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First of, I know McGregor is a controversial topic on these boards.
I want this discussion to stay objective, completely disregarding his personality.
What is this about?
A lot of people claim that McGregor will have his stiffest test against RDA at UFC 196, mainly since RDA has shown good wrestling and savvy BJJ, which is in general considered McGregors weakpoint.
But on what grounds?
Let's take a quick look at McGregor's UFC fights and find out how his TDD and submission defence held up, and the circumstances the fights happened in.
The Fights
Marcus Brimage: No takedown attempts.
Max Holloway:
- Holloway did not attempt any takedowns nor submissions.
- McGregor (surprisingly) attempted 5 takedowns and landed 4.
- rnd 1: McGregor missed one takedown.
- rnd 2: McGregor completed 1.
- rnd 3: Mcgregor completed 3.
- McGregor suffered a complete ACL tear, a MCL strain, and a posterior horn meniscal tear at the end of the second round of the fight [Source]
- Holloway has injured his ankle within the first 30 seconds of the fight. [Source]
- The fight went to a decision.
- McGregor passed guard twice in rnd 2 and 4 times in rnd 3.
- The fight was stopped within the first round.
- McGregor scored 1 of 1 takedowns (reversed Brandao in the air)
- Brandao missed 2 of 2 takedowns.
- Brandao attempted a leg submission but McGregor defended.
Dennis Siver:
- Siver tried taking down McGregor thrice, but the attempts were all stufed by McGregor.
- McGregor passed guard on one occasion.
- Chad scored 3 of 4 takedowns attempts in rnd 1 and passed guard twice.
- Chad scored 1 of 3 takedown attempts in rnd 2 (no guard passes).
- There were no submission attempts (accoring to FightMetric. I remember one guillotine attempt though).
- Mendes took the fight on 2 weeks notice (and was not training in between camps)
- McGregor had an 80% ACL tear 14 weeks before the Mendes fight and couldn't drill wrestling during camp. He didn't do sparring as well. [Source: here and here]
- Mendes suffered a broken thumb in the first round of the fight. [Source]
- According to Faber, Mendes broke his foot 5 days into his two weeks notice. [Source]
The numbers were taken from FightMetric and result in a TDD of 66%.
Verdict:
This percentage has to be taken with a grain of salt, as 4 (a third of all the takedown attempts) of the takedowns landed on McGregor were executed by Mendes, where McGregor's wrestling preparation was nil due to injury.
All of McGregors fight were at FW, whereas the RDA fight will happen at LW.
RDA is a powerful fighter as he has shown that he can both outpower and out-technique top LWs when it comes to wrestling.
His takedown accuracy is 44%. Among his last 4 fights his takedown accuracy is close to perfect.
- 9 of 10 against Pettis (no subs attempted)
- 2 of 2 against Diaz (no subs attempted)
If he comes in 100% that is. There is no real way to know before the fight happens how the wrestling game will turn out, as McGregor had a destroyed knee against the best wrestler among his opponents, Chad Mendes.
Discuss!
but keep it clean and objective
but keep it clean and objective
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