Affliction: Banned 7/19 Discussion

Training
81

The mesh thing has been tried before in other promotions and ended up just cutting people because they’d land in the mesh and the fight wouldn’t necessarily stop. Imagine having someone laying on you with sharp cloth cutting into you providing friction. The cage doesn’t flex THAT much and is more like a wall.

They used the Throwdown ring and it is substantially larger than your typical boxing ring. It looked huge to me, but I’m assuming its basically pride style.

The right is way, way, way better for live fights than the cage imo.

I’m ok w/ the restarts but I think in the Babalu fight they should have restarted them on the ground because everytime babalu went through the ropes he fell with a gullotine on the guy … but instead they started them on their feet. Which seemed kinda iffy to me.

Arlovski looked good but from my position he still looked a little gunshy. Much better than previous performances, but you can tell he was gunshy.

Fedor? Shit Randy, How taste Fedor’s big pee pee?

Tim Sylvia with a back injury took you the distance for 5 rounds.

But he could barely last 30 seconds in Fedor’s world. (really the first ~7 seconds they walked towards each other and circled for a second) Hell, Hong Man Choi lasted longer.

Who is left for fedor? No one really… No one’s cleared out their division like him. He has defeated every fighter who is the top in his division (multiple times in the case of Nog) and has faced every fighter that on paper/stylistically should be a problem for him.

Then he goes on to beat them at their game, and make it look easy! He beat nog IN NOGS GUARD, he beat crocop STANDING, etc I mean its crazy… who the hell is he gonna fight? Gonzaga?

Anderson Silva is arguably competition for the p4p ranking but imo he hasn’t faced NEARLY the level of competition Fedor has. Which isn’t his fault its just that any 185’er that we could argue has the potential to beat him is in another org

Even with the momentary move up to 205, sure he beat someone but shrug James Irvin? shrug. Said he wasn’t going to get steam-rolled. He kept mentioning that you know its all that was going through his mind haha, poor dude made it a self fulfilling prophecy.

—Aside—
interesting sociological point is how everyone now wants Silva vs Fedor. MMA has made its way all the way back around to a potential open weight grand prix (hah). It’s just in our nature to want to know who is the undisputed baddest. We don’t want conjecture we NEED to know who the baddest motherfucker is. We can’t just say “oh different weight classes” and shrug it off.
====sub aside=====
If fedor lost weight (bodyfat) he probably could make 205
====end sub aside====
—end aside----

The only person you could say he needs to fight is Barnett but from Barnett’s performance last night, as much as i love the guy, I dont think he has much for fedor.

Randy REALLY doesn’t want any of Fedor, hell he got beat by chuck twice.

But all I know is that Dana White has to be SHITTING himself right now. His bully tactics and childish antics are catching up with him. He ran his mouth about fedor calling him a Farce and “I only judge fighters on their last 5 fights”… motherfucking HAH…

If affliction can turn this into a profitable venue then the UFC is pretty fucked. But at least we got to see what the hell competition (and not the goddamn UFC monopoly) causes… we got TWO great events that night.

Man, great time to be a fucking fan.

82

Xen,

Interesting; I didn’t know a mesh idea like that had been tried before. Maybe there’s a way of making it out of a better fabric, or a tighter weave, so the fighters can’t get cut on it . . . ?

One thing I DO know is that, due to the constant tangles in the ropes and stoppages/re-starts that it causes, unless some better invention is devised (like a workable mesh thing like I described), if I had to decide between the current ring or a cage, I’d choose the cage hands-down.

83

[quote]Damici wrote:
Xen,

Interesting; I didn’t know a mesh idea like that had been tried before. Maybe there’s a way of making it out of a better fabric, or a tighter weave, so the fighters can’t get cut on it . . . ?

One thing I DO know is that, due to the constant tangles in the ropes and stoppages/re-starts that it causes, unless some better invention is devised (like a workable mesh thing like I described), if I had to decide between the current ring or a cage, I’d choose the cage hands-down.
[/quote]

Falling through the ropes wasn’t ever a huge issue in Pride. I think it was mostly coincedental.

