Great review of Le Shamrock

I’m not sure what this guy’s blog is about (he seems to post random pictures of his cat and I just don’t like that silly lolcats thing), but his review of Le Shamrock reads like a professionally written, slightly dramatized, magazine article:
Super Heroes vs. Ninjas review of Cung Le vs. Frank Shamrock
I’m not that into [...]

Fedor Nogueira 3 part 3

“Fedor is unable to have his concentration broken” says Bas. His constant almost-bored look is almost funny. First takedown from a strike setup is again unbelievably smooth. So fluid and relaxed. There is some skipping or something in the clip. And who knows how long it’ll stay online.

Fedor Nogueira 3 part 2

Nog gets a good takedown toward the end of round one. I like how Randy Couture calls Fedor’s bombs “Scud missiles” and how even Bas Rutten is impressed how quickly Fedor reacts to any submission attempt. Slow mo replay of rd 1 highlights is very nice. How does Nogueira take so much abuse and keep [...]

Fedor Nogueira 3 part 1

Here is part 1 of actually their second fight. Fedor dominated Nogueira in every range but I’m most amazed how quickly and smoothly Fedor switches from range to range and back again. Theoretically, if Fedor could fight Nogueira a third time (one of the previous three was nc), of course he’d be UFC HW champ. [...]

Trapping hands range?

People comment that Bruce Lee’s JFJKD was a prototype for modern MMA with its ranges of combat concept, how most arts specialize in a range, the need to “accept what is useful, reject what is useless”, anti-”dead forms” and pro- “alive” training and so on. So what happened to the trapping hands range? A friend [...]

Fedor v Sylvia

A lot of bloggers seem excited about this one. I am pretty excited to see Fedor fight a supposedly top contender (because he was ufc champion? - does anyone notice a trend with Rampage, Anderson Silva, and Big Nog coming in and taking over the belts? And Fedor, like Silva, is in a different league). [...]

Cung Le new Strikeforce champion

What an exciting 3rd round. Video seems to be taken down:

Another one likely taken down soon:

Not sure why Shamrock didn’t shoot - to prove a point or due to bad knees? Check out Cung Le’s back hook kick to spinning back fist and the leg sweep.
After the fight Shamrock said “Cung Le broke my right [...]

Pride vs. UFC, BJJ, style vs. style, new trends

Now that Big Nog is interim HW UFC champ and Rampage and Anderson Silva are champs in other divisions, the old stupid debate about whether Pride had better fighters is pretty much over and it should now be obvious to even the most casual fan who said something stupid like Pride was worse because of [...]

Brand differentiation: bjj vs. judo - how about a more exciting mma format?

Great post about bjj and judo as “brands” of the same art competing for grappling students.
Extending this kind of marketing analysis to sport fight TV viewer segments, I am still waiting for san shou to get more popular. Regular folks don’t like groundfighting. They like KO’s and throws. It makes the fights exciting and requires [...]

Human weapon: Sambo

Sambo episode is coming on. It will have a fighter picked by Fedor to fight one of the guys. Cool… spoiler warning… don’t read further if you haven’t seen it…
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First move they show, sort of roll-back to a sweep, aided by pulling on the collarbone. Nice. A self defense move.
Warm-ups: lots of rolls, “hindu pushups” [...]