MMA 2010: Why Always the Fighting?

[Analu]

What age level is this? If it's just kids, I'd say it's good advice. Simplicity.

They're 19, 20 years old or something like that. So not kids, but I guess fairly young. I'm not ripping on Leben since I like him, but it seems like from what they were saying, he gives corner advice like it's him fighting in there, which is basically just get in there and knock their head off.

I've considered doing some MMA training myself (ignoring the reaction my girl gets every time I mention it), but would consider hitting the treadmill and the like for a good month or so, first, to raise my cardio levels primarily. Surely it'd be best to be at a high energy peak before taking on such onerous training?

Just speaking for myself, I would bypass going right into an MMA-styled Mcdojo and concentrate on one thing specifically at first (whatever you like most): boxing, BJJ, wrestling, MT, etc. Then get into MMA type training and round out your game. To me, it's important to at least have a strong foundation in something that you can fall back on. It's partly why I think striking/boxing is so sloppy in MMA, compared to in boxing. Of course I realize the stance is different and you can't really let your hands go cuz of takedowns and kicks, etc. but it still makes me wince a little seeing the poor striking in MMA. Anyways, kinda went on a little tangent there.

I guess running is fine if you're building it towards something. I just don't see the fun in just running just to run.

I did Judo for a couple years in college so I always get a bit giddy when guys break out some high level hip throws and trips. Unfortunately since Judo is evolved with a gi the vast majority of techniques don't translate very well to MMA.

That surprises me that you're so critical of the Leben-Akiyama fight then, as I thought Akiyama did a lot of nifty little judo moves. Or at least I thought they were judo moves, since he's a judoka.

[Ken Stone]

That surprises me that you're so critical of the Leben-Akiyama fight then, as I thought Akiyama did a lot of nifty little judo moves. Or at least I thought they were judo moves, since he's a judoka.

If you'll notice I was only critical of Leban :-p

[Analu]

If you'll notice I was only critical of Leban :-p

Okay, I only skimmed thru the posts the first time, but went back and read what you said about him. Seems a little silly to rip on him for being sloppy and not locking in those armbars, IMO. Reasons why are that he's always looked sloppy, he doesn't have the slick striking like Anderson, BJ, etc. have. And IIRC, he was going for those armbars in the later rounds, when both guys were covered in sweat and blood. Armbars are hard enough with those gloves on, but are pretty hard to lock in when both guys are that wet and tired.

If you're going to be critical of Leben for those things, then you should've been and, in the future, should be ripping on him every fight. Don't tell me you didn't crack a smile at those double punches, though. I won't believe you.

[Ken Stone]

Okay, I only skimmed thru the posts the first time, but went back and read what you said about him. Seems a little silly to rip on him for being sloppy and not locking in those armbars, IMO. Reasons why are that he's always looked sloppy, he doesn't have the slick striking like Anderson, BJ, etc. have. And IIRC, he was going for those armbars in the later rounds, when both guys were covered in sweat and blood. Armbars are hard enough with those gloves on, but are pretty hard to lock in when both guys are that wet and tired.

If you're going to be critical of Leben for those things, then you should've been and, in the future, should be ripping on him every fight. Don't tell me you didn't crack a smile at those double punches, though. I won't believe you.

It's been a week out since I saw the fight, and I was watching it in a bar so their was an opportunity to rewind it or anything. However from what I remember Leban had Akiama in that arm bar position, where you have your hips up on their elbow, and a leg across their face 3 different times in the fight. Akiama was saving himself by holding onto his own hand, but if his grip broke it was over. 95% of the time when you see that happening in a fight it is a matter of moments before the grip is broken and the guy taps out. Leban had him in that position many times and each time he let Akiama off the hook. After letting him off the hook 3 times with deep arm bar attempts, he catches him in a sloppy triangle, and gets the tap. That was my "What the hell" comment.

Really though, mad props to Leban for coming into the cage with a sub game. If he tightens it up a bit more, I would like to see him rematch Kos. It would be such a different fight now that Kos has KO power in his stand up, and Leban has a ground game he can work.

[Oorag]

Dream 15 tomorrow. Anyone interested? I'm really hoping that someone impresses on that card and brings a little spark of life back into Japanese MMA.

[Lasty]

They're 19, 20 years old or something like that. So not kids, but I guess fairly young. I'm not ripping on Leben since I like him, but it seems like from what they were saying, he gives corner advice like it's him fighting in there, which is basically just get in there and knock their head off.

I understand your point, but if they're in their first few fights that's not actually all that bad advice. It's not uncommon for inexperienced fighters to struggle with an aggressive opponent.

