Yep, that’s the title of my master’s project, which I have recently defended (successfully).  I’ll spare you 40 pages and give you the quick and dirty.

1.  MMA salaries are efficient,  meaning that the more you pay out in salary per fight card, the more revenue you are likely to make.  This is a no-brainer that I’ve proved with the data;  the higher quality fighters get (demand?) higher salaries and consumers pay more for higher quality.

2. If a fighter gets  ~200k show and 0 to win, that fighter is likely getting a cut of PPV.

3. The system of PPV revenue sharing works;  giving guys a cut of PPV sales drives up PPV buys.

4.  The art of matchmaking matters.  From a salary perspective, you’d think that compelling match-ups would consist of taking the top quality (paid) guys and matching them up against each other.  However, there is no “balanced ticket effect” – salary fairness/equality between fighters doesn’t boost PPV sales or Live Gate numbers (attendance).  Fans may bemoan Joe Silva’s match making, claiming XYZ fighter needs to fight ABC fighter, but from a revenue standpoint, they are doing things right: the UFC is making money.

5. MMA fighters are underpaid, and I can prove it.  (Monopoly/Monopsony market effects on salary, inter-sport comparisons, etc)

There is a lot I still don’t know, and plenty more research to be done. However, I’m happy to field questions about any of these points or various MMA salary issues in general. I’d love to hear your thoughts and theories of MMA salary!

It sucked. I was going to review it, but couldn’t help myself from sleuthing into the details. Basically, Dave or Kevin Howell or Tim Ferris (of 4-hour fame) paid for something, very very dirty.

And by that I mean paying for positive reviews on the book to help it sell.  And not prostitutes.  Although that would be an even spicier story.

Before I dive right into a rant about how I can nearly 100% prove this allegation, let me say that I think Dave Camarillo is an amazing instructor.  I hope that he had nothing to do with the dubious promotion of a book I think he had actually little to do with in the first place. I give him the benefit of the doubt. I’m not here to bash him, nor the book (seriously).  I have a fascination with publishing, Tim Ferris, and other shenanigans  Basically, I just wanted to look into it.

So onto the meat.

The facts:

As of today, there are 46 reviews for his book:

40 are five-star

3 are four-star

1 is two-star

2 are one-star.

32/40 five-star rating are given by reviewers with one one review to their name. Fishy.

22 of these 32 five-star reviews were submitted on or before the day of the book’s released (Jan 4 2012).  Did these people read the book? Likely not.

4 additional five-star reviews are highly dubious,with the reviewer’s public history suggesting they are a comment spammers.

In total 38/40 five-star reviews are probably paid spam.

The most popular is a 1-star review that 93/101 people “found helpful” – ie, the review the crowd unanimously voted as the best.  The review is pretty scathing and spot on. The second most popular, 19/24 people found useful is another 1-star.

The conjecture

I believe Dave probably was approached by a ghost writer to make this book happen and Dave consented. Then, the book gets pumped up on Amazon with false reviews and a foreword by Mr Ferris. Tim plays an interesting role in the plot;  Tim has been accused cheating the Amazon review system before* (94% likely) and is kinda a weird dude/crazy person who is awesome at promoting stuff.  Why oh why would Tim Ferris lend his largess to a jujitsu book in the first place?  Tim “won” a small kickboxing championship by hacking the system – ensuring he was heavier than his opponents and then pushing them out of bounds, forcing a win via disqualification. A warrior to be feared, no doubt.  Surely this spirit of gamesmanship put some coin into his pocket, and the Submit Everyone book is likely no different.

The Sum Up 

Dave’s book has some redeeming content and I’d probably give it a 2-star rating. See for yourself, buy the book or read the reviews here.

* This is kind off topic, but I could go over all the details of Tim’s marketing success through “cheating”, a point he would likely not deny as he’s all about life hacking. I don’t blame him, but do think its a silly way to live.

And of course when I found out, I thought of you.

Believe it or not, the best free instructional I’ve seen on this move is from Shonie Carter’s DVD set, Judo Pimp: Brotha Hugga – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IcHbqVPE21A

As you might know, I’m not a pro MMA fighter but I am pro when it comes to laundry so I thought I dish a few tips.

First, if you do not want foul smelling boxing gloves, you need to wear hand wraps (always!) and wash them often. This is non-negotiable; safety and smell go hand in hand with this one. How often you say? If we were in a perfect universe, I’d say after each use. Practically, I’d go with every 3 wears – if you let them hang out and air dry between uses.

As for the actual washing, I like to keep them wrapped and jam them into a sock or the sleeve of one of my rashguards. If you have more money than sense, you can always buy a handwrap wash bag. Use a mild, non-bleach detergent.

