BTG 176 - Adapt or Die

Hello and welcome to another episode of Breaking the Guard. We had a few combat sports events this weekend. The first one I'll start off with was Polaris 35. I previewed this on Friday and I was looking forward to some good matches. Uh unfortunately not a lot to be seen there which is kind of surprising because it was for the the squads which was the matches I was most interested in 90 minutes of grappling if I'm getting that right and surprisingly very few submissions not a lot going on. It's kind of reminded me of CJI 2 where a lot of like tactical nothing going on and people just thinking about winning as a team. So it's like okay I just have to and in case you didn't watch it the way the squads format worked with Polaris is that it is kind of like a quintetent style where the winner stays in but the difference being in quintet it had to be a submission to advance. If neither person got a submission, both dropped out. In this format, there is a point winner. So, if you got a guard pass, he would stay in. So, what invariably happened, someone would get a guard pass and just sit on it. And uh it didn't make for great watching. And you had some guys who were very talented that just really didn't seem to do a lot because it didn't the rule set didn't incentivize it. So that to me was a a big let down on the super fights. We did see the the winners that I picked which Levi Liry Jones was able to overwhelm Davis Assara just oddly enough with guard passing once uh I mean Levi is known for his guard which Davis couldn't work around at one point he might swept him or they went for a leg lock and then Davis I mean uh Levi got on top and was able to pass his guard every time he got on top of him and Davis didn't really seem to do much. And this format was three fiveminute rounds and each round pretty much went the same way. Not a lot of resistance. Once the guard was broken, he just kind of gave up on it. Didn't seem to have any urgency. Is looking for a way to finish or to get back in the match. Uh I'm not sure what was going on psychologically there, but uh kind of weird from my perspective. So, Levi becomes the champion for Polaris and I guess that middleweight or whatever division they would call that. And then on the women's side, um the name Oh, Adelf Forino won her match uh by submission and not surprising. Although the the other lady uh was it Vic or I forget the the name but she did well but they had a little bit of a wrestling skirmish but Adele countered with a nice uchima got on top and just dominated from top position and I think it was in the second round she ended up catching her with a submission. So a job well done by her but the I was really looking forward more towards the squads matches and the squads matches were very disappointing. that when you start trying to change that format like Quintet had it right in that it has to be submission stays in uh because that's the only thing that's going to incentivize a lot of action in a fiveminute match and even that can be broken as we've seen sometimes they'll send someone in just to be a spoiler uh especially at higher levels where it's a I think it's a lot easier to be a spoiler uh Uh, so using points just makes it even worse as far as incentives. Uh, so I was not a fan of that rule set whatsoever. I still think as far as short time limit, high action, PGF has it figured out and they actually have their next season coming up in March. And uh unfortunately I'm not going to be here for most of March. I'm going to miss out on most of it which sucks. But I'll be watching it online. But I've seen now I think two maybe three seasons in person and they've all been very exciting, fun to watch. You can sit there for 3 hours and be entertained which for grappling is a lot. But the way the rule set is set up, it just really pushes high action. So, uh, yeah, I don't think anyone I haven't seen in another grappling format that beats that as far as as much submission push and just a lot of aggressiveness. There isn't another format that works better than what PGF has done yet. I'm not saying it's impossible, but I just haven't seen it. So, if I was another organization, it would behoove you to take notes, right? Like look at what they're doing. They have now this is I think season 9 that we're entering. the format works especially you can make complaints about the playoffs because they have you know overtimes and it's EBI and you know I don't like EBI over times but even then I think because the guys have been competing under the the seasonal format which is just kill or be killed once you get into the playoffs like yeah you have to think about winning but you're still using that kill be killed because it is still I mean the last season's playoffs was high action the there was not I can't recall a match where someone was trying to game it you know and wait for the the OT they were going after it so I think for me PGF is the most entertaining grappling and if you're somebody who wants to see submission chaos that's the match It's now it's not indicative of like maybe what what MMA grappling would be like or self-defense grappling would be like because the pacing is just so chaotic. But maybe it would be because there's a lot of caution thrown to the wind in PGF because of the format, right? where I'm just thinking, you know, if I'm in a street fight, I'm not trying to go ballistic because I want to be able to survive. And it doesn't really matter if I get a submission as long as I'm not getting hurt. But in PGF, you really got to get the submission because if you don't, you you wasted your energy and now you're behind. In any case, very