Losing your chin, physically and mentally.

Moral Victory

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There are some fighters that are chinny, and some that just lost all ability to handle a shot well.
To me there seems to be a difference between fighter like for example:

Gaethje, he get's wobbled in nearly every fight but still hangs in there and often manages to get a finish.
And on the other hand fighters like for example:

Ellenberger
Arlovski
Rashad

Whose chins nowadays just give up, it's like they get hit and you can see how the will to fight just goes away, and I'm not sure if that's confidence or not because I don't doubt that they have the will to fight, but it seems to be that the fighting instinct went away somewhere along the with chin.

Kind of hard to explain what I i mean but perhaps someone out there gets what I'm trying to say, that there is a physical and mental connection between the will to fight, that's it's like the bodys way of telling you to give up, kind of like a livershot to the head... And that it's accumulative in this case, CTE or whatever.
 
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There's definitely a mental factor to getting TKO'd. Some fighters fold pretty quickly while other guys will hang in there as long as their bodies will allow. But I don't think there's a conscious mental aspect to getting KTFO. You don't have a choice in the matter for that switch getting flipped off.
 
Arlovski's chin has reformed itself, for the most part.
 
There are some fighters that are chinny, and some that just lost all ability to handle a shot well.
To me there seems to be a difference between fighter like for example:

Gaethje, he get's wobbled in nearly every fight but still hangs in there and often manages to get a finish.
And on the other hand fighters like for example:

Ellenberger
Arlovski
Rashad

Whose chins nowadays just give up, it's like they get hit and you can see how the will to fight just goes away, and I'm not sure if that's confidence or not because I don't doubt that they have the will to fight, but it seems to be that the fighting instinct went away somewhere along the with chin.

Kind of hard to explain what I but perhaps someone out there gets what I'm trying to say, that there is so physical and mental connection between the will to fight, that's it's like the bodys way of telling you to give up, kind of like a livershot to the head... And that it's accumulative in this case, CTE or whatever.

I see what your saying. However, some fighters also have their chin stuck up ready to go when the button is pushed. Arloski, Rashad have had brutal KO's on them. As did Chuck, all it takes is one good crack and that granite chin turns into a glass jar.

Me personally, fighting over the last 12 years in Muay Thai, and Boxing I've never been KO'd. I do a pretty good job at keeping my hands up and chin tucked. Still, I've been blasted by huge bombs on the button. I just bit my mouth piece really hard and tighten on the neck muscles. Still there. Years of training, neck/shoulder drills and the will to stay awake help.

Mind you, these guys are getting torched with 4 oz mma gloves. Littler different than your typical 6-12 oz boxing gloves.
 
Arlovski held up pretty well in his last fight against Tuivasa.
 
I see what your saying. However, some fighters also have their chin stuck up ready to go when the button is pushed. Arloski, Rashad have had brutal KO's on them. As did Chuck, all it takes is one good crack and that granite chin turns into a glass jar.

Me personally, fighting over the last 12 years in Muay Thai, and Boxing I've never been KO'd. I do a pretty good job at keeping my hands up and chin tucked. Still, I've been blasted by huge bombs on the button. I just bit my mouth piece really hard and tighten on the neck muscles. Still there. Years of training, neck/shoulder drills and the will to stay awake help.

Mind you, these guys are getting torched with 4 oz mma gloves. Littler different than your typical 6-12 oz boxing gloves.
Ah yes, well i thought of mentioning Chuck as well but he went out so quickly that I couldn't tell if there was a struggle to keep going, in the Shogun fight however he was hit bad but tried to get back up, and I don't see that in Arlovski or Ellenberger when they get hit good as of late.

Arlovski held up pretty well in his last fight against Tuivasa.
Yeah, I think experience and technique was the biggest part of that though, preventing situations where he kind of knows that he wont deal well with, not just getting KO'd but when put in that situation I think he knows that he wont bounce back as easily has he has in the past.

Arlovski is the more admirable of fighters who seem to have lost their chins (and at HW no less), he really is working on the mental aspect from what I can of the interviews I've seen in the past 2 years.
 
Even Hendo lost his chin late in his career.

I doubt there are medical studies to back it up, but numerous trainers and coaches think you're more susceptible to a KO after it happens.
 
There are some fighters that are chinny, and some that just lost all ability to handle a shot well.
To me there seems to be a difference between fighter like for example:

Gaethje, he get's wobbled in nearly every fight but still hangs in there and often manages to get a finish.
And on the other hand fighters like for example:

Ellenberger
Arlovski
Rashad

Whose chins nowadays just give up, it's like they get hit and you can see how the will to fight just goes away, and I'm not sure if that's confidence or not because I don't doubt that they have the will to fight, but it seems to be that the fighting instinct went away somewhere along the with chin.

Kind of hard to explain what I i mean but perhaps someone out there gets what I'm trying to say, that there is a physical and mental connection between the will to fight, that's it's like the bodys way of telling you to give up, kind of like a livershot to the head... And that it's accumulative in this case, CTE or whatever.
They just need to train under the right person to learn some defense so they dont get caught on the chin....

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Besides obvious factors like combat sports mileage on your body, conditioning, how much weight they cut ect, I think genetics plays a big part in how much damage someone can take. Some bodies are just built for war. Gaethje is a fucking Neanderthal whose DNA skipped a bunch of generations whereas someone like Rashad is just a good athlete but not really a warrior.
 
That's a good example of what I think the difference between a chinny Ellenberger and a chinny Garbrandt is.
Garbrandt fought pretty light competition on his route up to Dom. Nobody tested his chin until TJ. Cody's fighting style he stays in the pocket, when he met a better striker in TJ that got him KO'd twice.
 
At some point all that CTE is going to take it's toll on Justin and he'll start getting ko'd by shots and guys that he would have walked through.
 
There's a video of Teddy Atlas floating around somewhere. His theory is that chin is entirely mental, I can't remember the ins and outs of it but that was the gist of it.
 
When you’ve been rocked and or knocked out multiple times it leads to a weaker chin physically speaking. The mental aspect is that it often leads to being gun shy as well. To top it all off for guys like Ellenberger, Rashad, Chuck and so on these guys stayed well past their prime so their speed, reaction and ability to recover are all shot.

Weak chin, scared to pull the trigger and being slow is a recipe to get KTFO. It shouldn’t be surprising.
 
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