Things that I'd forgotten: Quinton Jackson vs. Igor Vovchanchyn

I love watching old fights; I learn a bit more every time I see them, and I also like to see MMA history evolving.  I'm no historian... but my wife is, and she tells me that history is important.

via en.susumug.com

With that said, I'd misplaced by DVD of PRIDE 22 - Beasts from the East 2 for about a year, and having just found it again, I decided to give it a watch.  And the co-main event got me thinking.  So, just about 8 years after the fact, here's a few thoughts on Quinton Jackson vs. Igor Vovchanchyn, a fight that I'd forgotten until today.

First, this fight was one of several fun fights on a pretty decent card.  There were no belts on the line, but then again, that hardly mattered in PRIDE.  Who needs titles when you can just have Bob Sapp hurt some small man?  After a lackluster start to the event - thanks, Kevin Randleman - the rest of the fights were at least entertaining and at best quite impressive.  By the time Jackson and Igor were ready to fight, the crowd - not to mention Quadros and Bas - were really keyed up by some really exciting finishes including a Filho armbar from the bottom, and both Heath Herring and Mario Sperry scoring TKOs from top control.  And perhaps because it was a relatively short fight and also just one finish among many (including the main event that followed), or even the rather indecisive nature of the finish itself, or for whatever reason, this fight does not get discussed much.  That's a shame, in part because it bears similarities to some contemporary situations.  Let's see if this sounds at all familiar...

At the time of this fight, Quinton Jackson was considered the next big thing; the only question was how big Quinton could be.  Jackson had already ensured his future in Japanese MMA with his huge personality, and stepping up early on in his tenure with PRIDE to fight a very popular veteran fighter - the immortal Sakuraba - didn't hurt.  But what really won Quinton such acclaim was his power; in his usual understated way, Quadros labelled Jackson a "mini-Bob Sapp".  And power he had: his KO slam of Masake Satake and his manhandling of Sean Grey (career record 4-6!) showed just how much stronger Quinton was than almost anyone he faced.  But there was still the sense that Jackson was untested; he had only ever stepped up in competition once, his submission loss to Sakuraba.  He also had a reputation for being a bit raw with his technique and, at times, a bit wild.  He had suffered a DQ loss after turning Daijiro Matsui's athletic cup into an internal organ.  There were questions to be answered about how Quinton would handle a technical, experienced fighter, someone who was a legitimate threat to control the fight to his own advantage, and who could negate Jackson's powerful slams and hooks.

Enter Igor.  It's important to understand how Igor was regarded at the time.  Vovchanchyn was not necessarily being talked about as a championship contender and entered the fight 2-2 in his previous 4 fights, but all the same, he was very highly regarded.  He had a well deserved reputation as a calm, quick, powerful striker; his few losses were almost entirely to grapplers, notably his loss in the finals of the 2000 PRIDE Grand Prix to Mark Coleman, and a bad submission loss to Mario Sperry less than a year prior.  But Vovchanchyn had also shown signs of evolution as a mixed martial artist, including his (kinda lucky) heel hook submission win over Valentijn Overeem, and his 43-7-1 record certainly demanded respect.

The fight itself is short and fun.  Jackson very smartly clinched with Vovchanchyn right away and slowly worked to control Igor while looking for a takedown.  Quinton's boxing looked quick if stiff, but it was apparent straight away that Jackson intended to beat Vovchanchyn up inside and break him down to the mat.  However, a miscalculation by Igor changed the course of events: Vochanchyn tried to grab a guillotine choke and pull guard following an exchange against the ropes, but Jackson caught Vovchanchyn in mid-air, spun him, and slammed him, hard.

(This prompted an odd diatribe by Stephen Quadros about how you have to allow slams because otherwise the fight would be karate point fighting.  Bad commentary is a longstanding tradition in MMA.)

On the ground, Jackson simply smashed Vovchanchyn.  His pace was brutal in the sense that it was sustainable for Quinton and exhausting for Vovchanchyn.  When Jackson passed to mount while Igor desperately tried to fend off his strikes, he landed a few serious shots to Vovchanchyn's head, but more importantly, some nasty shots to the body that sounded a great deal like someone swinging a baseball bat into a side of beef.  Vovchanchyn escaped from mount, and even managed to stand up twice, but both times he was tossed back to the ground by the clearly more powerful Quinton Jackson.  Suddenly, Jackson stood up and backed away; Igor rolled on his side and groaned; the referee ran up to Igor, looked down, and waived off the fight.  Win, Quinton Jackson, 7:17 of Round 1.  The body shots that Quinton landed on the ground had pulverized Vovchanchyn's ribs.  Jackson looked unstoppable against a legitimate challenge, and the hype built even further.

