John Dodson is a happy, fun character, and I actually think this is exactly the attitude needed to beat Demetrius Johnson. Demetrius Johnson is a fighter who moves a lot, keeps an incredible pace and relies on volume and variety of attacks for controlling his opponents and making them vulnerable. He is very quick and elusive and that’s why it’s very hard to land a knock-out strike on him. The way to beat him, in my opinion, is to control the cage, limit his movements and take him down and control him on the ground if possible. John Dodson was presented to us again and again as the only guy who can match Johnson’s speed. This, together with his fun, animated attitude made me believe that this is exactly the approach he would take for this fight. In the first fight he knocked Johnson down three times, but wasn’t able to finish him or even really hurt him, so I thought it’s obvious he wouldn’t focus on trying to do this, and instead try use his natural speed and movement to control the cage and shut down Johnson’s movement.

So when I saw him walk to the cage with a serious “determined” look, it immediately seemed to me like the wrong kind of attitude he should be coming into this fight with. This kind of attitude is suited to a guy who is looking to go after their opponent, hunt them down, and hurt them. Not to a guy who should be moving all over the place, attacking from all directions but avoiding throwing too much into every shot in order to save energy to last the entire fight.

Anthony Johnson Vs. Jimi Manuwa. Why?

What is the idea behind this match-up?

Anthony Johnson looked amazing in his last three victories, overcoming the high-level wrestling of Phil Davis and destroying Rogerio Nogueira and Alexander Gustafsson – all top level Light-Heavyweights, and then looked very good against Daniel Cormier, knocking him down in the first round before succumbing to his overall superior game. I think everybody is very interested in seeing him face some other top light-heavyweight at this point.

Jimi Manuwa has looked pretty good up until a few fights ago, but he hasn’t looked devastatingly good.  He then lost to Gustafsson, and won a boring decision against top-20 (at the time) Blachowicz. What has he done to deserve such a highly ranked opponent as Johnson? And this is not the first time: Manuwa got Gustafsson when Gustafsson was the top contender slated to rematch Jon Jones after their close fight.  It was a very strange match-up then, even though he was undefeated at the time, and it’s a stranger match-up now, after his last two unimpressive performances.

What will the MMA world gain from this fight?  If Johnson would win, as he is expected to, everything would remain the same as it is now. Johnson would remain the number one contender; Manuwa would remain where he is ranked, and nothing would change. I suppose this could be a tune-up fight for Johnson for another shot at Daniel Cormier, but do we really want to see that rematch so quickly? Cormier beat him pretty definitively, and they both have many other top level opponents they haven’t faced, so why make this rematch now? This couldn’t be a tune-up fight for Johnson to face Jon Jones, because when ‘Bones’ returns he would obviously rematch Cormier for the undisputed title.

It’s always taken for granted that the heavier fighters are the more dangerous fighters.  Every champion is the best in his or her division, he or she may be the best pound for pound fighter in the world, but only one fighter is “The Baddest Fighter on the Planet”, and that’s the Heavyweight champion. He is the only fighter who would probably beat everybody else if there were no weight limits, and that stands to reason.   We implemented the weight system because we know size matters.

For some reason this does not apply to Ronda Rousey. She is considered a lot of times as the most dangerous woman fighter in the world, who supposedly can beat 50% of men fighters and beat Floyd Mayweather in an MMA fight. While all this time there is a whole division of women fighters who are heavier than her, which nobody says any of these things about.  We don’t really know how Rousey would fare against those women since she never fought any of them or at that weight – yet she is the one talked about as the most formidable woman fighter.

This situation is even more ridiculous considering that this heavier division has its own undefeated undisputed champion who smashes everyone she is facing and in fact has been doing so for a very long time, since before Rousey has even started MMA. Cristiane Justino has been considered the undisputed woman champion for a long time before Ronda Rousey got to be, and rightfully so. Ronda Rousey has taken her spot because she is American, more beautiful, more marketable and, most importantly, fights in the UFC.

Apart from the huge deal surrounding the failed drug tests, there’s another, much smaller issue in UFC 183, the weight missing by two of the fighters, and quite big names at that, Kelvin Gastelum and John Lineker.

For a long time I’ve wondered why fighters are fighting at a lower weight than the one that they walk around with, and how did it come to be.

The answer to the first question, of course, is that everybody has better chances when fighting smaller guys, and so, everybody tries to pass as small as they can themselves. The reason they can do this is because they have 24 hours before the fight starts to rehydrate and recuperate from the weakened state they are in at the time of the weigh ins.

I don’t know why fighters are weighed in more than 24 hours before the fight, though. I guess that in the beginning (of Boxing) it had something to do with the option of finding a replacement for the fighter or for canceling the show before the crowd got there.  But nowadays neither of these is the case.  Fights are still made even if one or both fighters do miss weight.

