BTG 178 - Quick Sand

Hello and welcome to another episode of Breaking the Guard. We had quite a bit of grappling this week. I covered obviously the UFC BJ5. There was a newer promotion called Thug Trials which had some highlevel talent grappling in there like Oliver Taza, Big Dan, uh Helena Cravar. Uh there were a few other notables in there like uh Vagna Roachcha, Jasmine Rocha. Pretty good action. They were doing grappling in a cage. So, it's kind of a throwback to Chel Sonnen's promotion, which also is rumored to be coming back as well. I think that is a good use of grappling. The cage really helps out get the fights to the ground or at least into a clinch. And all those matches, I can't recall a fight being just out in the open or people dancing away because they also have a smaller cage. Uh, which is wise. A bigger cage, like a UFC size cage, you might be able to run your way around without getting pinned. But in a small like throwback to like king of the cage promotion style cage, you can't really run. It's too small. You don't have the the space to run out. So for grappling purposes, it makes a lot of sense. We don't want people running away. We want them clinching or grappling or, you know, going for takedowns. I know it's not practical for tournament style events, at least not in a conceivable way that would be enjoyable for spectators of these events. But the the cage brings a lot of benefits in getting action quicker, not prolonging these long standup battles. And I'm saying this as I'm watching the ACC trials going on right now where there are a good amount of protracted standing matches and and mind you the ones I've seen actually been good wrestling exchanges. It's just the fact that there's no out of bounds. I mean there is out of bounds but and for example on this thing since they have like eight mats they'll let the athletes go into like two or three mats but even then they still don't score the takedown and then they have to restart them whereas if there was a cage wall someone's going to get taken down there's no interruption and I've said this many times if you take the referees out of the match and don't make them have to arbitrate so much like they have to get in there restart them I'll figure out how restart the position. That's the part where it really pisses off competitors and coaches because a lot of uh tom foolery. I was going to say something else, but let's go PG. Tom foolery will happen at that point. Whereas when you have a cage, there's a lot less tom foolery, right? The only time the referee intervenes is when you are the one doing tom foolery. Like I'm putting hands inside the cage or I'm grabbing something that I'm not supposed to grab. That's when the referee should be like, "Hey, no, you can't do that." But the the restarts, it's such a hard thing. And I'm not like blaming the referee, that's their job in those formats. It just sucks for them because it's you're not going to please everybody. And I think a lot of times it just doesn't work out well. So, I think the cage for grappling is great and especially since people want to promote, you know, the it's weird to me that UFC didn't do that. Going back to UFC BJJ because they are the MMA promotion, right? And they made the rule set for the UFC BJ as far as timing goes and the way the scoring the rounds to be similar to MMA format so that it would be an easier crossover. The big question, why did you invent this weird bowl which is better than no bowl, but when you already had the cage, you didn't have to re-engineer anything. Um, it's better for the viewers in my opinion because having been to a bowl, it sucks unless you're on top of it. Uh, otherwise it's horrible because you're going to be blinded half the time when the competitors are on that side of the bowl or the wall. Whereas the cage, although you have to look through the cage and through pads, at least they can see through it partially, the the wall, you can't see through anything. And it's more familiar to your MMA audience because they're already used to the cage. And if they like that, they're obvious going to like the cage and grappling, too. So weird that they decided to make a bull. I I feel like they were trying to counter. They they didn't think it through. In my opinion, they were trying to counter the the pit that was being made famous by Karate Combat and then I guess CJI copying that. I felt like people were just copying something but not thinking about if it was better or not. In my opinion, the cage is better. It's just more realistic and it's a better view for the the fans. the the pit interesting. It's a it's a niche thing, but it's not practical. And I also think it's just not as realistic. There's not a lot of times where I'm getting into a fight with somebody on a skate park. You know what I mean? Like, how often does that occur? Whereas a vertical wall is very common. It's here, you know, fences, it's all over the place, vertical walls in modern societies. So that makes a lot more sense as a barrier versus slant walls. In any case, any wall or enclosure is better than no wall. And while I'm watching this ABCC, it is a 20-minute format, but since this is trials, you could conceivably get away with the a structure. Although with eight