No matter who you are, its good to take time and analyze fights to sharpen your mental game.

For U of U students, the assignment is as follows:

Go to http://www.allthebestfights.com/best-mma-fights-of-2011/

Watch any one of the fights of your choosing.

Post a comment in this post using your first name and first letter of your last name. (Eg. Bart B, Mike F, etc)

State the fight you watched at the begining of the comment. (Eg. “Jim Miller vs Melvin Guillard)

Following the title, in about 200 words summarize the fight briefly and attempt to analyze the keys to victory for the winner. If one fighter was faster, stronger, a better striker … or even just lucky, explain how things played out. Think about how fighting style, aggression and technique may have affected the winner’s victory. Use all the knowledge at your disposal to craft your insights – don’t worry about being perfect or knowing it all, just do your best.

Before hitting the “submit comment” button read the comment  OUT LOUD to yourself and make any changes you’d need to. Remember, if you type something like ” XOXOX I lulz’d and <3  MMA so when d00d got jacked from kickz i was like OMG! ” the spirits of justice and grammar will find where you live and punch you in the face next time you fall asleep. Also, I will not accept your assignment.

Remember, after submitting your comment, it will not immediately show – they go to my inbox for approval before being visible.

If you have any questions, let me know.

Just thought I’d leave this here.

(Above, a clash of style and stance: Lyoto Machida’s karate and Shogun Rua’s Muay Thai)

Your fighting stance governs a great deal about how you fight.  All of your attacks will be influenced by it; your defensive structure is set by it. While there are many variations, there is a general sense of what is most useful and a majority of successful fighters only differ only 10-20% from it. Think of it like a steak.  Some people like medium-rare, others well-done.  If you were cooking for a large group (of carnivores, of course) and couldn’t individually serve them, you’d probably pick medium to medium well to best satisfy all. Serving rare steak or going with uncooked steak tar-tar would probably end poorly.

Below, a great, middle of the road stance (from local MMA instructor Brian Yamasaki) vs extremely low and impractical Shaolin kungfu stance.

I’ll call this middle of the road stance “the standard narrative”.  Remember, no one particular technique or stance is the 100% correct thing to do in all situations. Fighting is fluid and dynamic, but this standard narrative does a good job keeping in pace with all the places a fight can go.

Guarding the upper body

The main two concerns here are reducing damage to your vitals and allowing quick and powerful strikes. We’ll mainly focus on the defensive aspect, but the guard described here doesn’t really sacrifice much in terms of firepower for the benefit of great defense – one reason it so popular in MMA.

With protection in mind, your hands should to be held above your collar-bone,  your knuckles above your chin, protecting your face. Depending on your style, you can keep your knuckles at your temples (better defense), like you are answering the phone or even lowering them to the chin-level (better offense, riskier) to increase your speed of punching and relaxed shoulders.

Below, upper body high guards.

Here are some suitable relaxed lower guards with the arms.

In almost every case, you’ll want your elbows (chicken wings) to be down and in towards your body protecting your midsection. In the pictures above, many of the fighters are midway into a punch so their lead-hand elbow has drifted away from the standard position.

Especially for beginners, it is vital to keep the hands up and elbows tucked in even while punching, as it can save you from taking damage. Below right, Cain Velasquez’s high guard with the rear hand blocks his opponents punch while his punch lands flush.

Your chin should be tucked in towards your chest, “hiding” it and rooting your head to your torso.

When you are out of range of your opponent’s punches, your hands can drop slightly, but the standard narrative warns against it. This conserves some energy and allows for loose and fast punches as well as increasing takedown defense, but making your head more vulnerable to attack.

One other thing to consider – the tilt of your upper body.  Generally, you want your spine pointing straight up (chin tucked in) and only lean 5-15 degrees off vertical. When a fighter is bending at the hips past about 15 degrees, they are typically looking to wrestle (or defend it). Below left, Jose Aldo is tilting forward to be aggressive via strikes while Gray Maynard is tilting slightly away in defense.

Here, Tito Ortiz is looking to wrestle, his torso bent at about 30 degrees of vertical.

Advanced Considerations

When you are good enough, you can break any of these “rules” when the occasion calls for it. Below, Anderson Silva dropping his hands to Forest Griffin, then knocking him out. Lets be clear on this one. Silva uses superior knowledge of range to keep his opponents from hitting him, obviating the need to block. As one of the best fighters of all time, he is allowed to do what he pleases.  However, he does teach the standard narrative in his excellent DVD, Striking Combos for MMA.  He’s also got a book that goes over the basic stance – if you need a hard copy.

