself, I like being right and I hate being wrong. How much? It’s gotten to the point where, if I’m not right, I’ll change my mind. Drastic, I know, but that’s how it is. I’d rather see any fighter in the world lose when I said he’d lose or win when I said he’d win. I mean, you learn more by being wrong, but that’s no reason to root for it. Let me repeat: The guy I root for in every fight is me. There’s no fighter I like or dislike so much that I’d knowingly be wrong about him. Am I unusual? Some kind of superman? No. I think that for 99% of the fights that get discussed, most people are the same way. Most people have one or two guys that they cheer for and one or two guys they cheer against, and they have little trouble remaining objective when discussing fights not involving those people. There is also a bit of a promoter bias, but that’s a little different and doesn’t affect most discussions because MMA promoters don’t work together, generally. That kind of bias is still a problem because people are more likely to participate in discussions involving the one or two guys they hate or love, but the perception of the bias is a far greater threat to our understanding.

2010
08/10
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A History of Being a Fedor Fan (Pt. 1)

I’ve been waiting for some perspective to write on Fedor vs. Werdum. But then I said, fuck it, it’s not coming. I know I’m perceived as a big fan of Fedor, but I’ve actually been on the fence for a while on that issue.

The Beginning

He first hit my radar in 2000 during the RINGS King of Kings Tournament. I had heard of Ricardo Arona and how he was supposed to have great BJJ, and I was excited to see what he could do in MMA, thinking he could be the next big thing in the sport. I was disappointed (the first of many times Fedor would disappoint me) to hear that he lost to a nobody (Fedor), who then got beat in less than 20 seconds in his next fight. A couple of weeks later, when I got my hands on a bootleg DVD from the event (BTW, low video quality and boring event, despite some big names), I saw Fedor in action for the first time. I was impressed, but not hugely so. I would not have expected him to become as good as he later did.

Early Days in Pride

Fedor won a couple of RINGS tournaments I didn’t see that weren’t as big a deal as the 2000 King of Kings and then came to Pride, debuting against Semmy Schilt, a 7-foot tall kickboxer with a limited ground game. Fedor pulled off some slick judo-style takedowns and showed a nice overall ground game, but couldn’t put Schilt away or do much damage with strikes. It was the kind of performance that suggested that he’d be at least an interesting opponent for anyone, but not necessarily that he’d be a top guy.

That kind of performance would come next. Fedor faced Heath Herring, who was a young but experienced fighter, who had earned a spot in Pride’s first-ever HW title fight with wins over Tom Erickson, Enson Inoue and Mark Kerr and then lost a decision in a thrilling fight with Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira, the consensus best HW in the world at the time in that title fight. Herring had since beaten Igor Vovchanchyn and was looking for a rematch with Nogueira. He was a substantial favorite in the fight, and one of my personal favorites to watch. Fedor mauled him. Just an absolute beatdown. Scary. Got Fedor a title shot.

Top of the World

Nogueira was my favorite fighter at the time and despite the beating Fedor laid on Herring (and specifically, the manner of it, which suggested that he’d match up well stylistically with Nogueira), I figured he’d find a way to pull off the win. Oops. It was stunning to see someone just hang out in Nogueira’s already-legendary guard and pound the bejeezus out of him. I find that new fans have trouble even comprehending what kind of effect that had on people watching at the time. And the way he reacted (or didn’t react) to the win just added to the effect. I didn’t necessarily think he was the best fighter in the world yet because the possibility remained that he just happened to have the right mix of skills to obliterate Nogueira but wasn’t going to do the same to good fighters with other styles. Still, whatever your view of him was, he was at that time the talk of the MMA world.

