but there is no way that lazy/weak hook lands on any other top guy in that division. Rua would be staring up at the lights if he tried that against Jackson or Machida.

That is what is so sad for me. If this fight was 2 or 3 years ago this would not have even been close. Like you said Brent, as soon as Rua loaded that hook up & starting looping Chuck would have drilled him with an overhand right & the fight would have been over.

If you keep your hands up all the time, which would be the correct thing to do in a boxing match, how do you prepare yourself for the inevitable take down? With your hands up in the air, you’d get knocked right over. If you have your hands under inside under, you can sprawl, but if your hands are out, there’s no way to sprawl. You’ll be taken down easily.

There is a reason why most MMA guys tend to have their hands lower… it’s to defend the take down.

That is absolutely classic Chute Boxe technique. Wandy, Shogun, Ninja, both Cyborgs, they all do that. It used to work for them too. They’d overwhelm their opponents and then stomp the shit out of them when they fell over. At this point though, with no stomps or soccer kicks and improved opponents, it’s asking for a hard counter to the jaw.

it always seemed to me that was never too technical a striker & typically looked pretty wild at times. I mean, this does not look any less sloppy striking than what I remember seeing before.

Go back and watch him finish off Tito and then look at his last few fights. Its seriously amazing.

does Shogun’s UDL team have some sort of affiliation with them or did he leave completely?

Eh, I don’t pay too much attn too it. It’s an MMA fight and crazy punches and crazy flying knees get thrown in there once in a while. This time it worked for Shogun, most of the time it probably won’t though.

gifs suck

Shogun is throwing his left hook off of his left foot which is what I was always taught to do. That’s where the power comes from. Chuck throws his left hook with his weight on his right foot making it basically useless. That whole round Shogun showed no concern for being hit by Chuck at all and I was shocked by that.

… I didn’t even notice he was even trying to punch when Shogun initially hit him. It wasn’t until the replays where I realized Chuck was throwing a punch. I don’t know if he was just lazily throwing it out there or what, but my god has he deteriorated. It’s just baffling how different Chuck is from just a few fights ago. Like night and day. I really think that Rashad KO jarred something loose in there.

I’ve heard this about Rua time and time again. Give it a rest.

Shogun punching style is almost identical to Fedor’s.

Boy that was an ugly stiff arm punch Rua threw. Even more ugly was Chuck’s defense. Where’s Chuck’s right hand?? What’s interesting is that Chuck was so dominant at a high level and now his style seems to be completely exposed. So what happened? Did Chuck go bad or is everyone else that much better now? I believe the former for the most part. Three things come to my mind: 1) the obvious: he was (emphasize was) faster getting punches off; 2) had quicker reflexes in avoiding them; and 3) his style confused opponents and caused them to make mistakes which Chuck capitalized on. A younger Chuck might have been able to get off a jab before Rua’s punch lands or at least could maybe have moved the head slightly to avoid blunt impact. In summary, Chuck’s style is dependent upon his reflexes and ability to make quick movements because he leaves himself so exposed. Now that he’s “lost a step” the style that served him well all those years had now cemented the end of his career.

Chuck is also standing flat footed, while Shogun is moving forward. It’s much harder to hit a moving target and it’s much harder to throw a clean punch when you’re in the middle of a lunge.

If Shogun had stayed still he might have gotten caught more cleanly with Chuck’s punch and may not have had the range to catch him with the counter. He wasn’t just rotating his hips like Evans did, he was actually stepping forward.

Perhaps it was sloppiness, perhaps it was necessity.

Hilarious. The unsubstantiated hate continues.

Yeah the Chute Boxe stand up strategy has always been wide open and dangerous. Wanderlei Silva got flash knockdowned (not a real phrase but anyway) countless times in his early PRIDE fights. Shungo Oyama scored one on him during one of Wanderlei’s swarms. From memory I can remember Lil Nog’s knockdown of Shogun as another example. There’s still a place for it today but like Brent says, I don’t know how far Shogun can get with the vicious strikers in the upper echelons of 205.

Where Shogun can succeed though is – provided his cardio is up to snuff – his relentless pace and his decent takedowns. Liddell was the divisions best defensive wrestler and Rua managed to score a takedown on him even if Liddell was off balance at the time. Out of the top fighters, no one can really match Shogun’s pace when he has prepared right which gives him another dimension that Wanderlei and Chuck have lacked.