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” [...]

The fans interview Fedor

http://fedor.bel.ru/index_eng.shtml?id=150
Another good one to go back and read later. Interesting how he says being calm is a natural trait and how he mentions throughout he went for targets or submissions that were there… two of the athletic (including mind/body) attributes so widely sought in internal arts, or for that matter, in any sports or movement [...]

Fedor training videos on youtube

I was trying to see the grabbing ropes controversy from the Fedor Lindland fight and came across the Fedor training videos on youtube. Nothing really new that I could see except one video in which he and his brother spin a lot before shadow boxing - I’d never seen this sort of deliberate dizziness-inducing sort [...]

Rambling about standing, “mixed” ma, “science” and “living” arts

Reading all about yiquan lately is really getting me interested in standing again. It also keeps me interested in mma and the question of how the “mixes” are really trying to evolve into a perfect fusion. On the face of it, that is a weird interest. Most people interested in standing seem interested in useless [...]