I’ve been on a bit of a pay-per-view hiatus. But I looked at the card for UFC 98 and decided it would be worth the $45 to see Frankie Edgar fight Sean Sherk, and the match-up between Rashad Evans and Lyoto Machida. As it turned out, those two fights alone were worth the money.
First, a big congrats to fellow Jersey-guy Frankie Edgar. Edgar put on a striking clinic against a very dangerous Sean Sherk. Edgar proved most of the commentators wrong, using superb head movement, fakes, takedown attempts, and multi-faceted striking to earn a 30-27 unanimous decision. Edgar has developed a great style, finding the perfect mix of elusiveness and aggression that is really fun to watch. Also, after getting blasted with a double-leg takedown in the middle of round 3, Edgar also showed great poise working off of his back within seconds, and taking no real damage along the way. Egdar also showed fantastic presence, when he worked a guillotine attempt in the closing seconds of the last round to seal the deal, instead of just letting the time expire. Great job Frankie!
As far as the Machida fight goes, like Joe Rogan said, I think we are seeing the start of a new era. Machida’s Shotokan karate has frustrated every UFC opponent he’s faced, and turned a very, very tough Rashad Evans off in the second round. It’s interesting to see some of the more traditional martial arts coming back into the MMA fold, as the practitioners round out their games to cover the wrestling and submission aspects. I think this will end up raising the caliber of striking in MMA. Machida is definitely a force to be reckoned with.
Good stuff!
Tags: Frankie Edgar, Lyoto Machida, Rashad Evans, Sean Sherk, UFC 98
I was just now googling around about this when I stumbled on your post. I’m only visiting to say that I truly liked seeing this post, it is really well written. Are you thinking of blogging more about this? It appears like there is more fodder here for future posts.
Thanks for commenting. Just started this blog earlier this month, good to know someone actually hit on it through google. I hope to crank out 1 or 2 posts per week for now. I’m going to try and focus on the legal aspects of MMA and the combat sports generally, but will stray from time to time to keep things interesting.
Circle back when you have a minute – hopefully you’ll find something worth reading! Thanks again.
Thanks for posting, I very much enjoyed your latest post. I think you should post more often, you obviously have natural ability for blogging!
Lyoto Machida: once again demonstrating the superiority of the traditional martial arts over the mutant hybrid that is “MMA”! Until he started fighting, I was always wondering, “why doesn’t anyone use any defensive striking or foot movement?!?!?”
Good to hear from you jaytanic! Keep checking in, been busy lately but I’ll be posting more soon.
As far a Machida goes, don’t be delusional. Machida is a “mixed martial artist.” He is a blackbelt in Shotokan Karate, but he is also a black belt in brazilian jui jitsu and has competed in sumo. If you don’t have the grappling and submission piece you simply cannot compete in MMA.
From a sporting perspective, the debate over which “pure” styles are most dominant was settled over a decade ago in the early “no holds barred” UFCs and vale tudo events in Brazil. The submission grapplers, jui jitsu players, and world class wrestlers dominated those events.
When your in a cage or ring sport fighting, good footwork and defensive striking don’t got you very far if you can’t defend takedowns or submissions. You only get one shot when you have an olympic caliber wrestler coming at you, if you don’t put him to sleep with that one shot you end up on your back with a big problem.
Machida is so good and so fun to watch because he has a very well-rounded game with a very unique karate striking style. You don’t see very much of that type of striking in MMA, which is typically dominated by boxing, kickboxing, and muay thai.
I’m not knocking traditional martial arts from an exercise and street self-defense standpoint. They are probably plenty effective in those situations. But make no mistake about it, if Machida didn’t know the grappling (wrestling and submissions) and clinch games he would not be able to compete in the UFC.
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