UFC 124 Parting Shots

What’s already been a great month for mixed martial arts saw an excellent UFC event headlined by Georges St. Pierre defending his welterweight title again on Saturday night. Plenty of other great fights lined the card, which many detractors (*cough* me *cough*) labeled as “underwhelming” beforehand. Let’s take a chance to discuss some miscellany from the event before we move on to the last WEC event tomorrow night.

Koscheck’s performance: gutsy or foolish?

How about “all of the above”? Even from the safety of one’s desk (or couch, as it were), it is hard to criticize someone’s performance what that individual braved a broken eye orbital and swelling that rendered his vision from one eye ineffective during a five-round fight. However, with the obvious disclaimer that always stands in my columns that says something to the effect of “yes, I respect these guys for doing something that 99.99% percent of the world- including myself- could not do”, Josh Koscheck’s performance represented a missed opportunity to me.

The stats are a bit deceiving. Though Koscheck went for one pretty continuous takedown attempt in the first round, it is scored as a few attempts by Fightmetric. This is a necessary thing (where does one takedown attempt end and another begin?), but for all intents and purposes, Koscheck had one extended takedown attempt in the first round, and it worked.

Then, he seemingly abandoned the takedown altogether for the rest of a five-round fight.

During one of the breaks between rounds, plenty of instructions were lobbed Koscheck’s way, and going for some takedowns was just one last nugget tossed in for good measure at the end, when I felt that it should have been central to Koscheck’s strategy. Somehow, St. Pierre got through a 25 minutes with Koscheck without ever really having to prove that he could stop his shots. This should never have been allowed to happen.

I understand, to a point. Kos has a hard right hand that can be an instant game-changer. However, his bread and butter should always be his wrestling game. If he loses, it should be at least partially because whomever his opponent is stopped takedown after takedown during the bout. On Saturday, he let his opponent’s hand get raised without that being the case.

Hey, I get it: he was hurt. However, he was hurt from eating way too many jabs in his right eye, right? Wouldn’t attempting some takedowns provide some welcome relief from eating said jab over and over again? Even if St. Pierre stuffed the takedown attempts, it would give him something to think about and maybe even wear him down. My point is that any strategy would have been better than simply standing there and eating jabs all night long.

Get that man a title shot!

How long can an anonymous-sounding name and a lack of appearances in high-profile matchups hold Jim Miller back? Hopefully not much longer. Miller has long impressed me with his overall skills, and that tendency has continued with his quick UFC win over Charles Oliveira.

The guy outstruck a former K-1 Max standout and now has submitted a jiu-jitsu stud, to boot. Beyond that, he has very good wrestling, an outstanding pace and ridiculous toughness. He’d be a solid title challenger no matter who held the title. I think a Miller-Edgar fight would be very exciting, and Miller could push the pace on Gray Maynard, as well. He’s lost to both fighters previously (the Edgar loss being outside of the UFC back in 2006), and it’s time that he gets a second go at one of them. A lot of people are talking about Miller facing George Sotiropoulos, but I’m not a fan of that. You have two viable title contenders in a division where the top guys have mostly already had title shots: why not preserve them and let them both have their day?

What does the future hold for Alves?

Thiago Alves clearly still has a world of potential in him, as well as the ability to dominate just about anybody at 170 pounds not named “St. Pierre” or “Fitch”. The problem is that those two fighters just happen to be the only two ranked ahead of him by anyone who has half of an idea what they’re talking about. What did Alves’ fight with John Howard show us? Nothing new, really. I would have liked to see Alves keep the pedal down and finish Howard (it would have been nice to see Alves continue with the hard leg kicks in the third round, then go high with his right leg to catch Howard slipping), but like St. Pierre did later on, he let up a bit and coasted toward the finish line.

Where can Alves really go, though? Well, whether or not St. Pierre continues to fight at welterweight for the forseeable future, he can get a title shot, perhaps even in 2011. I’d say that two wins next year set him up perfectly for a title fight next fall or early winter. What’s that? He can’t beat Fitch? He doesn’t need to. There’s no way that the UFC is going to have them fight a third time, anyway. Ideally, Fitch would get the next title shot (like it or not, he’s earned it) after Jake Shields, leaving Alves to be next. Sure, if GSP is still the champion, that’s a lot of rematches, but what else are you going to do? Keep trotting the Dan Hardys of the division out there, even though there are two fighters that clearly deserve the title shot more?

Quick Shots

–Stefan Struve is a pretty self-aware guy. He knows what he needs to do to compete at the top of the heavyweight division: get bigger. Hopefully though, he takes his time and puts on quality weight instead of just trying to “Frank Mir” it. Furthermore, it would be advised to stop chilling out in bad positions: if he lets someone like Shane Carwin or Brock Lesnar dictate the terms on the mat for very long, he’ll be unconscious. He did a better job of controlling his opponent in his fight with Sean McCorkle, where he deftly escaped a kimura attempt and quickly turned the tables.

–How great must it have felt to be Mac Danzig after he knocked out Joe Stevenson completely out of nowhere? Not only did he have to know that his UFC career was likely on the line, but he KO’ed a guy who hadn’t been knocked out in over ten years with a technique he had specifically been training for that particular situation. I love the cerebral side of the sport: it’s great when you hear that a fighter trained a specific counter for a certain moment that could happen in the fight, only to have that training pay off perfectly.

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Tags: Charles Oliveira, Georges St. Pierre, Jim Miller, Josh Koscheck, Mac Danzig, Stefan Struve, Thiago Alves, UFC, UFC 124