I don’t have a problem with the cages so much as the rules associated with them. You can’t grab the cage with your hands but it’s perfectly fine to grab it with your feet and change your position using that leverage on the ground.

You can also pin your opponent up against the cage and hold them there and win the fight. I would rather see guys fall out of the ring every now and then, and a few of the Pride stop don’t move restarts than have to watch 15 minutes of two guys laying on top of eachother smashed into the side of the cage.

84

Man…awesome card. In fact, UFN 14 wasn’t bad either. But Jesus, the Affliction card…with all of the knockouts that were happening, it crossed my mind that some of the fights were fixed. Not that I think any of them are, but it is tough to get more exciting than that. The night could not have gone better for Affliction.

That said, Affliction still has some major hurdles to get over–last night essentially did two things and that is all: 1) endeared itself to the hardcore MMA fans and 2) established itself as having a stable of legitimate fighters ready to bang.

How important is that though? They will continue to bleed money until they can reach a wide fanbase. They need the casual fans/TUF crowd to notice them and they need the TUF crowd to know who they have.

Affliction came out of the gates like whirlwind, but it needs to sustain this for several fight cards–five at least–before I’m sold that they are a serious threat to the powers that be.

I don’t think Dana is shitting himself quite yet, but I wonder if this might change his plans on getting really global with the UFC and risk losing some of its local footing to Affliction and EliteXC.

Man…this was the card that should have been MMA’s debut on cable TV, rather than a Kimbo headliner.

85

Oh, and they need Bas to get in there and be a commentator. I really don’t like Trigg.

And I think the ring is superior to the cage. I don’t like how the cage is used as a strategic element. I’m willing to accept restarts and the occasional unfair loss of position that might happen from time to time. Fleeing the ring should be punished.

I think a mesh would be a bad idea, athletes would get all tangled up in it and potentially get injured. One potential option I was thinking of would be a metal guard on the bottom third of the ring–basically a block so people don’t slide out of it too easily while on the ground.

86

Bas would be great for them to have. Bas and Big John – that’s it. No Jay Glazer and no Frank Trigg. (Maybe have one of them, Jay or Frank, do backstage or post-fight interviews if you really want to be nice to them and keep them on the payroll).

[quote]Fiction wrote:
Oh, and they need Bas to get in there and be a commentator. I really don’t like Trigg.[/quote]

87

Ya I agree,

Bas as commentator would be an amazing experience. Bas, Kenny Florian/Frank Mir, and Joe Rogan (ya I like Rogan) would be my dream commentating team. If you take the slack off Rogan having to be the knowledgeable one then he can just sit back and be fucking funny… the banter between him and Bas would be epic.

88

[quote]Damici wrote:
Xen,

Interesting; I didn’t know a mesh idea like that had been tried before. Maybe there’s a way of making it out of a better fabric, or a tighter weave, so the fighters can’t get cut on it . . . ?

One thing I DO know is that, due to the constant tangles in the ropes and stoppages/re-starts that it causes, unless some better invention is devised (like a workable mesh thing like I described), if I had to decide between the current ring or a cage, I’d choose the cage hands-down.
[/quote]

Select promotions have tried all kinds of ring/mesh or ring/cage shit and very few have worked out well. I think there were some ideas floating around for shit that would have worked well they just never got popular.

someone had like a pit fight thing where the walls were slanted upwards.

I agree the cage is a really good idea for keeping the fight continuous but imo it changes the gameplan in a way I don’t like and leads to people who just like to lean and wrestle. You can’t really do that with a ring. It forces you to stand with the guy.

Plus the ground game pretty substantially as well.

I just like the ring, but potato, po-ta-toe.

but when it comes down to it, a fight is a fight, if you can’t adjust tactically to that little difference in venue then you might want to go back to the drawing board.

I always thought the “Oh he’s not used to the cage” thing was bullshit.

89

i think the thing that will hold the grand prix idea back is some of the big names such as nog, bj penn, anderson silva and others are in the ufc and dana wont allow it

90

I think Timmy must regret calling Fedor a “tiny shit” now.

91

Wow Adrei Arlovski looked good in his fight. I wondered why it took so long to knock out Ben.