Throwback - Ferguson Vs Kevin Lee (GIFS)

In Khabib's last fight vs Dustin we've seen that Khabib was rocked by Dustin's striking and that Dustin had him in a good choke from a scramble. Of course Khabib will take down Tony in the first rounds. The question is what happens in the later rounds. Tony is crazy enough to not wilt but to get more fired up and Khabib could look like the rest of Tony's opponents by round three, even from elbows from the bottom and clinches.
 
Sansnom said:
So I rewatched the Ferguson/Lee fight last night. I did remember Lee getting the better of Ferguson on multiple occasions but I didn't realize how dominant he was in the grappling department compared to Ferguson.

Here are a few gifs of some of his takedowns.

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2 other takedowns.
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Other gifs..

The end of the first round was pretty brutal.
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Ferguson avoiding a takedown.
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The submission
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Now I don't know how Kevin Lee's strength compares to Khabib's, but I hope this is not a preview of what will happen in the Khabib fight. A lot of the times Lee got a hold of Ferguson, he managed to overpower him and get the takedown.

Ferguson had the striking edge. I won't post all the highlights of the fight, I just wanted to focus on his biggest weakness which will be put to the test in his next fight.

What do y'all think, Sherbros, Can Ferguson avoid a mauling?
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Thanks for the gifs, looking at them closely I just noticed Tony hitting 12-6 elbows twice, one of them to the back of Lee's head! Where was the ref?!
 
cyanogen said:
In Khabib's last fight vs Dustin we've seen that Khabib was rocked by Dustin's striking and that Dustin had him in a good choke from a scramble. Of course Khabib will take down Tony in the first rounds. The question is what happens in the later rounds. Tony is crazy enough to not wilt but to get more fired up and Khabib could look like the rest of Tony's opponents by round three, even from elbows from the bottom and clinches.
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He was not rocked by dustin's striking. Literally at no point did he stumble, fall, nor did his eyes ever roll back in his head. This myth is worse than the one claiming that Michael Johnson rocked Khabib. Landing a good shot is not getting rocked. Fujita rocked Fedor. MJ and Dustin did not at any point rock Khabib.
 
TapMachine said:
The two main judging criteria are effective striking and effective grappling. Damage is the main thing that defines effective striking, I think there's a whole article on the topic by McCarthy, but I'm not going to search it now on a phone. Effective grappling is defined by damage on the ground, submission attempts, reversals and achievement of advantageous positions as well as takedowns that lead to an established offense.

On the feet, the fight was pretty much equal. Even RDA's corner commented on how they're equally matched on the feet, but this was only a minor portion of the fight. The fight was decided during grappling engagements that constituted the majority of the fight, engagements where Khabib displayed complete domination since he always had the advantageous position and was constantly trying to advance position. The only grappling engagement that might be considered "lay and pray" heavy from Kahbib's side is the one in the second round, where Khabib was putting his weight on RDA against the cage with RDA standing on all fours, but even during that engagement Khabib was trying to advance position by putting one of the hooks in and trying to take the back - something that was acknowledged by the commentators, it wasn't just lay and pray. In all other grappling engagements Khabib was landing strikes from top, some of them being heavy elbows.

Thus, for the effective grappling scoring criteria we have:
1. 6 takedowns for Khabib, zero for RDA.
2. Damage on the ground, however small it was, was completely in Khabib's favor. RDA did literally no damage on the ground.
3. Utter positional domination by Khabib, RDA was never in an advantageous position.
4. The only thing RDA did on the ground was attempt an ineffective guillotine which Khabib defended by doing virtually nothing: stayed in half guard and just waited it out only to pop his head out when RDA could no longer maintain the squeeze.

Essentially, the fight WAS a grappling match and Khabib utterly dominated RDA in the grappling department. It wasn't competitive. Since grappling constituted the majority of the fight, Khabib dominated RDA in the fight. I don't see how anyone could argue against this.

When it comes to Ferguson vs RDA, Ferguson did outstrike RDA and delivered more damage, but there were many moments in the fight where RDA was finding success and did damage of his own. He even managed to win 2 rounds, so the fight WAS competitive.
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I guess it starts getting into the nuance too of degrees of "advantageous" position. In MMA, on the mat, yes it's advantageous to have top position. But if the majority of the time that is in the opponent's full guard (yes Khabib tried passing and even did a couple times--but RDA regained guard almost immediately each time) with essentially no damage done, that's only a SLIGHTLY advantageous position. In fact there are many who believe full guard is really more a 50/50 position (like I said, I disagree as I do think it's a slight advantage for the person on top but only slight unless they are doing real damage or have serious sub threats going on).

Khabib didn't really land any "heavy blows" from top, I've watched it twice. He only landed 36 total sig strikes, 12 per round average. He threw a few hard elbows, I counted one that actually landed somewhat clean. There was really no damage done at all by either fighter.

As with anything, there's a level of subjectivity. Nobody would ever argue that Khabib didn't clearly win. In a fight with no damage done (like you said, the first definition of effective striking and grappling is damage) you have to move on to the lesser criteria and Khabib certainly did dominate THOSE aspects. So from that perspective I understand your point of view and why you think "dominate" is apt. To me, when you have to essentially move on from the first criteria because it doesn't even apply, it's hard to talk of "domination".

With Tony/RDA, I actually agree and don't think "domination" applies either, and that's even if we believe the judges were wrong and that Tony won round 3 (it's debatable, a close round, Tony landed more and some of the shots were hard, but RDA did land too). It was a clear win for Tony as well as he butchered RDA over the final 10 minutes. But yes, because RDA had his moments early I would not call that fight "domination" at all.
 