He followed that huge win by fighting again less than a month later (!) and winning a little-seen fight against a decent opponent back in RINGS. Then he had two more fights in Pride, against OK but not great opponents, looking very impressive in both against two guys who were nothing like Nogueira. He did have one moment of weakness. Kazuyuki Fujita landed a huge haymaker which wobbled Fedor, who calmly slowed things down until he cleared his head and then went back to dominating. Fedor finished the fight at 4:17 of the first round. He also had an injury which kept him from fighting the newest upcoming threat–Mirko CroCop. Instead, he fought an easy opponent in Antonio Inoki’s show and beat him easily (the events surrounding the fight would turn out to be hugely significant to MMA but not at all significant to Fedor’s career, which is what I’m looking at). Nog got CroCop instead and won in what remains my favorite fight of all time. The post-Nog/pre-HWGP wins made it easier to accept Fedor as the best HW in the world, though they might not have made a big difference in his legacy, which is all future fans would want to talk about.

The HWGP

Next up for Fedor was Pride’s HW Grand Prix tournament, which featured the three best HWs in the world (Fedor, Nogueira and CroCop) and some other guys (one of whom became a star during the tournament). I was rooting for CroCop to win it. As someone who mostly was interested in striking first, I was excited to see CroCop come into MMA and do well. Nogueira was my favorite fighter, but CroCop winning would send a message to all the grappling snobs who dominated internet MMA discussions at the time.

Fedor got the winner of the last HWGP in the first round, which seemed like maybe a sign that the Powers That Be did not want him to win. Coleman is dismissed today by fans obsessed with rankings, but had been considered the best fighter in the world before losing to Nogueira, and had only one fight (a win over a decent opponent) between then and his fight with Fedor. He outwrestled Fedor in the beginning, as would be expected, but was caught in a beautiful armbar, which ended the fight in 2:11 of the first round. It was stunning how Fedor, who had been best known for his brutal ground punching, was able to pull off such a slick move.

In the next round, he faced Kevin Randleman, who had just upset CroCop. Fedor made short work of Randleman, but not before eating a massive slam that looked like it should have broken his neck. He basically reacted as if it didn’t happen and won the fight a few seconds later (official time: 93 seconds total). Another fight that added to his legend, if not his legacy. After that was a cookie. An easy fight against Naoya Ogawa. Ogawa was an Olympic silver medalist in judo and undefeated as a pro, but not very highly regarded. There was a cloud of suspicion over a lot of his fights (as in, they might have been fixed). He offered no resistance to Fedor.

Next up, was the big one. Nog. A rematch of a fight between the two best HWs in the world, but honestly, I wasn’t all that thrilled, as I had a hard time seeing how it would be any different from the first fight. However, Nog made some adjustments and, while he was losing, it looked like he might have a chance to lock in a submission. Unfortunately, the fight ended prematurely when an accidental clash of heads caused a cut on Fedor. They would fight again, with the winner of that fight being declared the tournament winner, and, as Nog had earned a shot at Fedor’s title with his thrilling win over CroCop, it would also be for the Pride HW belt.

Fedor/Nog III

The third clash between the two best HWs in the world was probably the most highly anticipated fight in MMA history to that point. As a fan, my rooting interests could not be clearer. I would have thought, at that time, that rooting for Fedor to beat Nogueira would be like rooting for Everest to beat Edmund Hillary. Nogueira was a passionate, intelligent, highly skilled and incredibly tough fighter trying to avenge a vicious beatdown and the only real loss of his career to that point. Fedor was a dead-eyed killer with an uncanny ability to shrug off what little offense his previous opponents had been able to mount. Fedor was a clear favorite, but the adjustments Nog made to his approach in the second fight gave me some reason for hope.

That hope was quickly extinguished. In the second fight, Nog defended better on the ground than he had in the first fight and in making Fedor try harder to get offense in, he created openings to possibly land a submission. In the third fight, Fedor simply did not engage Nogueira on the ground at all. And Nog’s improved boxing (a result of working with the Cuban national team) was not adequate to the task of fighting Fedor standing. The result was another one-sided beatdown, and, if possible, an even greater level of respect for Fedor.

