Strikeforce Fedor vs. Rogers Predictions: How Many Hardcores?

A solid card; but will it draw solid ratings? The fights here will all be entertaining for what they are but if this thing dies on CBS- which it may- that will have far more long term impact for the sport than any individual results. Essentially this card consists of a bunch of foreigners who speak iffy English and have very little mainstream exposure, plus Jake Shields, Mayhem Miller and Brett Rogers- of whom only Miller may mean something as a draw off of his MTV exposure. I’d like to say the origin and language skills of the fighters won’t matter, but they almost certainly will. Showtime has had a Countdown-ish show and CBS did run some ads during football and perhaps that along with the ever popular Russian Superman gimmick will help draw in some UFC only or more casual fans, but if it doesn’t there’s no reason to think this show will do much better than the Elite XC on CBS show without Kimbo or Carano did. That’s simply not a sustainable rating for a network television show- there’s just not enough hardcores yet.

It’s a real crossroads for Strikeforce: with a serious network deal- and a thousand other things falling into place from here- they still have the potential to be a strong and important #2 promotion in America and Canada; without it, it’s hard to see them ever generating the interest and revenues required to be a top-level player purely off of Showtime exposure. My hunch is that the rating will come in in the gray zone, probably good enough to justify a second show but not good enough to make the future secure. That in itself would be a form of defeat for Strikeforce, as with such a limited roster there’s only so many loaded shows (which is what this is for them) they can put on and even hope to draw reasonably well with. The Gegard Mousasi situation demonstrates this most clearly- he’s already squashed Babalu, so if he beats Sokoudjou, who’s left? Mohammad Lawal isn’t anywhere near ready as a star, Dan Henderson’s signing hasn’t been confirmed, Robbie Lawler, Nick Diaz and Jake Shields are too small to be taken seriously, and no one wants to see Matt Lindland in that position. Strikeforce needs to knock this one out of the park because if not, they could end up locked into a financially dangerous Fedor deal without much hope of expanding their revenue streams to pay for it. The name “Strikeforce” needs to get over here.

Anyway, the fights:

Fedor vs. Rogers

I just finished reading a book of ancient Mediterranean history, which took note of the Graeco-Roman habit of sacrificing an animal- or in rare cases humans- to appease a wrathful deity. Not sure why that’s coming to mind, but there you go.

Seriously: Rogers CAN win, but it would probably be the greatest MMA upset of all time. Rogers has size, and he hits hard, and he’s younger; that’s the end of his advantages. Fedor is more skilled, more athletic, more talented, more experienced, might even hit harder, etc. etc. There’s just not much more to say about it; Fedor’s in a completely different talent bracket, and unless Rogers gets a very quick fluke KO he’s almost certainly screwed. Fedor by 1st round submission.

Shields vs. Miller

Ah, Jake Shields, a fighter with standup so iffy that it’s gone past rudimentary all the way to vestigial, as though he’s evolving backwards into the Royce Gracie of 1994. He’s a fine fighter, he’s clearly the more talented of these two, he’s defeated the far higher level of competition, he’s undefeated since 2004, he’s…so goddamn unconvincing. It’s entirely possible that I underrate him because I’m tired of reading message boards full of “ZOMG SHeidls wull ta p GSp” posts, but every time he fights I’m strongly tempted to pick the other guy. Miller winning would be a huge upset; yet I can’t shake the sense that all he has to do to win is keep it standing for 60% of the fight. Of course, the same thing was true of Paul Daley and Robbie Lawler, except more so. I’m going to take Shields, by boring decision, but I won’t be shocked if he loses.

Sokoudjou vs. Mousasi

I like the fight simply because Sokoudjou is a recognizable and quasi-legitimate guy to challenge for the title- certainly as legit as you could get for this show- off of his two signature wins, and if Mousasi annihilates him the way he did Babalu it’ll be the best thing possible for getting Mousasi over as a star, which Strikeforce simply must do. I can’t think of anything Sokoudjou has shown in his two recent wins against Bob Sapp and Jan Nortje which suggest that he’s a different fighter than the one who lost to Babalu, Machida, Luiz Cane, etc. which is to say he’s still decent but no where near good enough to beat Mousasi barring a total fluke. Much like the main event it’s two different talent classes. Sokoudjou hits really fucking hard; but he gasses quickly and seems to mentally break and get discouraged, turning passive, and his striking tends towards the rudimentary and telegraphed. His ground defense is not so hot. Mousasi doesn’t for the moment appear to have many clear holes in his game per se, and I suspect he’ll be patient, gas out the bigger man and then take him to the mat for the 2nd round RNC.