These are just a few of the major considerations – let me know what other things you think are important in comment section.

This semester many students have the opportunity/requirement of a kick-butt writing assignment. For those whom it is required, you know who you are.

Anyway, here are the ground rules.

You need to watch one of the fights from the TV show, The Ultimate Fighter (fights can be seen here). You could arbitrarily pick one or select one of the top ten fights from TUF – video above has snippets from each fight.

After watching, I want you to write a brief analysis (at least 200 words but no more than 400).  The analysis should have a summary of what happened (only a few sentences),  analysis of key elements that determined victory and your favorite moments with your explanation of why you liked those parts.

The main focus should be the various elements that you believe determined the fight.  What techniques seemed to be most dominant? Striking? Grappling? Conditioning? How might the loser have improved his performance?  What made this fight interesting to you?

Draw on your own experience with various techniques while you comment. Don’t fuss about being technical or ultra-knowledgeable. Speak from the heart with and edit once for grammar. Limited usage of slang and industry-standard terms is okay, but if your response reads like a comment on Youtube, I will likely stalk you down and beat you with a rubber hose.  (Flexibility will be provided for non-native-English speaking students).

Post your assignment below, using your first name and last initial, listing the fight you watched before the body of your work. This is to be finished before 12/12/11.

Ex:

BartB

Roland Delorme vs. TJ Dillashaw

This fight was ……….

I look forward to your work!

First,  my heart goes out to all Utahans that may have suffered ill effects from the sustained heavy winds (75-100 mph) and power outages on 12/1/11 to 12/2/11.  It sucks to have a 30-year-old pine tree ripped from your yard and placed not-so-gently onto your car, or to have your truck flipped over by sheer wind-power.

With this recent calamity in mind, I’d like to draw a parallel between emergency preparedness and overall fight preparedness.  When the storm comes – be it literal or in the cage – you know in that moment what you don’t have.  Many folks here in Davis county (where I live) had the power out for 18+ hours; they immediately realized a need for candles/flash lights, extra blankets, and non-electrical heating/cooking.

In that moment, when your opponent is hitting a solid double-leg takedown, you realize your deficiency in wrestling. In that moment, when you cannot get past your opponent’s jab, you realize your boxing is sub-par. In that moment, when you are gasping for air, think back on your cardio time in the gym.

In  that moment, all you can do is try to make the best of things.

However, let this be a lesson to all of us.  You cannot prepare for every contingency but you can prepare for many contingencies. If an emergency beyond your capacity hits, your self-reliant attitude and survival practices will help you see another day.

I hope that when our moment finds us, it does not expose our weakness but reveals our preparedness.

I believe this clip is from Pat Miletich’s Striking Strategies DVD or his Train to Fight and Win: Standup.

 References:

BJ Penn’s book, the MMA book of knowledge, has a solid introduction to the uppercut punch with a couple of variations.

If you are just looking for a quick video on how to throw the uppercut, here’s one for that.

Or you can always go the boxing purist route with Russ Abner’s boxing fundamentals DVD.

Saturday Novemeber 12: Forty minutes of  pre-fight hype on Fox didn’t slow heavyweights Junior Dos Santos and Cain Velasquez from getting busy in no time.  The bout ended in 64 seconds with JDS shoveling punches into a downed Velasquez, who was sent to the mats courtesy of a nasty looping overhand right.

Lesson 1: JDS is a bad mamba-jamba.

Lesson 2: Cain has a chin, but the shot behind the ear messes with your equilibrium, making it hard to get up. Remember, Cheick Kongo blasted Cain on the chin with two good shots and he recovered and wrestled to victory.

Lesson 3: MMA boxing is different than regular boxing.  The looping-overhand punch (a la Chuck Liddell) works really well with 4 ounce gloves.  It seems … almost sloppy, like it shouldn’t work.  But it does. Oh, it does.

Lesson 3: Loveable fatboy, Roy Nelson, has one tough cranium. JDS plowed that thing into the ground and Roy didn’t go out. (Roy has  nacho-cheese injected directly into his brain-stem every fiscal quarter, making him hard to knock out.  Science fact. )

After every good lesson, there must be a knowledge check! My questions for you are:

Q1.  Does this mean Cain has a “glass jaw” or are the heavyweight sluggers just that brutish?

Q2.  After seeing some HW heavy hands, do we credit Brock Lesnar for taking a beating much longer (or better?) than Cain?

Q3.  Who do you think the best HW is going to be in the next year?

Let me know in the comments.

If you want something not on the list, give me an earful about it in the comments.