2010
07/31
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On the Ascent of Fighters

There’s a widespread belief among MMA fans and writers that the sport is evolving at an incredible pace. How fast? Just to illustrate the point, look at Andrei Arlovski. He was considered maybe the top prospect in the HW division before 2005 (when he was 26). He won the UFC HW title that year and was considered an elite fighter until his June 2009 loss to Brett Rogers (he was the consensus No. 3 HW in the world before that loss). Now, in mid 2010, it’s common to hear that he was great in his time, but the sport has passed him by. So in about a year or two, he goes from being considered among the best of the best to being not washed up, but just as good as ever, but not good enough to compete with the next generation.

I think anyone reading this knows that there’s no possible way the sport can be evolving that fast. One point advocates for the Rapid Evolution thesis might make is that the sport had evolved past him before anyone actually realized it. I’ll address that later.

The biggest problem I have with the theory is that even if it were not true, I believe a lot of people would believe it. Why?

1. It’s in promoters’ interests to try to make people believe that the next event is the biggest ever, that the old stars are better than ever, and that the new guys replacing them are the best fighters ever.

2. There has been an explosion of new fans. It’s natural for people to believe that the stuff they missed is not as good as what they have in front of them. On a related point, it’s natural for people in a democracy, to believe in progress in all things.

3. Athletes in all sports get worse after a certain age (which varies from person to person and sport to sport). In MMA, that shows up not as a guy being late on fastballs (or cheating on fastballs and being fooled on breaking pitches), but as a dramatic ass-whupping at the hands of a younger man.

4. In the culture of MMA fandom, there is a tendency for people to interpret any analysis that goes beyond the level of “A beat B, therefore A is better than B” as “excuse-making.” That tendency is responsible for a number of misconceptions, and when combined with Point 3, it could lead people to believe in Rapid Evolution, even if it weren’t true.

Now, I should note that none of those points say anything about the validity of the belief; they only illustrate that the belief would likely be held even if it weren’t true, which should make us suspicious of it, but shouldn’t make us reject it without further thought.

So, OK, if Rapid Evolution were not true, we would still expect promoters to push it, new fans to believe that the current generation of fighters is the best, fighters to lose to guys who are below their level, and people to explain that relative underperformance in ways that reflect well on the winner rather than poorly on the loser. OK. What would we expect to see if MMA were evolving at a faster rate than other sports?

The first thing is, we’d expect to see fighters having shorter runs at the top than athletes in other sports. Do we, in fact, see that? The top MW in the world is Anderson Silva, who has been universally acknowledged to be in that position since October 2006. The top LHW is Mauricio Rua, who has been there off and on since arguably August 2005. The top LW is BJ Penn (some people would say Frankie Edgar, but Penn is a heavy betting favorite in his upcoming rematch with Edgar and would likely be a bigger favorite than Edgar against any LW). Penn’s been on top of that division off and on since October 2003. The top WW is Georges St. Pierre, who has been on top since 2006. Let’s stay away from HW. I have a strong opinion about who the top guy is, but at the moment there’s not much of a consensus.

That doesn’t seem like a short time to me. It’s far from conclusive. That’s a very small sample and not analyzed with any kind of scientific rigor. Just giving my opinion as a long-time fan who first covered MMA in local papers in the mid 1990s, it doesn’t seem that there’s any reason to think that fighters spend less time on top than athletes in other sports.

Another thing you’d expect to see if the game was evolving as rapidly as some say is fighters reaching the top with very little experience relative to athletes in other sports. That’s something that you do see. And then you’d expect a qualitative analysis to show a big improvement, which you see to some extent, though in some cases it’s difficult to distinguish between adaptations to changing rule sets and improvement. Specifically, there’s been an influx of really good wrestlers in the sport, who are winning fights against opponents who look superior in most ways (best recent examples are Sonnen/Marquardt and Lawal/Mousasi). Is that because those guys are better fighters than the guys who preceded them or because rules and scoring now favor wrestlers more than they used to? You used to be able to be an elite fighter with no wrestling skill. No more. There’s also more weight-cutting than there used to be. Is that a skill or do we just have to mentally adjust the weight classes? Who knows?

