Would you mind elaborating on this point with respect to (a) alternative strength exercises that more closely replicate movement patterns (what movement patterns are we speaking of?) relevant to MMA (b) the question why we should be interested in closely replicating ring/cage movement patterns in the weight room.
I can't answer such a complex question about the principles of specificity in a single post. There are many types of specificity, i.e. specifity of motor pattern and direction of force application, ****bolic specificity, strength specificy, etc. so this would take several pages to answer properly. At some point I'll write an article to elaborate on this topic because it obviously needs to be explored on here.
If you read my original post I simply said I wouldn't advise doing a lot of heavy overhead presses if you're a fighter. I never said it can't be done at all or that it has no place in training whatsoever, I simply said it's a hard movement on the joint and it's not particularly transferable into the skills of MMA anyway.
A lower level athlete could use it in the GPP block of training, but for higher level athletes or for more specific phases of training there are other more specific exercises should be used in training. It is also a biomechanical fact that due to the compressive force it places on the shoulder joint because of the humeral abducation inherent in the exercise it can increase your risk of shoulder impingement.
So no, I'm not saying the overhead press is the worst exercise of all time or can never be used by anyone, I'm saying it has limited application in the use of most sports specific programs and it is certainly not the single most important upper body exercise of all time as was suggested on here. I have rarely seen it used in the programs of elite level athletes and many world records have been set without it so it is by no means some terribly important exercise that can't be lived without.
Somehow when the topc of specificity comes up people either make the argument that you should be doing a bunch of stupid exercises that are supposed to mimic the actual skills of the sport (this is what the functional training crowd pushes) or they think there is not really any such thing as specificity and you should just get strong as hell and participate in your sport and that's all that's necessary. The reality is that neither of these views is correct and specificity and the transfer of training is much more complicated than either of those answers provide for.
To thoroughly understand specificity and apply the principles correctly you have to have a thorough knowledge of the specific adaptations the type of training you are doing will result in. Most coaches and athletes have no real clue of the actual physiological adaptations they are stimulating through their methods so how could they understand if they'll transfer into the sport or not? Transfer of training or dynamic correspondance as Verkhoshansky calls it, is probably the most complex subject in all of strength and conditioning and is rarely applied correctly.
Look through my article in the discussion forum to get an idea of how exercises should be used and the progression from general to specific should take place.