Dan Hardy Clarifies Call Against Stalling in MMA and He's Right

i dont even think mendes threw a punch on the ground

Oh for the love of god already. It was one damn fight. Sometimes boring fights happen. Hell, the allegedly divine Anderson Silva was involved in the worst fight of the year. No matter how much you try to change rules to favor strikers, boring fights are going to sometimes happen….its just the nature of the game. Sometimes people get so damn obsessed with finishes that they lose track of everything else.

lentz defense holds no water

you know what Winner could of done?

threw elbows and repeated hammer fists to get him off his leg

calvacante did so and he won the title

I picked Lentz in a dirty parlay that night, he can do no wrong by me!

I think Winner is just at fault for not being able to do anything to get himself off the cage, sorry if Lentz was able to overcome your great British wrestling with cage stalling tactics, but there are two fighters in the cage not one.

Sorry to hear Winner has bad wrestling and that this is somehow Lentz fault.

@Nate

Regarding your article, specifically in reference to the following point:

“refs need to be just as aggressive in breaking up stalemates against the cage as they are in breaking up stalemates on the ground (if not more so)

I believe this has always been the main hindrance in creating an exciting combat environment. However, having said, much is to be debated when considering an appropriate restart due to a stalemate (whether on the ground or standing).

But more importantly, this issue also threatens the integrity of MMA as a sport versus the entertainment factor. Make no mistake, I believe that MMA must have a driving entertainment value for all viewers, casual or hardcore. Yet, this entertainment factor needs to be secondary to the core of MMA, which is in my opinion, a Sport first.

What is often seen as Lay N Pray, or Wall N Staff, can be defined as “timid” and “Non-entertaining”, however, such stalemates also indicate the proficiency level of both fighters in that respective position. Nik Lentz may appear to be stalling, but his inability to take down Andre Winner highlights winner’s ability to defend the take down. It would be unfair to suggest any fault on either party for being boring, when both parties are exhibiting an array of skill sets that neutralize their opponents effort.

Stopped defending and let himself get his ass kicked. Problem solved. It takes 2 to tango here.

Encouraging more standups doesn’t help at all. It actually has the opposite effect. Standups encourage the guy on the bottom to stall, instead of actually attempt to get up on his own.

Notice that Hardy neglects to mention his BFF Paul Daley won his fight over the weekend with a meaningless takedown at the bell.

Hardy is pretty much fail all around. Sometimes fights are boring. Just like every other sport.

I’m glad that Dan Hardy clarified his statements, because I can say without a doubt that he is still wrong on all counts.

Nik Lentz wasn’t stalling, this idea that he was just holding on and doing nothing is wrong. He was working all 3 round trying to take Winner down and followed his gameplan. Now he wasn’t all that successfull overall but in the end he was able to wear him down and get the takedowns to win the fight.

You don’t like a guy trying to wear you down and get takedowns do something about it, there is no difference than anyone else trying to imposse their will on you in a fight. Lentz executed his gameplan and won, there was no controversy there and all of this crying only makes it look worse for people trying to defend Winner and his deer in the headlights look after he got worn down.

we all know
that “strikers”
are not striking 100% of the time
is circling your oppoent
looking for an opening
any more stalling
than trying but not getting a take-down
it is just as difficult to score a good take-down
as it is to land a KO punch
learn to wrestle just a little crybaby

did no one else notice that winner did nothing
to deserve the win?
he was on defense the majority of the fight
what was holding him back?

MMA is not a well-established sport. Refinement of the rules at this stage is to be expected and encouraged.

I would also add that the sport is less and less about different backgrounds. In other words, assuming MMA remains popular and becomes more acceptable, young fighters should start cutting their teeth in amateur MMA rather than collegiate wrestling, karate, boxing — whatever. The goal should not be to settle some dispute about which fighting discipline, in the real world, is most effective, because having rules at all precludes this.

In other words, changing rules to discourage boring fighting is not some injustice to “wrestlers,” because if we take the sport of MMA seriously, “wrestlers” should not be a valid category of MMA fighter. At this stage, the only goal should be to create fighters who are entertaining and multi-dimensional, which is accomplished through rule changes.

And, there are obvious ways that current rules make stalling through wrestling both safer and more effective than it would be, in, say, a bar fight, the most obvious of which is the way fighters use the three-point grounded position to “defend” knees to the head (say, during a takedown attempt), leave the backs of their heads exposed, or leave their groins exposed while pressuring opponents against the cage. Behavior like that should not penalize the fighter who has to avoid throwing the illegal blow, but the fighter using it for artificial protection.

except he did get the takedowns eventually and it also ignores the fact that Winner did less than Lentz in the fight so it was clear by the end that he had clearly lost.