For comparison, I washed two of my hand wraps with the differing methods; wrapped up in a coil (above left), and the toss-them-in-carelessly method (above right). When you just wash them as is, they often get kinked and tied up, which is super annoying.  I employed the sniff test to the wrapped ones and even the core of the roll was fresh – despite my initial fear of the inner part of the wraps not getting washed correctly.

One word of warning though, some hand wraps are notorious for bleeding color into your laundry – sometimes I’ll wash hand wraps for the first time while I take a shower, oldschool style, to avoid the possibility of dying my other clothes.

As for drying, hanging up the wraps, I suggest the air-dry method. Hang them up somewhere with as little self-contact as possible and wait. Letting them dry out in sunlight will help deodorize them a bit, although sunlight can slightly degrade certain fabrics/colors. Some wraps claim they can be put into a clothes dryer. I’ve foolishly entrusted a few pair to my dryer – only to be spurned with twisted, knotted, ripped and shrunken hand wraps.

Two other miscellaneous tips: wrap the fabric in reverse (Velcro ending up in the coil’s core) so they roll directly onto your hand when putting them on and invest in several pairs of hand wraps so you’ll always have a clean pair- they can often be picked up in a cheap 3-pack of wraps online.

Do you have any spiffy-clean tips? Let me know in the comment section below.

I took the easy way out, I know it. I’m guilty. So when I got home,  I decided to repent** and study up on the question of the hour: How do you beat a taller a taller fighter? How do you compensate for a reach advantage in striking?

I’ve put together some sound advice from around the web, coupled with my two cents.

Footwork

Killer footwork is genesis of so many delicious things -it creates power and speed; it is fundamental to solid defense or offense. Jason Van Veldhuysen  has a solid instructional video, boxing footwork, that shows a sneaky way to get past a reach advantage.

Counterstriking

Instead of closing the gap yourself, why not have your opponent do it for you?  As shown in the first vid, when you directly advance, expect that your opponent can easily move back out of the way. With a reach disadvantage, expect to get peppered with shots and not be able to hit back.

Local MMA teacher Brian Yamasaki fixes the problem of a reach advantage by cutting angles and counterattacking: catching kicks then punching, evading punches and kicking. Brian wrote an entire article about short vs tall, and I leave one video below.

In a similar vein, check out Chad Howser’s boxing video on closing the gap by timing the jab.  A variety of counter attacks could be utilized; the basic idea is get them to come forward (or plant their feet so they can’t retreat) and take a counter shot.

Selective Clinching

Many non-MMA boxers don’t account for another problem in the tall vs short puzzle.  Tall guys have the advantage on the inside with the Thai clinch. Getting on the inside doesn’t automatically create victory. In fact, a classic way to squelch a shorter fighter’s attempt is to hone your uppercut. Keep ‘em at bay with the jab, sucker them in and shovel their brain into uppercut oblivion.

That aside, clinching may be an option if executed well. Keep their arms tied up, your head under their chin, work for a takedown, etc. Watch Jon Jones fights to understand the limitation of this strategy.

Chop Down the Tree

When the arms just won’t do the trick,  try the legs.  A disparity in arm length may not always exist with the legs; you may be able to land low kicks and still avoid the hands. I’ve even seen a few guys use foot stomps and low leg kicks targeting the ankle to sneak by the range of a longer fighter.

The Overhand Right

Some experts may say that taller fighters aren’t used to seeing strikes come down at them and ergo don’t see it coming. Regardless, sometimes its the only strike long enough to get to their head.

Feints, Fakes and General Snitchery

In competition, if I know a guy has a longer reach and better striking skills I’m not going to be a silly goose. I’m going to try to take him down and defeat him where I have advantage on top.  Fake with my hands, get him to plant for his counter attack, change levels and shoot in.  The striking feints are even more important when there is a disparity in length; long arms can fence you off before you can even get a good grip on a leg, so make sure they are busy with something else.

Again from Chad H. “Tip: feint a lot. Really mix things up, but feint then throw a punch. Keep the bigger guys off balance. It’ll annoy the hell outta them and you’ll land clean punches. When you get inside, get and stay busy.”

While I wouldn’t suggest it as a primary strategy, I have been told that if you adamantly keep your chin tucked down you can “catch” a lot of strikes on the top of your head. If you have  a high guard, the theory is that you KO spots are well protected and you can eat some shots and then exchange blows that matter. You may even be able to hurt your opponent’s hand via you chrome dome.  When I have been with much taller fighters, I have noticed their downward angled punches don’t zing me like those coming from underneath me. Personally, it felt like a dull pounding instead of the sharp strikes that make your vision fuzzy.

You Tell ME!

I’ve listed a bunch of ways I’ve read, heard,  or experienced to deal with a taller and longer fighter. I’d love to know the tricks you know about in the comment section.

* When sparring with friends and acquaintances, I don’t really ground & pound – I just let them know my hands are working without delivering too much damage. I’m not sure what you’d call it – mat & slap? floor & fondle? tap & tickle? – but we remain friends and don’t get any uglier in the process.

