Ultimate Kickbox or Go Home! (In the context of Nelson v. Wren)
by HonorableJudgeIto on Nov 11, 2009 7:26 PM EST
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Tonight's fight will be another example of the UFC sending a message to its fighters.
That message is this: Ultimate Kickbox or go home. While this message may please viewers, it undermines the credibility of TUF and the idea of the UFC as sport and not sports-entertainment. To understand this message is to understand the core thinking behind many, if not most, of the UFC's decisions.
Roy Nelson is and has always been the favorite to win this season of the Ultimate Fighter. This must not sit well with Dana White. Dana has made it known that he thinks Roy is "an idiot" and the UFC has let Roy in the past that their interest in him would increase if he had a more toned body. I would suggest the real reason why Dana, et al. do not like Roy is that he's a grappler. Dana and the Fertitas, originally desirous of becoming boxing promoters, wound up buying the UFC, but it's clear that their love for striking clearly outweighs that of the ground game.
Now, I don't mean to suggest that the UFC hates grappling. They have embraced Minotauro, Maia, et al., but they clearly favor the stand-up aspect of the game. That is why we have see more of Alessio Sakara, Pete Sell, Matt Brown than Matt Lindland, Travis Lutter, Jeff Monson, or Mayhem Miller. It is also, as I suspect the reason why Sean Sherk, Josh Kosheck, and Rashad Evans have forgot how to wrestle and why Jorge Gurgel never used his BJJ black belt in the octagon. Fight of the Night bonuses also routinely reflect this sentiment. However, to embrace second-rate striking at the expense of top level grappling is to sell the sport of MMA short and to embrace sports-entertainment.
Putting Roy Nelson against Justin Wren only exemplifies Dana and the UFC's bias. After Nelson, Wren has a very good shot at winning the tournament. He's a great grappler in a tournament that features few grapplers (besides Jon Madsen). Nelson v. Wren may be the fight of the two best fighters in the house, but they are not the most desirable fighters to sell to the public as they like to hump on the ground grapple. The best way to keep Wren and Nelson and their boring grappling out of the finals is to ensure that they fight one another.
I am not naive. I understand the reason behind Dana's message. Striking sells better than grappling. You don't have to explain a KO to the fans. However, by embracing striking and strikers at the expense of the ground game, the UFC is thinking short term giving comfort to it's enemies. After all, casual fans grow into hardcore fans who appreciate the nuances of the ground game. These are the same fans who state on message boards that Sakuraba v. Newton, Sanchez v. Parisyan, and Guida v. Griffin are their favorite fights. These are also the fans who tune into your competitor's product to see the discarded grapplers that fill out the top 10 in their respective weights. Additionally, it is grappling after all that separates MMA from other competitors (namely boxing, kickboxing/K1). If the UFC wants the mainstream to embrace MMA as a sport and the UFC as its league, they'd be best served by embracing grappling.
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t is also, as I suspect the reason why Sean Sherk, Josh Kosheck, and Rashad Evans have forgot how to wrestle and why Jorge Gurgel never used his BJJ black belt in the octagon.
The UFC doesn’t shape the interests of the fans. The fans named Koscheck the blanket, not the UFC.
The UFC doesn’t shape the interests of the fans.
You’ve been around long enough to know that isn’t true. It may not shape the interests of all the fans, but there are plenty who are more than willing to swallow whichever pill the UFC offers them.
"Why am I here? Why does my mind have wings? Why do blue midgets hit me with fish?!" - The Tick
It is not that the UFC is against grappling or that Dana hates Nelson for being a grappler. They just favor fast grand transitions and multiple submission attempts over ground positioning and ekeing out victories.
It is hard to find fights with major back and forth transistions on the ground, and when there are they will get rewarded like Griffin/Guida, Griffin/Edgar, Parisyan/Sanchez. Usually you will find that if someone is fitted with lightning fast transitions they are usually going to be all over their lesser opponent and get the sub or they are gonna get stifled pretty quick, which ends in either of a submission of the night bonus or them being looked over in favor of someone like Jorge Gurgel.
The reason I believe Dana dislikes Nelson is because he beat Kimbo, and not just because he beat him, but because he did it while going at like 60% and just completely destroyed anyone’s idea that Kimbo has a smidgen of talent outside of throwing hands.