mats, you wouldn't be able to. That's the tricky part. I guess in tournaments you can make it that way, but at least for the super fights or the one-off events, having some type of structure, cage wall is definitely better for grappling. It's far and away more entertaining. There's less dancing around. Um otherwise even with two people who are engaged and who do like to wrestle, you're still going to go out of bounds because it's better than getting taken down inbounds. So I don't even blame the athletes in those situations is the rules that they're working with. So we we had that. Now there are some interesting things happening as well on the UFC and MMA world. one uh how made a fresh off his loss in the UFC in a in a lackluster performance got cut and mind you he was a ranked fighter. This was his second loss. It wasn't a consecutive loss. Uh and he was arguably one of the better guys in the heavyweight division. not saying a lot at this moment, but still he was ranked and they cut him, which is kind of crazy. And apparently somebody who chose to remain anonymous, who allegedly is in a UFC roster, was saying that this is going to be part of a series of cuts that the UFC is going to be doing now that they're going to be going after fighters who are not exciting. And if you're not there to show out and entertain that you're going to get cut. That's a again an interesting stance to take. Uh obviously it makes sense for them. I guess the question is what do they consider interesting? Because if you're I know the UFC typically doesn't like grappling. They they despise it. They prefer knockouts. And I know, well, at least from my understanding, the contracts don't allow them to cut people that are winning that are still in their contract. They can't cut you whenever you lose. It's their discretion. So, the fact that Hamilton lost put him on the chopping block. Uh, as long as he's winning, they can't do anything to him. Uh, as long as he's under contract. They don't have to renew the contract, but as if he's got a five fight contract, he's got to fight all five fights. Even if he's, you know, sleeps his way through all them and wins, they have to keep him. So, it's going to put a lot more pressure, I guess, on everybody to fight harder and not get cut. Um, so there's that. Another thing that is interesting, Tom Aspenol is fresh off double eye surgery. He had to get eye surgery for both eyes to correct his vision issues. Now, I wonder where are the people who said that he was faking it or that he didn't need anything or he was just being a pansy. It It's kind of a crazy thing now. And mind you, I say that in Jess because people are still saying, "Oh, he he's uh really playing it up." It's like, you think someone does double eye surgery for, you know, for fun just to try to prove that he wasn't being a a wuss? It's insane, man. Like, and you could see his eyes are very messed up. There are bloodshot red on both eyes. Obviously, after surgery, I imagine there's going to be some bleeding and whatnot. But the UFC is also asking to vacate the title because it has been now, is it eight or I believe it was eight months, maybe 14. It was one of those two numbers. I don't know why I'm getting those two, but it's been a while. And they wanted to vacate the title. And he countered by saying, "I'll vacate the title, but you have to release me from the contract." which is a a big double down. So, this is crazy because to me Tom Aspenol is a good heavyweight fighter. He became the champion and he has good skills all around. He can strike, he can do takedowns, he can grapple, but for whatever reason, the UFC hates his guts. Like I said, they seem to have lots the the UFC upper brass in my opinion seems to have a lot of ego and they don't like it when somebody has a chip on their shoulder. We've seen that many times before like Francis Nagana for example kind of went out the same way that it looks like Tom Aspenol is going to be going out and maybe Tom Aspenol can uh pull off that same feat and find himself a big money fight outside the UFC and make all this uh strife that he's gone through worth his while. I I just think it's unfair that he got trashed so hard for being legitimately fouled to the point that he need to needed to get surgery. It just shows how brutal MMA fans are. They are relentless. They're kind of some of the shittiest fans that you could have in my opinion. Uh cuz I think out of all the sports, MMA fans just by the the fact that it's the most technical sport in the world is going to have the most uneducated fans in the world just because they don't have the time investment to put off. You you could be uneducated in football, it doesn't really mean much, right? Because it's not as complicated a game as MMA is. So, the bar is much higher to be considered educated and to understand what's going on. And we're not even talking about like, oh, you know, if the guy is good or not. We're not talking about medical knowledge here because apparently people don't understand when a heavyweight striking elite striker double eye gouges you full blast and gets their fingers a couple inches inside your skull, it's going to do some damage. Apparently, people think that's not a big deal. And that that shows a lot of ignorance