We’ve
all heard the old adage, “styles make fights”, but they never told us
“sometimes styles make fights boring”. Styles make fights… That’s what made the
UFC and MMA so damn appealing and fun when it first hit the scene. We had the
striker versus the wrestler, the striker versus the Jiu Jitsu practitioner and
so on. It was the ultimate test of styles to answer the age old question of
“who would win between…”
Years later, with the demise of the one dimensional fighter, styles are far
more complex and thus so are the fighters’ game plans. Gone are the days of
just keeping the fight standing or simply taking the fight to the ground. After
watching Anderson Silva destroy so many fighters with his striking, everyone’s
game plan was to get the fight to the mat. However, Travis Lutter and Dan
Henderson found that game plan to be detrimental to their title aspirations.
Fast forward to Silva’s most recent fight against Thales Leites. First and
foremost, everyone knew Leites’ plan would be to get the fight to the ground,
both because he’s great on the ground and because Silva is so dangerous on his
feet. Typically a wrestler would get a striker to the ground by taking
advantage of an over-aggressive combination, but that doesn’t happen too often
with Silva because he’s a counter-puncher. So should Leites press the action
with his striking in order to set up the takedown, thus risking getting knocked
out via counter strikes, a la Chris Leben? It’s quite the dilemma for an
Anderson Silva opponent.
But why should all the responsibility to push the action fall on Leites’
shoulders? What about Silva’s responsibility to push the action? Should he be
more aggressive with his striking and possibly leave himself vulnerable to the
takedown? According to Franklin McNeil on ESPN’s MMA Live, he thinks the
challenger has the responsibility to press the action and take the belt from
the champ. I don’t disagree that the challenger has to go and take the belt,
but I also don’t believe he should throw his game plan and years of work to get
to that fight out the window just because the fight isn’t exactly a barn
burner.
Although
neither fighter was very aggressive or impressive, ultimately I would have to
say I was more disappointed in Silva’s performance. He’s clearly a more
dominant striker, yet he continuously waited for counter punching opportunities
as opposed to being an offensive striker. It’s not like Silva has terrible jiu
jitsu, he’s submitted some great fighters, so going to the ground with Leites shouldn’t
have been that scary. In fact, Leites has only won 3 of his 7 fights in the UFC
by way of submission. Whereas 5 of Siva’s 9 UFC fights have ended via strikes
(I’m not including his victory of Lutter because it was finished on the ground,
even though Lutter tapped due to elbow strikes). When the fight did go to the
ground, Silva avoided any damage and was able to escape.
At the end of the day, styles do make fights but they don’t always make them
exciting. A counter striker won’t be much fun to watch unless he’s fighting
someone that pushes the action against him. In Anderson Silva’s case, I’m not
sure there are too many exciting fights for him at middleweight in the UFC, I
think he’s going to have to move up to light heavyweight again in order to get
a real challenge and earn back the respect of the fans.
The next question we have to ask is not of the fighters, but of the fans. Are
we the fans willing to put up with a fight that is not very exciting because of
the game plan required by those fighters? Is it really any different than
watching your favorite football team run the ball every down in order to eat up
the clock and pull out a victory? After all, if the NFL teams aren’t judged on
style points, it’s all about winning, regardless of how exciting the game may
be.
Comments