any thoughts on ufc fightnight

A lot of good standup battles and techniques used this Saturday on a fightnight card that turned out to be pretty damn exciting; anything stand out to you guys..

As for me...

Horiguchi...yet another guy with a karate b/g running a standup clinic in the ufc; sooon people are gonna start saying, I can't believe people thought karate didn't work.. This guy ability to maintain..close/extend range is amazing..as is his accuracy.

Silva/brown fight a reminder that you have to be able to standup to punishment or come back from receiving it...we always discuss tech to def attacks or limit the opportunities o get attacked. But the fact is your gonna get hit no matter how good you are..if ur not physically or mentally tough enough to handle that all the skill is for naught.

Phillipou looked very good..he got back to kickboxing...not jjst boxing..made all the difference in the world; as it opened up many opportunities to maximize the adv he has with his hands.

Lorenz larkin hasn't looked very good recently..dude can box..has great movement..explosiveness and an array of kicks and knees. But he has been avg at best since getting to the ufc...

The biggest hole in standup i see is how guys handle/attack a guy who doesnt make himself available to hit; when a guy makes people work to hit them or work into getting into position competent guys look awful..good guys look competet at best.

Also great show by cruickshank..that timing footspeed and range of offensive weapons is a problem for alot of guys..his shaky boxing (def/off) is gonna hurt him long term.


etting to

 

I like how Cruickshank keeps the distance, then suddenly closes the distance with punches to the head and then he doesn't telegraph his headkicks. And those headkicks does alot of damage by his opponent.

Cruickshank did that also in another UFC fight.

 

Cruickshank's head kick KO over Koch was awesome. The final combination (right head kick, right punch, left head kick) is something you don't see every day. The second punch was key to the KO because it disrupted the rhythm and helped put Koch at an angle where he couldn't see the kick coming.

 

It's pretty cool. The thing is that some TMA's, such as karate but also taekwondo (shit on me all you want), can help you develop supreme timing. Boxing and MT still reign supreme, but these arts were both developed in the ring, which is a much smaller area than the cage. Karate, as is, hasn't been adapted to a 5x5m/6x6m area and can do wonders when you have more space like in a cage.

That still doesn't change the fact that we're talking about very specific training in karate and none of that McDojo crap.

 

Yea I like how Koch sees the punch miss, then decides right then he's gonna plant and counter. More than anything Cruickshank confused him on the range. If Cruickshank didn't put his right foot forward and switch stances, he wouldn't have been able to reach Koch with that kick. More importantly, you don't see people throw two head kicks in one combo so Koch wasn't even considering whether or not one could hit him. The punch really blinds him to the set up step, then he's already fully committed to countering with a right hook (expecting Cruickshank to come crashing into his range) so he ends up hanging out in the middle of Cruickshank's kicking range. Beautiful manipulation of Koch's sense of distance.

It was a good card overall. Brown vs Silva was fucking epic. I don't even have any technical thoughts on it right now, I just loved it. Brown is my favorite fighter.

Phillipou did a great job cutting off the cage and punishing Larkin for the way he likes to disengage. He'll step his left foot off to the side and basically switch to southpaw to move in that direction, the same way Edgar and Alvarez do. Phillipou got him against the cage where he didn't have room, drew out that step with a left hook to guide him on that direction then crashed a right hand into Larkin while he was in a terrible position. Very well done.

Can't believe Wineland got knocked out like that. Didn't even realize who his opponent was at first!

 

As regards the Cruickshank knockdown, I think the punch was fairly incidental to the fact that he switched stances and doubled up on the alternating rear head kicks. That is not something you see in MMA and there was no way Koch would have expected another kick to come crashing in at head height from the left side because normally at that point the attack is spent and you can counter safely.

Brown Silva was great. Brown's 8 limbed attack is second to none in MMA atm. Knees, elbows, punches and kicks coming at you non-stop. His volume is a problem by itself but the fact that you comes at you from high, mid and low levels makes it extremely difficult to defend against plus he blends in sweeps and trips at the same time! The result was poor Silva was off balance the whole time.

