[quote]Apollo1029 wrote:
I haven’t been this excited about a fight in a long time. I have been a Condit fan for ages. I feel GSP will take it if he can keep Condit down. Standing up I don’t think GSP will hang.(He looked awful inthe shields fight) Rooting for Condit all the way. WAR Condit!!![/quote]
I agree. I think this will be a much more exciting fight. I still expect GSP to win, but am rooting for Condit.
Condit is good, but is not, and will not be near the same caliber as GSP. And i dont even like GSP fights.
[quote]Apollo1029 wrote:
I haven’t been this excited about a fight in a long time. I have been a Condit fan for ages. I feel GSP will take it if he can keep Condit down. Standing up I don’t think GSP will hang.(He looked awful inthe shields fight) Rooting for Condit all the way. WAR Condit!!![/quote]
I actually like the Condit vs GSP match-up better than Diaz vs GSP, but in regards to him looking awful in the Shields fight…
You do realize that he got poked in the eye early into that fight and was basically fighting with only one good eye for the majority of it right? And also that he was fighting one of the best grapplers in all of MMA (who has also NEVER been finished) and was probably more than a little wary of over-committing and getting taken down?
I’m sure if you asked him he would tell you that he wasn’t happy with his performance in that fight and wishes he could have finished it. But, given the circumstances I’d say that he still did as well as anyone in MMA would have done in his situation.
Personally I feel that much of his “lackluster” performances lately have been the result of
[quote]Sentoguy wrote:
bad advice that Renzo gave him prior to his fight with Hardy (heard him say it during one of the UFC prime time episodes leading up to that fight) to “not strike while grappling, but only focus on Jiu-jitsu/grappling”. Since that time he has taken that advice and become one dimensional once it hits the ground.[/quote]
I heard that as well. I assumed it had to be out of context/bad edit because Renzo was one of the rougher Gracies as far as throwing beatings went. He would elbow, step on people once they were out, the whole deal. I thought maybe it was situational, but now that you mention it GSP has seemed to do the whole control > strikes or submissions since.
Hell, in the Hardy fight he was making what looked to me to be odd failures of technique on his submission attempts (armbar/ juji gatame and kimura/ude garami) so maybe that advice became his marching orders for a reason.
Regards,
Robert A
[quote]Sentoguy wrote:
[quote]Apollo1029 wrote:
I haven’t been this excited about a fight in a long time. I have been a Condit fan for ages. I feel GSP will take it if he can keep Condit down. Standing up I don’t think GSP will hang.(He looked awful inthe shields fight) Rooting for Condit all the way. WAR Condit!!![/quote]
I actually like the Condit vs GSP match-up better than Diaz vs GSP, but in regards to him looking awful in the Shields fight…
You do realize that he got poked in the eye early into that fight and was basically fighting with only one good eye for the majority of it right? And also that he was fighting one of the best grapplers in all of MMA (who has also NEVER been finished) and was probably more than a little wary of over-committing and getting taken down?
I’m sure if you asked him he would tell you that he wasn’t happy with his performance in that fight and wishes he could have finished it. But, given the circumstances I’d say that he still did as well as anyone in MMA would have done in his situation.
Personally I feel that much of his “lackluster” performances lately have been the result of
I realize he got jabbed in the eye. I guess what I was getting at is that GSP is very good at what he does and that is controlling the fight. GSP’s specialty taking very little damage. I think that if it becomes an attrition fight and damage is taken from both sides GSP will fold.(Especially in the stand up) I’m not expecting this to happen as GSP controls where the fight is at in almost every match he has been in. I am expecting the same GSP as always and Condit is very supceptible to the take down.
[quote]Robert A wrote:
I heard that as well. I assumed it had to be out of context/bad edit because Renzo was one of the rougher Gracies as far as throwing beatings went. He would elbow, step on people once they were out, the whole deal. I thought maybe it was situational, but now that you mention it GSP has seemed to do the whole control > strikes or submissions since.
[/quote]
Yeah, I found it puzzling as well as Renzo was really the first Gracie to really cross train in other arts and not stick to the whole “Gracie Jiu-Jitsu is all you need” mantra. But, whatever the context, he did say it, and GSP has since seemed to stop throwing strikes once it hits the ground and instead only seems to focus on positional control.
[quote]
Hell, in the Hardy fight he was making what looked to me to be odd failures of technique on his submission attempts (armbar/ juji gatame and kimura/ude garami) so maybe that advice became his marching orders for a reason.
Regards,
Robert A[/quote]
Those may have been techniques which he had recently been working on with Renzo but hadn’t really done enough times (with perfect execution) to make them second nature. In the heat of battle he made slight technical mistakes and (combined with Hardy’s toughness/flexibility and unwillingness to submit to anything short of a perfectly executed submission) thus allowed Hardy to survive the fight.
Think about it, GSP had pulled off a great armbar on Hughes (who is no slouch when it comes to Jiu-Jitsu himself) prior to that fight and there is even a video of him teaching that same armbar and explaining why he prefers the stomach down version. But, after training with Renzo (who is legitimately a great Jiu-Jitsu coach) he goes for the common lying version and misses it.
IMO GSP is “coachable” to a fault. What I mean by that is that he is so trusting of his coaches that even if they tell him to do something which obviously isn’t working as well for him as something he was previously doing, he’ll still continue to do it. I think this not striking while on the ground MO that he’s adopted as of late is an example of that.
Of course that’s just my theory, but I think there’s evidence to support it.
Here is GSP subbing Hughes.
And here he is teaching that arm bar and explaining why he prefers it.
