The MMA thread

[Airbag]

Lost_BMW said:

I bet the Canadians loved his remarks about their health care system!

I was wondering about that, he doesn't really expand on what his problem was.

[tuscaneer]

Lost_BMW said:

On another note in Steve Bunce's column in Boxing Monthly he makes a remark about how MMA had its 1st death in Britain last year and it went under the radar (unlike, he argues, in boxing where it would be a big deal).

Certainly went under mine as I've never heard a thing about a death in the UK. Anyone know what he's referring to?

it`s something i wasn`t aware of to be honest but is a subject i have been very interested in as we have discussed before.i feel that,paradoxically, the brutality in general of an mma knockout(hendo/bisping for eg.)compared in general to a boxing knockout is actually better for the recipient.a quick 4oz. glove knockout has a lot less of an accumulative effect in a 15-25 minute contest than an 8-10oz. boxing glove over,potentially,36 minutes.deaths in boxing seem in general to happen after long hard fights more often than not in the lighter weight drained classes.another factor is head strikes.most boxers are head rather than body hunters and with only two appendages in use most of the artillery is being used from the shoulders upwards.mma ,obviously ,ismore wrestling focused and it seems to me that kicks are more biased to the body and legs.

one final point for ponder is how widespread the two sports are.mma is coming on strong but it`s only a decade ago i was scoffing and shaking my head at my early introduction to the ufc. it has evolved from spectacle to sport and is gaining momentum but the sheer volume of pro boxing across the globe coupled with it`s nearly 300 years of competition mean the law of averages shows more boxing deaths due to the volume of competion.

might be wrong might be right,but i would be interested in hearing other peoples takes on this

[XitUp]

It's way older than a decade.

[Don1]

Boxing, the people can be hit in the head up to 100 times in a contest = long term brain damage.

MMA - if there are more than 5-10 unanswered blows to the head, it's over. Fast, quick KO's tend to be 'flash' ones - Bisping took a few minutes, and walked out under his own steam. And that was a great KO....

MMA has been around for a long, long time. As a pro sport, yes, it is gaining in popularity, which is why the boxing press are so worried about it.

[tuscaneer]

XitUp said:

It's way older than a decade.

no you missed my point fella,i`m aware of various martial arts being as old as boxing but for me no holds barred fighting in the early 90`s was nothing like the organised sport it is today and as an emerging sport it was very "niche" in its market.


so my point was that less practitioners=less chance for life threatening injury.

Edited by tuscaneer on Monday 25th January 08:23

[tuscaneer]

Don1 said:

Boxing, the people can be hit in the head up to 100 times in a contest = long term brain damage.

MMA - if there are more than 5-10 unanswered blows to the head, it's over. Fast, quick KO's tend to be 'flash' ones - Bisping took a few minutes, and walked out under his own steam. And that was a great KO....

MMA has been around for a long, long time. As a pro sport, yes, it is gaining in popularity, which is why the boxing press are so worried about it.

just to clarify fella,i don`t want anyone to take my remarks about early nhb as in some way derogatory.if anything i watch about as much, maybe more, mma with the ufc and strikeforce with a bit of m1,than i do boxing at the moment.
the boxing pres is indeed looking over it`s collective shoulder worriedly at the quick rise of the sport over recent years with people just like me now watching an evolved sport rather than the original ultimate fighters which were not appealing to the mass combat sport market.
my points were all about neurological damage and not in a "boxing`s better than mma" way at all.

[Don1]

Yep, mine too!

[XitUp]

tuscaneer said:

XitUp said:

It's way older than a decade.

no you missed my point fella,i`m aware of various martial arts being as old as boxing but for me no holds barred fighting in the early 90`s was nothing like the organised sport it is today and as an emerging sport it was very "niche" in its market.


so my point was that less practitioners=less chance for life threatening injury.

Nope, I didn't miss your point.

MMA is at least 20 years old in Japan.

[Lost_BMW]

tuscaneer said:

Lost_BMW said:

On another note in Steve Bunce's column in Boxing Monthly he makes a remark about how MMA had its 1st death in Britain last year and it went under the radar (unlike, he argues, in boxing where it would be a big deal).

