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Printer-Friendly ModeUpsets built into MMA
September 24, 2007 —
If you didn't fork over 40 bones this Saturday to watch UFC 76, you missed the best reason to hand two Jacksons to the cable company every month.
That's not to say that UFC 76 was an amazing card, although it was above average. The upsets that rocked the night were simply not that surprising.
Why? In the last year, the sport has witnessed too many upsets for fights like Keith Jardine over Chuck Liddell to even be considered one. What we are seeing is a gradual leveling of the playing field, so that the majority of fighting going on in the major promotions is between elite competitors.
As the sport has evolved, training methods, nutrition and diet, and even lifestyles have fallen in line and become fairly uniform. Some fighters train grappling more than striking, and vice versa, but for the most part, training for MMA has become a lot like training pitching. You perform a certain set of routines over and over again in order to get better. There's not much room for variability - do this, or get KOed.
The sport hasn't always been like this: some fighters simply trained better and with better training partners. The quality of any given fighter's could vary wildly. For example, Quinton Jackson trained with amateurs for the majority of his career, relying mostly on his natural ability to get through fights. That only worked for so long, and he was completely outclassed by competitors from superior camps.
But after finding his home in the UFC, Jackson began training with professionals and went on to beat Dan Henderson, one of the sport's best. But the fight wouldn't have been an upset, even if Henderson won. Both fighters were elite competitors from elite camps.
The same is true for Jardine. Calling his win an upset is almost insulting: he is a professional fighter, every bit as much as Liddell. He beat Chuck by fighting a smarter fight. In comtemporary MMA, there are no upsets. Just good strategies and bad ones.