So why is it still going on? Is it a health issue? These days, fighters lose so much weight for fights that their body is very weak at the time of the weigh ins.  If they would try to fight at this weakened state it would probably prove to be very dangerous for them.  Looking at it this way, it might make sense not to let them fight right after a weigh in, when they are particularly weak.

But I don’t believe that this is right way of looking at it.  Fighters lose all this weight and fight at weight classes smaller than their regular weight because they know they have those 24 hours to recuperate. The situation now is the dangerous one, since fighters are dehydrating themselves to extreme levels, sometimes to the point where their bodies just shut down.  We see it time and time again, and there is no reason to think we’ll ever stop seeing that.  Fighters will always try to fight in as small a weight class as possible and will always continue to hurt themselves in the process of trying to make that weight, counting on the 24 hour period after the weigh in for recuperation.

If, on the other hand, weigh ins would be held minutes (yes, minutes) before a fight, so fighters would have no time to recuperate from a weight loss, fighters would know that they can’t fight at a weight class lighter than their natural weight since if they do they will be weak during the fight, which is the most important time to be as strong as possible. fighters would, then, try to keep the weight pretty even, at the weight they would fight in, throughout the entire training camp because they wouldn’t want to need to lose almost any weight right before the fight which would make them weak.

This way fighters would fight at a weight much closer to their walk-around weight and there would, practically, be no health dangers surrounding the weight cut, and, of course much less weight misses.

Sometimes fights are stopped too early and sometimes too late. In a perfect world, of course, all fights would have been stopped exactly on time.  But realistically judges usually have to decide (in a split second) between stopping the fight or letting it continue when the fighter seem to be really hurt but might still be able to continue.

The upside of stopping the fight at that point is that of the protecting the safety of the fighters, while the down side is that of stopping a potentially intriguing and important fight, robbing the fans of it’s entertainment value and maybe changing the rightful outcome of the fight, thus disrupting the whole true rankings and future fight schedule.

When should a judge, then, err on the side of caution and should he let the fight continue to a more definitive outcome?

The answer, in my opinion, primarily depends on the significance of the fight.

Yes, we all think that all fights should be judged exactly the same, like we think all fighters should be treated the same. But this is not the reality. Top fighters earn differently and get different treatment from promoters and athletic commissions, and main events get 5 rounds even when they are not title fights. The point is that top fights are much more important than all other fights. These are the fights that the fans care about the most by far, these are the fights that are most important for the sport and these are the fights that are most important for the fighters.

The winner of the fight between Rory McDonald and Tarec Saffiedine might get a title shot.

Rory McDonald is the #2 welterweight, so this is almost the biggest fight anyone can get in the division.   On the other hand, Tarec Saffiedine has fought only one time this year and one time last year.  He didn’t beat anyone significant (Nate Marquardt has been unimpressive at welterweight) and his last 7 fights went to decision, which proves he is not the most exciting of fighters.

Dana White is generally very vocal about how he wants fighters to be exciting (Jon Fitch, Jake Shields) and active (Fabricio Werdum was forced to take a fight though he wanted to wait for the title shot).

And now another such fight was announced: Hector Lombard, who just beat Jake Shields and might very well deserve a title shot himself, against Josh Burkman, who just returns to the UFC after losing a fight outside of it (to Steve Carl).

Wouldn’t it make more sense to pit Hector Lombard against Rory McDonald, a fight I think everybody would like to see and let those upcoming guys prove they deserve those high-profile fights instead of booking fights which seem pretty one-sided?

I think it’s worth noting that this week there is a fight between two of the best heavyweights outside of the UFC, #12 Damian Grabowski and #23 Marcin Tybura. There is almost no word about it in any of the more popular american MMA news sites, so the least we can do is give it some pubicity here, the home for the more objective look at the MMA world.

Apparently, the event will air on M1Global.TV and will be available for a symbolic $1.00.

Is the UFC even aware of the existence of these guys? Nobody anywhere even suggests they should be fighting in the UFC.

Joe Rogan is well-known for his objection to stand-ups. Presumably, he is a supporter of “real” fighting where there are no stand-ups, and sees it as the fighter’s job to stand up rather than getting stood up by the referee, thus being “saved” from a bad position. He remarked on the matter a little more than usual this past Saturday during the Camozzi/Santos fight.

I thought I would address some of his remarks:

In the second round, when Santos was in side control, Rogan said that once he’s got him in side control he’s got to do something about it, and that he can’t just hold the guy there. I wanted to ask him “why not?” He is winning the fight by “holding the guy there” so why does he “need” to do something? That’s exactly the problem, in my opinion, with the current situation: that you can just hold the guy there and still win the fight.

In the third round when Santos was holding down Camozzi and Camozzi looked at the referee, Rogan said there shouldn’t be stand-ups: when a guy holds you down, he is still beating you. Stand-ups are not realistic because there is no referee in a street fight, when your life depends on it, and so they shouldn’t be used in order to find out which marital art is the best.