entertaining format. Polaris could use some pointers with them in my opinion because they did have high level guys. It's just I felt like the rules did not encourage them to do anything. Moving on, we have UFC 325. There was a good bit of action. I'm going to look at my phone here just for reminders of the matches. I started watching uh well at the main card with Quillin Selkid and Jamie Malarkey. Um, this went as I thought it would with Quinnland getting the better of him, but not with striking this time. He came in with grappling, was able to get a rear naked choke or more accurately a re naked face crank and uh forced uh Jamie to tap and Jamie looked sharp. He didn't it was it happened in round one, but he didn't look like he was off pace. It just looked like um Quinnland was really on point and he wasted no time getting into a clinch immediately. So, it's an interesting uh switch up from uh headkick knockout from his previous fight. So, job well done by him. Next matchup, Tai Tobasa and Talis and Tashida. This shouldn't be happening in today's age in the UFC in my opinion, right? And what I mean by that is this is well, this was a slopfest. It was early UFC's heavyweight combat with both guys with low-level technique is what it looked like. Very sloppy. Now I think Tisha I mean he is a black belt. He has some good groundwork. The problem is his gas tank was about this big and he was able to get the fight to the ground very early in round one. Dominated from top. Although in my opinion kind of wasted the position because he never really capitalized on strikes. Didn't really go gunhole in any submissions. He was just happy to stay on top of him. By the time round two rolls in, he is exhausted. Tai is also exhausted. And and mind you, the other thing, both of these gentlemen, with all due respect, are completely out of shape. And I mean that in every sense of the word. They didn't have the cardio and physique-wise, they're sloppy. Talison looks like skinny fat. And Tai, no surprise, he's been like this the whole time. He's fat fat, right? Uh when you're a professional fighter, in my opinion, you should be optimized, meaning that you should be as lean as you possibly can be while still being effective. Now, I know in heavyweight division is is different, but I think Tai has to cut weight to make he the heavyweight division because he's a big boy. which is ridiculous considering how much body fat he has on, right? Like he shouldn't have to cut weight. He should have to lose weight. It's the difference. The talis on the other hand, he could lean out a little bit uh well quite a bit and put on some muscle and also work on conditioning a lot because Tai has been done a downward skid. This, I think, was his sixth loss in a row now. And I'm guessing he's in there just because he was a fan favorite, uh, especially down in Australia. He's had some memorable knockouts and he's a heavyweight. He could knock you out if he lands a punch. But at this point, I think it's time to hang him up. At least for the UFC career, he's got to take this more seriously in my opinion. It's going to be hard to tell me that you're taking it seriously when you're that out of shape. And it's not like he's a big guy like maybe like Mark Hunt, but Mark's putting people away and he has more of I would call like a power gut if you will, right? Uh kind of like a strong man. You know, they're not shredded, but they're strong as hell, right? Like there's a lot of muscle under uh that layer of fat. Tai doesn't look like that way. He's got a lot of loose weight. Uh, and I feel like if you're a fighter, like me right now, I am not lean enough in my opinion to be a professional fighter in this day and age. Like I said, 90s, it's a different story. That's why this fight to me was like a throwback to like a '9s heavyweight UFC fight where it's just really sloppy. Both guys get tired very quickly and then it's like a back and forth. So, it was a fun fight because you didn't know who was going to win. And round one, I thought Talison was going to walk away with this because the grappling was too easy. He was able to connect a few strikes, scored quick uh high crotch uh into a crackdown and then just dominated from top. But then round two came in and Tai's wrestling started to work a little bit and started to lay some hands on Talison. And you can see Talison's are starting to fumble around all over the place. So, it looked pretty bad for him. Uh but he got taken out again. He lost that round two uh Tvasa did, but it was shaky. And then round three was very chaotic, very back and forth. And you can hear the commentators being so upset with Tai because Talison is on like baby giraffe legs, barely standing on his feet, and Tai keeps clenching up with him. And they come to realize also Tai is so tired that he can't strike. So like he has to hold on to him because he could probably fall over off a takedown very easily. So it's just one of these fights that's like it's like me when I watch a a bad horror movie. It's like you're cringing the whole time because it's so terribly written, you know, like the strategies were so poor, the technique was so poor, the the conditioning in particular. Yeah. like fun fight, you know, but this at this level in this day and age, you shouldn't be here. And uh I believe Tisha is undefeated. And I I guess his past three UFC UFC UFC fights were under 34 seconds. And maybe that's why he has no cardio. He's just been fortunate that he was able to put away people really fast. And this is his first three, five minute rounds. So, good on him that he he survived, but you got a lot of work to do. You really got to work on that