MMA and Combat Sports Thread

[nShade]

JUST IN TIME FOR DC/MIOCIC BOOIIII!

And Max just got pulled from his fight vs Ortega for concussion like symptoms. Which are probably the result of weight cutting. The madness continues.

[bluedot]

They’re saying he wasn’t even cutting weight yet. I wonder if he was just sparring like a dummy.

[bluedot]

They?re saying he wasn?t even cutting weight yet. I wonder if he was just sparring like a dummy.

[nShade]

Yeah, I read that as well. Pretty crazy. Sucks there won't be a replacement fight, but I don't blame Ortega for that. Keep your title shot!

[bluedot]

There’s a video making the rounds of Matt Serra very calmly subduing what appears to be an incredibly drunk guy who was evidently being belligerent to the waitstaff of a restaurant and may or may not have taken a swing at Matt when he stood up to diffuse the situation.

I went to a few of the NJ/NY BJJ seminars when I lived in the East coast, and I’m reminded of something Matt said. I knew Matt from MMA and from seeing him in ADCC, which is to say, no gi competition. I was of the mindset that no-gi was real, cause who walks around in a gi?

One thing Serra said has stuck with me. First, almost everyone you’re likely to fight is wearing shorts or pants that you can use to control them, cause the fabric is usually durable and the waistband is right at the hips. (This is when I realized he was a genius... one sentence in.) He said a guy in a t-shirt doesn’t have tons to work with, but on the East coast, people are im coats and jackets about half of the year, maybe more. He picked on the iconic black Northface fleece... it’s just as tough as a gi jacket, so you can grip the fuck out of it. It also has less mobility about the shoulder, which means if you can grab at the shoulder or above, it allows for even MORE control than a gi grip. He also talked about how you can use your own street clothes to confer the advantages of a gi.

He had some student-instructors dressed up in various ways, and demo’ed what he was talking about.

I’ll never forget that and two other things... he’s fast as fuck when he’s grappling, even when he was chubby between fights. and his grip when he got wrist control on me was so tight that it actually hurt. I told him and he apologized immediately. He said that sometimes, all it takes to diffuse a situation is to grab someone’s wrist as hard as you can, and they get the idea that you are way stronger than them and already control a limb.

For a guy who likes to play up his meathead side, he is a legitimate mastermind.

I sometimes wonder if Weidman was there as a helper, but that was before he would have been on anyone’s radar except the Serra/Longo crew.

[nShade]

Dude that's awesome. I fell in love with Serra watching him on Looking for a fight, and the primary reason was how he spoke to young fighters in the back room. Like he legitimately just seems to love teaching and passing on grappling knowledge, and 100% a genius when it comes to those things.

Also I try to tell people about his ridiculous love of every type of pizza known to man and they look at me like I'm dumb lol. I'd watch a buddy show of him and Din Thomas just traveling and eating and doing crazy shit.

[bluedot]

The information coming out about Max is very scary. It is possible that he was in the pre-cut water loading phase, and that may have exacerbated some head injury. What?s most scary is ? from what I can gather from news reports and interviews ? no one knows what is wrong, except it?s likely a neurological issue. Part of me wonders how much of this is from the accumulated damaged of his aborted weight cut to fill in for Tony on short notice. He?s put his body through HELL in the last couple month. Hope he really is Blessed

Mike Chiesa, who missed weight (157.5) gave an interview earlier that day where he said he was scared about Max?s condition and that both he and Max had to make very grueling weight cuts to hit LW. Chiesa is 30 years old and 6?1-ish... I don?t know how a grown man with the type of musculature he has can make that weight. I gotta wonder how much of this is him looking at Max and realizing it?s not worth pushing through to get that extra 1.5 lbs off. Thankfully, he?s said that?s the last time he?s competing at LW.

Notice on media day that he?s wearing sunglasses and chewing gum? I?d bet a million dollars that those are both to mask how dehydrated he is. I?m sure his eyes are sunken in, and he can?t produce saliva unless he stimulates it by putting something in his mouth. This is a ~2 minute clip where he addresses all this stuff, but was before the weigh in.



Maybe this will get some people to reconsider their weight class.

[nShade]

It really sucks for some of these LWs who are moving to WW because of weight cutting issues and then running into juggernauts who can easily fight at 185. I have never really supported the idea of more weight classes, but a 165 division really wouldn't annoy me that much I don't think (and then I assume WW would go to 175?). But that alone doesn't solve the actual health issues of weight cutting... I think the UFC really needs to hire a massive team of guys who are watching this stuff, weighing these fighters in a couple weeks out, tracking and controlling this stuff to the point that the end cut is very small. Really just anything more than they are doing now, lol. I'd really like to see the UFC take a more active role in some of these gyms. Like, provide the gym a small stipend for shit in exchange for allowing a UFC-hired Dr/coach/nutritionist/w/e work with the team, even if its the team finding someone they know/trust (because I can see the issues that arise with this) and can be hired through the UFC. This is why I like the UFC Performance Institute they are pushing. If they could build something like that up to the point where they have enough of them to say, "okay, you bring your team to the performance institute for the last 6 weeks of training camp, you check in with UFC Drs are the end of the days, etc, etc." You keep your team, the UFC gets to actively work to prevent injuries and weight cut issues, I feel there is a lot of winning in these ideas.

All of this depends on, basically, a salary though. You can't expect these teams/fighters to do any of this shit without that incentive. "You partake in this program, we hook you the fuck up."

edit: is there a table of most missed weight cuts by division in the UFC? I guess I could google it. I'm kind of curious

[bluedot]

I really like the 10 lb weight increments, like you said. 155, 165, 175, 185, boom. That 15 lb increment between LW and WW is 10% of these guys bodyweight. It just doesn’t make sense.

Your idea of having UFC be more proactive in helping with nutrition and weight management is a good one. My only reservation is the huge fiasco with George Lockhart and Cyborg. He put her on birth control, and by now we’ve all seen that weight cut. There may have been worse weight cuts in history, but I’ve never seen one with my own eyes. Anyway, they’re the one who hooked her up with him.

I feel for the fighters, because they don’t get an “off season” where they can balloon up and sort of enjoy beer and burgers. But man, dudes like Rampage get actually fat between fights and have to lose like 30-40 lbs before they even cut. Part of that is on him :/