So sorry to have disappointed anyone who expected a firm conclusion. What I think is most likely is that there has been some general improvement, maybe a faster rates than you see in other sports, but the extent of it is wildly exaggerated.

2010
07/26
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Heresy

Pound-for-pound rankings are almost as bad as divisional rankings, but there’s an odd tendency for people to rip into unconventional choices (I’m thinking of Bas Rutten recently saying that BJ Penn is the best fighter in the sport here).

If these discussions are going to be interesting and informative, what’s needed are more people giving honest and not necessarily conventional opinions, backing them up with reasons and defending them under fire. What’s absolutely NOT needed is the stamping out of heretics that goes on so often on the Internet. In fact, I suspect many or most Internet fans like to read rankings precisely to see if the ranker shares their views or should be declared an X hater, where X equals anyone who the reader thinks should be ranked higher than the ranker ranks him.

2010
07/23
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Mistakes
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Jack’s Guide to Internet Argumentation

The Jon Fitch/Joe Rudi Paradox: If everyone thinks that you’re underrated, you can’t possibly be underrated.

2010
07/20
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Jack's Guide to Internet Argumentation
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What Makes Someone Overrated?

People on the Internet love to talk about who is overrated, and it gets pretty heated. It might be more useful to look at the general principles behind “overratedness.” The most important is this: Anything that makes someone famous other than his ability to win fights makes him overrated. Examples:

1. Pre-MMA fame. That’s an obvious one. Even a guy like James Toney, who was famous for doing something that relates to the skills he’ll use in MMA will be overrated if he isn’t buried by the UFC (that is, if they give him fights he can win, he’ll be overrated).

2. Looks. A fighter who is attractive enough to the opposite sex to get attention or just looks scary will tend to be overrated (examples here–and you can figure out which is which): Roger Huerta, Babalu, Chuck Liddell.

3. Self-promotion. Someone who talks a good game (hi Tito!) will tend to be overrated.

Other things along those lines would be announcing gigs or TUF appearances (as a coach or participant).

Other factors relate to records:

1. A fighter who makes a big move up in rankings/popular esteem on the basis of one big win will almost always be overrated. On the Internet, people tend to forget that styles make fights, that fighters’ abilities vary significantly from fight to fight (especially if they are very late or very early in their careers), and that chance plays a large role in outcomes. So if X beats Y, he’ll almost always be ranked ahead of Y, and if Y is a great fighter, X will be overrated.

2. Some fighters seem to get a pass for multiple losses if the guy they lost to got a bump in his reputation as a result of the fight. One fighter I can think of has been KO’d in four of his last nine fights, including once by a good striker in the clinch, once by a wrestler against the cage, once by a wrestler on the ground, and once by an elite BJJ player on the ground. Yet that guy is still generally considered to be one of the best fighters in his division.

3. Reverse of No. 1. Usually when a fighter racks up a bunch of wins against so-so competition, people are very skeptical about him, but sometimes, especially if the fighter is entertaining to watch, he’ll get more highly regarded than his skills and accomplishments merit.

Now, I know people are going to read between the lines and see this as a veiled attack on one guy or another, but that’s really not my intention (though, of course, there were individuals I had in mind here). My intention is just to provide a guideline for when we should be extra careful about the possibility that our perception is distorted. I’ll give an example of a guy I actually think is underrated and would arguably beat any HW in the world: Alistair Overeem. No pre-MMA fame, but he does look scary, he is an entertaining fighter, he holds a belt (another big factor), he’s had a lot of wins against terrible opposition in which he’s looked spectacular, and arguably one big one (recently). Lots of reasons to think I might be fooled about him, and I’ll have to be careful. Also, there’s the question of what public we’re talking about. Hardcore fans on the Internet might have a tendency to overrate lesser-known fighters just because they are lesser known, while more casual fans might have a tendency to underrate less-well-known fighters (and therefore overrated better-known guys). If I’m affected by that same bias, maybe that’s another reason to view Overeem with suspicion.

