Twitter Mailbag: Talking UFC 169, Mir's legacy, TRT's future and more
- from http://mmajunkie.com/ on Jan 30, 2014
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Super Bowl weekend is nearly upon us, which means two things, as far as the Twitter Mailbag is concerned.
1) UFC 169 brings us two title fights and one potential loser-leaves-town match to discuss in this week’s TMB, and 2) we’d better hurry up and do this so I can get to the store and execute this year’s snack game plan. I see a lot of couch-sitting and cheese-dip-eating in our futures, friends.
Ask a question of your own on Twitter @BenFowlkesMMA. Or just make a statement poorly disguised as a question. Either one works.
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That’s one fight where striking statistics really don’t tell you much, or at least don’t tell you much that you didn’t already know. Neither man did a ton in the striking department. In terms of pure volume, Benson Henderson clearly did more. His shots to Josh Thomson’s body were probably the most significant strikes of the fight. At the same time, this was way more about takedowns and control. That’s the game both guys spent most of the fight trying to win, though it’s sometimes tough to tell how to score that.
Thomson spent a lot of time on Henderson’s back in the first round. He didn’t do a ton with it, but he still secured a dominant position in a round where not much else happened. That’s Thomson’s round. Where it gets tougher is in subsequent rounds, where Thomson would get Henderson’s back only briefly. This isn’t a jiu-jitsu tournament where you secure the position and get your points after a few seconds. If you can’t maintain the dominant position or use it toward some greater end, I’m not sure how much it should count for. The fact that we’re still having the discussion without any clear answers probably tells us what we already knew: That was a close fight. Those can go either way, at least in theory. In practice, they usually seem to go in Henderson’s favor.
A fair question, and one we covered in this very column about a year ago. Short answer: probably. Long answer: but it might open the door for a legal challenge that could lead to uncomfortable scrutiny of UFC contracts in general.
I don’t fault the UFC too much for not moving independently to ban testosterone-replacement therapy outright. That’s asking a lot, especially if athletic commissions allow it (which is the really crazy part, when you think about it). What I fault the UFC for is this shifting stance on the issue. One minute UFC President Dana White is vehement in his opposition, and the next he’s praising Vitor Belfort’s career resurgence and firing back at critics who “talk a lot of s–t” about whether he could get a therapeutic-use exemption in the U.S. If the UFC doesn’t like TRT, why did it give Antonio Silva a secret go-ahead to use it for a fight in Australia, where the UFC acted as regulator? Why did Belfort get a similarly secret exemption when he fought Jon Jones in Toronto, which came before his year of Brazilian beatdowns?
The UFC has tried to play both sides on this debate, denouncing TRT when it seems fashionable while at the same time profiting from the proliferation of it. Now that the momentum is gathering against TRT, especially with the statement from the Association of Ringside Physicians, maybe the UFC figures it’s ridden this wave as far as it can. Everybody out of the pool. Better late than never, I guess, though I know a few fighters who wish this change of heart had come sooner.
My initial response to this question was an automatic “no way,” with a side of “psssh,” and maybe even a “you kidding me?” thrown in there. Mostly that’s because the UFC isn’t known for giving fighters a ton of options to choose from when setting up the next fight, but also because I just assumed that fighters pay as little attention to the “official” UFC rankings as the rest of us do (MMAjunkie’s staff doesn’t vote in them, nor do most of the writers from the other big sites like Sherdog, MMA Fighting, etc.).
But, actually, at this past weekend’s UFC on FOX 10 event in Chicago, I really noticed it. At least one fighter requested that his next opponent be someone with “a number next to his name,” and several have begun to directly reference where they stand in the specific UFC rankings. The fighters actually buy this stuff, even if it started mainly so the UFC could reference it on FOX broadcasts and justify/hype certain fights with the illusion of math.
Does that mean it’s harder to get them in a fight with someone lower down on the totem pole? Maybe a little, but that’s more likely to manifest itself in which fights they ask for rather than which fights they’ll accept. As I’ve written about in the past, turning down fights in the UFC can land a fighter in a dangerous lottery. It gives the UFC the right to extend your contract, which means you could be on the sidelines without a paycheck for a while. When you do get the next offer, it could be even worse than the last one. Maybe it’s better not to over-think it as you’re climbing the ranks. Also better not to put too much stock in those numbers next to each guy’s name.
I believe it has the potential to impact his confidence, and maybe even disrupt his training camp. I also believe that the mental game might be the weakest link in the chain for Vitor Belfort (if only because the other links are all pretty strong), so anything that messes with that could be significant. If he really is forced to get off synthetic testosterone all at once after more than a year of regular injections, which can trick your body into ceasing its own testosterone production, that could be significant.