Bigfoot Silva vs. Werdum

One sign of good matchmaking for a promotion like Strikeforce whose big shows usually feature the same talent is that there’s a fight on the undercard which is designed to throw up a challenger to the winner of the main event. I’m not sure either of these guys against Fedor is a big draw, but hey- they’re doing it the right way at least. So far as the fight goes I don’t buy Giant Silva and I never have, and I probably buy him even less after he got busted for horse steroids and had to hide out in Japan for a year. His career best win is a split decision over the husk of Ricco Rodriguez, he moves with the grace and quickness of a disoriented whale, he’s really got not much but size working for him. Werdum is just much better, quicker and more skilled on the ground if it goes there, and as long as he stays defensively responsible he should be able to pick Silva apart standing and possibly shoot in to take him down as a counter. Silva’s chance is to time Werdum and throw a big counter himself (something like a right hand over a leg kick), but despite his size I’m not even sure he hits all that hard; it might have to be a perfect shot. Werdum by decision is a pretty easy pick here.

All in all it’s not the most competitive card in the world but it should be fun, with several legitimately world-class talents on display. You could do a lot worse for a free show.

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Bonus sidenote: Glen Johnson is rematching Chad Dawson on HBO this weekend as well in the return match from their close and kinda-sorta-maybe controversial first fight which Dawson won. I’d pick Dawson as the easy choice in the rematch as the younger man who won the first fight and is now fighting in his home territory in Connecticut, but I’ll add- Dawson will have to knock Johnson out twice to get any respect here. Glen Johnson is a wonderful fighter, but he’s also one of the biggest complainers and whiners in the sport, and virtually no matter what happens I guarantee he’ll be back on Monday claiming he was rob-jobbed. It’s a pretty crucial fight for Dawson- despite some signature wins over Johnson, Tarver, Adamek etc. he’s not really broken through to star status and has been a negligible draw in many places, and Johnson is one of the very few legitimate opponents left for him at 175 who are realistically available. he needs to do something to capture the public’s attention, or he risks becoming the Kelly Pavlik of 175. He seems like a really nice guy, so I’m hoping he can avoid that fate.

The opener to the HBO telecast is Harry Joe Yorgey vs. Alfredo Angulo, and if you don’t know those guys all I can say is watch out- it won’t go the distance, and it’ll be a great fight.

…Awful

So Mike Tyson is talking comeback, Fernando Vargas is talking comeback, and now Mirko Crocop is scheduled to face Ben Rothwell at UFC 110. A plea to fight promoters: if you have to raise the dead to fill out your cards, reconsider.

“You’re All Scum, And You Know It, But For A Little While Some of You Have The Chance For Something More”

… are there any good teams left in the Premier League? The longer this year drags on the more you have to think Arsenal have a favorite’s chance to take the crown, 50% due to their improved play, 50% due to the amazing crapness which seems to have descended on the rest of the league in the space of one offseason. It’s preposterous. If it were just United slipping due to losing CR9 and Liverpool falling apart without Xabi Alonso that would be one thing, but Chelsea’s taking a tumble with the same old crew (and they’re really not that old). Such a very strange season this is, so far.

Anyway, apologies for the lack of posts this week, I have been sick or food poisoned or something and have felt about as good as Pepe Reina must right now. Quick picks for tonight are Dirrell by decisions ad Abraham by mid-late rounds KO, and I may post something after the fights.

(The quote is from I, Claudius, and is wonderful)

Historical Boxing Factoid

As per the latest Wrestling Observer newsletter, Archie Moore was officially credited with three fights in his career against pro wrestlers- Sterling Davis, future hall-of-fame promoter Roy Shire, and Mike DiBiase- father of “Million Dollar Man” Ted and grandfather of Ted Jr. All three fights came out of pro wrestling angles involving Moore as a special referee; all three ended in 3rd round KOs for Moore; yet people in boxing and wrestling alike swear that the DiBiase fight at least was legitimate. A strange history this sport has.