Speakerbox said:
He was not rocked by dustin's striking. Literally at no point did he stumble, fall, nor did his eyes ever roll back in his head. This myth is worse than the one claiming that Michael Johnson rocked Khabib. Landing a good shot is not getting rocked. Fujita rocked Fedor. MJ and Dustin did not at any point rock Khabib.
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The MJ one is completely overblown, people only bring it up because Khabib immediately was moving backward. He got clipped but I don't think it really affected him much other than that he wanted to back up and reset and not get hit with a follow up.

Dustin stunned him a bit. Maybe it's semantics saying "stunned" vs "rocked", IDK. Was Khabib in real danger? Probably not. Was he hurt a little by it? Looked like it to me. Had Dustin landed anything else clean it **might** have been a different story. But he didn't, and Khabib was fine seconds later.
 
Hotora86 said:
Thanks for the gifs, looking at them closely I just noticed Tony hitting 12-6 elbows twice, one of them to the back of Lee's head! Where was the ref?!
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12-6 elbows are legal from bottom.
 
Portland8242 said:
That's more of a testament to RDA's grappling, he's very hard to inflict damage to on the floor, very sound defensively.
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Of course, I'd never argue otherwise. My point was that in my eyes it's hard to call a fight "domination" when no damage is done. Khabib certainly clearly won. The outcome wasn't in question so if that's how you define "domination" that's fine. Because it is a fight, I tend to save that verbiage for contests where one fighter is either inflicting real damage or at least threatening with real finishing opportunities. Positionally controlling someone absolutely earns a clear decision, I just can't call that "domination".
 
For 1.5 rounds fkl looks like a world beater. And then he doesn't
 
Tony Feguson will win via murder, another easy title fight to predict. Izzy vs Whittaker, Miocic vs Cormier 2, and now Ferguson vs Khabib. Excellent, easy money for me.
 
Conor managed to survive 2 rounds and take a round after Khabib got tired and was catching his breath. And Conor has a terrible ground game and endurance. Ferguson can definitely do the same and then some. He will obviously have to outlast Khabib or get a submission but either outcome is not unrealistic.

Poirier's pitiful performance is maybe making Khabib look a bit more unbeatable than he is. Ferguson's strengths are Khabib's weaknesses.
 
Bojka said:
Conor managed to survive 2 rounds and take a round after Khabib got tired and was catching his breath. And Conor has a terrible ground game and endurance. Ferguson can definitely do the same and then some. He will obviously have to outlast Khabib or get a submission but either outcome is not unrealistic.

Poirier's pitiful performance is maybe making Khabib look a bit more unbeatable than he is. Ferguson's strengths are Khabib's weaknesses.
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You know there may a chance, Khabib has actually improved since the McGregor fight, which to any objective observer could he seen in his performance against Poirier..
In 125°F heat, he put on a insane pace and his cardio didn't look in question..
 
Deadwing88 said:
You know there may a chance, Khabib has actually improved since the McGregor fight, which to any objective observer could he seen in his performance against Poirier..
In 125°F heat, he put on a insane pace and his cardio didn't look in question..
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I never gave Poirier any chance. I expected him to get dominated like he did so that is not how I made sense of what happened that fight.
 
Deadwing88 said:
You know there may a chance, Khabib has actually improved since the McGregor fight, which to any objective observer could he seen in his performance against Poirier..
In 125°F heat, he put on a insane pace and his cardio didn't look in question..
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Have to agree. One takeaway from the Dustin fight is that Khabib's cardio looked on point, even in that heat. Of course it's easier being the hammer than the nail but all things considered, Khabib's gas tank looked as good as it ever has.
 
mkess101 said:
Have to agree. One takeaway from the Dustin fight is that Khabib's cardio looked on point, even in that heat. Of course it's easier being the hammer than the nail but all things considered, Khabib's gas tank looked as good as it ever has.
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It isn't reasonable to think someone like Khabib has just started working harder. Endurance is limited by your genetics. These guys, especially champions, all train their endurance as hard as possible. And I'm sure Khabib always has.

Unless he started taking drugs, he didn't improve his endurance. He just had an easier fight.
 
Bojka said:
It isn't reasonable to think someone like Khabib has just started working harder. Endurance is limited by your genetics. These guys, especially champions, all train their endurance as hard as possible. And I'm sure Khabib always has.

Unless he started taking drugs, he didn't improve his endurance. He just had an easier fight.
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I'm just going by my eyes. I saw Khabib take rd 3 off vs Conor. I saw him tired in rd 4 vs Iaquinta, shooting sloppy half assed TD's that he couldn't complete, his pace slowing. I didn't see any of that vs Dustin. He was all over him the whole time.

I'm not saying I know WHY that is, just that it's what I saw.
 
i don't think Ferguson can avoid an early mauling but the BIG difference with him i think he can come back from it
 
mkess101 said:
I'm just going by my eyes. I saw Khabib take rd 3 off vs Conor. I saw him tired in rd 4 vs Iaquinta, shooting sloppy half assed TD's that he couldn't complete, his pace slowing. I didn't see any of that vs Dustin. He was all over him the whole time.

I'm not saying I know WHY that is, just that it's what I saw.
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I saw him damn close to going to sleep, and if poirier was a better grappler he'd have used the choke to turn him onto his back and finish him
 
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