Twitter Mailbag: Fowlkes on cutting Palhares, Brazilian judges, Cain-JDS trilogy

So much for preparing the Twitter Mailbag in advance. After Wednesday night’s action at UFC Fight Night 29, we have so very much to get to, and our Internet-trained attention spans are so very short.

Let’s get right to it. And if you have a question of your own, send it to @BenFowlkesMMA.

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@benfowlkesMMA How should the UFC punish Palhares? Should they cut him?

— ryan211 (@ryan211) October 10, 2013

I sure wouldn’t be sad to see him go. The UFC cut Paul Daley for taking a clumsy, ineffectual swipe at Josh Koscheck after the final horn, so why go easier on Rousimar Palhares for continuing to crank a heel hook after his fight with Mike Pierce was effectively over? I don’t buy for one second that he does this out of instinct or training or adrenaline. Watching the replay of the fight, you can see that Palhares clearly realizes the referee has moved in to stop the fight, and still he yanks on the heel hook one more time. That’s nothing at all like a fighter hitting an unconscious opponent right after dropping him. It’s more like a fighter reaching past the ref to keep punching a guy even after he’s been pushed off. It’s inexcusable, and Palhares has done it enough that he can’t claim it was all an isolated mistake. If you cut a guy like that, what do you really lose? And if you keep him, what have you told the rest of your fighters, not to mention your fans?

@benfowlkesMMA What do you do with Thiago Silva? Any chance UFC cuts him for 1 too many f-ups? If you had to cut 1, is it Silva or Palhares?

— Brendan (@CursedDiamonds) October 10, 2013

Thiago Silva looked about as bad as you can in a dominant, completely one-sided decision victory. Somehow he managed to beat Matt Hamill up and still lose momentum in the division. That’s what happens when you miss weight, show up to the fight looking like all the excess pounds are located squarely in your midsection, then proceed to huff and puff your way through three slow-motion rounds. The thing that’s so infuriating is that Silva is a good fighter. He’s tough and mean and has plenty of ways to hurt people. So why does he insist on getting in his own way so often? Still, with Silva there’s hope. At least his screw-ups are only hurting him. If I have to cut someone after Wednesday night, it’s Palhares who gets the axe.

@benfowlkesMMA Does the UFC have the power to stop going to Brazil as a way to protest Brazil’s nature to favor their own? #TMB

— Omar (@omar_ortiz21) October 10, 2013

Of course the UFC can go where it wants and stop going where it wants, though I suspect those decisions are far more likely to be made according to ticket sales and TV deals than judges’ decisions. That said, it did seem to be a pretty good night for Brazilian fighters involved in close fights. I thought T.J. Dillashaw deserved the decision win over Raphael Assuncao, and it’s not hard to imagine judges who’d be less impressed by Fabio Maldonado‘s willingness to lay up against the fence and get punched by Joey Beltran.

The exception was Jake Shields‘ split decision win over Demian Maia. Heading into the fifth round, I would have told you that this was not a good time for Shields to continue his reliance on friendly scoring. Not like the UFC had plucked Brazilian fans from the crowd to serve as judges, but in close fights the crowd reaction often seems to have an effect. This time it didn’t, which is reassuring. Still, Brazilians did win a majority of the fights in their home country once again. According to MMA statistician Reed Kuhn, who covers this topic extensively in his forthcoming book, the home cage advantage for Brazilians is not just our imagination. Brazilian UFC fighters on home soil have won somewhere in the neighborhood of 75 percent of their fights against foreigners, according to Kuhn. Whether that’s because of favorable matchmaking or the influence of the crowd or some combination, I can’t say, but it feels like enough of a trend to make me think twice if I’m an American fighter who gets offered a free trip to Brazil on the UFC’s dime.

@benfowlkesMMA it seems that JDS doesn’t get a lot of credit for the w vs Cain. What’s more impressive. Dominant Dec win or flash ko in 1min

— Daniel (@JDRCheckit) October 9, 2013

It is weird how so many people seem to think that knocking out a guy out with one blow somehow detracts from the value of the victory. I get it, Cain Velasquez was diminished by injury heading into that fight (so was Junior Dos Santos, but whatever). The point is, it was his skull that JDS hit, and he only needed to hit it once. That tells us a) that JDS has the type of KO power that you’re never totally safe from, and b) even Velasquez, that rare non-stop heavyweight, has on off switch located somewhere on his head. Fortunately we have a third meeting scheduled to help clear up the debate.

@benfowlkesMMA can we forget about a possible 4th fight if JDS loses to Cain at UFC 166?

— Margarito Roman Jr. (@__Jr_) October 9, 2013

I think we can forget about it either way. I hope we can, anyway. I kind of thought that was the whole point of a rubber match. When both guys have won one, it’s winner take all in the third. That’s why, as much as I’m looking forward to this fight, I’ll be glad when it’s over and the heavyweight division can move on.

@benfowlkesMMA any chance that the freshly announced event in London next March will feature the JBJ vs Glover title fight? #tmb

— Paul Duckworth (@Paul_D86) October 9, 2013

You know what I like about you U.K. MMA fans? You maintain your optimism, even when the UFC doesn’t give you a lot of good reasons to. For your sake, I hope you get that fight. I just wouldn’t rearrange your life around it just yet.

