Open Suggestion Thread

Oxford - Wrestle - Take part in a fight or contest that involves close grappling with one's opponent

Webster - Wrestle - To contend by grappling with and striving to trip or throw an opponent down or off balance

sounds like combat to me.

I'm going to ignore your whole, "Don't you know that wrestlers are in MMA" and "Don't you know who these people are" comments because a) yes I do, and b) not the point. Also, c) the tone is a little silly, because nobody is disrespecting wrestling (I was disrespecting professional wrestling, thank you). But thanks for getting all snippy.

I will address  the "Josh Barnett considers himself a pro wrestler" thing, because it's funny: If I call myself a tulip, does that make me a flower? I don't care what he calls himself, and you shouldn't either. Barnett is very well rounded and has cross-trained for all of his career. Besides, I thought he was a catch wrestler. :-)

[If you wanted to bring Barnett up in a discussion about Brock Lenar, you should have mentioned that he was run out of the UFC for being a doper, and has only fought once in a country with drug testing in almost 6 years. Strange, no? So if they meet in America for that rubber match, I'll put my money on Nog. Or would you rather play for eyebrows?]

Back to my point. Let's take a minute and read what i actually wrote:

"I personally want him to face the threat of another loss. It's the only way he's going to learn that he needs to get the fuck out of Minnesota and train some serious BJJ and Muay Thai if he's going to make it in this game."

Now which part of that were you disagreeing with? Because it looks from here like either the entire BE crew started taking crazy pills, or you all are so upset about picking Lesnar to beat Mir that you're willing to say crazy things to defend your pick like:

a) Wrestling is a combat sport. Really? Where are the strikes? Where are the submissions? Let's not be silly about this. See my reply to the guy with the dictionary.

b) Being good at wrestling is enough for MMA. Which flies in the face of standard MMA wisdom: nothing is more boring than a pure wrestler facing a pure wrestler. You know it, I know it, the whole world knows it. And the reason is that wrestling doesn't teach the skills necessary to finish fights. Right?

I don't know where you got the impression that I'm down on wrestling, but you're mistaken. I think wrestling is an integral part of MMA. But without striking and without submissions, it's useless. Do you honestly disagree with that? Or did you like watching Sean Sherk take down and dry hump Hermes Franca for 5 rounds?

The second half of my point was, admittedly, just about tweaking you guys for being so wrong about Mir/Lesnar:

"Let's face facts people: Brock Lesnar is just as much of a freak-show as Hong-Man Choi or Giant Silva. The reason you put these freaks on the card is to see how the real fighters defeat them."

So I was joking a bit, but it was nice to see Brent take the bait. But the more I think about it, the more I stand by what I wrote. Lesnar has more wrestling skills than Choi or Silva, but not more combat skills (see above). As such, his real weapons are his size and strength, just like Choi or Silva. And I think it's instructive that Lesnar lost to Mir in just about the same amount of time it took Fedor to beat Choi (less, actually) and that Mir and Fedor left the ring with their faces jacked up in pretty much the same way, but otherwise uninjured.  

(Also interesting is that Mir is willing to take what I think we would all agree is a tougher opponent than Choi, and finish him faster than Fedor did. And do it in a state with drug testing. WAR MIR!)

I predict that if they put Lesnar up against a smaller opponent that the guy dances around the ring to stay away from the takedown and peppers him with leg kicks before going for a choke. You know, like most freak shows. :-)