Dear Lord

From Dan Rafael’s chat today:

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Marc (Malden, MA)

At the Vitale fight, did you see the LA fans boo Hayden Panetierre? What is wrong with them? She’s hot!
Dan Rafael
(12:42 PM)

I did catch a glimpse. She’s dated Wladimir Klitschko from what I am told and was there for that reason.
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Someone once described Andre the Giant having sex as “like a lion mauling an antelope.” I’m going to go ahead and assume this looks about the same.

Clearly The Heavyweight Division Has Improved

Shannon Briggs is making a comeback. 37 years old, 2 and a half year lay off and counting, lost to Sultan Ibragimov in his last fight.

Fistery’s Mysteries

This article, this article. What to say? Several major issues:

1. Maybe it’s because he was the dominant champion when most of today’s boxing press were young, maybe it’s because he fits peoples’ preconceptions of what a heavyweight champion should be, maybe it’s for the KOs, maybe it’s for some other reason- but Mike Tyson at this point is like everyone’s first girlfriend. He’s remembered far too fondly based on half-remembered superficialities from 20+ years ago, more for primacy and novelty than ability, and there seems to be sort of a collective agreement to try to forget the whole last decade and a half of his career when everyone realized (albeit briefly) that the sun did not in fact rise and set with this man. Look: Tyson was a very, very good heavyweight, a justified hall of famer, an intensely memorable figure; but in the list of top 10 heavyweights of all time he’s not #1, he’s almost certainly not top-5, and I’ve seen reasonable arguments that don’t even have him on the list. He was never as good as Lennox Lewis. Not ever. His dominance of the heavyweight division from his pro debut to the end of the myth in Tokyo was 4 years and 11 months, roughly a quarter of his career, and his best win in that time was a terrified Michael Spinks; second best was either Frank Bruno or the 39 year old post-retirement version of Larry Holmes, take your pick. The point is, Tyson got exposed over time; and if what he was wasn’t completely obvious at the start of his career (though it was to some, take a bow Teddy Atlas) then surely now, nearly 20 years after the Buster Douglas fight, it should be. Holding him up as a mythical measuring stick for dominance is both factually wrong and frankly silly at this point.

2. Lennox Lewis, by contrast, is STILL underrated by people obsessed with perceptions more than realities. Lewis lost exactly two fights in his career, both by KO: one to Oliver McCall and the other to Hasim Rahman, both later avenged with KO wins in one-sided fashion. What does that tell us? That Lewis fought through adversity and learned from his mistakes, two things which Tyson was never able to do. Lewis’s losses were non-repeatable and flukey; Tyson was repeatedly beaten in thorough fashion by Evander Holyfield, Buster Douglas and Lewis. Lewis’s best wins include Evander Holyfield, Vitali Klitschko and, yes, Mike Tyson (for name value), as well as a long string of solid contenders- David Tua, the hyped-at-the-time Michael Grant, Rahman, Briggs, Golata, Morrison, Bruno, Ruddock- every bit the equal (and in some cases the same) as Tyson’s. And yet for whatever inexplicable reason people STILL focus on the fact that Lewis could be hurt and fight through it to win as a negative because he supposedly had “a healthy dollop of vulnerability”. It’s just ignorant, frankly. Here’s a question: if you’re fighting someone, what’s scarier- a guy you can barely hit but maybe have a chance to hurt, but who walks thorough that and keeps coming- or a guy who’s scary for a little while, but who you know will mentally break if you hang around and keep fighting back? To my mind it says everything about Lennox Lewis that he concluded his career with one last fight at age 38 after a year long layoff- against VITALI KLITSCHKO- which he won by KO. That was not a fight he had to take, it was a fight where he seriously risked his reputation by facing a younger, stronger man who matched him in size, who had never been beaten in a fight (his lone loss was an injury retirement) and who had KO’d all but two of his opponents to that point in time. Lewis took it, won it, and thereby stamped his dominance not only on his own era but on the era which followed him.

