UFC 168: Weidman vs Silva 2

[Egg Shen]

woulda stuck this in the main thread but it's appropriate here...

 

I finally watched Like Water and was surprised to see that the rib injury every made so much noise about before the second Sonnen fight and what apparently hindered Anderson so much in the first fight wasn't much of anything at all. I was reading things like 'You wont realise how hurt he was until you see the documentary', but other than Anderson complain about it once during a training clip and cancel a session of the gym to go home and rest there was not much made of it at all. I genuinely expected to see clips of Anderson barely able to move around.

 

...and Dave, stop clutching at straws for Anderson's loss. To call a leg check reactionary is pretty much admitting Weidman planned for that. Martial Artists train repetition over and over, they do it so certain things become second nature. Weidman probably drilled checks continuously going in so at that point it will become reactionary.

[jimufctna24]

Yeah but it only went, what 90 seconds into the second round? And Anderson landed about two leg kicks in that time. One of which was the shin-shattering checked one. It's not enough for me to think Anderson could have turned it around. Maybe he could've landed some deathblow, we'll never know. But Weidman absolutely took him to school in the first round. Just because he didn't attempt a takedown in the first minute of round two, doesn't necessarily mean he was losing focus or letting Anderson back into the fight.

Just looked it up it was 1.18, it felt a lot longer to me for some reason.

 

I will yield slightly, but still a 3rd fight does still interest me greatly. Despite Weidman winning fair and square, I would still like to see him win in a more conventional way. Not that I will hold that against him moving forward.

[David]

...and Dave, stop clutching at straws for Anderson's loss. To call a leg check reactionary is pretty much admitting Weidman planned for that. Martial Artists train repetition over and over, they do it so certain things become second nature. Weidman probably drilled checks continuously going in so at that point it will become reactionary.

Hey, I'm not doing any grasping, I'm just commenting on what Anderson himself has said;

 

I believe that, if you pay attention to these technical details, you will see that (checking the kick) was instinct, not something that he trained to do.

If you have issues with that, take it up with the dude himself.

 

All I've said is that I honestly believe that Weidman isn't as good as Anderson standing. I don't think anyone is better than him when he's 100% focused and not arsing around.

[wandshogun09]

He didn't arse around once in the rematch though did he? There was no dancing or taunting and this time Weidman decked him even earlier. He recovered but Weidman didn't land that punch because of Anderson clowning did he?

 

I don't think anyone's saying Weidman is a better pure striker than Anderson. If they fought in GLORY, I'd pick Anderson every time. Just like I'd pick JDS to beat Cain in a straight standup fight. But it's MMA. With everything mixed in you can outstrike or KO a superior striker by keeping him guessing mixing takedowns with strikes. In the words of Matt Serra before he beat GSP -

 

"You don't gotta be the better striker to outstrike someone in MMA. He's thinking one thing, I'm doing the other, the fight could be over."

 

According to what Anderson has been saying he seems to believe it was heading the same way as Anderson/Sonnen II

 

He's gonna say that though, isn't he? I could see that if he started lighting Weidman up in round two and then broke his leg. But he landed one good inside leg kick. Then the next one got checked and it was over. One inside leg kick he landed. It wasn't heading the same way as Chael 2 based off that and he knows that.

 

Weidman had knocked him out once, then nearly knocked him out again in round 1 of the rematch. That's the difference between Weidman and Sonnen, Weidman could hurt him. When Sonnen knocked Anderson down in their first fight it looked more like he just caught Anderson by surprise/off balance. Then the later knockdown was confirmed as a slip in the later rounds. When Weidman knocked Anderson down in the rematch his face went completely blank. He looked out for a second.

 

I think Weidman was really in Anderson's head after the KO in July. There was an interview with Bisping last week (he was in attendance), and Bisping was saying that Anderson actually tried to get to Vitor Belfort during his walk-in or something. And had to be pulled away by his corner and the event security. I'll have to rewatch the footage. If that's true it's mental. You've got Chris Weidman waiting behind the curtain with your belt, it's the biggest fight of the year and a chance to avenge your first KO loss, and you're stopping to fuck about with Mohawk Vitor in the crowd? Bisping seemed under the impression that Anderson was mentally got-to and I think he's probably right. Coming off his first ever KO loss, we don't know how that effected him going into the rematch. Bisping knows better than most how something like that can fuck with your head.

 

He seems to think that Weidman's check was not intentional as part of his gameplan and simply reactionary, and that the fault lay with himself.

 

But surely everything in a fight is reactionary to some degree. That's what drilling techniques and sparring is all about isn't it. So it becomes muscle memory and you instinctively react in the fight with the techniques you've learned in camp, without even having to think about it. As Bruce Lee said (and funnily enough, the clip Anderson's documentary was named after), "Be formless. Be shapeless. Be like water, my friend."

 

Checking that kick as a 'reaction' is no less impressive than checking it 'intentionally'. Although how you accidentally check a kick, I don't know. Surely it's more impressive if he didn't even train checking kicks yet was still able to utilise the technique effectively just on natural instinct.

 

I love Anderson but it's bollocks. The fault didn't lie with himself. You can only throw a leg kick so many ways. He threw it with bad intentions and Weidman timed him perfectly.

[David]

I'm yet to be convinced by Weidman. He's kind of sneaked in under the radar, mostly because I feel the UFC were lost for challengers to Silva that he hadn't beaten already.

 

Christ, before he fought Anderson he'd never been on PPV before! He headlined a FUEL TV show, and was featured in the opener on a FOX card.

 

Before that he'd been on a SpikeTV undercard, a Facebook prelim and a Versus show.

 

Hopefully a decisive finish in the Belfort fight will go some way to sorting that out for me.

[wandshogun09]

Here's that quote from Bisping I was on about with the Vitor stuff, for anyone interested.

 

I'm a huge fan of Anderson. He'll go down as having the most magnificent career ever in the UFC. What I noticed when he was coming out for the fight, he stopped in the hallway outside and meditated; kind of closed his eyes and focused himself for a few minutes. I think that was a definite sign of nerves. It was his first fight coming back after a big knockout; it's a big stage and the pressure is huge.

 

I was ringside right there, maybe three or four feet away from him, and two or three seats to the left of me was Vitor Belfort. It seemed to me that he kind of headed in that direction, to go and shout at Vitor. He spotted him and was headed over, but security got hold of him and steered him into the cage. I was wondering why he was concerned with Vitor when he's got Chris Weidman right in front of him. It just seemed like mentally, he'd succumbed to the pressure a little bit, and I kind of thought this doesn't bode well for him, especially with it being such a high profile fight against the guy that had just knocked him out earlier this year.

 

Weidman was clearly dominating the fight before he broke his leg. It was a shame, and very sad to see Anderson go out like that. Yeah, the leg break was brutal, and when he was carried past me, screaming in pain, my heart went out to him. He's had such a beautiful career, and that's just not how you want to go out. At the same time, you've got to take your hat off for Chris Weidman and congratulate him.

[Egg Shen]

oh, i think i saw that. Was it in the fight check point area?