conditioning. You got to tighten up a bit. And Tai, I feel like maybe the time's up for him or he's going to have to really build his way back up. That's uh my take on it. Anyways, uh moving up then we had a a really good fight here. Marcio Rufi and Rafael Phys. This was going to be a standup striking battle. Although Rafal can threaten him with takedowns. It didn't really get to a lot of takedowns though. There was a lot of um measuring. They both respected each other a lot. It looked like Rafel was trying to get a lot of leg kicks in early on Ruffy and I think he probably took around one. Uh, Ruffy was really uh measured, but he found his jab pretty early and his jab was just connecting every time, just very, very fast. And I think the speed was a problem for Rafel because he didn't seem to have an answer for that jab. It just kept touching him and he couldn't get out of the way of it. I think that made him a little more reserved. There was maybe one or two takedown attempts that were easily stuffed that weren't real threats for Ruffy. So, Ruffy was able to keep at his range and just pepper him with that jab and occasionally land a a cross behind it. When they moved into round two, the jab was becoming more effective. And it must have been about midway through that round where he caught Rafael with the right hand that like right on the ear that rocked him. He kind of wobbling his feet and with good killer instinct, Ruffy close a distance, lands like a a kind of like a looked like a shovel hook or uppercut because it came in a diagonal, but it caught Raphael. Put him on the canvas and that was all she said. So, uh, I got that one wrong, but that's one that I wasn't I mean, this is going to be a standup fight for sure. So, I figured whoever gets a knockout is going to get it. And Ruffy proved that he was a better man that day. So kudos to him. And then we have the co-ming event, Benois Deni with Dan Hooker. This one I thought was all Benois. And early on I thought I was dead wrong because Hooker was starting to connect with body kicks with Teeps. But the body language and the facial expressions coming from Mano weren't looking great. He looked like he those kicks really messed him up. and he looked like he was miserable and getting desperate. But what was interesting was his desperation was rushing in forward, head down, just throwing big shots, but it worked. Like he was able to connect a few of those, get a clinch, score a takedown, and he was beating the bricks out of uh Dan Hooker on the ground when they went into round two. same strategy. He came in just berserking and Dan Hooker didn't seem to know how to deal with that. Like he would get into these exchanges, but he would get clinched, taken down, and on the ground. Ben had his way with them. At one point, he just kept threatening arm triangle, arm triangle. U man, he had one pin that I love, which is from the mount. When you have a shin pin on one bicep, you have a over hook on the other arm that they have an under hook on. Now they have no hands defending themselves. And Benoa just started loading up on elbows. Should have been a TKO right there. But for some reason, Benois let go the arm and then, you know, he was able to scramble. I'm like, "Oh, I would have loved that." Cuz I I tell people to do that pin all the time cuz when you could get there, it's a game over. There's nowhere he can't roll out. He's stuck because you got the shin pin, you have the other arm over hooked and he's on his side. There's no bridge because he's already sideways. So he and you get a good angle on the temple. Uh he was doing a lot of damage. So I'm not sure why he let go of it. Maybe he got excited or whatnot. But uh he kept trying to get that arm triangle, but Hooker was doing a good job of reaching down and grabbing through his leg here to create this gap on the shoulder. So Benois couldn't really get the finish and he just opted to go to mount and just started unloading and true to Herb Dean lore he did not seem to want to stop the fight and when wall was beating the crap out of him and with elbows but it seems like for whatever reason like Herb didn't care about the elbows and I to me that's when in my head I was thinking just throw lots of light hands because I I'm guessing it's just the frequency of getting hit that's not triggering it for Herb Dean And sure enough, he went into just more like pitterpatter, just a lot of quick punches, and that's what stopped it, which I think is interesting, you know, cuz if I had the choice, I'd probably rather take the pitterpatter than getting elbowed to the death, you know. Uh, but I guess some referees see it differently. If I'm only taking one strike every 10 seconds or every 5 seconds versus like three strikes every two seconds, the frequency, even though the lighter seem to affect him more as far as like, oh, I got to step in here. In any case, a good win from Benois. Dan Hooker. Once again, he's showing in my opinion like low fight IQ here. At this stage of the game, he should be a lot better on the ground than he is. He looks completely clueless on the ground. Like he's getting him mounted every single time he gets taken down. To me, it's inexcusable. If you give me one session and I can show you a mountain escape that you should never be mounted again. Uh so I I can't understand that. To me, mount is only a good position on a broken guy. If you are fresh, you shouldn't be able to be held in the mount. That's my take on it. Even if the guy is really good at grappling, it's pretty hard to hold a mount on somebody when you know how to escape it properly, right? And if you guys seen me, I've shown this many times now. Well, not