Not that I condone facism or any ism for that matter. Isms are in my opinion, not good. A person shouldn't believe in an ism, he should believe in himself.
I quote John Lennon, "I don't believe in Beatles, I just believe in me". Good point there, after all he was the walrus. I could be the walrus. Wouldn't change the fact I have to bum rides off of people.
by Sam Cupitt on Nov 11, 2009 7:59 PM EST reply actions 1 recs
As much as I agree with the overall assertion that the UFC likes to promote fights that amount to bad kickboxing, I can’t get on board with a lot of the argumentation here.
That is why we have see more of Alessio Sakara, Pete Sell, Matt Brown than Matt Lindland, Travis Lutter, Jeff Monson, or Mayhem Miller
You picked a couple of good examples on the striker side: Alessio Sakara actually never had a winning UFC record until he took that decision over Thales Leities (after nearly 4 years with the company) and Sell was allowed to amass a 2-5 UFC record before finally being released. Matt Brown is less of a good example: he’s 3-1.
The grappler side of that argument is a lot less convincing. Mayhem has been vocal about not wanting to go to the UFC for various reasons; Lindland is in a similar boat; Lutter missed weight for a title shot, in addition to going 1-2 in both his UFC stints; Monson actually asked to be released! A much better (and more common) example would be Yushin Okami.
If the UFC really had such an anti-grappling bias, why would they do so much to promote fighters like Matt Hughes, Clay Guida, Brock Lesnar, Frank Mir, and Georges St. Pierre? You provide additional, similar examples yourself.
The best evidence in favor of your view here are the FOTN bonuses (which you do cite), the treatment given to the likes of Sakara, Sell, and Houston Alexander, and the overall rhetoric used to sell fights—look no further than Dana White’s rapturous reaction Mitrione/Junk, and all the “they definitely won’t go the ground!” talk around Machida/Shogun, to take two recent examples.
by JRN on Nov 11, 2009 8:09 PM EST reply actions 1 recs
I understand the point, but this still mostly fails.
The UFC promotes exciting fighters. There are fighters who are primarily strikers but who are tentative — think Machida before he hit his stride. If my memory serves me correctly, the majority of Machida’s cage time in his first few fights were spent on the feet, yet those fights were by no means exciting. The same principle applies to fighters who are primarily grapplers who have slow, methodical styles. Guys like Tyson Griffin and Clay Guida have become fan favorites because their style is fast paced and fun to watch — the grappling equivalent of strikers like Anderson Silva or old school Liddell.
So again, the UFC seeks to promote exciting fighters, regardless of whether that stems from their ground prowess or striking arsenal. If the majority of exciting fighters are those that have a tendency to engage in stand-up battles, so be it. The best remedy for a fighter to avoid getting labeled as boring is to become as well-rounded as possible. If a fighter is confident enough in his skill-set, then he’ll be less tentative on the ground or standing.
As we saw last night, usually when it’s grappler vs grappler, the fight ends up being really sloppy kickboxing. Months of training after the show wouldn’t have changed much if this fight was going to happen at the finale. Roy doesn’t have the wrestling to get the fight to the ground, and Wren doesn’t have the BJJ to want the fight to be on the ground, so the fight was going to end up looking like it did last night.
You can’t hold it against the UFC for realizing that grappler vs grappler fights that end up standing usually are not that exciting, I don’t blame dana for trying to avoid that in the TUF finale.
Dana just doesn’t like Roy, end of story.
Roy’s done nothing wrong and hasn’t fought in a boring manner, he’s fought smart for the most part; many of the other fights this season were pathetic compared to the two outings Roy’s had so far on the show.
The mat is my church, the ground is my heaven, Jiu-Jitsu is my religion. And once you hit the ground you're in my world. My world is like the ocean, I’m like a shark and most people don't even know how to swim - Draculino
by Patrick Tenney on Nov 12, 2009 8:56 AM EST reply actions 1 recs
I still can’t believe that people are trying to keep passing off this myth about ultimate kickboxing which is a retarded name btw. There are plenty of boring fighters in the UFC, the idea that bonuses only go to sloppy brawls has been exposed before. The UFC isn’t Elite XC, stop reaching for grand conspiracies because there aren’t any what’s going on in TUF has never had any grand theme to what’s going on in the UFC and neither will this fight.
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