** Next time the giant comes in, I’m going to keep it standing. If I get KTFO’d, then so be it. If I slay him via knowledge, there will be much rejoicing.

Seagal was recently on “The Voice” for a for a full hour interview. All in all, it was pretty entertaining and if you can use your internet skills or Tivo’d it, its worth a watch.

• Seagal talked about his training history, his time in Japan, getting into movies etc. This part is pretty cool – Seagal is a legit aikidoka and has some depth in traditional martial arts.  At one point, he mentions that Lyoto Machida’s dad is a bit envious of his trainers and vice versa.
• Steven alludes to having to use his skills “hundreds” of times, also suggested that he may have actually used the cue-ball-in-the-bandana weapon (from his movie Out for Justice). Moreover, he jabs at Micheal Jai White and Jean Claude Van Damme (The Voice asks if they are real martial artists and he responds, “Can I laugh in your face?”).  He does give a nod to Jet Li and a begrudging acceptance of Chuck Norris as a “tough guy”.
• On the Judo Gene Label story – where Gene chokes out Seagal and Steven poops his pants – Steven says it is hogwash and Gene’s a liar. I’m not normally with Seagal’s worldview, but the choke-crap-caper is a bit too … mythical? Much like Steven’s magic powers.
• On training Lyoto an Anderson Silva: his official record is that one of Anderson’s guys phoned him, knowing about Seagals “lethal stuff”, and started teaching him.  Yes, he acknowledges that people have seen the front kick, but they way he teaches it is different in some important [mystical?] ways. I’m totally going to write a whole post about this front kick.
• On being one of the first Mixed Martial Artists; sure he was studying all sorts of different systems and mixing it up, but so were thousands of other guys. The notion that MMA is somehow new doesn’t fly with him; Seagal also makes distinctions between fighters, warriors, athletes and true martial artists.
• Seagal acknowledges that he’s made some good movies and some terrible movies; he’s not too broken up about admitting that; this seems like a pretty grounded thing to say, +1 to you Steven.
• Seagal thinks that he may be faster now than he was a two decades ago; – 1 to you Steven.
• Of all the things he’s done, he seems to enjoy helping people – especially with his law enforcement and humanitarian work.

In summary, if you hate the guy, you’ll find plenty more to latch onto. If you like him, you’ll find enough here to substantiate that too. Personally, I like the guy. He’s weird, exaggerates and is a bit deluded – but he really does love traditional martial arts and is both knowledgeable and passionate.

On the bizzaro spectrum, Steven Seagal is more normal than Mayhem Miller and Bob Arum, but crazier than Diego Sanchez and Tito Ortiz.

You my not know that I have a twitter account; or if you do, you know that my twitter has been dead like a run over buzzard. However, I’m turning over a new leaf and going to start tweeting on a semi-regular basis.

http://twitter.com/SLCMMA

In this uppercut strike, you really see a nice corkscrew as Brad twists and pushes from his back leg.

Say what you will about will about Chael, he’s a mildly entertaining dude who has shown that Anderson Silva isn’t immortal, just bad-ass. Sonnen has more or less given the blueprint to world on how potentially to beat Silva:

Have a good power double.

Nobody is immune to a good double leg takedown.

Keep smart pressure on Silva and don’t allow him his choice of range and foot placement.

In the first fight, we noticed Silva and Sonnen exchanging blows – something very rare for the elusive Spider.  Anderson’s timing and footwork are generally immaculate. When allowed to setup his feet and get his range down, he becomes a master at picking shots and avoiding any return fire.

Keep Silva down (but actually hurt him when he is there).

With solid wrestling, I believe the advantage is sided with the man on top.  Chael’s problem is he just doesn’t do any damage when he’s pounding.  I’m not sure I fully understand it yet, maybe its posture, maybe its the endurance vs explosiveness in his muscles, maybe its the caution to hold a guy down and not open up a can upon your opponents face – Chael doesn’t seem to give the umph in the ground and pound department that someone like Mark Munoz does.

Do not do silly things, do not take a break.

A spinning backfist is something you have to kinda catch guys unaware with.  Unlike various kicking + punching combos, where you can almost force an opponent to each or exchange punches, the spinning backfist isn’t a high percentage technique. Pair that knowledge with the fact that Anderson Silva is clearly one of the most superior strikers in MMA and you get silliness.  There is no time to give Silva room to set up shop (read: the spider-web) and pick you apart.  There are times when various fighters have had moments of success against Silva.  They all involve pressuring him into their game and not standing in the middle of the octagon. Relentless attack seems like the way to go if one hopes to beat the champion.

Anything missing?

Anyway, what are your thoughts? What fighter or gameplan would you construct to put an end to Silva’s reign?