Bad Chin or Bad Defense? you tell me

Nah lukes chin is legitimately bad. The punch he took from bisping was not that hard and most guys wouldn't have gotten finished from it. Jan blachovicz is not that hard of a puncher either and now luke has people thinking he's some murderous ko artist until they look at his record. Whitaker I don't think has a weak chin he just has bad defense and doesn't see punches coming. I knew people were jumping the gun in the Romero fight when they were saying Whitaker had a God tier chin though. In that fight he displayed amazing toughness and heart but not a great chin when he was getting dropped every time Romero connected. If you wanna see a good chin watch Romero and Costas fight because those are what great chins look like
 
ImmigrantMentality said:
Nah lukes chin is legitimately bad. The punch he took from bisping was not that hard and most guys wouldn't have gotten finished from it. Jan blachovicz is not that hard of a puncher either and now luke has people thinking he's some murderous ko artist until they look at his record. Whitaker I don't think has a weak chin he just has bad defense and doesn't see punches coming. I knew people were jumping the gun in the Romero fight when they were saying Whitaker had a God tier chin though. In that fight he displayed amazing toughness and heart but not a great chin when he was getting dropped every time Romero connected. If you wanna see a good chin watch Romero and Costas fight because those are what great chins look like
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Great points. I agree totally about Rob. But did I believe Jan landed pretty solid on Luke. He almost finished him with a headkick. And Bisping just had a perfect gameplan and hit him right on the button.
 
LHoee said:
Lol, Blachowicz has hit tons of guys flush with hooks without them going down. You are cherrypicking and assuming what Luke gets knocked out with is something no one has ever eaten before. His knockout tolerance is obviously lower. Luke gets knocked out with shots that have hit other guys and done nothing many, many times. What you considered a "good shot" landed on some fighter, but where you thought nothing of it after, probably had enough force to KO Rockhold.

There are countless physiological factors that goes into chin strength. Head breadth, gonial angle, jaw breadth, temporalis muscles, masseter muscles, neck muscles.

Luke clearly doesn't have the skull/facial structure to take shots. He has a gracile, narrow and elongated head.

Almost every fighter gets hit flush a couple of times each fight. There is no avoiding it.

If the force is enough to rattle your brain, "muh defense" will only do so much. Watch Costa vs Uriah Hall or JDS vs Struve to see shots KO'ing someone through the guard. Countless headkick examples of that as well.
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Yea lukes got the facial structure of a Ralph Lauren model not a fighter
 
There's definitely physical attributes that contribute to it but I think the most important thing is your ability to see the punch coming (this is Rockhold's issue imo) and being in a stance that helps absorb (why Silva got KO'd by Weidman, his feet were parallel with each other).
 
I kinda agree with TS. While it's obvious that some fighters clearly have the ability to absorb more punishments than others, most of the time I believe fighters that are called chinny have just bad striking defense.

Their chin is exposed, they don't roll with punches so they get hit flush.
 
GoshiShun17 said:
But all those guys can be badly hurt or KOed by shots they aren't prepared to absorb. Many on your list have been.
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You are correct but in general, these guys can bang and eat a lot of shots. Where Rockhold and Garbrant simply cannot.
 
xyzxyz94 said:
There's definitely physical attributes that contribute to it but I think the most important thing is your ability to see the punch coming (this is Rockhold's issue imo) and being in a stance that helps absorb (why Silva got KO'd by Weidman, his feet were parallel with each other).
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frandie2b said:
I kinda agree with TS. While it's obvious that some fighters clearly have the ability to absorb more punishments than others, most of the time I believe fighters that are called chinny have just bad striking defense.

Their chin is exposed, they don't roll with punches so they get hit flush.
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Yup. Let's consider the case of Andrei Arlovski who went from getting dropped in pretty much every single one of his fights to not even getting wobbled once in his last 8 fights even when he was hit clean by heavy punchers. The main things that changed are his defence, his reaction to getting hit, and his ability to see strikes coming. He doesn't leave himself over-extended with his chin hanging in the air, doesn't panic and run himself into the fence when he gets hit, and he sees punches coming a lot better so he can block them or prepare for impact.
 
Most times when people say bad chin, they just mean the guy has bad defense or bad reaction time And as you continue to get hit it almost becomes a self fulfilling prophecy, because we know at least anecdotally that as a guy takes more damage and gets older, they get worse at all of the above and their ability to take damage.

I think there are extreme cases where a guy is just seriously glass jawed, but I don't think that's what people actually mean most of the time.

I don't think its worth separating them, unless you're being very pedantic
When you say a guy has a bad chin, you just mean he isn't durable.
 
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The PosterBoy for both China Chin and Striking Defenselessness...

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LHoee said:
Lol, Blachowicz has hit tons of guys flush with hooks without them going down. You are cherrypicking and assuming what Luke gets knocked out with is something no one has ever eaten before. His knockout tolerance is obviously lower. Luke gets knocked out with shots that have hit other guys and done nothing many, many times. What you considered a "good shot" landed on some fighter, but where you thought nothing of it after, probably had enough force to KO Rockhold.

There are countless physiological factors that goes into chin strength. Head breadth, gonial angle, jaw breadth, temporalis muscles, masseter muscles, neck muscles.

Luke clearly doesn't have the skull/facial structure to take shots. He has a gracile, narrow and elongated head.

Almost every fighter gets hit flush a couple of times each fight. There is no avoiding it.

If the force is enough to rattle your brain, "muh defense" will only do so much. Watch Costa vs Uriah Hall or JDS vs Struve to see shots KO'ing someone through the guard. Countless headkick examples of that as well.
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But keeping your guard up is not the only or even necesarily the best form of defense. You have to move your feet, your head, frame etc.

Luke has shown better defense in the past. I don't know about his facial structure or whatever. Looks normal to me.
 
NoBiasJustMMA said:
I look at it as three different things, defense, durability and recovery. If you are bad at 2 out of 3 you're probably known for having a bad chin.

Whittaker's chin isn't bad but I would imagine it isn't as good as it used to be after his 2 fights with Romero, he was also coming forward when Izzy KOed him so he ran into the punch.
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Excellent way to break it down imo.
 
GoshiShun17 said:
But keeping your guard up is not the only or even necesarily the best form of defense. You have to move your feet, your head, frame etc.

Luke has shown better defense in the past. I don't know about his facial structure or whatever. Looks normal to me.
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Heres a good example of what he's talking about with Luke's facial structure. Compare his to the other fighters and you can see how he just isn't built to absorb punishment
BJo2bIhCIAATbEt.jpg
 
sampuncher said:
It's a bit of both but look at guys like Hendo and Chuck, both had very solid chins and once they had that big KO to themselves their chins didn't really manage to hold up. Mousasi from memory got Hendo with a jab and then finished him with strikes. No way would that have happened years prior.
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It gets worse after the first one. There have been studies but fans of MMA have seen guys like Chuck, BJ, Rockhold. If you crumpled up a piece of paper and threw it at Rockhold, he might get KO'd if it hit him in the head at this point.
 
I get what your saying but...
  1. Chins do get worse
  2. Even the best fighters get hit with big shots
Therefore no matter how good your defense is, your chin DOES matter. When that starts to decline, your career will suffer regardless of your skill level.
 
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