2010
07/19
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Sanity

Just a little supplement to this, I note that there’s been a lot of hyperbole about Shane Carwin’s punching power and overall striking prowess. Let me, then, just point something out. The seven guys he’s (T)KO’d are (and this includes ground strikes):

Frank Mir
Gabriel Gonzaga
Neil Wain
Christian Wellisch
Sherman Pendergarst
Rick Slaton
Justice Smith

It’s interesting to note that his two opponents leading up to his title shot happened to be the two “name” HWs who are the easiest to KO. Coincidence? Maybe.

2010
07/18
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The Great Schism

Not Eastern MMA vs. Western MMA, as the name might imply. That’s all done. No, Brock Edward Lesnar vs. Shane Cornelius Carwin (his middle name is not really Cornelius, but it should be — though Bannister isn’t too bad either). What happened? An epic battle between the two best heavyweights in the world? The worst title fight in history? Something in between?

First some background, not so much on the fighters as on me. That’s important because I’ve noticed  a tendency for people involved in this discussion to assume that anyone who disagrees with them is a propagandist for the other side, which in turns causes them to radicalize their own views and actually be a propagandist on one side. My intention is not to clear myself of any charges of bias, but to reveal my thoughts as they came about so you can identify any biases I might have for yourself.

I’m a long-time fan of professional wrestler — everything: The WWE, WCW, AJPW, NJPW, UWF, UWFi, AWA, WCCW, AAA, ECW, whatever. Name it. I’ve long believed that wrestlers get unfair criticism from the media and the non-wrestling-watching public. I used to argue with my wrestling-hating/MMA-loving friends that if Brock ever came into the sport, he’d be very successful and might even be able to take Fedor.

Me and My Brock

Let’s pass over the Min Soo Kim fight. When Brock first entered the UFC, he was matched against Frank Mir. I thought it was a good matchup — a “name” guy who wasn’t very dangerous, though I realized that Brock’s lack of BJJ experience could be a problem. and even though Lesnar lost, the performance he gave convinced me that he’d eventually be a top fighter.

His next fight was a gimme, against a past-it Heath Herring, who was a great stylistic matchup. Good showcase fight for Lesnar, and he looked great. The fight went as I expected it to, but actually seeing it confirmed my high opinion of the guy, plus he showed that stamina wasn’t a major issue. Then he got the fight with Randy Couture.

Couture was a guy who had previously left the division because he had trouble with bigger opponents who was in his mid-40s and coming off a layoff of more than a year. Stylistically, I didn’t think he had anything for Brock, though I was afraid that with Couture might be able to come up with something given his vast edge in experience. I was pretty torn. The result was a good win for Lesnar, but the fight probably killed any thought that he was an unbeatable monster. He outwrestled the much smaller Couture, but not in a way that suggested that he was untouchable in that area, and he took a lot of clean punches, which didn’t buckle him but did appear to bother him more than you’d expect. On the other hand, he flashed some signs of a developing striking game and beat a good opponent.

Up next was the Mir rematch. My thinking was that the smart money had to be on Brock, but I was curious to see how it would play out. Mir was getting mauled in the first fight before pulling off the submission on the inexperienced Lesnar. Since then, Brock had presumably been working on his submission defense, and presumably become a smarter fighter with more experience. Mir’s profile had risen with a win over then-consensus No. 2 HW Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira, but the manner of the win (mostly simple punch combinations, which the apparently shot Nogueira could not defend or withstand) did not suggest that he was an increased threat to Lesnar. He didn’t necessarily need to be, though, considering that he won the first fight. As it turned out, Mir posed no threat at all to an improved and focused Lesnar. Mir looked better than ever physically, but he had absolutely nothing for Lesnar, who came out with a smart gameplan and executed it perfectly.

At that point, I was close to being convinced that Lesnar was an elite fighter and was excited about what he could do going forward.

