Maia Prayer Vigil

I agree that wont be easy for maia to get the td, but getting GnP from hg is a disaster recipe from TW, you can be sure as hell he isnt going to try that. dude is smart, I bet my life hes not going to try to outgrapple maia, hell just try to stand back up and pull out of the situation, he doesnt need to fight on the ground, maia does.


If Maia KOs him standing F12 will lose its mind.
 
I love Maia as much as you but he's not immune from taking punishment on the ground. He took quite a few heavy shots from Masvidal.

Also, Twood has the second best takedown defence record in the history of the UFC. Jake Shields had 18 attempts on him and failed. This is not an easy guy for Maia to takedown. Not an easy fight for Maia.

That's a very misleading stat. Shields outwrestled him against the cage throughout the fight, and only had a few actual committed TD attempts. The rest of the fight he just wore him out with knees and pressure.
 
Very tough fight for Demian. Luckily for Demian's small gas tank, I think TWood won't be pressuring too hard. Maia can dictate the pace. TWood isn't going to be easy to take down so hopefully Maia can keep him at the end of his jab early on to force TWood to open up a little.
 
He does have a way of avoiding his opponents strengths though. He made things very difficult for Wonderboy in the second fight.


Thompson is a completely different fighter than Maia in many ways, not even counting the obvious ones.

His best performance comes from stepping off on guys rushing into him with counter punches, and against volume strikers looking to out point him, which given his own successful pointfighting background, he's confident in playing that game better than they can.

Tyron for his part was willing to simply not engage and wait however long it took for Thompson to decide to come forward to engage, taking him out of his comfort zone, as he is not used to fighting off the lead. Further more, Tyron is also not a volume puncher either, preferring to bide his time and intermittently explode with bursts of 99% effort, not getting into the prolonged dancing matches that Thompson would excel in.

'Elite striker' and 'Tyron Woodley' are two phrases you probably wont see in the same sentence all that often, but as they so and so often say, styles make fights, and his habits matched up very well with Wonderboy.

Even thought Thompson was attempting to fight on the lead, at the same time, he was also timid, unwilling to fully commit to engagements or get too close to Woodley. This resulted in a 'worst of both worlds' situation, where the chief result was simply placing himself in prime critical range for Tyron to uncork his overhand all night.

Twood is used to fighting people being afraid of him, who give him too much respect; he has difficulty dealing with people willing to get into his face and pressure him, and all three guys who have beaten him in the past utilized this strategy.
 
Thompson is a completely different fighter than Maia in many ways, not even counting the obvious ones.

His best performance comes from stepping off on guys rushing into him with counter punches, and against volume strikers looking to out point him, which given his own successful pointfighting background, he's confident in playing that game better than they can.

Tyron for his part was willing to simply not engage and wait however long it took for Thompson to decide to come forward to engage, taking him out of his comfort zone, as he is not used to fighting off the lead. Further more, Tyron is also not a volume puncher either, preferring to bide his time and intermittently explode with bursts of 99% effort, not getting into the prolonged dancing matches that Thompson would excel in.

'Elite striker' and 'Tyron Woodley' are two phrases you probably wont see in the same sentence all that often, but as they so and so often say, styles make fights, and his habits matched up very well with Wonderboy.

Even thought Thompson was attempting to fight on the lead, at the same time, he was also timid, unwilling to fully commit to engagements or get too close to Woodley. This resulted in a 'worst of both worlds' situation, where the chief result was simply placing himself in prime critical range for Tyron to uncork his overhand all night.

Twood is used to fighting people being afraid of him, who give him too much respect; he has difficulty dealing with people willing to get into his face and pressure him, and all three guys who have beaten him in the past utilized this strategy.

spot on.

rmongler 6, scout 0.
 
The way i see it, the real x-factors in this fight are, of course for starters, the short turn around from Maia's last fight and less recovery/preparation time. There's the fact that Woodley fights out of American Top Team, and one thing i've noticed is that pretty much every guy from that camp in the UFC has good defensive wrestling; be it Lawler, or Masvidal, or Tibau, and so on. Im sure they have a very good system of practices they run and understand the importance of focusing on it. There is also the fact that Woodley has been training personally with Ben Askren for this fight, who in my opinion is the finest wrestler in MMA right now, although, his style and Maia's style are not identical. Actually, noone really has Maia's style exactly, which is one of his difficulties in preparing against.

Will any of this be enough to tip the scales? We'll find out soon enough.
 
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Audio is terrible but Woodley discusses strategy.
 
If Maia KOs him standing F12 will lose its mind.
That's... essentially close to impossible.

But it would be lit.

I think probably the most likely way he wins is if he comes up on top in a scramble, he could easily take the back and get the choke or armbar... but hitting a single leg sweep on Woodley is not going to be easy. I'd be worried that he'd lose all his energy within a round or two.
 
red-candle.jpg
 
Hi. My name is Tyron Woodley. I don't try to win, just not to lose.
 
Gameplan was never going to work. Sad.
 
Hi. My name is Tyron Woodley. I don't try to win, just not to lose.
If he striked he risked getting taking down
Knew Maia would lose and struggle to get the takedowns, just shows u how important wrestling is in mma
Sad to see Maia unable to get any takedowns tbh
 
No contest for repeated fence grabs.

That's my story and im stickin' too it.
 
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