3. “Not so with Vitali. He’s a chiselled figure, with a remarkable weight deviation of just seven pounds over the past decade, and he’s never been knocked down.”

It’s fucking boxing, not Mr. Olympia. Michael Grant looked great at the weigh-ins as well; then he looked horizontal in the fights. Grumble Grumble non-relevant criterion grumble…

4. “Most boxing observers would put Peter, Gomez and Arreola as a group ahead of Williams, Sanders and Kirk Johnson, his three opponents before his retirement in 2004. In other words, while the division ain’t exactly resembling the golden eras of the ’70s, or even mid-90s, it’s better than it was five years ago.”

…Because of the choice of three consecutive opponents by one fighter? Deeply silly. I’m willing to listen to the argument, but let’s have some real evidence for it.

5. “And people also need to know about the long view. Many of the dozen years Joe Louis held the crown were desultory and the division in the mid-to-late ’50s was lacking.”

Fighters faced by Joe Louis in his run as Heavyweight champion: James Braddock (current champion), Max Schmeling (former champion), Jersey Joe Walcott (future champion), Ezzard Charles (post-title relinquishment by Louis, then recognized as champion), John Henry Lewis (current light heavyweight champion), Billy Conn (former light heavyweight champion) who Louis faced twice, and the combined records of Louis’ opponents whom he faced as champion, including Charles, was 1409-304-87 when Louis faced them, in a much more brutally competitive era. No, this is not perfect evidence and no, this era was not the mid-70’s, but let’s be serious: in their era guys like Charles, Walcott and Schmeling were much, much better than guys like Chris Arreola or Sam Peter. Hell, you could probably make a half-assed case that Chris Arreola is the modern Tony Galento, and Galento was not really considered all that great a fighter in his day.*

As for the mid-late ’50s, sure, not the best era; but it had the beginning of the famous and memorable three fight series between Floyd Patterson and Ingemar Johansson, Patterson becoming the youngest heavyweight champion to that point, Archie Moore, and most importantly a mechanism in place to develop new fighters to replenish the division. Today’s heavyweight division is washed-out football players, solid but uninspiring ex-Soviet professionals, and Klitschkos, and who knows where the next star is coming from? More importantly than that though for the present argument: please go back and watch some of the fights from this era, which are available on youtube and elsewhere- the skills difference from even a weak era like this to present heavyweights in the same general range of the division is often really glaring. Modern fighters would hold their own head to head due to training and size differences, but if you could normalize for those factors I honestly think there’s very few heavyweights from the current era who could have thrived in the old days. I wouldn’t argue that the old days are always better mind you- the Klitschkos would have been competitive in any era and possibly dominant because of their size- but guys like Arreola or Kevin Johnson or Nikolai Valuev as major contenders is very much a product of the modern era.

As for the rest of the article- sigh. Kevin Johnson is not a serious contender, Fast Eddie, though talented, is basically the cut-price Chris Byrd and would make a better challenger to Chad Dawson or Tomasz Adamek than a Klitschko, Alexander Dimitrenko just lost to Eddie Chambers, and while Alexander Povetkin is also a talented fighter against either Klitschko he’s screwed for size, reach, power and cardio. Some of these guys could have solid fights against each other or against a Ruslan Chagaev (or David Haye if he ever fights a serious heavyweight), but none of them are a threat to the title, all of them have massive, gaping technical flaws or athletic limitations, and some of them have already fought each other to a complete lack of public interest or acclaim.

Anyway. I don’t meant to pick on this author too much, but a lot of the weird takes on boxing history contained in his article seem to me to be common and particularly glaring ones. I understand the urge to try and defend the current state of boxing from all the overblown boxing-is-dead stories, but to my mind the best way to do that is to highlight the talent in lower divisions, rather than try to build a weak case for a weak division. Times have changed, and boxing can’t live or die with the heavyweights- and given that the biggest two draws in the sport currently fight at welterweight, it really doesn’t.

*Fun with old boxing records. Galento faced the following fighters in his career: Unknown Winston, Battling Bozo, “Italian” Jack Herman, and the wonderfully monickered Roy Lazer.

