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Fight mileage vs age.
- Thread starter filthynumber1
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Mileage is real man. Injuries can really mess you up for the rest of your career. We have seen so many fighters with knee , neck and back problems never returning to their former selfs. But milage is more than just injury, it's the mental aspect as well. When a fighter goes through the meat grinder and back multiple times it can be mentally damaging aka youve been in the game way too long
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Rory Macdonald was never the same after the 2nd lawler fight
I rewatched it the other day and the amount of R jabs and L straights lawler landed on rorys nose was off the charts. By the 5th round that nose was mush
Nothing left of it and his nose and himself were never the same again.
What was he like 26 for that fight?
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Max is 32 but fight mileage is high. He ain't got long left.
Especially after get his iron chin cracked. Usually all downhill from here unfortunately
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Something like that. Man that fight really did demoralize Rory as a fighter. Completely killed his spirit. I guess his ego couldn't take such a beating. Rory was held in such high regards leading up to his fights with Lawler and rightfully so. The dude dominated most of his matches.
By that point it was 10 years in the game and he probably had enough of it. Kind of makes sense because he started to talk more about money and leaving the UFC for other opportunities.
If I recall right, he started to become even more weird in interviews during his bellator run.
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Age.
Age is seen and observed this way in every sport -- mileage, in terms of MMA, is relatively low. NFL players play from the age of 5-35 and they still last to early-mid 30's before their skills do them in. Many MMA fighters don't even start until their teens or 20's and still peter out by mid to late 30's.
Age is seen and observed this way in every sport -- mileage, in terms of MMA, is relatively low. NFL players play from the age of 5-35 and they still last to early-mid 30's before their skills do them in. Many MMA fighters don't even start until their teens or 20's and still peter out by mid to late 30's.
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Fight mileage plays a big role. See shogun rua or dan henderson or fedor. Jon jones?
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Then we have someone like Robbie Lawler who also started very young, was able stay in the game for years and peaked late.
Fighting is weird like that.
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Lawler, surprisingly, for how he fought didn't wear much mileage. Rumor has it he kept sparring to a minimum in training. Which is smart, I've seen some footage of fighters sparring and it's bananas
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Riddick Bowe was a damn beast
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Until he met Andrew golota
Who destroyed his career in 2 fights
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I just hope Bowe had had children before those fights
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The issue is you are asking people to compare something we can quantify like age and then ask to compare to an tangible metric like 'fight mileage' which is arbitrary mma slang. Unless there is a specific formula for fight mileage it's sort of meaningless.
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Mileage...but not just fighting mileage...sports related mileage...
Age is only a factor when the skill is close...
Think Randy vs Gabriel Gongzaga
Age is only a factor when the skill is close...
Think Randy vs Gabriel Gongzaga
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Its not too hard to quantify really...
A guy who's had a severe injury to his knee, alot of fights and tough loses...has way more mileage then lets say a fighter with 10 fights all first round stoppages and never been rocked in sparring or fights...
Its cant be tracked directly like age...but its pretty easy to see who has more mileage going into a fight ..
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It all varies. Each fighter needs to be objectively broken down to understand the nuances of a career only once complete. You need to be able to see the whole story to understand mileage and aging.
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I do think mileage matters more than age. But it's not specifically fight mileage, but more general body mileage - including sparring brain damage and physical wear, like joint injuries and injuries that aren't rehabbed well (either due to rushing or due to subpar protocols). I also wonder if cutting weight does any long-term damage that affects recovery. Some fighters can continue their elite MMA career with more wear-and-tear than others, due to their style. Eg Mousasi was always flat-footed and didn't rely on quick movement. Some fighters have built the skills to easily transition to a different game as physical limitations come along, eg Usman's knees are bad but he'd already become well-rounded enough to follow other gameplans. Or Mousasi had a torn ACL vs Latifi, but had the skills to follow a jab-and-move gameplan to a decision, which for example Yair Rodriguez likely couldn't do, if he suddenly had knee issues.
I think age itself doesn't matter much tbh. Vascularity/blood supply to tendons does decline with age, causing slowed healing, but I don't think it declines that quickly within the MMA window of 20 to 40yo (declines quickly after childhood), especially with these athletes doing so much cardio. Same for testosterone levels. A lot of non-athlete "aging" is just wear-and-tear from lifestyle, like skin aging from sunlight, effects of stress from having kids/work or sometimes IMO mentality or habits, like "I'm fat cuz of my slowed metabolism", which is just cuz people stop exercising as they get older (often mid-20s nowadays. Less sports, more sitting, less walking) and believe they're too old for habits that promote staying physically young, either because of ideas about being physically older or because they think it's immature to do it (eg immature to dance, balance on things). Sure, it gets harder to maintain at later ages, but people give in more than necessary. It should be a sign to invest in the habits more, but they do the opposite.
Not sure about Max's chin being cracked. Yeh, a little worrying and not legendary status after being dropped vs Gaethje and rocked and then dropped/near-unconscious by Topuria, but we've seen plenty of guys get similarly finished and still able to take a shot well enough in later fights, even experienced guys who've been in many wars like Poirier, Gaethje and Mark Hunt. Plus Max took a few years off from hard sparring, presumably from when he was about 28-29. If he rests properly I think his brain will be ok for MMA. He said he does things for brain health too, so I wonder what that could be (maybe some cognitive exercises for TBI?).
I think age itself doesn't matter much tbh. Vascularity/blood supply to tendons does decline with age, causing slowed healing, but I don't think it declines that quickly within the MMA window of 20 to 40yo (declines quickly after childhood), especially with these athletes doing so much cardio. Same for testosterone levels. A lot of non-athlete "aging" is just wear-and-tear from lifestyle, like skin aging from sunlight, effects of stress from having kids/work or sometimes IMO mentality or habits, like "I'm fat cuz of my slowed metabolism", which is just cuz people stop exercising as they get older (often mid-20s nowadays. Less sports, more sitting, less walking) and believe they're too old for habits that promote staying physically young, either because of ideas about being physically older or because they think it's immature to do it (eg immature to dance, balance on things). Sure, it gets harder to maintain at later ages, but people give in more than necessary. It should be a sign to invest in the habits more, but they do the opposite.
Not sure about Max's chin being cracked. Yeh, a little worrying and not legendary status after being dropped vs Gaethje and rocked and then dropped/near-unconscious by Topuria, but we've seen plenty of guys get similarly finished and still able to take a shot well enough in later fights, even experienced guys who've been in many wars like Poirier, Gaethje and Mark Hunt. Plus Max took a few years off from hard sparring, presumably from when he was about 28-29. If he rests properly I think his brain will be ok for MMA. He said he does things for brain health too, so I wonder what that could be (maybe some cognitive exercises for TBI?).
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mileage by far. age isn't so bad until you start getting really old. but mileage will take all the shit age can but faster and even stuff that age won't take, like your fight IQ, mileage is going to take it. it's hard to gauge when the experience to mileage ratio starts to skew towards mileage. you need a lot of experience without gaining so much mileage and that's hard.
