Georges St. Pierre Suggests Some Good Rules Changes

The gloves are there to protect the fighters’ hands from injury. “Aoki pants” would provide additional friction to the legs of a grappler beyond what is “normal”. In a way it is the exact opposite of greasing, and “cheating” in the other direction. I like a fight to progress as normally as possible. And if a good wrestler or striker can defend against submission in to the later rounds where sweat makes it naturally more difficult to apply a submission, well then that’s part of the game. Maybe the submission specialist needs to improve his stand-up game and become more well rounded.

I’m wondering how close fighters could come to replicating “Aoki pants” even if the long tights themselves were in fact not allowed….

A fighter could wear the tight spandex “Vale Tudo” shorts to begin with, and could wear ones that extend nearly to his knees. Fighters can also wear neoprene knee sleeves. They can also wear neoprene ankle supports.

With these 3 items, which are all allowed, a fighter could nearly replicate the entire functionality of “Aoki pants”, in a piecemeal arrangement

“What’s wrong with submissions? Is there someone out there who doesn’t enjoy seeing them?”

I think when there is a lull in the stand-up they should reset the fight on the ground, the same way when there is no work on the ground they stand the fight back up.

But it is very striker biased still.

Imagine how much more money fighters would make by endorsing products/clothing companies on spandex pants. The pants are roughly twice the size of shorts, and I would think it would stand to reason that fighters could effectively double, if not more than double, revenue dollars from the apparel.

caption should read “…more money for fighters”

If fighters had the option of wearing Aoki pants, others would start demanding that they get to accessorize for their particular martial art as well. Wrestlers wanting their wrestling shoes, jiu-jitsu purists demanding their gis. That might be fine to some, but I prefer seeing everybody on fair footing, in as pure a fight setting as possible. It’s the same reason I prefer the inclusion of elbows and knees to a downed opponent. If strikes to the back of the head were safe, I’d keep those too. MMA is the sport of fighting, pure and simple. I wouldn’t want to see a bunch of specialized equipment being introduced. The line would need to be drawn somewhere – better to say no equipment at all.

I agree with Brent on this one. The pants will really do nothing but give an advantage to a grappler, or bjj tactician. Some else noted that grabbing the shorts rule would not apply here. I fail to see how, if you’re going for a take down and grab someones calf, are you not going to grab a handful of material at the same time, and there by bring down the wrath of the referee? Also someone else mentioned swabbing fighters at the end of a fight, like a urine test. If you find trace amounts of a lubricant, can it not be theorized that this may have happened due to transfer in clinch and grappling? How many times have we seen people drive someone into the fence leading head first. By this one move alone you can transfer almost all of the vaseline from one side of your face to the side of the person that is being driven to the fence, and then from there all it takes is the back of the fighter taken to transfer “grease” to almost any part of the both bodies. Gloves were for safety, the pants are just a wish list that will lead to shirts and other types of clothing. This is all out of some fighters accusations that have yet to be proven. The sport is fine as it is, lets just move on, and watch the action. My apologies if my analogy is a little confusing, it’s the best way I could word it at the time.

Isn’t it ironic how GSP and Jackson have suggestions for the NSAC on how to keep guys from greasing? Let me guess… if we were to cheat, this is how we would do it. It sounds as good as OJ Simpson’s book, “If I Did It.”

Jackson’s camp is scrambling because they know their camp is going to be under a microscope, and if their guys can’t cheat they don’t want any other camps to cheat. It’s only fair. Ha!

So Bruiser, what you’re saying is that Jackson’s camp making recommendations to prevent this sort of thing from happening, makes them guilty of actually doing it? How about the fact that they might be trying to better the sport as a whole. That is definitely one possibility to consider. Yes they will be under a microscope, but so will every one else.

How about the FACT that they got caught rubbing vaseline on GSP in the cage by the NSAC? That’s a FACT! Team Jackson is not, out of the blue, helping the sport with rule changes. They only bring these changes to the table because they got caught CHEATING!

They are leveling the playing field because they can not afford to get caught again. So they don’t want anyone cheating because they lost their cheating advantage.

They know how to make the rules because they know how to cheat. Just like the best criminals make the best police officers. He cheated, he got caught, and now he’s making the rules so others can’t cheat. Just like Leonardo in Catch Me if You Can. Don’t be so naive to think that GSP didn’t know he was being rubbed with vaseline!

UFC fights are either 3 five minute rounds or 5 five minute rounds. As the fight progresses, a good fighter should be prepared in advance for issues that will come up during the fight. Some of these issues include having enough cardio to actually last into the later rounds, being able to nullify the strengths of the other fighter, dealing with cuts, and… sweat making the other fighter slippery. Introducing pants provides submission fighters with a way to negate the sweat issue in the later rounds without any effort on their part. Sure, stop illegal, intentional greasing but stop or negate sweating? It’s a 3 (or 5) round fight. You can’t have ideal conditions ie) no sweat, no cuts, both fighters fresh with a full gas tank at the start of every round. People looking for that should watch the World Combat League with its 1 round fights. Fighters should be looking to gameplan and adapt to fight conditions, not look for artificial ways to negate unfavorable conditions their style of fighting may encounter during a fight. What’s next? Headgear for grapplers?

It’s not about changing or adding rules. It’s about enforcing the rules already in place. No vaseline anywhere on the body but the face. I believe GSP knowingly cheated when he got CAUGHT by the NSAC.

And I personally don’t mind the use of those pants at all myself. I don’t think that it will detract fighting by having Aoki pants, but I feel that it is a bit of an over exaggeration to say that having them will “save us from MMA degenerating into bad kickboxing.” With collegiate wrestlers and BJJ practitioners transitioning into MMA, we will see more of the ground game for sure. Obviously, some fighters who are mainly grapplers will turn fights into bad kickboxing bouts (Sanchez vs Stevenson among many others), the ground game will still be prevalent regardless.

if you allow pants then what about sleeves?