Rashad Evans

[quote]slimjim wrote:
Rashad is my posterboy for the need to revamp the UFC’s scoring system. Points need to be awarded for submission attempts, and points not awarded for simple takedowns…slams yes…takedown into the opponent’s guard, no.

What happens if Rashad progresses enough with this style to take a belt at some point in his future? I will not pay to see title fights featuring a guy who does nothing but score takedowns and sit in his opponents guard with his elbows in to avoid submissions.

He is a very good athlete, but he needs to learn some ground skills that actually allow him to finish a fight rather than avoid submissions and sit in there for the win.[/quote]

Fair comments but I’m sure after reflecting you will admit “someone” has to win the round/fight. If he is initiating more than the other guy - well then oh well, he wins…simple as that. Exciting? No. Fair? Absolutely. Like I said, you have to award the round one way or the other. In the absence of real action, you can only be guided by aggression and yes, takedowns. Agree?

I stopped watching the UFC a while ago. Pride is run better, has much better matchups and has better fighters. How many times do I have to see Lidell fight Couture, or Sylvia fight Arlovski? Are these the only fighters in their respective weight classes? And the fight that got more hype and buildup then any fight I remember is Hughes against an old Royce Gracie? That’s it, that’s the best they can do? No thanks.

[quote]TheBodyGuard wrote:
slimjim wrote:
Rashad is my posterboy for the need to revamp the UFC’s scoring system. Points need to be awarded for submission attempts, and points not awarded for simple takedowns…slams yes…takedown into the opponent’s guard, no.

What happens if Rashad progresses enough with this style to take a belt at some point in his future? I will not pay to see title fights featuring a guy who does nothing but score takedowns and sit in his opponents guard with his elbows in to avoid submissions.

He is a very good athlete, but he needs to learn some ground skills that actually allow him to finish a fight rather than avoid submissions and sit in there for the win.

Fair comments but I’m sure after reflecting you will admit “someone” has to win the round/fight. If he is initiating more than the other guy - well then oh well, he wins…simple as that. Exciting? No. Fair? Absolutely. Like I said, you have to award the round one way or the other. In the absence of real action, you can only be guided by aggression and yes, takedowns. Agree?[/quote]

Good point Bodyguard. However, you could give points for takedowns, but then also have the referee take away points for inactivity (I agree that hitting their pay cheques is not possible in the UFC- 10% of nothing is still nothing).

By forcing activity it would cause fighters to be more active on the ground. We’ve seen a couple great examples of this fighting style this week Groves/Herman and Cumo/Goulet.

On a related issue- How do judges come up with a draw in a 10 point scoring system, I’ve never understood that?

[quote]Ruggerlife wrote:
TheBodyGuard wrote:
slimjim wrote:
Rashad is my posterboy for the need to revamp the UFC’s scoring system. Points need to be awarded for submission attempts, and points not awarded for simple takedowns…slams yes…takedown into the opponent’s guard, no.

What happens if Rashad progresses enough with this style to take a belt at some point in his future? I will not pay to see title fights featuring a guy who does nothing but score takedowns and sit in his opponents guard with his elbows in to avoid submissions.

He is a very good athlete, but he needs to learn some ground skills that actually allow him to finish a fight rather than avoid submissions and sit in there for the win.

Fair comments but I’m sure after reflecting you will admit “someone” has to win the round/fight. If he is initiating more than the other guy - well then oh well, he wins…simple as that. Exciting? No. Fair? Absolutely. Like I said, you have to award the round one way or the other. In the absence of real action, you can only be guided by aggression and yes, takedowns. Agree?

Good point Bodyguard. However, you could give points for takedowns, but then also have the referee take away points for inactivity (I agree that hitting their pay cheques is not possible in the UFC- 10% of nothing is still nothing).

By forcing activity it would cause fighters to be more active on the ground. We’ve seen a couple great examples of this fighting style this week Groves/Herman and Cumo/Goulet.

On a related issue- How do judges come up with a draw in a 10 point scoring system, I’ve never understood that?

[/quote]

A draw is possible b/c you have 3 judges scoring each round and hence, 3 different ways the score could manifest. At the end, the gross numbers (from 30 to 27 typically in a 3 round bout) can (obviously) match.

I liked the fight actually lol… I like Evans slamming Bonner around, and pretty much controlling the whole fight. With his takedowns, Evan just needs to perfect the ground and pound.

He doesn’t need to perfect it, he needs to fucking USE it first. He didn’t even try passing his guard.

[quote]StevenF wrote:
He doesn’t need to perfect it, he needs to fucking USE it first. He didn’t even try passing his guard. [/quote]

Couldn’t have said it any better. Sure he was imposing his will on Bonnar and the slams were pretty, but what the fuck. He stalled, simple as that. Didn’t try to pass the guard, barely threw any strikes, didn’t try for submissions, fucking nothing. If that was a fight in Pride, he would have been fined so much he’d be on welfare by the end of the fight.

What happened to the flashy, explosive, and powerful Rashad that knocked Brad Imes down with flashy combos and strikes?

[quote]StevenF wrote:
He doesn’t need to perfect it, he needs to fucking USE it first. He didn’t even try passing his guard. [/quote]

Agreed. If he was a new fighter, I could see him doing that because he didn’t know that much. But he’s been in the game long enough where he must know SOMETHING about the ground game. I think it has more to do with the kind of a person he is: he simply doesn’t want to take risks or put forth any more effort than he has to.

I don’t think you guys are giving Rashad enough credit, especially if you talk about effort. He has a fought a bunch of fights that went the distance and never quit or gave his back or anything like that. I agree he needs to work on his ground game, but Bonnar isn’t a bad opponent and he dominated him. Think of how close the Forrest Griffin and Stephan Bonnar fight was, and Forest is considered pretty good, and now Rashad crushed Bonnar. I think a Forrest v Rashad fight is inline. To me to fight for 15 straight minutes is pretty ballsy, it could have been better but I don’t see it as deserving of a trashing.

Well I am by no means trying to take anything from him. He is definitely talented and, as everyone saw, capable of dominating a pretty decent Bonnar.

But, if he expects to do anything in this sport, he needs to learn how to fight, on the ground, and that’s that.

[quote]j281 wrote:
who else was REALLY disappointed by Leben’s performance? i mean the guy supposedly had an iron chin…and got KO’ed in less than a minute. oh yeah, hominick vs grugel fight. hominick puts on THE worst show i’ve ever seen. i agree he did what he had to do to win the fight but still…RUNNING away just to avoid the take down? that’s just pansy like. [/quote]

They need to put more TUF fighters against guys like Silva who’ve had training at Chutebox and fought in Pride. Maybe it will shut up all the TUF fans who think that the guys on that show are the end-all be-all of fighting. Come on Dana, bring in some good new talent, and quit trying to pass some of these guys off as world class MMA’ers.