Klitschko vs. Arreola: My Prediction Is Pain

Let’s get this out of the way up front: Arreola has very, very, very little chance in this one and I fully expect Klitschko to win by KO by, at the latest, the 8th. Arreola’s major asset is that he hits decently hard and can throw very good combinations for a heavyweight, but he’s going against the granite-chinned Klitschko brother and you can’t throw a combination against Mount Klitschko until you get past the jab. Not sure that one’s in the cards. Into the bargain Arreola is pretty easy to hit and nearly got KO’d by Travis Walker two fights ago- not a good sign. For Arreola to win he either needs to hit the perfect punch, or he needs Klitschko to suffer some sort of injury during the fight, or perhaps one in the last couple of days before the fight which hampers his ability to throw a jab and control distance. Maybe a dedicated body attack will bother the big man. I am really clutching at straws here.

The timing of this one is what surprises me. There’s an argument to be made which runs: this is the biggest money fight available to Arreola and likely to be the biggest one he’ll ever have a chance at, so take it now before Vitali decides he wants to go in another direction and you’re left fighting Jameel McCline types again. I can certainly understand that, but here’s a counter-argument: because all the money in heavyweight boxing right now is attached to a Klitschko fight, once you’ve had that fight your career is essentially winding down if you don’t win. Prior to that fight you can get HBO bouts for decent money on the basis of HBO featuring you as a potential Klitschko challenger on the rise. Once you’ve reached the top of the mountain and fallen off there’s not much of a story left to tell, and HBO is likely going to be looking at moving on to the next featured challenger. At that point Arreola is still in his athletic prime at age 28 and still has excellent skills for a heavyweight which make him likely too dangerous as an opponent for the next Klitschko challenger to build himself up with; where does he turn for a money fight then? If he’s looking to cash out of boxing and move on with life none of this matters, but if not he’s got a chance to end fighting Ruslan Chagaev or Nikolai Valuev for mediocre money in Germany in front of unfriendly judges.

I can’t shake the sense that given his entertaining style and Mexican heritage Arreola would/could/should be an independent draw in California if properly promoted, which would give him something to fall back on if he can’t defeat Vitali. Right now he’s not there, but perhaps if the HBO feature period could be leveraged…ah well. Too late to worry about that now, I suppose.

Two Boxing Notes

1. Early reports from Kevin Iole say that Mayweather/Marquez did at least 1 million buys. Floyd’s a draw.

2. Top headline on Yahoo’s boxing page: “Arreola finally takes fighting seriously.” Problems.

“This Guy Sucks”

Every UFC there’s a fight with a definitive finish, and afterwards there’s God knows how many people lining up to get off some variation of the phrase: This Guy Sucks. It’s depressing stuff to read and if I’ve been hard on boxing of late I can always say this: one thing boxing fans right now have over MMA fans on average is the ability to analyze fights and fighters along multiple axes. There’s something to be said for 100 years of the influence of the idea that styles make fights. Let me describe what I mean using a specific example: Mirko Crocop.

Does Crocop suck now? Depends how you mean it. If, say, I went into MMA and you saw me fight, you’d say I sucked. I’m decently strong but have no cardio and move like an anesthetized rhino, and I barely know what I’m doing at all. If someone asked you why I sucked and you said I just did, you’d be right- I’d be so awful everywhere that it would be impossible and pointless to analyze in any depth. If you say Crocop sucks and someone asks you why, and your answer is “he just does”, that by contrast is a bit silly: when a hall of fame caliber fighter who was clearly one of the three best heavyweights of his era and maybe of all time becomes a guy who can’t really compete with top-ten contenders, fans who are serious about understanding what they’re watching should be able to say in some detail why this has happened. “He sucks now” tells us nothing beyond his most recent results; it’s got no predictive value as to whether a comeback is possible or if a fighter is simply done, or if he needs new training, or if he needs to stay away from a certain style of opponent, etc. If we want to break this down there’s several areas the basic question needs to be divided into, and I’d propose these three as the best broad areas: skills, athleticism, and other.