First of all, there are no judges in a street fight either. No fighter in a street fight would just take the other guy down and hold him there, because there are no judges to decide who won the fight, and anyway neither fighter cares who “won” the street fight. They both just want to hurt each other – not “win”.

Second, there is no danger to your “life” anyway when a guy just takes you down and holds you, and the absence of a referee doesn’t change that fact.

Finally, this isn’t a street fight. This is a show, and the purpose of all of this is entertainment. If everybody would just hold their opponents down in every fight, nobody would watch their fights. Even if it is more realistic (which it isn’t, as I explained), and even if this proves that wrestling is the best martial art (which it doesn’t, since beating a guy in a real fight means hurting him too, not just holding him).

I don’t like stand-ups, either. I don’t like when anyone interferes with the fight. But the current situation is that the judging system promotes this style of fighting, so need to be stand-ups, or people will lose interest. Abolishing the stand-ups wouldn’t solve this problem – it will worsen it. The only solution is changing the judging system to one that significantly favors damage over control.

There seem to be a consensus that Jon Jones should fight Alexander Gustafsson next, as they had a very close fight and it was the first and only time Jon Jones was in some danger. That’s why there is such a strong reaction to Jon’s’ reluctance to take on this fight.

I don’t share this enthusiasm for this fight.  As a rule, I watch MMA to see different guys fight.  It’s always interesting to see how different fighters will do against each other, who is better,  and what will happen.  And this is especially true for the champion.  I want to see him fight as many fighters as possible, see how he deals with all of them and what they can bring against him. We’ve seen Jones vs. Gustafsson already, and it was a great fight.  Nobody won that fight and there is a good chance that nobody would win their next fight too.  Of course it would be fun to see them match up again, but there is a good chance we would just see a repeat of the first fight.

And besides, should Gustafsson really be the champion? Let’s say that they fight and the judges give him 3 rounds. Does he really deserve to be the champion? Whom has he beat in the Top 10?  He went to close decisions with Rua and Jones, while Jones finished almost everybody he faced through TKOs and submissions.   Of course it would exciting and it would shake up the LHW division but that’s true for any loss of Jones, and personally I think this time Jones would come prepared and win more decisively.

So it would either end in a close decision for Jones which just be a repeat of last time, a decisive victory for Jones, which would just leave us with the feeling this fight was expendable, or a close decision for Gustafsson which would give him an undeserving title (no way Gustafsson finishes Jones, IMO).

I’d much rather see Jones face someone he hasn’t faced, and there is someone who would make a very interesting opponent:  Daniel Cormier, who looks amazing again and again.  If, for some reason, Jones would never fight again after his next fight, I would be very sorry to have missed Jones vs. Cormier, while I wouldn’t feel I’ve missed Jones vs. Gustafsson.

Some rematches are definitely a must: when Cain Velasquez lost to Junior Dos Santos one minute into the fight it felt like it was a lucky punch, and he should be given another chance. When Anderson Silva got knocked out by Chris Weidman, it felt like he could do a lot better if he wouldn’t play around as much. But this is not the same situation.  We saw the fight; it was good, but it doesn’t mean we have to see an immediate rematch.  There are other worthy opponents for Jones.  Gustafsson can get his rematch later, maybe after beating (and finishing) a Top 10 guy or two.

Having said that, this is just my personal opinion, and the reality is that there is quite a demand among fans to see this rematch (at least that’s the feeling I’m getting).  By trying to avoid it, Jones does make it look like he is afraid. I don’t think he is, but that’s not the issue.  If there is really such a demand for that fight (which is a good question – is there really?) then he should accept it, and beat Gustaffson decisively like I think he would.

A while ago I wrote about the uselessness of accusing the fighters of not fighting in an exciting way or not trying to finish fights. I said that the rules encourage safe fighting and that as long as the rules would not change safe fighting will continue to be a significant part of the sport.

The UFC wants to be sanctioned and that’s why they accept the Unified Rules of MMA, with their 10-point must system. I believe the UFC are now big enough and strong enough to be able to influence these rules if they wanted to, but that’s another matter.   The important thing now is that they are bound by these rules and must follow them.

The problem that they now face is how to avoid the slow but steady decline of fighters to point-fighting while adhering to the same set of rules and without influencing the judges.   The way Dana White has chosen to do this is by cutting any fighter who seems to be fighting safely, even when they are considered among the best in the world.

It started with the surprising release of Jon Fitch, followed by that of Yushin Okami, the lack of interest in signing Ben Askren, and now the release of Jake Shields.

The UFC cannot affect the rules but they can control the fighters, and they try to make them fight excitingly by keeping only those who bring the action, and threatening to cut those who don’t.

There is a lot of criticism surrounding this strategy.   It is said that MMA is a sport, while the UFC is becoming a spectacle.   Instead of trying to find who the best fighters in the world are, they are just trying to put on crowd-pleasing fights and make money.