Oh sh-t, Lombard vs. Palhares in December

i like the way the system is now. if guys want to cut weight then that is their choice. weight cutting is hurtful to ones health but i think the physical advantages are overhyped. there is no such thing as a guy losing ONLY because he was just too big, if the guy is too big then you need to switch your strategy. if you cant switch your strategy, then the other guy is a better fighter IMO

and i only say the above because I have a lot of experience boxing guys who were as much as 60 pounds heavier. and i was able to use strategies such as speed, distance, hand checking, and combos to dominate each fight, even getting getting a knockdown

im not sure what checking weight before the training camp begins would do. how would
they even know when training camps begin? last time i checked nobody can make you even have a training camp. and the other old rule that they weighed the guys right before the fight wont work either bcuz of the risk, i know you didn't bring that up but just saying.

See, I disagree.


I'm 153 lbs. I've boxed guys who are double my weight and done well. Beat every one of those big dudes. But that's my point. Big UNSKILLED people you can beat...if you have a edge in the other skill sets that together are superior to his size advantage. But how many very large very unskilled guys in the MMA get a TITLE fight? In sports, your options for victory are not that large when you're facing a 20-30 pound weight disadvantage AND a guy with equivalent skill sets and athletic attributes.

SD [ Self Defense ] guys like me have and use a arsenal specifically designed to handle those kinds of situations.

but mma guys dont face weight differences that great. even in great weight disadvantages they would face about a 10 pound difference.

in cases like edgar vs bendo its a little different because edgar is a small lw and bendo is a big lw so its really a 2 weight difference. and at the end of the day edgar still dropped bendo and showed how little the weight mattered. hughes, forrest, and anderson didn't win their matches by size, they won by skill.

if a guy in mma allows another to manhandle him then i feel it is a skill difference not size that completely won the fight.

by the way i boxed the same guy at 125 pounds and then 145 pounds with the same result

have you guys actually cut weight before? It's an advantage and a disadvantage depending on how you look at it. When I hear people complain about weight cutting weight, or reach advantages, or takedowns, or whatever it all just sounds like a bunch of bitching to me. Seriously, if a dude finds a way to make his body a certain weight, then they earned that, because it's not fucking easy to cut weight. If Brock Lesnar finds some miracle secret to make LW so he can fight at 155, good for him, I honestly doubt he'll be able to throw more than one punch, lol.

it seems jay bee has, that question wasn't directed at him

I've never cut weight. Been around people who have many a time. And it's not bitching, man. Weight cutting is a practice for cowards. The literal ONLY reason that people weight cut is so that they can be BIGGER THAN THEIR OPPONENTS come fight night or contest time. They literally carry the advantage of size into a match. If size wasn't a significant advantage? These professional athletes wouldn't be using methods like weight cutting to achieve and maintain it.

The idea of weight classes is to have people of the same size fight each other. People who deliberately try to fight people smaller than them? Especially in professional contests? Are cowards and bullies. Period. Go fight someone your own size and stop being a chump

I mean no disrespect but that's my opinion.

Fair enough, I respect that you at least take ownership of that opinion, and that you seem to recognize that it isn't a typical position to have.

I will say I think that cutting weight will always realistically be allowed, and I think that the Frankie Edgars, BJ Penns, and Dan Hendersons of the sport would probably not care either way if they are forced to fight people virtually their exact size. They probably enjoy the speed advantage they possess in their respective weight classes, and would probably deny that being the smaller person makes them automatically at a disadvantage. I don't think those three fight at a weight they walk around at because they are going out trying to prove they have the biggest nuts around, I sincerely think they are just more comfortable not cutting weight and training to have different advantages.

You know some people just aren't as dense and durable as other people their size. Dan Henderson can fight heavyweights and not get KOed. Other middleweights can't probably say that shit. A lot of that shit is just genetics. Same with being tall, or having long as arms and legs. If someone has determined that they don't possess the natural advantage of being a dense durable ass dude, and they feel like putting in the work through torturing themselves in cutting weight, that's their path imo.