Now, obviously that is a different set-up than the one he tried on Hardy, but his point about there being less options when face down and using gravity to your advantage is a legitimate one.
Actually, upon further review the armbar was from rear guard, which makes it pretty tough to do a face down one. So I stand corrected on that one.
Still obvious that he hadn’t payed enough attention to executing a Juji-gatame perfectly (notice how wide his knees are, which is why Hardy was able to turn his arm out of alignment and even have the ROM/time needed to do that period) and thus missed it.
Against Hughes he tried the mounted Kimura but unlike Hardy, Hughes tried to roll out of it in a predictable way that GSP was used to and prepared for. With the Kimura, he just had to sit on Hardy’s head (pinching it there between his knees), pull the arm to his chest and rotate and Hardy would have either had to tap or get his shoulder destroyed.
Here’s the arm bar.
and here’s the kimura.
Yeah, in that arm bar video you can clearly see that GSP made the mistake not to pinch his knees together. Hardy would never had had room to move at all had he done so.
I don’t know what is it but I’ve noticed, and it has happened to me too, that in certain combat situation, people seem to kind ‘black out’ and forget about what they’d trained and practiced for ages and start making mistakes.
At some point I was thinking, damn, Hardy is a tough mofo for letting his arms being brutalized like that, lol. But the technical mistakes were on Saint-Pierre. I think he did focus more on power than technique on that night.
Oh thank goodness. You guys see it too. Watching that fight I was wondering what I was missing.
Regards,
Robert A
[quote]Sentoguy wrote:
Still obvious that he hadn’t payed enough attention to executing a Juji-gatame perfectly (notice how wide his knees are, which is why Hardy was able to turn his arm out of alignment and even have the ROM/time needed to do that period) and thus missed it.
Against Hughes he tried the mounted Kimura but unlike Hardy, Hughes tried to roll out of it in a predictable way that GSP was used to and prepared for. With the Kimura, he just had to sit on Hardy’s head (pinching it there between his knees), pull the arm to his chest and rotate and Hardy would have either had to tap or get his shoulder destroyed. [/quote]
Well written. Far more articulate than I usually manage.
As for the Kimura, he made an error I see all the time. He let extension of Hardy’s shoulder/gleno-humoral joint lie to him and tell him that he was putting the lock on. Hardy was largely in the same position someone willingly puts themselves if they do Bench Dips(Fuck be upon these by the way).
I think mistakes like this play into what DarkNinja wrote about as weel, sort of “blanking”. Something “feels” or “seems” different or off and it makes everything seem foreign. Even little things can turn practiced movements/actions into the “I have never been here before”/virgin in a whore house feeling. Of course, and this is going to sound flowery/esoteric, the other aspect is training where to put your “mind”. Basically, get the whole “Zen” thing going where you know and do without consciously thinking. This is different than just winging it in my opinion.
Regards,
Robert A
I sometimes had the impression that gsp could have destroyed hardy’s shoulder with that kimura if he had chosen to do so. But he was winning the fight anyway and thus, being the genuinely nice guy that I think he is, settled for the dominant position. But I am biased as I am a huge fan of him.
^Nope, Sento is spot on with his analysis of the armbar and kimura. GSP made ‘simple’ BJJ mistakes and it cost him the subs. With the Kimura he needed to sit back and pinch his knees to fix Dan’s body in place. With the armbar he needed to pinch his knees or cross his legs over the far shoulder (though he had the right idea controlling the wrist to prevent the clockwork escape, Hardy powered through.)
The way I see GSP as a grappler is that his positioning and defense are awesome every time, easily best in the division. His subs aren’t perfect though. He tends to rush them and either loses them immediately (any time he tries armbar from back) or executes them improperly (like in the Hardy fight).
Come to think of it, with GSP’s armbar on Hardy, he did in fact try to trap the farside shoulder to prevent the roll. Hardy saw it coming and freed himself (watch his left hand), which he managed to do because the shoulder trap wasn’t tight to begin with. At this point Georges could have pinched his knees to recover, but I think he was too focused on controlling the wrist.
you’re probably right. I really don’t know anything about grappling. My observation was more based on gsp’s facial expression, in the first armbar when the fight was still open you can see him straining. then in the kimura attempt he looks around kinda reluctantly instead of trying to tighten his submission. By the way thanks alot for digging out these clips.
Hopefully he will not make the same mistakes you pointed out against Condit and submit him… or even better knock him unconscious.
[quote]partybison wrote:
you’re probably right. I really don’t know anything about grappling. My observation was more based on gsp’s facial expression, in the first armbar when the fight was still open you can see him straining. then in the kimura attempt he looks around kinda reluctantly instead of trying to tighten his submission. By the way thanks alot for digging out these clips.
Hopefully he will not make the same mistakes you pointed out against Condit and submit him… or even better knock him unconscious. [/quote]
I took his looking towards his corner (around) as being him looking for advice as to why Hardy wasn’t tapping. Unfortunately, with all of the noise from the fans screaming at the excitement of him being so close to finishing the fight, he was either unable to hear their advice, or perhaps they didn’t know either and couldn’t help him.
[quote]rundymc wrote:
The way I see GSP as a grappler is that his positioning and defense are awesome every time, easily best in the division. His subs aren’t perfect though. He tends to rush them and either loses them immediately (any time he tries armbar from back) or executes them improperly (like in the Hardy fight).[/quote]
Agreed. His set-ups are actually usually very good too (both the arm bar and kimura were set-up very well against Hardy), it’s his “submission positions” which need work.
agreed here, he setups well just made basic mistakes on the finish.