I’ve heard it proposed (the Tough Talk podcast post-UFC 103 wrapup show as an example) that the issue with Crocop is one primarily of skills- that he’s still essentially the same guy he was at the start of his career, a kickboxer who’s learned just about enough takedown defense and ground skills to let him use his major skill against most opponents. This, in Mirko’s case, is half-true; he’s clearly still the same basic sort of fighter he used to be, as opposed to a Georges St. Pierre who’s radically changed and improved his skill set as his career has progressed. But for this to explain Crocop’s relative decline several things also have to be true: that he’s as good as he ever was at his major skills (and therefore that those actual disciplines haven’t really evolved), that no other issues are sufficient to explain the decline, and that opponents are starting to take advantage of his relative skills deficits to beat him. There are some fighters for who this is in fact a reasonable explanation: Houston Alexander is as good a boxer-striker as he ever was, boxing has not really evolved, Alexander appears to be athletically similar to the guy he was when he was KO’ing Jardine and Sakara- but he’s never improved his ground skills and fighters have found him out and used that weakness to beat him over and over again. But this does not appear to be the case with Crocop; he was in his prime a terrifying standup striker who liked to keep the fight on the feet, and he’s been the same fighter in terms of skills in all of his recent losses as Junior Dos Santos and Gabrial Gonzaga KO’d him standing and Overeem and Kongo beat him up. People haven’t found a weakness in Crocop’s skills to take advantage of; they’re beating him in those areas in which he’s at his best. He still throws the same viciously hard and accurate head kicks and strong straight punches, he just doesn’t get the same results with them. Why?

For my money a lot of it is the second area of import- athleticism. Crocop is 35 and fighting is a younger man’s game, and for all that people love to cite Randy Couture fighting at 46 as an argument against age being a factor, the reality of the matter is that the reason everyone cites Couture is partly because there’s not a lot of other similar examples and partly for another reason to be noted below. Couture is an outlier, and citing a special case as evidence for a general rule is wholly unconvincing. Crocop is not Couture; people age in the ring at different rates for different reasons, and Crocop at 35 is an old fighter in my opinion. Go back and watch some of Mirko’s PRIDE fights: for the most part he’s the exact same fighter throwing the exact same kicks and punches, except that he’s throwing them all noticeably faster and more often and seemingly with more power behind them. They’re not more technically perfect shots, not straighter or more well-placed on the temple or behind the ear or on the chin- they just get there faster and harder and more often. Despite the advances in training and nutrition and other consideration in all sports world wide it is still the case that most athletes begin their decline athletically in their early 30’s and often still experience a noticeable and dramatic falloff in their mid 30’s. Some manage to make up for this with advances in other skill areas (think Michael Owen’s improved finishing or Michael Jordan’s fallaway jumper) but the majority do not, and it appears that Crocop falls into the latter category. In theory perhaps he could have become a great wrestler or jiujitsu fighter to compensate; realistically the chances of him reinventing himself in his mid-30’s was always slim, and such cases should be looked on as impressive because of their rareness and not expected. Not everyone is gifted with the potential to be world class in all things, and even in boxing- a relatively simpler sport- there’s not an enormous body of fighters who began their career as one thing and ended it as another.

There’s also the third area which has important bearing on the explanation for Crocop’s decline: Other. It’s a catch-all category which for Mirko includes things like transitioning to the cage and to a drug-tested environment, and might for other fighters include dramatic step-ups in quality from smaller promotions or exposure to a new type of opponent or changing camps or all sorts of varied life experiences of the kind that can impact anyone’s job performance. Simple confidence can mean everything. I personally have no doubt that this is a huge part of what’s happened with Mirko- he’s fighting in a cage which allows clinch-fighting of a kind which he clearly has trouble with and which ruined him against Kongo, without accusing him of anything it’s clear that transitioning to commission oversight has affected nearly all the ex-PRIDE fighters, and all of a sudden Crocop is facing in UFC a long string of fighters who have a size advantage on him alongside world-class athleticism for the weight. His last 3 UFC losses were to fighters who were seemingly taller and weighed in heavier than him, and who as his athleticism declined were quicker as well. That’s a horrible combination for anyone to face and it shouldn’t be surprising that Mirko’s struggled against it. All of this doesn’t even take into account factors which have a major impact but are often forgotten, like the difference between PRIDE throwing together cards often late in the promotional cycle vs. UFC’s scheduling of fights months in advance allowing fighters to peak on a certain day, or PRIDE’s habit of giving star fighters easy fights against weak opponents. I don’t expect to see Mirko Crocop vs. Dos Caras Jr. or Yuji Nagata or any other pro wrestler in UFC anytime soon.