Rich Franklin is a "bigger" guy than Dan Henderson, but his bones are more prone to breaking. Is that his fault? Should he really be forced to fight people his size because it makes us feel like that's fair? Because there is NO SUCH THING as fair. Period. If he feels like "Well I'm willing to dehydrate my body to the point of being a human raisin so that I can legitimately compete with people who may either be doing the exact same thing, or feel confident that they can fight people bigger than them because their general skill set and genetics allow them to" I think he should be allowed.

But I mean, to me it's just like people calling Jon Jones' reach advantage an "unfair advantage" when he is no where near being the biggest LHW. Dude walks around at close to the same weight as Silva. I have heard people actually make the claim that Jon Jones should have to put on some muscle and fight HW, because he is "bigger" than his competition.

Nate Diaz is taller and has a longer reach than a lot of welterweights, but in general, due to his overall bone structure and the way he trains, he's not exactly "big" for that weight class, he had to move down. While he appears to be a giant compared to the other LWs, he again, isn't exactly the "biggest" dude in that division either.

That's all these guys train for, is to have an advantage over their competition. If we really want to be fair, we shouldn't even give them time to train. We should just surprise them at their house, and bring them someone to fight.

Truth

you have a point deth, cutting a shitload of weight makes a mockery of the idea of weight classes

I was discussing this same point with Antonio McKee and Yves Edwards last week, and I must say man: EVERYBODY knows that weight cutting makes mockeries of weight classes. In fact, that's exactly WHY people cut weight...to find a way to cheat weight classes. Antonio and Yves accept the practice, and they have a few other positions that we disagree on [ like Yves Edwards thinks that trapping doesn't work in MMA, whereas I remember Machida, Anderson, Jose, GSP, Frankie Edgars, Jon Jones, Rashad Evans, and many others doing it successfully; even Bisping was doing it vs Hendo successfully til he got knocked ] but hey...bottom line? You shouldn't be walkin in at a weight higher than your weight class on fight night. Period point blank. That's some cowardly stuff in my opinion.

^trapping?

you mean like hand traps?

jack slack had a great article about that on be

Hand trapping is part of trapping...trapping covers alot more ground than trapping hands. Good coaches include immobilizations with traps and show you the difference. Traps work well against independent limbs like hands elbows knees, feet, neck, shoulders, etc. The wrestler's knee tap is just "trapping" the far knee, then pushing him over it. The far tie is a trap, judo's knee wheel attacks are traps.

What most MMA guys don't realize is that they use traps all the time, they just use traps vs larger parts of the body. When traps are used against larger parts of the body? They're called IMMOBILIZATIONS. The Muay Thai Clinch. The guard. any and all of them. Wrestler's over and under hooks. When you trap a guy's leg with your half guard? His leg is trapped. When you sink the hooks in and you got the back mount? Your opponent's lower body is trapped so he can't move his upper body. These are all TRAPS. Just varying degrees of the same thing.

It's very important to note the difference and the strengths and weaknesses of each because their application directly affects their training and their purpose.

In self defense, quality trapping skills are very important not only because they give you the option of completely dominating an opponent without hurting him, they also allow you to deal with weapons and multifights without having to commit much of your body to the immobilization or trapping of one opponent. Trapping also opens up lines of attack that are illegal to exploit in MMA...like eye gouges, groin and throat shots, tears, rips, hair grabs, head butt and bite attacks, etc.

In MMA, nobody's going to pull a weapon on you, you HAVE TO hurt your opponent, and nobody's going to have their homies jump you. Nobody's going to regularly and purposefully head butt you, grab your hair and jerk it backwards to chop your neck, stick a knife in your groin or ear, have their homies shoot you or crack you with a bottle or chair, etc.

However, most self-defense guys don't train their techniques with anywhere near the kind of functionality that MMA guys do. That's part of the MMA guys' huge 3 pronged advantage over most soft training TMA guys: functional training, conditioning, aggression.

But when you have TMA guys who train functionally, have great conditioning and aggression? You get guys like Russian Spetznas and Korean ROK guys and the Taiwanese Chinese and Japanese SpecOps: guys who are absolutely deadly with and without guns.

That's the difference.

So CIVILIAN martial artists both TMA and MMA can learn quite a bit from one another, if they're open minded. That's why I train with MMA champions. Keeps me on my toes, and keeps me mentally acute.