Just speaking for myself, I would bypass going right into an MMA-styled Mcdojo and concentrate on one thing specifically at first (whatever you like most): boxing, BJJ, wrestling, MT, etc. Then get into MMA type training and round out your game. To me, it's important to at least have a strong foundation in something that you can fall back on. It's partly why I think striking/boxing is so sloppy in MMA, compared to in boxing. Of course I realize the stance is different and you can't really let your hands go cuz of takedowns and kicks, etc. but it still makes me wince a little seeing the poor striking in MMA. Anyways, kinda went on a little tangent there.

I would agree with this. I certainly don't consider myself an expert, but I think that it's probably best to start off training in the different aspects serperately. Even without a real solid base (ie, the kind that takes several years), just a basic understanding how different arts work on their can really help you when you have to start putting them together. I'm sure it's different for a lot of people, but when I started training MMA I felt that because there was so many different aspects to learn, everything was a little fragmented. I really enjoyed it all the same, but it wasn't until the start of this year when our club started offering pure BJJ that I felt I was really starting to improve.

Naturally this will differ from person to person and club to club, and depends on why you're training. If it's just for yourself (eg, for fitness/fun/to get a better understanding of what you're watching) it's much less important than if you intend to compete.

Re: MMA striking

I'm terrible at striking so I can't offer any reason other than less time spent working on it and less need to be technically gifted, but it works both ways. Fighters with a striking base can have poor wrestling and/or sloopy jiu-jitsu, but that's usually treated as a fighter specific problem rather than a sport wide epidemic.

[Analu]

I understand your point, but if they're in their first few fights that's not actually all that bad advice. It's not uncommon for inexperienced fighters to struggle with an aggressive opponent.

I guess so, but kids are getting into MMA at such a young age these days, that I would think at 19, 20 years old they'd be hoping for more technical advice from their corner. Still, it's gotta be a thrill to have someone like Leben in their corner.

I would agree with this. I certainly don't consider myself an expert, but I think that it's probably best to start off training in the different aspects serperately. Even without a real solid base (ie, the kind that takes several years), just a basic understanding how different arts work on their can really help you when you have to start putting them together. I'm sure it's different for a lot of people, but when I started training MMA I felt that because there was so many different aspects to learn, everything was a little fragmented. I really enjoyed it all the same, but it wasn't until the start of this year when our club started offering pure BJJ that I felt I was really starting to improve.

That's exactly what I'm talking about. Most of the best fighters out there have a very solid base in one aspect of MMA that they can fall back on when they get into trouble: BJ with his jiu-jitsu, Anderson with his MT, GSP and Brock with their wrestling, etc. I feel like a lot of young, up-and-coming MMA fighters are the "jack of all trades, master of none" type of fighter, and while that's not a terrible thing, I think having that base is pretty important.

Re: MMA striking

I'm terrible at striking so I can't offer any reason other than less time spent working on it and less need to be technically gifted, but it works both ways. Fighters with a striking base can have poor wrestling and/or sloopy jiu-jitsu, but that's usually treated as a fighter specific problem rather than a sport wide epidemic.

Haha, I'm actually the exact opposite. Started out boxing and had some ammy fights in Silver/Golden Gloves, but was clueless on the ground until recently. Have spent the last couple years focusing on my ground game and am now a blue belt, but am still pretty green down there and prefer to keep it standing. Right now, I'm training at Fairtex, which offers MT, boxing and BJJ training, so am loving it. I take the MT and boxing classes 3x a week, and do BJJ the other 3 days. Damn good training. Where do you train at?

[Ser_not_appearing_yet]

I've never heard of someone just 'going into mma'. Everyone to my knowledge starts out with one discipline, then moves into mma later due to better prospects.

This is also the reason why striking in mma tends to be poor. The best boxers go into boxing, since there's more money in it than mma, while with Judo, kickboxing, BJJ etc its the opposite.

[Liffguard]

I definitely agree that it's a good idea to have a solid base in at least one discipline before branching out into MMA. I think that's a lot easier to do in the US what with high school wrestling. The standard of MMA in the UK is shockingly bad because anyone half good at boxing tends to stick with boxing and grappling is still an extremely small, niche sport. Judo is fairly big but Judo tends to work better as a supplement to an already established MMA game rather than as a foundation.

Unfortunately, as MMA continues to grow there is an increasingly large number of people who decide to train at an "MMA gym" with no previous experience. Then after six months of half-arsed training they go fight at some shitty little provincial show where they spend ten minutes flailing away at some equally half-trained numbskull. Maybe they eek out a win by points. Maybe their opponent has even worse grappling than them and they manage some poor excuse of a submission. Then they go away thinking about how tough they are and bragging to everyone they meet about how they're an "MMA fighter" now. Or, more likely, an "ultimate cage fighter."