Introducing Shane

So for Carwin, we can skip most of his pointless early squashes, and again start in the UFC. The first time I saw him fight was at UFC 84. There was a lot of buzz around him, as he was supposed to be some kind of super prospect, despite being older than almost every top HW at the time. His opponent was Christian Wellisch, a small HW with an 8-3 record at the time (one of his losses might have been fixed, though) against mostly sub-mediocre competition. There was no talk of the fight being anything more than a showcase for Carwin, and he delivered with an early and impressive KO. Despite that, I was surprised at how bad Carwin looked, and given his age, I did not expect him to ever amount to anything.

He had another fight against a lightly regarded opponent and again won early but unimpressively (to me), and then was matched up with Gabriel Gonzaga, a BJJ world champion and a powerful if amateurish striker, who was 1-3 against high-level opponents and had only faced one good wrestler (Branden Lee Hinkle, who was 5-5 against low-level competition in MMA at the time and who Gonzaga beat by submission in his second pro fight). Carwin took some solid punches, appeared hurt, and was taken down, but then powered back up to his feet and caught Gonzaga coming in with a punch that didn’t look very hard but did big damage.

Next up for Carwin was Frank Mir. My thought going in was that it was likely to be a short and that each guy was facing the only consensus top-10 fighter that the other could beat. A short synopsis of the fight: Carwin goes for a takedown, doesn’t get it, they end up against the cage, Carwin throws punches, Mir folds. Yawn. But he’d built up his reputation to the point where he was regarded as a viable challenger to Lesnar, and “earned” his title shot and even an interim belt.

Needless to say, I wasn’t impressed with Carwin at this point. I was concerned about possible rust from Lesnar, but I expected a decisive win for him. So what happened?

The Fight

There are two common interpretations:

1. Brock withstood bombs from the hardest puncher in the sport and one of its best fighters in the first round, proving that he’s impossible to knock out. In the second round, he showed amazing “heart” and took Carwin down, and using great BJJ (something few knew he had in his toolbox) submitted Carwin. The win sealed his position as the best HW fighter in the world.

2. Brock reacted to Carwin’s punches like a little girl who saw a mouse on the floor (or Bob Sapp), curled up into a fetal position and prayed for Carwin to stop punching him, which he did when he amateurishly blew his stack three minutes into the first round. Brock then took advantage of Carwin being completely exhausted to unskillfully bring him to the ground and choke him out. The performance proved that both Lesnar and Carwin are terrible fighters.

I think the truth is much closer to the second interpretation, but it doesn’t reflect all that badly on Brock. What I took away from the fight is that Carwin is as bad as I thought he was overall, Lesnar is a much worse striker than I thought he was (though that might have partly been a result of rust, as he was coming off a long layoff), and Lesnar is making the kind of incremental improvements that I expected and hoped he would (polishing his BJJ game, specifically). The disturbing thing was that Brock was not able to turn things around by the force of his own actions. The momentum shift came when Carwin was too tired to fight anymore. My assessment is that Lesnar is still on track to being a great fighter, but he showed that he has a little further to go than I expected him to, and he might have  a slightly lower ceiling than I thought, as it looks like it’ll be hard for him to ever develop the mental toughness necessary to be a really good striker (it’s really hard for someone who hasn’t trained all his life to keep a good defensive stance and a clear mind under fire). I think Brock has a maybe 45% chance to beat Cain Velasquez, and I’d pick him over anyone else in the UFC right now. Carwin, I expect, will lose to someone unexpected within his next three fights, and he doesn’t have much of a future as a main-eventer.

2010
07/13
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Talent Distribution

The main focus here is separating truth from bullshit about MMA. And one of the most important things to remember in that endeavor is the shape of talent distribution. It’s not a pyramid in professional sports because we’re only looking at the best of the best. It looks more like a logarithmic curve.