Certainly went under mine as I've never heard a thing about a death in the UK. Anyone know what he's referring to?

it`s something i wasn`t aware of to be honest but is a subject i have been very interested in as we have discussed before.i feel that,paradoxically, the brutality in general of an mma knockout(hendo/bisping for eg.)compared in general to a boxing knockout is actually better for the recipient.a quick 4oz. glove knockout has a lot less of an accumulative effect in a 15-25 minute contest than an 8-10oz. boxing glove over,potentially,36 minutes.deaths in boxing seem in general to happen after long hard fights more often than not in the lighter weight drained classes.another factor is head strikes.most boxers are head rather than body hunters and with only two appendages in use most of the artillery is being used from the shoulders upwards.mma ,obviously ,ismore wrestling focused and it seems to me that kicks are more biased to the body and legs.

one final point for ponder is how widespread the two sports are.mma is coming on strong but it`s only a decade ago i was scoffing and shaking my head at my early introduction to the ufc. it has evolved from spectacle to sport and is gaining momentum but the sheer volume of pro boxing across the globe coupled with it`s nearly 300 years of competition mean the law of averages shows more boxing deaths due to the volume of competion.

might be wrong might be right,but i would be interested in hearing other peoples takes on this

The idea of being hit and out more quickly in mma, with the smaller gloves, is the argument I've heard a lot (e.g. Joe Rogan often proclaims on this) to explain the seeming difference in danger/bad outcomes between the two sports.

I also think you have a point about the variety of targets/methods used in mma - it's not that often that you see a stand-up only/mainly fight with so many head shots landed as someone will either do something different or go out!

There have been a copule though where the fights have either been one sided with a ref slow to intervene or close humdingers with both guys landing a fair number of hard shots and/or someone with a good chin who won't go down until well battered (I wonder how many clean blows Clay Guida has taken in his career?)

It seems every week I hear of some old(er) boxer with problems so it might be interesting to see how many mma guys get issues over the next 10 to 20 years as they age.

[tuscaneer]

yeah good point mate,thinking of the guys like wanderlai who i`ve seen take as well as give a fair few pastings....you might not see the accumulative effect until they are long retired.

[tuscaneer]

XitUp said:

tuscaneer said:

XitUp said:

It's way older than a decade.

no you missed my point fella,i`m aware of various martial arts being as old as boxing but for me no holds barred fighting in the early 90`s was nothing like the organised sport it is today and as an emerging sport it was very "niche" in its market.


so my point was that less practitioners=less chance for life threatening injury.

Nope, I didn't miss your point.

MMA is at least 20 years old in Japan.

in that case fella,i may be missing some point you`re trying to make?my original comment referred to when i first came across the sport in the late 90`s.i`m aware that the sport was in existence for a long time prior to this but i was trying to get at the fact that even as recently as 10 years ago it was still a very "underground" sport.the sport of throwing yourself off a cliff with no parachute will not turn up any death stats if nobody participates!

[Don1]

tuscaneer said:

yeah good point mate,thinking of the guys like wanderlai who i`ve seen take as well as give a fair few pastings....you might not see the accumulative effect until they are long retired.

Wanderlai used to fight bare knuckle Vale Tudo - slightly different from boxing?

[Lost_BMW]

Don1 said:

tuscaneer said:

yeah good point mate,thinking of the guys like wanderlai who i`ve seen take as well as give a fair few pastings....you might not see the accumulative effect until they are long retired.

Wanderlai used to fight bare knuckle Vale Tudo - slightly different from boxing?

And just like Ali he's still so handsome!!!

Pretty boy Wanderlai (don't tell him I said it . . . )

[tuscaneer]

Don1 said:

tuscaneer said:

yeah good point mate,thinking of the guys like wanderlai who i`ve seen take as well as give a fair few pastings....you might not see the accumulative effect until they are long retired.

Wanderlai used to fight bare knuckle Vale Tudo - slightly different from boxing?

yeah matey,that`s what we are pondering.is it(mma)as damaging as boxing.?bare knuckle fighting throws up some interesting stuff.back over the history of bareknuckle boxing(1890`s back to 1720`s) the records of fights and fighters show (obviously) that damage to hands was horrendous to the point of a lot of careers were cut short from smashed knuckles/matacarpals etc.(see tom spring and his reign as english champ curtailed due to damage in his second fight with jack langham).they simply could not throw power shots in the old days like modern boxing and there is a lot less reported brain damage/deaths from this period compared to today.interestingly choke holds and cross buttock throws were legal uder old london prize ring rules and before the advent of what was deemed "scientific" boxing the sport was more like old nhb than modern boxing.

Edited by tuscaneer on Tuesday 26th January 11:36

[deevlash]

tuscaneer said:

XitUp said:

tuscaneer said:

XitUp said:

It's way older than a decade.

no you missed my point fella,i`m aware of various martial arts being as old as boxing but for me no holds barred fighting in the early 90`s was nothing like the organised sport it is today and as an emerging sport it was very "niche" in its market.


so my point was that less practitioners=less chance for life threatening injury.

