Very Strange!
That’s all I can say.
Before the fight between Ronaldo Souza and Vitor Belfort I pretty much accepted that unless the Belfort’s performance against Chris Weidman was a gigantic fluke, Belfort has very little chance against grappling master Ronaldo Souza.
Chris Weidman took Belfort down easily with a simple double leg take down pretty early in the fight, quickly moved to half-guard and proceeded to hammer Belfort to oblivion. Belfort didn’t seriously try to escape the position, didn’t hip-escape or try to hold Weidman down. Didn’t really show any grappling skills, as if he didn’t even train for that – and that’s when he was fighting a wrestler. He even tried to punch Weidman from the bottom – the kind of tactic you’d see in the early days of MMA employed by absolute novices to grappling, who thought they had a chance of doing damage this way.
This was not a good sign for Belfort, but I hoped that this was just not a good performance by Vitor. He was coming back after a long lay off which he took to get his body accustomed to the post-TRT era of the UFC, and he had finished his last 3 fights by head kicks, so I thought maybe this gave him over-confidence of his striking skills to the point he didn’t focus enough on his grappling training. But surely after that devastating loss he would learn his lesson and train extra hard on his grappling and take-down defense for a fight against someone like Jacare, right?
Belfort’s chance was supposed to be in his hand speed and power.
Jacare didn’t face top competition lately except for Mousasi and Yoel Romero. Mousasi attacked mainly with his flick jab, which Souza just ate and pushed forward, getting the take-down again and again. Belfort doesn’t use jabs – he prefers quick power shots. If Souza would get hit by one of those he could go out, and against Romero, Souza’s boxing skills got exposed. He is a good power puncher, but his technique is quite flawed, and he leaves himself very open when he moves forward. He got hit more than once by Romero, and he got dropped once, so this means his chin is not unbreakable. And if someone can break chins it’s Vitor Belfort, so I thought that Belfort actually has a good chance of an upset if he would find Souza’s chin coming in, but of course if he wouldn’t, then Souza would probably take over.
But I didn’t think this would happen.
It didn’t look good pretty fast when Jacare was able to take him down without really any kind of set-up. He just pushed forward, closed the distance and wrestled Belfort to the floor. Belfort couldn’t find Jacare’s chin, he wasn’t even close.
But it seemed like things are not that bad. Belfort managed to get back up to his feet when Souza tried to advance to side control. So maybe Belfort did work on his grappling. Right?
But then, after Vitor Belfort managed to stand up, Souza pinned him to the cage again and tried to take him down again. It didn’t look like he was close to succeeding or anything, he was just holding Belfort, trying to set up the take-down, when Belfort suddenly… pulled guard!!!???
At first I thought maybe Belfort was looking for a guillotine choke (which would have been a very stupid thing to do against someone as capable in BJJ as Souza), but no. Neither one of his hands were anywhere near Souza’s head when he pulled that guard. He just pulled guard on the best (well, maybe 2nd best, after Maia) submission master in the UFC. Why? Brian Stann wondered about it himself, but, as most commentators do he didn’t dwell on it too long. Except for a brief mention of it when it happened, there was no more discussion of this strange move.
But it didn’t end there. When Souza was trying to ground-n-pound, and Belfort had his legs completely free to try and control Souza’s posture, he did no such thing. He just let Souza stand in the most dominant position, throwing bombs, and then he just let him achieve mount, without any real opposition.
And to sum it all nicely, when Souza was sitting comfortably at mount, Belfort tried again his old trick that worked so well against Weidman, and trying punching Souza from the bottom. The horror!
I could just write it all off as just a case of very bad preparation for a fight with an elite grappler, and it might very well be all that it is, but I dare suspect there is more to it. Vitor Belfort has a lot of MMA experience and he is a black belt in BJJ. It doesn’t seem reasonable for someone like him to make such blatant mistakes. If it was just a matter of losing to a better grappler in Ronaldo Souza, or even making the worst mistakes possible, like not controlling his posture, giving him mount, and punching from the bottom, I would accept that. But pulling guard on submission champion Ronaldo Souza seems too much to me.
Luke Thomas explains a little about how Souza was able to pass to mount seemingly so easily, but this all still remains very very strange to me…