[quote]chitown34 wrote:
slimjim wrote:
chitown34 wrote:
slimjim wrote:
You don’t think the strength and size advantage Alves was playing with helped him stop Hughes’ takedown attempts?
BJ Penn has the best TD defense I have ever seen, and he is (despite what you may have heard or think) not very physically strong. He has amazing technique, and when someone has great technique they feel much stronger than they are on the mat.
This is something you experience early on if you have every done a grappling sport. Alves did stop a few takedowns, but it’s not like Hughes has been taking everyone down recently. He couldn’t take BJ or GSP down, and he had way too much trouble against Chris Lytle IMHO, a guy he should have destroyed and finished.
Hughes DID take Alves down, and did absolutely nothing to hurt him. If you are going to fight a great striker, you have to hurt him when it hits the mat because they can knock you out at any time standing.
That was the biggest non-answer I’ve seen in awhile. Do you really believe Alves’ strength advantage did not help him in their fight?
BJ is pretty strong for his size. Maybe not quite ‘gym’ strong in the sense that he can lift a lot of weight, but I’ve seen him actually hip toss Cabbage (the fighter) from the clinch. You can argue technique and whatnot, but it still takes a bit of strength to throw someone who outweighs you by 60-70 lbs (BJ was moving up in weight at the time.)
But that’s neither here nor there. Your argument that technique and cardio is the biggest keys to success in MMA holds true only because there are weight classes. The reason they have weight classes is because size and strength do matter, without weightclasses, the huge guys (hws) would win 90% of the time.
Alves literally shoved Hughes off of him at one point when Hughes took an ill-advised shot from the outside. A weaker fighter would not have been able to do that.
Again, you help my case by mentioning how he threw someone 60 lbs heavier than him with relative ease. BJ Penn does not have beastly strength, but his technique is so good that he is able to use his body very efficiently. I have wrestled, trained judo, and bjj for years and I can tell you from experience that how strong someone feels does not have a great deal to do with how strong they look or how much they lift. I have been thrown on my head by a 150 lb woman (I weighed around 195 at the time). Did she toss me b/c she was stronger? Of course not. She tossed me because she had been training judo since she was 5 years old, was on Japanese national team, and had a huge technique advantage.
With Alves and Hughes, we are not talking about 50 lbs. Alves weighed in 4 lbs heavier, and Hughes himself has said that he often weighs in the high 180’s by his fight the next day. Alves didn’t stuff Hughes’ takedowns because he is THAT much stronger. He stuffed Hughes’ takedowns because he knew that’s all Hughes would go for when standing up. Every time Hughes got in close, he wasn’t worried about a hook to the face, he was focused on stuffing the shot, and it is very hard to make a successful shoot when the other guy is anticipating it.[/quote]
First of all, I’m glad you have wrestled, practiced judo, and done BJJ for years. On my first day of BJJ I could submit guys who had done jiu jitsu for years, not because of my skill, but because of my strength and size advantage.
I only shared that part about BJ to highlight the fact that he is a poor example of someone who looks weak and utilizes only skill, when he is in fact very strong. Obviously the biggest part of BJ’s game is his technique, but that would be relatively useless if he was not strong enough to utilize it.
Alves, on the other hand, looks diesel and fights like it as well. If Alves did not have a strength advantage, Hughes would’ve been able to muscle him down and hold him down. Instead he got one takedown and was ineffectual on the ground both because of Alves’ technique and strength.
Did Hughes beat Royce Gracie because he possessed more experience and skill in BJJ?