Nope, I didn't miss your point.

MMA is at least 20 years old in Japan.

in that case fella,i may be missing some point you`re trying to make?my original comment referred to when i first came across the sport in the late 90`s.i`m aware that the sport was in existence for a long time prior to this but i was trying to get at the fact that even as recently as 10 years ago it was still a very "underground" sport.the sport of throwing yourself off a cliff with no parachute will not turn up any death stats if nobody participates!

Just a point of interest but the original UFC's were freak shows. They were set up by the Gracie family of BJJ fame in order to showcase their skills. They enetered the smallest memeber of the family they thought could win the tournament (Royce) and invited a mixed bag of freaks, sub standard grapplers and ex pro wrestlers. They even had a fight where a guy wore one boxing glove!

Vale Tudo and cross discipline fights had existed a long long time before this, kung fu guys were getting their asses handed to them by the Thais way back around the turn of the century for instance. Kimura (the judo champion) had fought Helio Gracie (the founder of BJJ) in 1955 in a cross discipline match.

It will be interesting to see if mma practitioners do end up with the same problems as many boxers do in the long run. I think some will but nowhere near as many asoccur from boxing. Simply because the longest an mma fight will go these (under unifies NSAC rules) days is a 25 minute championship bout of 5 5 minute rounds. During those 25 minutes a lot of the time will be taken up by rolling around on the floor and in the clinch. There simply arent as many head shots as in boxing. The same obviously applies to training. Also in MMA if a person is on "queer street" he will either be KO'd quickly or more often than not the ref will run in and stop the bout. Shaky fighters are also usually taken down and quickly submitted as opposed to taking several more shots to the head. The chances of a recovery are somewhat less than in boxing where a clinch provides a moments respite and allows a concussed fighter to struggle on. If a fighter in MMA is knocked down, thats usually it for the fight, unlike boxing where they have a chance to regain their feet and get hit again in the head which contains their already semi concussed brain.

All that said Chuck Liddells speach has noticably slowed over the years, especially since he fell from the top of the pile and has picked up a few brutal KO losses recently to Rampage and Rashad.
Here he is giving an interview in 2003 during the Pride GP he participated in, he talks very quickly and sharply.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_o6cfRaG8g

Here he is again in 2008, noticably slower and more nasal
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6sr1k-GCsRU

How much of that is down to his KO's and how much of it is down to his "partying" is up for debate though. Here he is after apparently indulging in a bit too much Columbian marching powder.

[tuscaneer]

there`s a definate difference in those 5 years but nothing too severe i think.that said,as mentioned before,what about in 10 years time?
that clip is fked up!!he looks manic!!looks like he`s speeding his tits off

[deevlash]

Thats the thing, Dana White (UFC president) has told chuck he wants him to retire and infact "retired" him after his loss to Rashad. Chuck went off, did Dancing with the Stars and has now come back, he's going to be fighting Tito Ortiz (again) after theyre both done coaching on the Ultimate Fighter series 11. That'll be a good indicator of whether Chuck really has lost a step or more as the previous 2 times they fought, Chuck ran through Tito with ease

Here's chucky again on a good morning america interview, aparently he'd taken too much Nyquil the night before and couldnt sleep properly...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=huKeNWggSPA

[XitUp]

tuscaneer said:

XitUp said:

tuscaneer said:

XitUp said:

It's way older than a decade.

no you missed my point fella,i`m aware of various martial arts being as old as boxing but for me no holds barred fighting in the early 90`s was nothing like the organised sport it is today and as an emerging sport it was very "niche" in its market.


so my point was that less practitioners=less chance for life threatening injury.

Nope, I didn't miss your point.

MMA is at least 20 years old in Japan.

in that case fella,i may be missing some point you`re trying to make?my original comment referred to when i first came across the sport in the late 90`s.i`m aware that the sport was in existence for a long time prior to this but i was trying to get at the fact that even as recently as 10 years ago it was still a very "underground" sport.the sport of throwing yourself off a cliff with no parachute will not turn up any death stats if nobody participates!

I'm not trying to make any point other than the one that you were wrong about the age of MMA.

I agree with the people who've said the % of time being punched in the head vs a boxing match is very low and this will help the health of fighters. Only time will tell though. I think with a lot of big wrestlers in the HW division non-head injuries could be a problem in the future though, just down to the basic physics of it.

[tuscaneer]

sorry to be pedantic but i never made a statement about the age of mma.i was commenting on my initial introduction to the early ultimate fighters around a decade or so ago.you must have misread my post

[XitUp]

Fair enough, my mistake. Carry on chaps.