Tyson or Ali. Who'd Do Better In MMA?

[mozfonky]

Grappling is not very hard to learn. It really isn't. Its organic to the human body. Taking a punch is not a normal organic function for the human body.
But either way, thats not what Nac is saying.

No one ever says that boxers would outgrapple wrestlers.
What we are saying is that, you being a wrestler doesnt mean you are some unstoppable takedown machine.
Avoiding the takedown process is easy to learn, and the better the athlete, the easier the process.

And someone like Tyson, looks like he would be probably one of the hardest men to take down from boxing, just due to his build, stature, speed, and power.

Maurice Smith told me he had only three months of grappling exp when he started fighting in MMA. I never thought it was that hard, I did think it was easier to learn, I just never personally liked it. I think part of that was my age and learning new things as we get older gets harder. The other part was, I didn't want to get too involved with the people I was around because I just didn't trust them.

 

[mozfonky]

It's all guess work you could be right but being dismissive on a counter point would be equally presumptuous


Would you have said an old man with no take down defense would knock out the former UFC champ heavyweight champ still ranked highly , before it happened

If you were to be honest you would have said no way

i would have said no way.

 

[mozfonky]

fascinating reading about Sam McVey's MMA fights, he had two and won both. He fought some australian who he beat but he'd been tapped out several times. The rules were the bout goes on I guess and he eventually kayoed him. The strategy was for McVey to let the guy tire himself out which looks to have happened and then beat on him. It worked, the fella threw in the towel.

 

[nac386]

you think so? I always felt really insecure about my ground game. You have to get close to strike and once they get ahold of you it's over. I never liked ground fighting so I just didn't learn very much of it. Funny thing is, most of my real life, security tussles involved grappling because there really wasn't a need for striking but you're still working with people that don't know what they're doing in those situations.

I'm talking about a heavyweight, which influences this conversation quite a bit.

Think about the heavyweight MMA fighters over the years, their age, and their athleticism. It is a historically weak division for MMA.

In comes Tyson, a notoriously athletic boxer. A guy that is considered an amazing specimen even when compared to 100 years worth of athletes in the sport. One that also happens to have the type of build that matches up well with the stocky MMA-type guys.

I do not have any confidence that Werdum could get to Tyson without getting cracked. We recently saw Werdum get his lights put out by a guy back-peddling.

Now, if we were talking about an MMA division that is historically very talented, I would not be quite as confident. But I do not see a ton of talent in the heavyweight division when compared with other divisions in MMA.

 

[mozfonky]

If Gracie had ever gotten to fight Tyson, I'd still pick Gracie. Gracie wouldn't have been in the line of attack. He was very clever about how he either was totally out of range or if he was in range, it was just for a moment and it was to get to a takedown. He was also bent down far enough to where a boxers' punches won't be of much use. The way he bent down, uppercuts would be the only punches that would be of any use. I really do doubt if tyson would be completely new to the ground, but like me, if you're doing that shit in the streets, it's nothing compared to a serious practitioner. So, he might be able to do a little damage on the ground, I recall Duran looking halfway decently in a wrestler match and Roberto once said he was a better streetfighter than a boxer.

 

[mozfonky]

you're right about the heavies though, they usually are pretty weak.

 

[mozfonky]

Dempsey is another one that fought wrestlers but in those days, fighters were generally more well rounded, Dempsey started off fighting in the streets and people forget now but boxing was close to mma a hundred years ago. Society was more fatalistic and brutal.

 

[ssx]

couldn't find some of them, renzo wasn't kayoed in the fight i saw, maybe he fought him more than once, i'll check.

I checked... it was Dan Henderson that KO'ed Renzo, not BJ. I also remembered Rolles getting KO'ed but did not remember it was by Pudzianowski.