Wow, it’s been the year of upsets in the UFC. Cro Cop gets KO’ed by an unknown, Randy Couture moves up in weight to steal the heavy belt, Serra shocks George St Pierre…
Admittedly I picked Chuck, but in the same breadth I expressed my thoughts on Chucks holes. I’m going to elaborate in these in this post.
I think Chuck is analogous to the Prince Naseem in boxing. Both are very unorthodox fighters that routinely did things that technically you aren’t supposed to do. Both got away with it because of their amazing attributes, both eventually fought fighters with similar attributes and were exploited (against Rampage and Barrera respectively).
In Chuck’s case he’s a natural puncher with a long reach and KO power in both hands. He’s a very accurate puncher that can box moving backwards while maintaining KO power, allowing him to do some wicked counter punching.
But he has holes: his hands are low, elbows are out, hos punches are wide and don’t even get me started on his wide and sloppy overhand right hand. Because Chuck is a counterpuncher and he likes to leave open big holes to draw his opponent in and land his bombs. Chuck has gotten away doing this but he hasn’t fought many good strikers (Rampage isn’t an elite striker, but obviously good enough).
Saturday night Rampage fought really smart, he refused to attack and stole Chuck’s strategy for himself. Then he taunted the famed champ to ensure Chuck went after him.
A Lil’ Boxing Theory
As a general rule of thumb, when combination punching, you should not end on a body punch, end on a high punch. If you do end low, put your hands back up, get out fast and realize you left an opening. Chuck threw an uncommitted right, then left hook to the body and attempted to move out with his hands low, elbows out and chin up. All it took is eating one hook on the way out and Chuck was in La La Land.
Chuck could make mistakes like this against inferior strikers. He could absorb a hook from Ortiz or Couture, but he can’t make a mistake like this against the heavy handed Rampage.
80% of MMA standup is boxing, 80% of MMA fighters are not polished boxers. I believe that really learning the Sweet Science will be the next evolution of MMA.
