"Teammates" Not Fighting Each Other

[Bringin'TheHeat]

Cormier is a training partner, friend, and coach (wrestling) to Cain. If you fight someone like that then you have no spine.

 

[Not Tuf]

In the current team structure it does not work.

 

[Jawth]

They have a choice whether or not to enter the sport. When you are the Heavyweight Champion though it should be in your contract that you cannot duck a certain fighter if the match maker says that is who he needs to fight next to remain champion and keep SOME legitimacy to the title. A UFC Champion who refuses to fight the person who the matchmaker deems to be the top contender would then be found in breach of contract and liable to being sued by The UFC.

A UFC Champion has an image to uphold. If he ducks a fight on the grounds that he doesn't want to fight the top contender because they are friends, it cheapens that image and prevents the sport from being taken seriously. Friends compete against friends all the time in sports so why should UFC fighters be given a pass? Because their sport is too barbaric to compete in against a friend? That's the message they would send.

1. It's not ducking when both fighters refuse to fight.

2. The matchmakers put together fights like GSP/Diaz and Jones/Sonnen while making the true number one contenders wait, so the "UFC has a image to uphold" argument is full of shit.

3. There's a huge difference between playing basketball against your friend and doing your best to render your friend unconscious or tear his arm off.

 

[Blackjack]

Lets explain why these guys don't fight


- They're friends.

- They share coaches, gym, etc -- very hard on the gym if they fight and nobody wants to leave (who corners who, etc).

- They spar every day; they have a good working relationship and fighting will almost certainly end it, if you've got a good thing then you want to keep it going.

It's beneficial for fighters to change training camps once in a while anyway because that way they get to learn new techniques from new people. If the same people train together every day and don't change to a different set of training partners, their progress will stagnate. I can think of former champions who ultimately ended up losing their titles at least partially because they liked the rules at their training camp and didn't want to go somewhere else where they might be forced to train in a way that might be uncomfortable, but would benefit their fighting ability and ultimately the longevity of their careers and the income their careers provide. I doubt there are a lot of good paying jobs available for former mixed martial artists.

The ultimate objective of every fighter is to be a champion. That's where most of the fame, notoriety, and of course money is - at the top. If a fighter doesn't want to challenge the champion because he likes his sparring partners too much he has a misplaced sense of priorities - a somewhat neurotic trait. They didn't get into this business to make friends. They got in this business to be the champ. If they've lost sight of that goal then a new training camp would be beneficial for more reasons than one.

 

[TheRassler]

the only exception for not fighting each other should be if they were biological brothers.

 

[pjmman]

There are unwritten rules in this sport such as friendships, loyalty, respect, and concern for one another.. Take it or leave it

well put ...

 

[afrdzak]

It's beneficial for fighters to change training camps once in a while anyway because that way they get to learn new techniques from new people. If the same people train together every day and don't change to a different set of training partners, their progress will stagnate. I can think of former champions who ultimately ended up losing their titles at least partially because they liked the rules at their training camp and didn't want to go somewhere else where they might be forced to train in a way that might be uncomfortable, but would benefit their fighting ability and ultimately the longevity of their careers and the income their careers provide. I doubt there are a lot of good paying jobs available for former mixed martial artists.

The ultimate objective of every fighter is to be a champion. That's where most of the fame, notoriety, and of course money is - at the top. If a fighter doesn't want to challenge the champion because he likes his sparring partners too much he has a misplaced sense of priorities - a somewhat neurotic trait. They didn't get into this business to make friends. They got in this business to be the champ. If they've lost sight of that goal then a new training camp would be beneficial for more reasons than one.

LOL. Not for some greed of a fan wanting to see 2 particular fighters fight....but for their own good, someone should leave their camp and go train elsewhere....and hey...an added benefit is you get to fight your (former) teammate. You're a stand up guy!

If your teammate is champ, you can leave camp, go up/down weight, wait around, change organizations. You have other options besides fighting your teammate.