many times, but I've shown it several times on the cross frame hip. That's all I do. I to this day now if you guys seen I got to look back at when I first showed it still hasn't been stopped and now I don't always bridge people over but I'll get back into guard at the very least a half guard off the first bridge. So to me, that's the only escape I would really teach people. Now, you do that with a kipping and and you know, your basic hip escape. That's all you need. Everything else is just extra because I only use those. And I know if I'm grappling someone who's really good, the chances of me sticking them out for a long time when they're fresh is not great. I'm usually going to go neon belly variant of amount just to wear the hips down a little bit more so I can get heavier without worrying about them recovering their guard and not getting swept or anything. And once they start to break then I can go into a mount and start, you know, getting the under hook and climbing up and threatening that Smount and all that stuff. But someone who's fresh, man, it's hard to to keep them on a mount. It's a lot easier to keep them on the side control. So, as a highle MMA guy, you shouldn't be able to get dominated in that quickly in round one or two, like where you have no defense to amount. That to me is preposterous. Yeah. In any case, then we have the the main event. We have Diego Lopez and we had Vulcanowski. This is a rematch and it looked pretty similar to the first match which is a lot of striking, very tactical. Uh, Vulcanowski did a good job of being able to stay in his range and connect and he was able to outpoint Diego pretty well and stay out of a lot of danger. He rocked uh Lopez a few times. Uh Lopez definitely has a chin made of granite because he was eating some right hooks and overhands that and just the most that he got shook up. He did like a a baby squat where like he got hit and he just squatted a little bit and then got back up and that was about as much as he got shook from like some thunderous power punches that would level or flatline people. So his chin is crazy. He in turn dropped uh Vulcanowski once I think in round two. caught him with a short hook that was like a flash KO where Vulcganowski dropped and then popped right back up right away. And what's funny was when he goes into the corner was, "Hey, what what was that thing I got dropped with?" And then the corner's like, "Oh, no, you just slipped." And they showed the the instant replay. It's like, "Dude, nope." You can see the eyes going, but then he like recovered midair and then when he fell, he just popped right back up. Definitely got dropped. Um, but Vulcanoski pretty much won all the rounds if I recall correctly. Not by a huge margin. It was a dangerous fight the whole time as far as like Lopez was in it the whole time. Like if Bulganowski dropped his guard for a second, he's getting smoked. but kind of like a expert. Let's say if you're a good uh lion tamer, very dangerous animal, but you know this animal, you know how to move around it. It looks easy now. And everybody, oh, like it's not a hard fight. It's like, no, no, it it's a very hard fight, but I know this thing so well that I'm able to navigate it without getting myself into trouble. And I felt that's what Alex did really well. I believe he also commented on that that he was saying that, you know, he's older now. He's 37. He didn't want to take as much damage as he did in the first fight, so he had to play it smarter. And clearly he did. He didn't besides that one drop. Yeah. I mean, he took some shots, but that was the only really significant punch he took that had a consequence. Other than that, he was in there the whole time. And you know, he well, I won't say stumbled, but he shook Lopez a few more times where you could see like a a reaction that it clipped him, but he was just because of how strong his chin is, he he was able to take it. So, it was a good showing for the champion. He retains the belt. I think um Lopez didn't really seem to come out with anything different. Like it was like the same type of game plan he had in the first fight to the second fight. So I I feel that's why Vog did a lot better because he just figured out he must have worked like a good camp like okay whatever happened in the first fight we got to analyze it. the things that we got in trouble with, let's not get in trouble with them the second time around. And clearly that seemed to, at least to me, it seems a lot of that happened. I know he also said that he had a hard time circling to his right when Lopez was fighting u from a southpaw stance. So, he just started circling to the left, which normally you wouldn't do because that means you're circling to the power side, but it seemed to work because maybe Lopez didn't expect that and he was used to circling the other way and uh or chasing the other way. So, when you know, Vul started going to the left, which should be, you know, going to his power, he just didn't know how to deal with it. So that type of study and improvisation is what makes a Vulca champion, right? Like he's learning still. He's adapting, he's growing where I think uh Lopez kind of stayed in the same type of game and thought, well, if we play this game long enough, I'm eventually going to catch him. And I felt that that was costly for him. So Vog ends up, you know, retaining his belt. He now says he wants to fight between uh Ivos and uh what's it the the brother of I'm losing the names but the the basic sentiment was he wants to fight top ranked guys. So, the number one and number two, not necessarily the bigger name guys, which I can respect because then what's the