5 ms·

As someone who has trained in MMA extensively, "the greats" tend to be those who embody this for long whiles in their careers before eventually (and generally,

by bmelton 11y ago

As someone who has trained in MMA extensively, "the greats" tend to be those who embody this for long whiles in their careers before eventually (and generally, inevitably) regressing to the mean. Anderson Silva, Matt Hughes, BJ Penn are all common names to MMA devotees (or at least were as recently as a few years ago) , and each of them share the same trait -- they win when they aren't supposed to. I've never been remotely as good as any of them (nor Ronda Rousey), but eventually, when you defy the statistics for long enough, you become looked at as a modern-day Superman. Anderson Silva, for example, ran a hugely long undefeated streak in which he not only bested his opponents, but often embarrassed them before suddenly falling off the mark twice, and to the same opponent. As a result, he has fallen from grace as the once "best pound for pound fighter in the world" to almost average, depending on who you're talking to. Regardless, his fight record[1] tells the story of a man who simply knows how to win, except against Chris Weidman, and as such, is worth fearing, despite being older than average and much, much better than average. The point that I appear to be dancing around though, is that a guy on a 10-fight win streak seems invincible, while a guy on a 2-fight losing streak seems positively wimpy by comparison. Looking at the fighter's record on the whole is probably the best gauge of their talent, but as your statistical record approaches the mean, so does the level of fear you might otherwise instill, commensurately.