because one, you've just never been hit before. You don't understand what it's like. Like some people think getting hit in the groin is not a big deal. And it's a huge deal when you get hit hard. It will immobilize you significantly. I've known a couple people who had horror stories where they one of them got kicked so hard uh in the testicles that one of them completely retracted into his abdomen and it was like sticking out here and he had to push it down to get it to fall back into place and it ended up having a lot of issues and he ended up losing it from a simple kick to the nuts. Right. And some people think that's not a big deal. And when you have the cup, it doesn't always save you. In a lot of cases, it can. Sometimes, you know, this the way the anatomy works, a little bit pinches under the cup and you get hit and man, that thing can kill you, too. So, it it doesn't always save you. It's definitely better than not having it, but a groin hit, a groin strike is a groin strike, and it's always going to suck, just like an eye gouge. I think eye gouge is arguably a lot worse. Uh, but in any case, these are serious vows. So, I I guess it's going to be interesting to see what happens with Aspenol if the UFC does make him vacate the title. And as he Well, I guess right now they're asking him to vacate the title. I don't know on what grounds are they allowed to force it, right? Uh, is it a time restriction? Is there something else that goes into it? Do they have to offer him a fight? I don't really know. So, it'll be good to see what happens with that. It just sucks. He was a I I liked him as a heavyweight prospect. He was a a very good representation of a mixed martial artist at heavyweight and we've been robbed of of a lot of good fights as a result. The Jon Jones one would have been an interesting one. Him with Francis would have been an interesting one. And uh now we're not going to get to see any of that at least for some time until the eye I eye heals up. Uh last thing I'll talk about and I'll make this a little shorter is I I was thinking back on champions have had long uh legacies and staying champion. Jon Jones is probably one of the longest ones, although he kind of had an interruption and switched weight classes, but he's technically hasn't really lost in MMA ever. Uh, as a champion, you have GSP who lost it briefly and then regained it and just held it for until he retired. And I was looking at somebody like Morab. And Morab was had a good streak, but then he lost it. And he didn't deteriorate. He didn't get worse. He didn't get complacent. To me, looking back, I'm like, what happened? What was different about Morab's uh reign than others? And what stands out to me is he was so active as a champion. And I think that worked to his disadvantage. There's a few reasons. I think I mentioned one of them before, which is just physical wear and tear. Even if you're doing all the recovery right and you're not suffering any injuries or anything like that, it's still building a lot of fatigue. And every athlete has cycles where they peak and then where they decline. And you're trying to time your training camp so that you can always come up to a peak. But you're going to need some time to unwind. There's this idea that you could be you could be fit year round, but you can't be optimally fit in the sport that optimizes weight class, you know, year round. you just won't be able to. I am training. You guys, if you watch my Instagram, you see it with Sean Strickland's group, which has a lot of good guys. Edmond Terrarian, there's Mitchell Pereira, lots of UFC guys that go there. And Sean's probably the one that fluctuates the most where like he's moving from like upwards of like 230 240 and you know coming into fight week he's like in the 200s and then he's fighting at 185. So you're talking about somewhere around a 55 lb swing, you know, which is insane. And mind you, like it's not I would say he's probably cutting 15 20 pounds of water weight. The rest is just mass, right? Like he's like you see like in beginning of camp he's kind of chubby and then he finishes shredded. So it's a crazy I I don't necessarily agree with that approach, but that's an extreme. In general though, it will be hard to maintain what would be optimized for fighting, which is probably going to be a below 10% body fat year round when you're doing full-on training. It's just going to be hard to do that. Your body's not going to be too happy with you. You could sustain it for a period of time. And I say this because everybody's genetics is different. So, for example, for me to I'm probably around 14 15% body fat right now. That to me is great for health. I can stay there forever. It it doesn't it's not a strain on me at all. It's very easy to do. If I want to get leaner, like let's say below 12%. That becomes more challenging. I have to cut uh a good amount of calories from the from the diet. That's going to put me, you know, at a caloric deficit. It's going to take more of a strain on me. And I know the last time I did that, I was just hungry constantly. I was just always hungry. And that's the to me the price of trying to optimize. But I could float. So, I mean, that's a few percent body fat for me. And I think for my build, the