point of the rankings if they don't matter, right? Um because I guess some people were trying to say he should fight Silva. Uh like, no, he's not in the rankings. And plus, Silva got, you know, wrecked by Lopez. So, it doesn't make a lot of sense, right? Like the I know MMA math is different, but It doesn't make a lot of sense rankings wise. Like if you have other people high up in the ranks, they should be in there. So, uh I like that instead of just chasing money fights, uh going after people who deserve it based on rankings. In any case, now we have another UFC coming out in the following weekend. The Paramount thing is great, man. It's It's nice that I can watch these without you know, being out would have be like $160 now, you know, versus uh I think I got the plan when it was like 120 for the year. So, I'm already ahead. And what I did find annoying with a Paramount this time, the first on UFC 324, there was for me that I I could recall at least there was zero commercials because the 120 plan is no commercials. On this one, I had commercials. Now, they weren't obnoxious, but they were there, which to me is kind of annoying if I played for a no commercial plan that I'm still getting commercials. So, it seems like they did some adjusting because I see other people who enjoyed it more because they said, "Oh, now we didn't get as many commercials." So, I don't know if they that the people with a commercial plan, they just showed them less commercials and now people who are not supposed to be getting commercials are also getting commercials. I don't know that that's kind of a nuisance to me. Again, not a big deal. Don't carry it away. Uh, usually between fights, I'm not paying attention. But if you advertise that, ironically, that there's going to be no commercials in this plan. There shouldn't be any commercials. But with that being said, big win for UFC fans in my opinion. So far, I haven't had any issues with the broadcast. It seems to be going very smooth. I'm usually watching through my computer because I'll be working on something in the meantime. And uh the stream went through just fine. So, Paramount has done a pretty good job of getting this stuff in there. Better job than ESPN. ESPN I had issues with quite a bit with the feed glitching out and having to refresh and reload it. Uh haven't had to do that with Paramount yet, so that's a plus. Uh hopefully I haven't heard anything about it. Maybe I just haven't looked into it. But for the fighters, we know that they bumped up the bonus structure, which we can say is a result of the amount of money that Paramount has poured into it, which I guess someone was saying is a billion dollars a year for the deal they got, which is a substantial increase. I think it's over double of what their previous deal was with ESPN. So, if that's true and they doubled the prize money, okay, great. But what about the rest of the monies? Is the rest of the pay scale also doubling up or is it still going? Like I think entry level is still 1010 which is not great because that means you can walk away with 10 grand which is not a lot for a professional fighter in such a massive sport now and it's not a baby sport anymore. It's a real deal. So, these guys are still, in my opinion, undercompensated for the amount of money they're making the promotion, right? Like, if you're running a league that gets a billion dollars a year and you still have athletes getting 10 10, that's crazy. Not to mention that you can walk away with only 10. And of that 10, you're generally getting half of that at the end of the day because you have to pay your manager, your coaching fee, your training camp costs, and then paying off taxes. So, you're potentially walking away with five grand for maybe three, let's say, the short end, three months work. It's not great. You wouldn't do that anywhere else, man. Like, especially with inflation, you know, five grand in 3 months is pretty terrible, right? Uh what? That's $12,000 a year. Did I do that right? No, I'm What would it be? Uh 4105 $20,000 a year. Excuse me. Yeah. Not great. Not great at all. So, they need to take here's what they should do in my opinion. Remove the win structure. The it should just be flat. I'm fighting. I get X amount whether I win or lose. But keep what they added which was a big plus which is finish bonus. You get a finish, you get 20 grand because the whole point of incentivizing the winner was that they're going to go out and risk more, right? If you you you're already getting that with the finish bonus. So you don't need that for the wimbo. What you what you need is like some security and making a decent income as a fighter. It should just be instead of 10 10 deal just 20. Okay. Now that same deal it's not so bad, right? It'd be if you were getting Oh, it's not great still, but it's double, right? It would be 40 grand in the year for fighting if you didn't get any bonuses and you just lost every fight or won them, I guess, in this case. But it's better than 20. And I think that whole pay should be up anyways. Like if if you're fighting and now essentially front of millions of people every time you're there, you're doing, you know, press conferences and you're getting you're doing a lot of advertising for the UFC because you have to do stuff on social media and you're risking life and limb on an platform that is very very profitable. You shouldn't be so poorly compensated. At the very least, they should be doubling up everybody's income. And the easy way of doing that is just remove the win bonus. Just make it part of the the show up for the fight. That's my take on it. Anyhow, that's all I got for you guys. I'll catch you next