Fightmania Mailbag: Instant rematches, Mir-Cro Cop

Fightmania’s readers can be a vocal bunch, and I’ve got a fresh batch of e-mails ripe for the posting this week before we all get ready for UFC 118. Among this installments subjects are instant rematches, Cro Cop-Mir and Bellator Fighting Championships.

Jackson from Nevada writes:

It is interesting to me that Chael Sonnen will get an immediate rematch with Anderson Silva, even though Sonnen was beaten by submission. It seems like most of the time, an immediate rematch only happens after a close decision or a fight that has some controversy to it, like a bad stoppage. I think that maybe this shows that people don’t respect the submission game enough…like Anderson was getting beaten and pulled off a “lucky submission”. What do you think?

It’s an interesting theory. However, I think that most of it just has to do with how Sonnen was dominating 23 minutes of the fight until that point. That kind of quick comeback just doesn’t happen much. Here are the reasons why I don’t take it the way you took it:

1) Because people do the same thing with knockouts. How many times have we heard a fighter shrug off a knockout loss and say “I just got caught”, or something similar? As if being knocked unconscious by an opponent is somehow not decisive. We’ve all heard the phrase “lucky punch”, too. To me, it seems like sudden knockouts that aren’t the cause of a referee stoppage due to nonstop, consistent abuse are often passed off as luck, much more so than submissions, actually.

2) Look at a similar result from the Fedor-Werdum fight. Now, notice I said a similar result. The fights were completely different- one was a one-sided 23-minute war, and the other was a quick submission in 69 seconds, of course. However, the result was similar in each. In each fight, a fighter (Fedor in one, Sonnen in the other) made a tactical mistake, and paid the price by being submitted.

However, you don’t hear nearly as much outcry over the Fedor fight being fluky as you do with the Sonnen fight, which I think backs up my point that much of the desire for an immediate rematch has to do with the entire fight and not just the way it ended. I mean, there are still plenty of people out there who don’t understand or appreciate the ground game, but anyone who knows MMA knows that the finish was all skill on Silva’s part.

Now, it wouldn’t have happened if Sonnen hadn’t relinquished wrist control and gone into defensive mode, allowing Silva to set it up, but that’s a different matter, entirely…

Daryl from parts unknown keeps it short and sweet:

Nogueira’s out and Cro Cop is in against Frank Mir at UFC 119. Thoughts?

I like it. I think I actually like it more than the original fight, honestly. I don’t know that Mir-Nogueira 2 would have been that different than the first one, honestly. If the fight had a better chance of hitting the mat for an extended period of time, I would be much more interested, but I think Mir would just out-strike Nogueira again like last time, though we may not get such a decisive, early finish because Nogueira was sick for that one.

Mir-Cro Cop should be good, if Cro Cop can continue to party like it’s 2005. I also think that while Cro Cop’s takedown defense hasn’t had a good test in a while, Mir has just the right combination of cockiness and confidence in his standup to test out the former Pride superstar standing up. It’s an interesting fight, for sure.

Jay from Moline, IL writes:

Sooooooo, I thought you were going to have more Bellator coverage. We haven’t had anything for the past two weeks, though. What gives?

I hate to pass the buck, Jay, but you need to take this one up with my cable company for their “outstanding service”. Things should be back on track for next week, though. I was able to see both of the last two weeks of Bellator events, but not until time had long since passed to actually cover the events, sadly.

E-Mail Jon Hartley

Tags: Anderson Silva, Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira, Chael Sonnen, Frank Mir, Mirko Cro Cop Filipovic