In addition there’s the issue of how these factors interrelate. Randy Couture is an extreme outlier; but the closest things to him are fighters like Matt Lindland (39) or Dan Henderson (39), all three of whom share a background as world-class or near world class wrestlers. I firmly believe that of all the various background a fighter can bring to MMA wrestling is the one which will allow a fighter to go the longest for many reasons: because it reduces punishment taken, because it instills truly incredible physical discipline, conditioning and work ethic, and because it’s reliant less on physical quickness than on strength and timing, sense of balance, knowledge of leverage and positioning, etc. than any striking skill. If a wrestler still has the quickness to close with you and the strength to manipulate your posture he can still beat you and potentially look dominant in doing so. Wrestlers rarely have that fall-off-the-cliff moment the way strikers do, the way Chuck Liddell and Mirko and Wanderlei Silva have had several times over each. Cropcop at this point retains a lot of his power and physical strength the way wrestlers do- but because he’s not a wrestler the relative utility of that aspect of athleticism is reduced, as he doesn’t have the skills or size required to impose that strength on opponents. Randy Couture could potentially have taken Dos Santos down, held him there and pummeled him to win rounds using strength- as the boxing truism has it, the last thing to go is power. Indeed, even Crocop was able to hit Dos Santos hard enough to cut him and swell his face up; the power in the hands at least is still there. But because quickness goes first and Crocop’s style of skills depends on quickness he no longer can hit the openings he sees with consistency. His athleticism has declined as is natural; his skills unfortunately require a feature role for the aspects of athleticism which decline first.

So does Mirko suck? No, he doesn’t, but he’s declined from being a top-3 heavyweight to a top-15 or 20 heavyweight and it’s not clear that he has any serious option to reverse that fall-off. Given his size and the stage of his career and relevant athletic decline there’s little chance of his developing the skills required to make the most out of what he retains athletically; and while he’s still a skilled and powerful kickboxer who can do damage, he can’t do enough damage against the suddenly larger, quicker and better trained opposition he faces in UFC to win consistently and compete at the world class level. Moreover his confidence appears shot after coming up short in 3 of his 5 UFC bouts and that combined with size disadvantages has resulted in him being pushed around the cage on his back foot or crushed up against it in the clinch, being bullied and losing rounds. Going backwards he’s more hittable as many strikers are and he appears to be seeing openings he can’t capitalize on anymore which is a sure sign of reduced reaction time and quickness. He still throws the left high kick, but now it whizzes by just short or is checked or takes long enough to get off that by the time it arrives the opponent is already gone. He doesn’t stalk much anymore and seems content to try to be a counter-striker; his legs are slow, his movement labored. He can beat many fighters still because he’s declining from such a height, but because of the specific reasons for his decline it’s very difficult to see a road back for him. As a title contender in UFC, he’s done.

The decline of Crocop isn’t the result of any one factor and the state he finds himself in isn’t subject to summation in one phrase; he deserves better than to be described with a curt and rude dismissal. For my part I’d like to see him retire as he seems like a man with other things going on in life who seems likely to be hurt by the decline of his overall ability, but if he decides to continue we as fans can at least put in the effort to really understand what we’re seeing on some kind of a serious level. And Crocop is but one example; you could write something at least this detailed and in-depth for any world class fighter coming off of a definitive loss, and if I have time I may do just that for Rich Franklin later this week or next. The point is that there’s a lot to dig into in determining just where any fighter stands relative to the competition, and the sorts of concerns laid out above are only the tip of the iceberg. Fighting sports are complicated; if they weren’t they wouldn’t be half as interesting.

EDIT: some telling recent quotes from Crocop after the fight. It certainly sounds like he’s looking at retirement and if so, I and I’m sure every other MMA fan wishes him the best. The two things he focused on really tell the tale I think: a worn out body and a worn down drive.