and the last was Zuluzinho ;)

I think if he was talking to you and you gave that response he would add Big Nog to his quick example of exceptions like Maia and Aoki. Ryan Hall did talk alot about how the highest level of BJJ is evolving away from a closed guard because it relies too much on someone making a mistake rather then having moves to counter what the opponent is doing on top.

Another example is Lesnar. He’s at the top when it comes to wrestlers and he doesn’t have to be a BJJ master he just needs to know some pretty basic positions that completely neutralize any opportunity for his opponent to get a submission.

Don’t mean to bring Brock v Fedor into the discussion but if Brock got Fedor is the same position that Brett Roger’s did, on his back, brock would have smothered him and never gave him the room to swivel out for the armbar that he’s done so much.

but rather his brain being scrambled from the punch that knocked him down.

He actually had the presence of mind to get the underhook there, which was pretty smart. Thiago was just smarter by slapping on the Brabo. I don’t really think Swick did much wrong there, especially since he had just been dropped, like Scott said.

True but is he good against high level wrestlers?

Early in his career, Nate got lots of subs from his back, and his BJJ certainly hasn’t just gone downhill from there. He just never has experienced the smothering top control that Chael used.

And I think this applies only at the highest level. Obviously we’ve seen Carlos Condit, Nate Diaz, Amir Sadollah, etc., all sub wrestlers with armbars and triangles from the bottom in the last two years. They just weren’t fighting the top five guys. Other than that, he’s got a good point, although I’d like to see the time limit of rounds included as a factor here. The five minute round seems to favor guys who can gain top control, as opposed to a great BJJ player on his back, who needs time to set things up.

And almost passed out in the guillotine against Nate.

i think a guy like marquradt (huge with good top game) never really spends time on his back, and his bottom game was exposed a bit.

but also the trend being that guys will start coming out with great submissions off their back again. A.silva sub’ing lutter was off his back, that was cool.

i think we still see a lot of triangles from bottom too, and like kwisatz said, alot of wrestlers still get sub’d in guys guards.

Yeah this is a good point. Nate was still the one who came closest to getting a finish. If that fight had been five rounds, which is purely theoretical I know, Nate may have been able to turn it around and finish Chael.

You post a lot of stuff that includes “X fighter told me” or “Y promoter talked to me”. We get it, you talk to people in the industry. You make that quite clear. But we all SAW Sonnen almost finished by the sub. Sonnen told EVERYONE that at the press conference.

And the key word is almost.

Do you believe that name dropping will increase traffic to your website? Concise points and intelligent comments that bring something to the conversation would make me want to visit your website. If you believe that the hardcore readership of BE is going to follow you because you have talked to Sonnen, you apparently don’t pay attention to the audience, and I only consider myself a casual fan compared the to the average BE reader/commenter.

So far, I have never been to your website and am increasingly unlikely to ever visit due to the quality of your posts here. BTW a shameless plug is not in order, but do what you must.

Marquardt did go for a kneebar and a kimura from the bottom, so it’s not quite accurate to say he “didn’t even threaten submissions”. But then again, those two submissions are much more easily completed when you’re in a dominant position, rather than when your opponent’s in a dominant position, so he probably would have been better off going for armbars and triangles. He might have been thinking sweep with the kimura as well.

I read it, and generally, I think you make a lot of good points. However I don’t think this is much of a standard test case, as I don’t know that Nate was really even working for a submission that hard, I think he just looked a bit lost, and didn’t make the switch from working his guard to just trying to get up, which I expected he’d have more success doing, and it may have worked against him that Chael was busted up pretty badly. If Chael was fresh, he may have tried harder to end the fight by working for mount, and given Nate more openings. I never expected Nate to sub Chael from his back, I just thought he’d be able to defend takedowns to a degree, and that he’d be able to get up from his back. As it was Chael kept tight to Nate in guard, and was content to just work his ground and pound. Nate just couldn’t get much space to turn his hips, and in my opinion, lost his composure once he realized he couldn’t stop the takedowns. He knew he needed to get up, but he was eating a steady diet of punches and elbows, and he couldn’t mentally get himself to stop trying to control Chael’s posture and just risk everything to get up, which was pretty clearly his only chance by the midpoint of the fight. We still see wrestlers get subbed from guard pretty often, but Chael isn’t just another good wrestler. He’s one of the best out there. And so that’s not much of a trend at all to me. It’s always been that way. The few truly elite wrestlers out there have always been tough to sub once they develop good defense against it. Hendo being a good case in point, as it took Anderson to finally tap Hendo out. Meanwhile, good wrestlers without the experience and sub defense still get caught pretty often, by good, but not elite BJJ players, see Brock Larson, C.B. Dollaway, etc. You put Maia under Chael and it’s a whole different story. To me this was more about Nate being really good everywhere, but elite nowhere. And I ate my words on this one. I thought he’d be able to stuff Chael, elude him with speed and footwork, and eventually beat him down. And I’ll agree with you on Anderson. He isn’t going to be held down and dominated positionally for more than a round, let alone five of them, whether he can slap on a triangle or not.