[GSP]

"I've never heard of someone just 'going into mma'."

It's unusual these days but its changing. I think MacDonald, that guy who just had that war with Carlos Condit, is one of the new generation who showed up to an 'mma' gymn and just went. I believe you will see a new generation of up and coming fighters, many of whom had no tma or other experience before, training for an mma career. There are guys who want the cage and nothing else and see no value in training with a guy (sp?) or anything else that does not translate directly to the cage.

That's not necessarily the wrong approach either, to become well rounded enough in all aspect of the game, that all areas can be fallen back on when you are in trouble. I mean, what does it help you to fall back to your kickboxing roots if you are getting schooled by Cro Cop or something? Maybe falling back on your bjj roots isn't the thing to do when Maia has you on the floor. Falling back to your instinctual game only helps you if that is a strong area relative to the opponent presently giving you trouble. If you have trained from the beginning in all areas, maybe each arena of combat gets to be equally a fallback position, giving you more flexibility as a fighter.

But this is coming from someone with far and away more kickboxing training than in any other area, and I know if I was in trouble I'd revert to trying to land a big bomb, so what do I know?

[Ken Stone]

If you want to me an MMA fighter it makes the most since to study MMA as a whole, instead of learning a different discipline first. At the very least it's the most efficent way to do it. Take Judo as an (admittedly poor) example. The vast majority of Judo techniques are not useful in MMA, because there is no gi to grab ahold of. Also in Judo your goal is to throw someone and have them land on their back. That means that if you start to get thrown and can flip around and land on your front you are best off doing that. In MMA you are better off landing on your back because if you land on your front your opponent can take your back, which is much worse than having them in your guard.

That is the way it is for any other discipline also, although maybe not to the same degree. The techniques of any descipline are maximized to be the most useful within the rules of that discipline.

In a way, it would be like telling someone who wanted to get good a soccer, to train track and field for a few years first, and than transition over. Sure you would get a lot of great practice running, but you would also be wasting time doing discuss, pole vault, etc. If you what you want to do is soccer, than you are best off training soccer. Not sure why that would be different for MMA.

[Liffguard]

If you want to me an MMA fighter it makes the most since to study MMA as a whole, instead of learning a different discipline first. At the very least it's the most efficent way to do it. Take Judo as an (admittedly poor) example. The vast majority of Judo techniques are not useful in MMA, because there is no gi to grab ahold of. Also in Judo your goal is to throw someone and have them land on their back. That means that if you start to get thrown and can flip around and land on your front you are best off doing that. In MMA you are better off landing on your back because if you land on your front your opponent can take your back, which is much worse than having them in your guard.

That is the way it is for any other discipline also, although maybe not to the same degree. The techniques of any descipline are maximized to be the most useful within the rules of that discipline.

In a way, it would be like telling someone who wanted to get good a soccer, to train track and field for a few years first, and than transition over. Sure you would get a lot of great practice running, but you would also be wasting time doing discuss, pole vault, etc. If you what you want to do is soccer, than you are best off training soccer. Not sure why that would be different for MMA.

This is true, provided you have access to a good MMA gym and a decent amount of time to spend training. What tends to happen fairly often (at least in the UK) is that people who train "MMA" two or three times a week like any other hobby martial art end up diluting their training so much they're unable to strike, wrestle or grapple. If they'd started off with BJJ, wrestling, boxing or whatever first then they'd at least have that under their belt.

[Ser_not_appearing_yet]

The thing is, do you really want to be learning boxing or BJJ from an 'mma guy'? The best training comes from camps which focus directly on one discipline, which makes 'mma gyms' sound strange to me. Do they have several different trainers each with their own special discipline? Or what?

And if that is how it works, those trainers would need to come from those individual disciplines, not mma as a whole.

[Ser Barry]

The thing is, do you really want to be learning boxing or BJJ from an 'mma guy'? The best training comes from camps which focus directly on one discipline, which makes 'mma gyms' sound strange to me. Do they have several different trainers each with their own special discipline? Or what?

And if that is how it works, those trainers would need to come from those individual disciplines, not mma as a whole.

It is as Ken says, if you want to learn the individual discipline for the sake of perfecting that discipline then your idea is true. If your goal is to become a good MMA fighter then it is more efficient to only learn those techniques which are relevant to the sport. Liff also has a good point in that if you try to learn MMA from three sessions a week then you are screwed. If that is all the time you have then it is best to learn one discipline to decent level and then you can do 'maintenance' training in it once a week or whatever while moving on to learn another part of the sport.