adwf 11y ago
Well a huge amount of sport is about mentality, so winning a nice streak really does make people invincible. Also, I wouldn't necessarily characterise Silva as regressing to the mean, just getting old.
balls187 11y ago
> As someone who has trained in MMA extensively, "the greats" tend to be those who embody this for long whiles in their careers before eventually (and generally, inevitably) regressing to the mean. You can make the case that both age, and the sport evolves around them and they regressed towards the mean. Except for Anderson. I attribute his decline simply to no longer being motivated to train hard. In many of his later fights, he would "play around" and toy with fighters. With Weidman, that cost him a brutal knockout. The psychological damage compounded with his next fight, which was immediate rematch that ended up in brutally shattering his leg. For BJ Penn, there were a lot of questions about his motivations, and by time it seemed like he was properly motivated, the sport had passed him by. Despite all that, he is one of the few fighters that have belts in multiple weight classes, and beat Matt Hughes, and Gomi in their prime (you could argue he beat the piss out of GSP in their first match, despite it being a loss). Full Disclosure: BJ Penn is one of my favorite fighters of all time.
- bmelton 11y ago
  BJ Penn is easily one of my favorites. I'm actually upset at the fact that seemingly, the more motivation he found, the more likely he was to engage in a stand-up battle, despite his obvious advantages on the ground. Quite possibly there are factors that I'm not privy to (like age inhibiting his flexibility or something), but I've never seen anybody as creative on the ground as he was (though there are some modern fighters that are getting there), and definitely not of his time, but yeah, for a long time, he rode the coattails of his raw talent and didn't train as competitively as many of those who ultimately passed him by. Frank Mir is, in my opinion, his polar opposite (in too many ways to list).
  - balls187 11y ago
    I always respected Frank Mir's raw talent--after his devastating motorcycle accident that he was still able to return and claim the heavyweight title. As someone who has admiration for the "veterans" of the octagon, I'm really happy to see the resurgence of Andrei Arlovski.
    - bmelton 11y ago
      Arlovski has been a master of reinventing himself as needed. I haven't seen much of the "old guard" adapt to a sport that evolves as quickly as MMA has as well as he has done so. That said, I would probably put Frank Mir right up there on adaptability, and Mir's last fight against Todd Duffee was simply amazing.
  - mistermann 11y ago
    I actually think BJ and Frank are very similar in that their downfall was lack of training. In BJ's case, being generally in poor shape much of the time, but mainly not focusing on his core talents and as you say, getting by on raw natural talent until that was no longer the case. The part that makes me so sad about BJ is, he was a once in a lifetime fighter, but there really aren't that many fights of his that are worth rewatching many times, really wish he would have stayed on top of his game for longer. I feel similarly about Nick Diaz - a good Diaz fight (ie vs: Lawler, Zaromskis, Santos) and a good BJ fight are just wonderful to watch. In Frank's case, he just always gases early, often by the end of the first round. He's very talented but if you can't use that talent for much more than 3 rounds, you can't get too far.
swang 11y ago
Similar to how Tiger Woods looked unbeatable, the "Tiger Effect." Where him just showing up to the tournament made every play just slightly worse because most likely you're playing for second place money.
- balls187 11y ago
  Mike Tyson also spoke that before his matches, most of his opponents were already defeated. Then again, when he was 15 years old, he was destroying adult pro boxers during sparring.
onedev 11y ago
Just curious, what do you do nowadays?
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- bmelton 11y ago
  Well, I'm a work-at-home programmer, so mostly, I gain weight. That's a joke, mostly, but having settled in to family life and programming, I did gain a lot of weight that I'm working off at the moment. As it stands, I'm still about 20-25 pounds overweight, but I haven't trained anything seriously since I had to take the family out of my last dojo due to ... uhh, personal concerns[1], a couple of years ago. That said, I've been scouting out replacement dojos that do more than BJJ, which are harder to find, and have found a couple that are promising to get back to. My area of focus has historically been in Muay Thai, and I've just really never been all that great at BJJ, so while I enjoy training BJJ, it's nice to have a gym that does other things that I can go to to feel "good at something". [1] - http://www.bloodyelbow.com/2013/12/3/5170294/team-lloyd-irvin-rape-assault-coercion-stories http://www.bloodyelbow.com/2013/12/3/5170294/team-lloyd-irvi...
  - onedev 11y ago
    Wow that's incredibly fascinating. Thanks for sharing!
    - bmelton 11y ago
      If the "Lloyd Irvin rape scandal" is fascinating, let me tell you, at the time it was the scariest thing in my life. I have a 13 year old daughter, and as soon as I was clued in on the allegations, I mentally ran through every single event we'd attended, and tried to remember whether or not my daughter had spent any time with anyone unattended. The answer I came back with was 'No', thankfully. As she was only doing children's classes (obviously), I would gleefully watch her every practice and give her tips / practice with her afterward. After that, we left the gym, but in addition to whatever other allegations against him, Lloyd Irvin takes his gym contracts very, very seriously, and I ended up owing them the remainder of the contract after they sued me (and won) which was only extra painful because we had just renewed the contract, so despite only having been a month or so in, they ended up getting a judgement in their favor somewhere in the $2800 range.
rm445 11y ago
As someone who hasn't trained in MMA, but watched some bouts from early in its spate of popularity some years ago (unconditioned and unprepared fighters, people fighting wearing the gi of their martial art and being flung all over the place by it, many victories by knockout with little grappling), it still seems like a young sport. Clearly it developed massively when the Brazilian ju jitsu guys came to dominate. When a fighter wins with an unusually great use of a particular technique, the armbar, either a counter-method will become widespread, or if there isn't a good counter the armbar will become ubiquitous. Either way the champion fighter will regress towards the mean. As you say, psychological dominance is a factor. And dare I say that the women's sport potentially is still in a younger stage of development. The first truly outstanding athlete to take up a somewhat niche sport, dominating over the lesser athletes currently present, is going to be hailed as one of the greats. Yet of course they risk reverting to the mean as the sport's profile rises and challengers appear.
- michaelchisari 11y ago
  Yet of course they risk reverting to the mean as the sport's profile rises and challengers appear. This is what everyone is waiting for. Rhonda was effectively raised from childhood to be one of the greats in a mature women's UFC. So in this early era, nobody can touch her Martial arts on her level is something that hardly any women encounter as early on as she did, and most of her competitors are coming at a major late-start disadvantage to her. What's particularly great is to see how she inspired young women and girls to start training intensely now instead of finding a love for the sport in their late teens and twenites.
- bmelton 11y ago
  Women's MMA is definitely younger than men's, but at the same time, the women have the luxury of not having to reinvent the wheel, as (to my knowledge) there are either none or very few female MMA gyms, so they're training with the guys, and have the same ~20 years of MMA history to draw from in what works and what doesn't. The interesting thing about the Rousey's armbar is that everyone knows it's coming, and presumably, would look to defend against it above all else, and yet she still has an astonishing number of wins with it. A lot of that has to do with her being well-rounded elsewhere, and a lot of is has to do with the fact that she's really, really good at armbars. Women's MMA is primarily disadvantaged by the dearth of women in college / high school wrestling, which means that most of them are starting later than the guys who graduated from greco roman wrestling and parlayed that into MMA. It's a big advantage, due almost entirely to discrimination, but one that will likely be obviated over time. Ronda, on the other hand, grew up in an athletic household as the daughter of the first women's judo champion, and that mother routinely pushed her towards a similar path. She maybe didn't get a chance at college wrestling (or maybe she did, hell if I know), but she got the relevant training regardless, which puts her ahead of the rest of the pack. Ronda's got a leg up, and it probably won't persist ad eterneum, but for now, and probably the immediate future, she's the best, and she's earned it. If she stops being the best, the question really is whether the talent vacuum rushes in around her, or gets occupied by the single person that beat her, and all that.
grubles 11y ago
No Fedor? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fedor_Emelianenko#Mixed_martial_arts_career https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fedor_Emelianenko#Mixed_martia...
- bmelton 11y ago
  Didn't come to mind, but absolutely Fedor.