way I'm structured getting down there, that's like I'm trying to do the math right now, that's around like 10 12 pounds of body fat that I could lose. That would get me around 10 to 11% body fat. I mean, yeah, that would be right. So, that's doable. That would probably take me about a month or two. Uh, doing it easy, you know, just like slowly versus trying to crash into it. I could probably do it in a month, but you wouldn't be happy. But even then, it would there's only so long I can sit there that would be optimal. like it's going to peak at a certain point and I stay there for too long, I'm going to probably start suffering negative consequences of just being calorically deprived. And that's why I don't think it's good to do these big shifts. I think it's good that you do a shift, but it shouldn't be so long because then if most of your fight camp you're dieting, you're not going to be able to train at 100% because you're not eating at 100%. you're eating at like 70 or 60%. So now you're going to be putting that output the same 60 70% output instead of 100% output. Poor training, poor results, right? To me, you want to ideally diet before your camp starts so that when you start camp, you're pretty much on weight, maybe like one 2% body fat off. So you you might have to lose, you know, 5 to six pounds in the course of a fight camp of 3 months. That's very easy. That will probably happen naturally because of the increased training output that you're going to be doing. That's not going to be a big toll versus having to cut 20 to lose 20 pounds of body mass. That's significant. You're going to have to diet significantly to get that. It's going to cost you. So there's that aspect. So there's the physical aspect of this which I covered about being a champ and when I was talking about Morab, the difficulty of trying to defend your title so much. I think the bigger issue though, if I'm being honest, is mentally when you are fighting very frequently, frequently, excuse me, you're giving your opponent a lot to study very quickly. He had I forget how many fights it was last year. At least like four, maybe five fights. That's a lot of footage, very recent footage that you're allowed to study of somebody and exploit holes in their game. And while we can be constantly working to improve in such a short span, there's not as much improvement or adaptation or changes that you can make in your game that will have a significant outcome versus the amount someone can study from you that's very recent and see where they can take advantage of the holes in your game. Most champions defend a lot more seldomly. Once to twice a year, that's a lot that you much even at twice a year. It's like six months of fight. In six months, you can develop significant progress and be a different fighter. And I think that's something that GSP did really well. He was constantly growing. He was becoming a better fighter every time, becoming slightly different, very strategic. So, he was very wise in his approach to fighting. Um, but I don't know the stats of his like defense exactly, but I know Morab was more active than most champions. So there is a to me as a champion you are at the disadvantage of everyone studying you and you're on the crosshairs and the more active you are the more there is of you to study and the less time you have to evolve whereas everyone is working to catch up to you. So I I think there as a champ the lesson should have been that from the management from the coach, hey I know you want to but you shouldn't, right? We should give you more time to recover, more time to build and develop new parts of your game so that we're not coming out with the same version of yourself every time. Because when you're fighting like four or five times in a year, you're pretty much in a fight camp the whole year. And when you're in fight camp, it's really hard to develop new skill. Normally, you're working tactics and strategies based off the opponent that you're you're going to be fighting. And that is very specific and niched. It's not so much skill building as it is just working a particular series of techniques or or or tactics that you're going to use to defeat that opponent where when you're not in camp, you can focus on new things and just become a better tactic, a better technician rather. You can develop parts of your ground game, submissions, different footwork for your striking, uh things of this nature. Whereas when you're in fight camp, you really don't get that much bandwidth to do that. So if I had if I was coaching Morab, I would have said don't take that fight so soon. have to wait a few months at least until next year so that we give one full recovery time for you especially since he was already so active and two we can work on adding some new tools into our arsenal that way that we have something new to throw at somebody. We can't just expect to keep coming out as the same athlete every time and just dominating people by being the same guy. I feel like we have to be evolving constantly. We have to be giving different looks each and every time. That's my opinion on that. You guys will let me know what you think. Anyhow, that's all I have for you all. I hope you had a wonderful weekend and I'll catch you next week.