What you are getting is young people with time on their hands who are able to devote the hours to picking it all up at once. Naturally they may concentrate on one area or another more at times but learning to integrate it all from the start prevents an awful lot of unlearning.

I'll give you two examples. Our boxing coach teaches beginner boxers to step out of range a lot. If you do that in MMA then you are going to get the legs kicked off you. There is no point learning to dance backwards from a jab when you are dancing right in to kicking range.

Or my brother who does BJJ and surrenders his far side underhook to me and allows me to roll out of his side control, in BJJ I would be rollling in to a Gi Guillotine but with no Gi I can escape him. He would have to unlearn that habit for No Gi grappling/MMA.

Of course you are learning lots of things which are cross functional for both the individual discipline and MMA but you are also learning some 'bad' habits from an MMA pov. An MMA coach will be aware of the differences and coach accordingly.

[Ken Stone]

The thing is, do you really want to be learning boxing or BJJ from an 'mma guy'? The best training comes from camps which focus directly on one discipline, which makes 'mma gyms' sound strange to me. Do they have several different trainers each with their own special discipline? Or what?

And if that is how it works, those trainers would need to come from those individual disciplines, not mma as a whole.

I think the point is you don't want to learn boxing or BJJ, period, unless you want to compete in those disciplines. If you want to learn MMA you want to learn boxing as it applies to MMA, and BJJ as it applies to MMA. I don't want to learn how to box a boxer, I want to learn how to box someone who may shoot in and take me down. I want to learn how to mix shots into my boxing. If I want to learn MMA I don't want to waste time on those aspects of boxing that don't apply to the cage.

[Renasko]

Bit old news but, what does everyone think of WWE's Dave Bautista becoming an MMA athlete? Think he can cut it? Not sure if it's been discussed before now, but I was speaking of it earlier with a friend, and was wondering how the general MMA community feel. General talk seems to be focussing on him making an appearance before the end of the year in Strikeforce, but no opponent has been mentioned as of yet. He becomes the third pro-wrestler to join MMA, following Lesnar and Lashley, no?

[Stego]

Can Batista cut it in MMA?

He can never be a superior MMA athlete, but he can knock people out. Muscle matters.

[Analu]

I think the point is you don't want to learn boxing or BJJ, period, unless you want to compete in those disciplines. If you want to learn MMA you want to learn boxing as it applies to MMA, and BJJ as it applies to MMA. I don't want to learn how to box a boxer, I want to learn how to box someone who may shoot in and take me down. I want to learn how to mix shots into my boxing. If I want to learn MMA I don't want to waste time on those aspects of boxing that don't apply to the cage.

Well no offense, but this is kinda ridiculous. Punching is punching. Simple as that. If you want to learn to punch properly, then you should box. Then you can adjust your stance, distance, etc. however you see fit to adapt it to defend takedowns, kicks, etc. Why would you want to learn boxing from an MMA gym when the general consensus by most fans/fighters is that boxing is still very sloppy in MMA? It just sounds like you want to run before you learn to walk, or whatever that saying is.

But if you're only interested in how it all pertains to MMA, then I guess that's fine and we're just on different wavelengths here. MMA might be the most efficient way to learn, but it's definitely not as precise and isn't going to improve your technical proficiency. To me, it's like trying to string together a 5-punch combination before you've even learned how to throw a basic jab-cross correctly. But to each their own.

[Ser Barry]

Bit old news but, what does everyone think of WWE's Dave Bautista becoming an MMA athlete? Think he can cut it? Not sure if it's been discussed before now, but I was speaking of it earlier with a friend, and was wondering how the general MMA community feel. General talk seems to be focussing on him making an appearance before the end of the year in Strikeforce, but no opponent has been mentioned as of yet. He becomes the third pro-wrestler to join MMA, following Lesnar and Lashley, no?

The whole story seems ridiculous. He has no sporting pedigree having not wrestled since high school. He had a ton of media at his first ever training session. This is Scott Coker seeing a way to make a few bucks before Batista gets destroyed. He is somewhere between 41 and 46, does anybody know the truth of his age? Has zero experience. Yes they can find a couple of cans for him to smash in six months but he is going nowhere fast. Kimbo had a better pedigree than this fella and we can all see where three years of training have taken him, with a decade less on the clock. All the publicity is good for the sport and the huge numbers of wrestling fans who are noticing the sport is a good thing but there are very few Brock Lesnar's out there. Dave Batista is not one of them.

[GSP]

I heard they are thinking of throwing him at Lashley for some kind of super fight for WWE fans.