So when you see a writer suggest that there’s a big drop-off after, say, the No. 10 in a division or on a p4p list or something, know that he probably doesn’t know what he’s talking about. If you could somehow quantify a fighter’s ability, you’d probably find that the difference between the No. 1 and No. 5 guy in a division is bigger than the difference between No. 8 and No. 17 (Note: the use of non-round numbers is not in any way meant to imply precision here). If we use Elo for that, we can check. At heavyweight, the gap between No. 1 and No. 2 is bigger than the gap between No. 2 and No. 9 and equal to the gap between No. 9 and No. 21. At welterweight, the gap between No. 1 and No. 4 is bigger than the gap between No. 4 and No. 25.

But what does cut off big after No. 10? Opportunity and hype. There are only so many high-profile opponents to go around, and there are only so many guys a promoter can push to the public as being elite. No disrespect intended to Brock Lesnar, but if he and Todd Duffee switched opponents, Duffee would probably be regarded as one of the biggest stars in the sport, and Lesnar would be regarded as a top prospect. Especially if they also switched hype jobs. The same could be said about Shane Carwin and Duffee.

2010
07/12
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My Favorite Mistakes

Given that one of my purposes here is to try to advance my (and anyone reading’s) understanding of the game, I thought it might be instructive to look at some of my biggest mistakes. I was going to do a top-10 list, but there are too many. Instead, it’ll just be something I do weekly or once in a while (being unrealistically hopeful, I fear the well will start to dry up at some point).

What has to top the list is my idiotic call on the Forrest Griffin vs. Anderson Silva fight. Doing a Google search, I could only find a record of me predicting Silva would win but mocking the idea that he’d “obliterate” Griffin, but I seem to remember picking Griffin, maybe before the fight was a reality. Of course when it happened, it was pretty much the textbook definition of an “obliteration.” Let’s break it down:

WTF Was I Thinking?

Silva was and mostly is a middleweight, while Griffin was and is a big light heavyweight. Putting aside the explosively and bizarrely controversial question of how big Silva is during his fights (as opposed to during his weigh-ins), I noted that Silva had never before demonstrated the ability to do damage to a guy that size and that he was not able to do a lot of damage to some MWs. So I expected Silva to land cleanly and consistently on Griffin, who is a pretty poor striker and very open to counters at midrange, which Silva is sensational at executing, but I thought he’d be able to get inside (where Silva is maybe the best striker in MMA — ugh) and make it a physical battle. I figured that if he could survive a bad round or two, his size and strength advantage would wear on Silva, and Griffin might have more success later. I had questions about Silva suddenly showing his age and maybe not being prepared for a real war. I was also somewhat fascinated with Griffin because I could not really see what made him successful, but he was coming off two straight wins over really good opponents and a solid performance against another decent guy. I’d begun to doubt my own assessment of him.

Lessons Learned

Probably the biggest thing is that as a long-time boxing fan, I probably have a somewhat distorted view of the way weight differences work in MMA. A boxing light heavyweight (175 lbs) jumping all the way up to cruiserweight (200 lbs now) would expect to have a problem doing damage to bigger opponents. With the smaller gloves and lesser skill in MMA, the jump might not be as significant in terms of the expected relative power loss.

Also, I probably should be less pulled in by bullshit about toughness and heart. I bought it because I just couldn’t see how a guy like Griffin could beat good fighters. Of course, everyone knew that Shogun Rua’s injury was a factor in his loss to Griffin, and the Rampage decision was somewhat controversial, but even the fact that he could hang in there with that level of opponent was impressive and more than I’d have expected. I should have stuck to my own analysis at least until Griffin’s Elo score truly indicated that I was missing something on him.

Finally, Silva’s age is a concern and he probably isn’t as quick as he was when he was younger, but I really jumped the gun on predicting his decline. It has to be a concern, but until he really shows signs of losing it, it’s a bad idea to incorporate a decline into an evaluation of him, unless we’re predicting how long he’ll be on top or something. Not for one fight.

2010
07/11
CATEGORY
Mistakes
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