In a way, it makes you almost feel sorry for Belfort. The TRT tide seems to have turned on him now, but he was enabled in this pursuit by everyone from the UFC to the Brazilian commission to that one doctor who works for both the UFC and the Brazilian commission in an obvious conflict of interest. All these people told him his testosterone use was fine, and they defended him publicly when critics spoke up. Now it’s no longer fashionable. Sorry, Vitor. Dana White is running for cover – when, as my co-podcaster Chad Dundas pointed out, he seemed positively giddy while Belfort was knocking people out on his TRT-fueled rampage – and Belfort is left holding the syringe. I probably would have picked Chris Weidman in this match-up even before this, just due to how their styles stack up. Now it’s starting to feel like a no-brainer.
Pat Barry’s problems were not going to be solved by a drop in weight class. At 5-11 he was undersized for heavyweight, but at least he had quickness and athleticism to fall back on. At light heavyweight he’d still be shorter than most, only those guys are generally superior athletes. Better to take your chances with the slow big men. Or get out of the sport altogether and take your chances against some kickboxers who won’t try to double-leg you as soon as the fight starts.
As for Frank Mir, again, MMA doesn’t have a hall of fame – the UFC does. Whether you get inducted into that one depends a lot on how the UFC feels about you by the time your career is over. Does Mir deserve such an honor? Maybe. He was the UFC heavyweight champ back before one era gave way to the next, and then he was the interim heavyweight champ (I know, but still) for about five minutes before Brock Lesnar came back on the scene. He became the first man to stop Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira with strikes, and then the first to submit him. Does all of that make him worthy of a hall of fame spot? I don’t know. Maybe if we had some sort of independent voting panel to weigh in on it, we could come to a consensus. Instead I guess we’ll just wait to hear whether Dana White likes him enough.
Maybe in those two weight classes. Not unlike Team Alpha Male, Nova Uniao seems to specialize in the lighter divisions, where they’ve produced some real killers of late. That’s not unusual for an MMA gym. You need good sparring partners to create good fighters, and having a couple world champions on the mat every day makes everyone better. That said, I’m not sure how much these particular fights will tell us about Renan Barao and Jose Aldo that we didn’t already know. Barao beat Urijah Faber once, and is expected to beat him again. Aldo is a 6-1 favorite over Ricardo Lamas, so anything other than a dominant performance will likely be a disappointment. Kind of puts them in a tough spot, but hey, that’s what happens when you’re at the top.
Whoa, they never work? I think you meant to add, ” … except for when they do.” This handy chart compiled by a member of the UG forum shows the most common submissions throughout the UFC’s history, and while leg locks aren’t leading the way by any means, heel-hook submissions are just as common as, says, D’arce chokes, with kneebars not far behind. If you know when and how to apply them, they can work. Trouble is, if you go for one and it doesn’t work you often end up sacrificing position, and that can cost you.
Also, because heel hooks and kneebars can be dangerous, a lot of guys don’t fight against them that hard in training. You get caught in a heel hook in training, you work your escape, but you don’t want to risk tearing something (those subs in particular come on fast and mean), so you might tap before you really have to. That can give some fighters a false sense of how good they are at them, so when they attempt them with money on the line, they’re surprised at the other guy’s willingness and ability to fight through them. That doesn’t mean fighters should never attempt them. It just means they should pick their spots, and get better at finishing them.
I’ve been pushing for “UFC: Paris” for years now. Instead we get Chicago in January. Not that I can complain too much. The UFC just announced a trip to Vancouver in June, and that is a fine time of year to visit my favorite Canadian city. Paris can wait.
Real drug testing. And by real, I mean random, unannounced, show-up-at-your-gym-and-watch-you-pee-into-a-cup kind of testing. The way the TRT winds are blowing, you’d have to be an idiot to apply for an exemption right now. You’d be far better off doing it on the sly, then manipulating your levels as fight time approaches. Commissions don’t do the CIR testing that can detect the presence of synthetic testosterone, and those levels drop quickly after you take a dose. Right now in MMA, you can circle the date on the drug test on your calendar. That’s no way to do it if we really care about cleaning up the sport – a big if, by the way.
Ben Fowlkes is MMAjunkie and USA TODAY’s MMA columnist. Follow him on Twitter at @BenFowlkesMMA. Twitter Mailbag appears every Thursday on MMAjunkie.
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