@benfowlkesMMA Does the amount of travel you have to do as a sports writer make your job suck more or less?

— Nicholas Jenkins (@ngjenkins) October 9, 2013

The thing that sucks about working at MMAjunkie.com is that we have John Morgan, which means no one else gets to complain about their travel schedule ever. That man is the true road warrior of the MMA media. If you watched UFC 165 from Toronto, you saw him right up front on press row, wearing his bright blue polo shirt. If you watched UFC Fight Night 29 from Barueri, Brazil last night, you saw the same exact shirt (the blue really brings out his eyes). You think it’s easy to get to Barueri, Brazil? It’s not. It’s a long time in an airplane, and a long time to think about what would happen if you crash-landed into the Amazon (naturally, I assume John would lead a group of survivors who would name him king after being awed by his blue shirt). Me? I travel maybe once a month, and only for a couple of days, so I can’t really complain. Even if I could, I probably wouldn’t, since it’s not exactly a bad deal to get paid to fly off to a different city and watch fights.

@benfowlkesMMA Cain Velasquez just got his black belt. Do you think he will go for submissions now?

— Steven Hyne (@StevenHyne) October 9, 2013

I’d love it if he did, but I can’t say I’m overly optimistic. In 13 pro fights, he has zero submission victories. Even in the rematch with Junior dos Santos, where he had the former champ dazed and delirious, it didn’t seem to occur to Velasquez that he should stop punching him for a second and think about a choke. He wasn’t a jiu-jitsu novice then, so what’s a new fabric belt going to do to change that? I’m sure he knows his share of submissions, and I think it could really add another threat to his arsenal if he used them. It just doesn’t seem to be something he’s all that interested in. At least not so far.

@benfowlkesMMA Do you think there should be an automatic point deduction for grabbing the fence or an opponents shorts and no warning? #tmb

— Larry Bell (@LarryJBell) October 9, 2013

As we saw in the Dong Hyun Kim vs. Erick Silva fight on Wednesday night – and as was aptly pointed out on the broadcast – not all fence grabs are created equal. Some are relatively harmless. Others can change the entire complexion of a fight, turning a would-be takedown into a crucial opportunity to end the fight. Kim’s fence grab was of the latter variety, and should have been punished immediately. It’s not like these guys don’t know the rules. If anything, they know them so well that they know they’ll get at least one free fence grab in most fights. If they use it wisely – say, to stop a takedown that allows them to then turn around and knock the other guy out, as Jose Aldo did to Chad Mendes – they can knowingly cheat to win. Other sports aren’t in the habit of handing out repeated warnings to people who intentionally break the rules, so why should MMA? It’s especially egregious since, unlike most other sports, in this one the competition can end at any moment. Even a point deduction can be rendered obsolete by one well-placed punch just seconds later. So why are we wasting time warning fighters not to break rules they already know they have to abide by?

@benfowlkesMMA what were your thoughts on erick silva’s performance, like how he kept turning his back to kim?

— BRF (@BRF52) October 10, 2013

The good stuff about Silva is also the bad stuff about Silva. He’s dynamic, which also leads to him being a little wild, and he fights at a pace that seems destined to either wear out the other guy or else drive him straight into trouble. That’s what happened to him against Kim. For a while he managed to keep Kim on defense simply by staying on the attack, then he ran straight into a left hand that put his lights out. That seems like a fixable problem to me, but he’d better fix it soon. As you climb higher in the UFC’s welterweight division, you’re only going to find more fighters who can make you pay for those kinds of momentary lapses.

@benfowlkesMMA The whole point of weight classes is to pick on someone your own size. Would day-of weigh ins help weightgate? #tmb

— NaturalFlyweight (@NatFlyweight) October 10, 2013

Day-of weigh-ins would change the sport, I think we can agree on that much. Whether that change would be positive or negative depends on who you ask. For instance, if we held a lone weigh-in a few hours before the event, it seems like one of two things would happen. Either fighters would find a way to cut that didn’t leave them too depleted to turn right around and compete after that (and maybe harm themselves further in the process), or else they’d try that at first, discover that it didn’t work very well, and we’d see a mass weight-class reshuffling as fighters retreated to a division closer to their natural weight. Welterweights would become middleweights. Light heavyweights would become heavyweights. Flyweights might cease to exist.

Would that be better for MMA? I don’t know. To some extent, I think we might be trying to solve a problem that isn’t as prevalent or as bad as we think it is. I’m not sure weight-cutting itself, when done properly over a long enough time, is really so damaging. It’s the drastic, short-notice cuts that put fighters at risk. Maybe same day weigh-ins would help deter that, since what’s the point of making weight if you’re too weary to fight afterward? Then again, maybe the same guys who do it now because they need the show money will still do it then, just with more immediate consequences when they step into the cage too tired to do anything but take a beating.

Ben Fowlkes is MMAjunkie.com and USA TODAY’s MMA columnist. Follow him on Twitter at @BenFowlkesMMA. Twitter Mailbag appears every Thursday on MMAjunkie.com.