by bmelton 11y ago

adwf 11y ago

Well a huge amount of sport is about mentality, so winning a nice streak really does make people invincible. Also, I wouldn't necessarily characterise Silva as regressing to the mean, just getting old.

balls187 11y ago

> As someone who has trained in MMA extensively, "the greats" tend to be those who embody this for long whiles in their careers before eventually (and generally, inevitably) regressing to the mean. You can make the case that both age, and the sport evolves around them and they regressed towards the mean. Except for Anderson. I attribute his decline simply to no longer being motivated to train hard. In many of his later fights, he would "play around" and toy with fighters. With Weidman, that cost him a brutal knockout. The psychological damage compounded with his next fight, which was immediate rematch that ended up in brutally shattering his leg. For BJ Penn, there were a lot of questions about his motivations, and by time it seemed like he was properly motivated, the sport had passed him by. Despite all that, he is one of the few fighters that have belts in multiple weight classes, and beat Matt Hughes, and Gomi in their prime (you could argue he beat the piss out of GSP in their first match, despite it being a loss). Full Disclosure: BJ Penn is one of my favorite fighters of all time.

bmelton 11y ago
BJ Penn is easily one of my favorites. I'm actually upset at the fact that seemingly, the more motivation he found, the more likely he was to engage in a stand-up battle, despite his obvious advantages on the ground. Quite possibly there are factors that I'm not privy to (like age inhibiting his flexibility or something), but I've never seen anybody as creative on the ground as he was (though there are some modern fighters that are getting there), and definitely not of his time, but yeah, for a long time, he rode the coattails of his raw talent and didn't train as competitively as many of those who ultimately passed him by. Frank Mir is, in my opinion, his polar opposite (in too many ways to list).
- balls187 11y ago
  I always respected Frank Mir's raw talent--after his devastating motorcycle accident that he was still able to return and claim the heavyweight title. As someone who has admiration for the "veterans" of the octagon, I'm really happy to see the resurgence of Andrei Arlovski.
  - bmelton 11y ago
    Arlovski has been a master of reinventing himself as needed. I haven't seen much of the "old guard" adapt to a sport that evolves as quickly as MMA has as well as he has done so. That said, I would probably put Frank Mir right up there on adaptability, and Mir's last fight against Todd Duffee was simply amazing.
- mistermann 11y ago
  I actually think BJ and Frank are very similar in that their downfall was lack of training. In BJ's case, being generally in poor shape much of the time, but mainly not focusing on his core talents and as you say, getting by on raw natural talent until that was no longer the case. The part that makes me so sad about BJ is, he was a once in a lifetime fighter, but there really aren't that many fights of his that are worth rewatching many times, really wish he would have stayed on top of his game for longer. I feel similarly about Nick Diaz - a good Diaz fight (ie vs: Lawler, Zaromskis, Santos) and a good BJ fight are just wonderful to watch. In Frank's case, he just always gases early, often by the end of the first round. He's very talented but if you can't use that talent for much more than 3 rounds, you can't get too far.

swang 11y ago

Similar to how Tiger Woods looked unbeatable, the "Tiger Effect." Where him just showing up to the tournament made every play just slightly worse because most likely you're playing for second place money.

balls187 11y ago
Mike Tyson also spoke that before his matches, most of his opponents were already defeated. Then again, when he was 15 years old, he was destroying adult pro boxers during sparring.

onedev 11y ago

Just curious, what do you do nowadays?