Camp/team dynamics are more important than one fighter's wishes. You are putting the fighter over the team. And that, is a neurotic trait.

 

[crazyjames1233]

honestly its naive to have a policy of not fighting teammates. every guy wants to be successful and their can only be one champ. bigger camps like Jacksons are starting to realize this.

 

[spid3yo]

Do the camps share fight records? Since GSP is the champion, if it was a team sport, shouldn't MacDonald be able to call himself the UFC WW champ? Should Cormier already be the HW Champ, since his team won the title this past weekend?

Nope. Doesn't work that way

Results, accolades and failures are awarded individually. The training may be team oriented (and that's just a matter of efficiency), but you don't get rewarded for training. You get rewarded for how you perform in the actual fight, and no matter who you have training with you, they're not getting in the cage with you come fight night.

That being said, I don't really care if teammates don't want to fight each other. The divisions are strong enough that there should be no need, there should be enough other fighters at that level to avoid them ever fighting.

When you get the #1 contender being a close training partner of the champion, THEN you may have an issue, but if they're that close, chances are they've already agreed that someone is going to change divisions.

derp....no need to state the obvious. The fight comes down to individual performance, but to get to that point and to train your skills you need a strong team behind you (coaching and training). The team aspect in MMA is stronger than ever, and it's producing the greatest talent we've ever seen.

 

[spid3yo]

honestly its naive to have a policy of not fighting teammates. every guy wants to be successful and their can only be one champ. bigger camps like Jacksons are starting to realize this.

Simple, if you want to be a champion in a particular weight class...you probably shouldn't be doing your training with the champ in their house. Unless you want them to see your every weakness and learn how to beat you.

 

[Diakonos]

For as much as it may mess up matchmaking, fighting teammates is very unnatural. To turn around and fight those who all along contributed to your development and supported you is a very weird 180 degree move.

It's probably hard for non-participants to understand this. I've never trained in MMA but remembering my BJJ days it would've been hard for me to fight a teammate in a tournament. Even in wrestling, I feel it would be. I have watched international judo where teammates fought each other, and I always wondered what that was like. I like the primal element in fighting as much as anyone, but people just aren't wired that way.

 

[bubkusjones]

derp....no need to state the obvious. The fight comes down to individual performance, but to get to that point and to train your skills you need a strong team behind you (coaching and training). The team aspect in MMA is stronger than ever, and it's producing the greatest talent we've ever seen.

You think of it like that and you can call any sport a "team" sport. Everyone needs trainers and coaches and training partners in order to compete.

It's not how you train that makes something a team sport, it's how the sport itself is competed that make it a team sport or an individual sport.

 

[MTFFC]

stop to think, do you have the courage to fight your friends and then look at his face and you think was responsible for letting him disfigured...

 

[bubkusjones]

stop to think, do you have the courage to fight your friends and then look at his face and you think was responsible for letting him disfigured...

I don't think that team mates need to fight one another, especially in a talent-rich promotion like the UFC. There should be enough other potential opponents to avoid that situation. I was just questioning the logic of calling a sport where you compete one-on-one a "team" sport.

 

[Ediaz]

Now more than ever, you have great fighters coming from the same camp that refuse to fight against each other. In almost every division you have guys that come from the same camp and are at the top of the division and refuse to fight each other. The biggest example is that of GSP and Rory Macdonald along with Cain Velasquez and Daniel Cormier. In both scenarios we have a dominant champion who is running out of viable contender's and a teammate who is a top contender that is not able to face top level competition in that division because doing so would either draw him closer to a fight against his teammate and it would also deprive his teammate of a potential PPV opponent. I believe that camps should develop proper procedure for this and they should also encourage fighters to take these fights because it is only business. Nowadays, fight camps are getting so big that it is more than possible for two fighters to fight against each other and train under the same roof without having to see each other or share the same sparring partners.