Ed Soares and Dave Meltzer on Chael Sonnen's "Quick Tap" Against Anderson Silva at UFC 117

The quick/false tapping is a terrible thing to do because it violates the trust that the other fighter puts in you when entering the ring. It’s just as bad as not stopping gnp after the other person is clearly out or not releasing a sub to a tap.

It also doesn’t just put your opponent in danger, it puts all fighters in danger because of the loss of trust.

I thought it was. But the unified rules don’t seem to mention it.

Anyway, I’m not sure that there’s an issue here. Dolloway tapped to Sadollah in much the same way, and afterwards said that he felt the hold start to loosen, but his hand was already in motion – I’m fully prepared to believe that the same happened to Sonnen. Similar things have happened to me practicing BJJ, except it doesn’t matter there because it’s practice.

I’m still trying to figure out whether it was from the triangle or the arm bar. It looks like he alleviated a lot of the pressure from the triangle by sitting out. Unfortunately for Chael he didn’t have the presence of mind to wrap his left arm around Silva’s leg while he was doing so to avoid the follow up arm bar attempt. (This seems like a high level technical detail but you would think that given his history they would have drilled this position a half million times by now.) Did Chael comment on this? (He did and I probably missed it.)

In my view, with the benefit of hindsight and a clarity of thought that only someone who’s not fighting but is instead sitting behind a keyboard can obtain:), I’ll say that Chael should have let him break the arm or put him to sleep. A successful armbar doesn’t mean the fight ends as Jacare demonstrated against Roger, although it sometimes does as Silvia-Mir demonstrates. From my vantage, it doesn’t look like Silva could have finished the choke.

The mark of cheaters everywhere!

is why their between-round coaching methods resort to yelling at their fighters NOT TO LOSE THIS FIGHT! Any fool knew that the triangle was pretty much Anderson’s only chance in those later rounds aside from a flash KO, so why wasn’t Matt Lindland yelling STAY OUT OF THE TRIANGLE?!?!? Or instead of yelling, reminding him of the technique to avoid falling into the triangle? Or instead of yelling “DON’T LOSE THIS FIGHT!” to a guy with a history of mental breakdowns in otherwise winnable fights, yell “YOU WILL WIN THIS FIGHT!??”

Team Quest obviously commands a good amount of of respect, but at the same time it’s been a while since they’ve developed a real contender, and most of the top amateur wrestlers seem to be going to other camps.

nothing more I love than another mma myth, that years from now will be taken and spoken as gospel smh. seriously there is no conspiracy or quick tap and just because Lindland pulled some bs years ago doesn’t mean Sonnen or anyone at Team Quest does the same. Sonnen has never quick tapped, not to Filho not to Maia not to Anderson. I’m as big a Melzer fan as there is on here but he missed the target on this one big time. People can reach all they want and claim until they can’t breathe that it happened but just like GSP tapped to strikes and Chuck eye pokes fighters it’s a myth and not true at all.

first HuffPo, then the whiney “Joe Stevenson MUST travel to Mexico for X-rays” bullshit, now this.

I get the feeling you don’t even train, Nate. do you?

I do.

let me tell you about some of my own experiences with “quick tapping”. first of all, you should realize that sometimes, there is a DANGER in the physical act of tapping. for instance, if someone has your arm in a really tight spot and you’re supporting the arm that’s caught in the hold with your other arm, releasing that support in order to tap the guy with your other hand could cause your arm to get broken. in situations like this, it’s best to yell “tap!” than to actually tap bc you don’t want to forego that little extra support. but either way, you NEVER stop fighting to get out of the hold until the guy lets you go. this way, if he tries to crank on it, you’re at least still TRYING to defend. anyone who trains knows this. you might tap verbally or physically, but you don’t stop defending until he lets you go. if you do, you’re putting your health entirely in someone else’s hands and, in my opinion, are a fool for it.

but what if he doesn’t let go and you get out on your own? this happens sometimes. there have been a few times where I’ve gone to tap the guy and while I’m in the process of doing that, I get out. what happens then? was it a tap or do we keep going? answer: IT DEPENDS. sometimes you’re unsure if the guy let you go or you got out on your own. if I think I got out on my own, we’ll keep right on going. if I’m not sure, I’ll sometimes concede the tap even if I think I might’ve gotten out on my own.

what happens with what you refer to as “the quick tap” is someone goes to tap, taps maybe once or looks like he’s about to, and then starts to get out. you know it when you see it (e.g. CB vs Amir on TUF Finale). the ref has not yet been able to stop the fight as he begins to escape. for this reason, the fighter feels entitled to keep fighting. it’s no great moral crime like you attempt to make it out to be. I mean, rather than arguing that the guy who “tapped” is crying that he didn’t tap, couldn’t you also argue that the fighter who caught the submission knew the other guy was getting out and let the hold go before the ref could stop the fight so he could argue that the other guy tapped when he really knew that his opponent was about to escape? tell you what. go rewatch the Nick Diaz/Diego Sanchez fight. at one point (and it happened real fast), Diego caught Nick in a real quick armbar and it looked like Nick might’ve tapped once before escaping. the only difference I see in that tap and Chael’s tap is that the ref saw Chael’s and didn’t see Nick’s.

lastly, if you’re seriously trying to argue that a “quick tap” is an actual strategy, you’re an even bigger fool than I first thought. risking your health, good name, and possibly career on the chance that the ref doesn’t see you tap doesn’t sound like a sane strategy to me.

to me, it looked like Chael was defending, tapped once while still trying to defend, and then started to get out a split split split second before Anderson let him go. for that reason, having been in situations like that before, I can see why Chael felt like he got out and his tap shouldn’t count bc in his mind he got out before the ref stopped it. and, after all, you can tap all day long, but the fight isn’t over until the ref stops it. so really, just between the two fighters, the tap is meaningless; in pro MMA it is a signal to the referee, not the other fighter. if you tap but then get out on your own before the ref steps in, fight on. it’s well within the rules.