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
bmelton 11y ago
Well, I'm a work-at-home programmer, so mostly, I gain weight. That's a joke, mostly, but having settled in to family life and programming, I did gain a lot of weight that I'm working off at the moment. As it stands, I'm still about 20-25 pounds overweight, but I haven't trained anything seriously since I had to take the family out of my last dojo due to ... uhh, personal concerns[1], a couple of years ago. That said, I've been scouting out replacement dojos that do more than BJJ, which are harder to find, and have found a couple that are promising to get back to. My area of focus has historically been in Muay Thai, and I've just really never been all that great at BJJ, so while I enjoy training BJJ, it's nice to have a gym that does other things that I can go to to feel "good at something". [1] - http://www.bloodyelbow.com/2013/12/3/5170294/team-lloyd-irvin-rape-assault-coercion-stories http://www.bloodyelbow.com/2013/12/3/5170294/team-lloyd-irvi...
- onedev 11y ago
  Wow that's incredibly fascinating. Thanks for sharing!
  - bmelton 11y ago
    If the "Lloyd Irvin rape scandal" is fascinating, let me tell you, at the time it was the scariest thing in my life. I have a 13 year old daughter, and as soon as I was clued in on the allegations, I mentally ran through every single event we'd attended, and tried to remember whether or not my daughter had spent any time with anyone unattended. The answer I came back with was 'No', thankfully. As she was only doing children's classes (obviously), I would gleefully watch her every practice and give her tips / practice with her afterward. After that, we left the gym, but in addition to whatever other allegations against him, Lloyd Irvin takes his gym contracts very, very seriously, and I ended up owing them the remainder of the contract after they sued me (and won) which was only extra painful because we had just renewed the contract, so despite only having been a month or so in, they ended up getting a judgement in their favor somewhere in the $2800 range.

rm445 11y ago

As someone who hasn't trained in MMA, but watched some bouts from early in its spate of popularity some years ago (unconditioned and unprepared fighters, people fighting wearing the gi of their martial art and being flung all over the place by it, many victories by knockout with little grappling), it still seems like a young sport. Clearly it developed massively when the Brazilian ju jitsu guys came to dominate. When a fighter wins with an unusually great use of a particular technique, the armbar, either a counter-method will become widespread, or if there isn't a good counter the armbar will become ubiquitous. Either way the champion fighter will regress towards the mean. As you say, psychological dominance is a factor. And dare I say that the women's sport potentially is still in a younger stage of development. The first truly outstanding athlete to take up a somewhat niche sport, dominating over the lesser athletes currently present, is going to be hailed as one of the greats. Yet of course they risk reverting to the mean as the sport's profile rises and challengers appear.

michaelchisari 11y ago
Yet of course they risk reverting to the mean as the sport's profile rises and challengers appear. This is what everyone is waiting for. Rhonda was effectively raised from childhood to be one of the greats in a mature women's UFC. So in this early era, nobody can touch her Martial arts on her level is something that hardly any women encounter as early on as she did, and most of her competitors are coming at a major late-start disadvantage to her. What's particularly great is to see how she inspired young women and girls to start training intensely now instead of finding a love for the sport in their late teens and twenites.
bmelton 11y ago
Women's MMA is definitely younger than men's, but at the same time, the women have the luxury of not having to reinvent the wheel, as (to my knowledge) there are either none or very few female MMA gyms, so they're training with the guys, and have the same ~20 years of MMA history to draw from in what works and what doesn't. The interesting thing about the Rousey's armbar is that everyone knows it's coming, and presumably, would look to defend against it above all else, and yet she still has an astonishing number of wins with it. A lot of that has to do with her being well-rounded elsewhere, and a lot of is has to do with the fact that she's really, really good at armbars. Women's MMA is primarily disadvantaged by the dearth of women in college / high school wrestling, which means that most of them are starting later than the guys who graduated from greco roman wrestling and parlayed that into MMA. It's a big advantage, due almost entirely to discrimination, but one that will likely be obviated over time. Ronda, on the other hand, grew up in an athletic household as the daughter of the first women's judo champion, and that mother routinely pushed her towards a similar path. She maybe didn't get a chance at college wrestling (or maybe she did, hell if I know), but she got the relevant training regardless, which puts her ahead of the rest of the pack. Ronda's got a leg up, and it probably won't persist ad eterneum, but for now, and probably the immediate future, she's the best, and she's earned it. If she stops being the best, the question really is whether the talent vacuum rushes in around her, or gets occupied by the single person that beat her, and all that.

grubles 11y ago

No Fedor? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fedor_Emelianenko#Mixed_martial_arts_career https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fedor_Emelianenko#Mixed_martia...

bmelton 11y ago
Didn't come to mind, but absolutely Fedor.