After rewatching this fight, I couldn't help but wonder about the parallels - and differences - between this bit of history and the recent life and times of Jon "Bones" Jones.

via t0.gstatic.com

Jones, like the younger Rampage, is a raw but terrifying force.  His natural gifts - incredible speed and athleticism, and deceiving power in a very long, lean frame - have made him look like a dominating new breed of fighter, though against somewhat suspect competition.  Like Jackson, Jones fought a crowd favourite fairly early in his tenure on the big stage, facing Stephan Bonnar in his second UFC fight and eighth fight overall; obviously, Bonnar is not in the same stratosphere as Sakuraba and Jones, unlike Jackson, picked up a win.  The wildness of Jackson was similar to the wildness of Jones in his first few fights in the UFC, as was the rapid improvement on that wildness; the DQ losses were both looking like the function of inexperience.  But the questions about Jackson's strength of opposition and his ability to dominate a higher level of competition were legitimate then, as the recent questions about Jones were legitimate.  Both were also decisively answered.  Jackson fought Vovchanchyn smart, used his massive power advantage, and broke a high level fighter.  Jon Jones did something similar between his demolition of Brandon Vera and, more importantly, Vladimir Matyushenko.  Matyushenko, like Vovchanchyn, was considered a fighter just dangerous enough to potentially take a little luster off of Jones' star; unlike Igor, Vladimir was never expected to be more than Jones' coming out party.  If Matyushenko could have taken Jones down and controlled him at all, it would have been the first chink in his armor, maybe the first sign that his inexperience could be exploited; instead, Matyushenko was smashed far more decisively and dramatically than Vochanchyn was by Rampage.  But these are differences of degree; the test at the similar stage of their careers remains an interesting parallel.

So what can we learn from this?  If Jones' career at this point at all follows Rampage's career post-Vovchanchyn, he has a lot to be happy about.  Rampage reeled off four more wins in a row, including his first defeat of Chuck Liddell, before finally falling to Wanderlei Silva in a fight that showed that Jackson's power could at times be countered by speed, or at the least, a gameplan based on beating Jackson to the punch.  Silva worked hard to pepper Jackson and get inside on him quickly, and then controlled the clinch with constant knees.  But it's difficult to imagine such a straight-forward solution to the challenge of Jon Jones.  Jones' package of power, speed and size offers opponents few places to turn.  Everything about Jones' career at this point seems like Rampage's career arc but higher and faster, and it's possible and even likely that he could be remembered as a greater fighter than Quinton Jackson by the time he ends his career.  He has that kind of potential, though he still has another eight years of fighting to do in order to live up to that potential and justify such an opinion.  But it's an exciting thought.

Meanwhile, what of the defeated Russians, Vovchanchyn and Matyushenko (actually a Ukranian and a Belarussian)?  Vovchanchyn went on to have a few more fights, some of them fun - I'm a sucker for his fight against Dan Bobish because it's fun to watch a fat man gas and get punched in the face - but few of them relevant.  His head kick KO loss to Cro Cop and his defeat at 205lbs at the hands of Alistair Overeem signaled the end of his relevance for the most part, but the real end to Vovchanchyn's career was a right hand injury that refused to heal.  He retired at the age of 32 in 2008.  Matushenko may follow a somewhat similar arc; he has just signed a new contract to fight with the UFC and is likely to appear on their upcoming event in Germany.  But Matyushenko will be fighting a much lower tier of competition from now on out; the job that Jon Jones did on Matyushenko showed the difference between Vladimir's skills and athleticism at age 40, and the skills and athleticism of the younger top fighters of the division, regardless of experience.  Matyushenko, thankfully, has not suffered some of the serious injuries that derailed Vochanchyn and with some luck he can end his career on his own terms after a collecting a few more pay cheques.

The young Quinton "Rampage" Jackson, and the current Jon "Bones" Jones.  I never thought about the parallels before, and that's partly because I'd forgotten about Jackson's fight with Igor Vovchanchyn.  I'm really glad I decided to clean out the drawer where I had inexplicably shoved my PRIDE 22 DVD between two table cloths.

Historical Footnote 1: The main event for this card was BJJ stylist Ryan Gracie vs. Japanese judo specialist Shungo Oyama.  Gracie was 1-2 at the time; Oyama was 2-3.  This was a simple grudge match, and it was brilliant and entertaining.  After the fight, Quadros pondered "What's next for Ryan Gracie?"  The obvious answer would be three more wins; the truthful answer would be an untimely death and a lot of questions about a life and career that could have been.

Historical Footnote 2: This event also features my favourite "ugly" fight of all time: Guy Mezger vs. Yoshihisa Yamamoto.  It was the third to last fight of Mezger's 30-14-2 career and he simply abused Yamamoto for 20 minutes.  I have a soft spot for Mezger, and seeing him so close to the end of his career still fighting at a high level makes me smile.