Brilliant stuff.

 

I think the punch was a huge deal in that it hid the step to switch stances, and gave Koch the illusion of safety. He saw it miss, felt he was out of range and began a counter expecting Cruikshank to walk into it. He probably believed until the last second he was about to score hard.

 

I liked browns MT style throws, but his vulnerability to body shots is crazy. Jordan Mein almost finished him with body shot, then Silva doubled him over twice. Strange thing?

 

Its crazy how vulnerable he is to body shots..I can't imagine guys ARENT gonna start looking for that lawler...Diaz..conditions are guys who really go after their opponents body.. It hasn't cost him yet..but I can see it costing him eventually.

 

Yea man he's almost as bad as Tito and penn with that. I mean I know Erick silva hurt his last opponent bad with a body kick too, but brown was in the middle of scooping the first one and had to let go cause it hurt so bad.

 

I'd be willing to bet a LOT of money that if he fights Hendricks we'll see him throwing his left hand to the body regularly in the first round. He always comes in with at least one new tool specifically tailored to his opponent, such as his left uppercut against gsp, jabs and leg kicks against lawler.

 

I hear people calling for the title shot, but I can't see what he's going to offer Lawler or Bigg Rig. I can see Lawler finishing him after a body shot and Hendrix wrestling him. I could see Ellenberger wrestle fucking him in his next fight. Staying too far for knees and elbows, or too close to strike.

 

thats pretty interesting. I feel like the distances are all different for muay thai,boxing, and karate. In terms of closing the distance and throwing kicks from the outside karate/tkd do some very interesting things.

 

Yup, they do. They also don't translate to MMA without any modifications. The shape of the cage makes that it's already much harder to cut of your opponent, which is something people in point sparring competition and competitions that are held on mats instead of closed areas have adapted to, because locking up your opponent on a mat is very difficult.

 

Agree...brown volume physicality is a challenge..but the guys at the top end of the welterweight division are all very durable and conditioned dudes. On top of that...all the guys he would face are very big hitters and capable of going to the body.. Not to mention browns style essentially demands that he takes as good as he gets..and we know he can pitch..not sure how well brown catches.

I would love a Diaz/brown fight..

 

Guys with tma b/g who have done the point type sparring..their timing is always top shelf..usually their accuracy and ability to navigate range. I have sparred guys with that foundation.I'm general they are far and away ahead of most other guys...the nature of that type of competition and the training to develop those skills gives them a huge advantage in certain ranges of fighting; their issue is level of contact intensity durability. If those guys address that..then that then the other things become huge advantage.

 

Yeah I'm wondering if he has some sort of medical condition like Brock did because he is obviously very well conditioned otherwise.

 

Just watched Eddie Wineland in the prelims. What is up with this guy? I saw a couple of comments in the heavies about him having a glass jaw but it's not that it's because he fights with his chin sky high in the air but has his hands at his waist.

He does have decent footwork and head movement. But those defensive skills counts for nothing when he just hangs his chin out to dry. He really needs to work hard on correcting such a simple bad habit or at least keep his hands at home.

 

Just watched this fight. Wasn't what I expected. I was expecting Machida-esque slide and glide teflon karate which it started out as then Horiguchi turned into a more skilled karate version of Gomi.

He got caught plenty of times and while I didn't really see him being anything but the clear winner if he didn't have a very good chin or Montague hit harder I think he'd have been in trouble.

He hits hard, is fast, has a good chin, looks physical strong with good gas but is wild with it and I think a good counterer will catch him. TDD needs work but definitely exciting to watch once he gets going.

 

I watched a couple of his fights from shooto and vtj today... his td defense looks to be improving compared to those fights.

He is very wild tho, definitely agree with that. I think in part its a result of him being very comfortable with his submission defense, I noticed he always stayed calm and got out of some bad looking spots.