Couture vs. Toney Taught Us More About MMA Fans Than It Did About MMA
by Brian Mayes on Aug 31, 2010 5:37 AM EDT
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via www.fighters.com
Let us turn the clock back to May 27, 2006. At the time, your humble correspondent had been watching MMA as a casual fan for roughly eight months, drawn in by the second season of "The Ultimate Fighter" reality show. I was now drawn in by something far more fascinating than anything I had ever seen on Spike TV – Royce Gracie, the man I had watched dominate so many big, powerful guys on the old grainy VHS tapes I bought for a dollar each on clearance from my local video store, was about to fight the most dominate UFC welterweight champion of all time, Matt Hughes.
I cannot explain the palpable excitement I felt in the lead up to that fight, and then the tension I felt while watching it. Deep down, in my heart of hearts, I think I knew Matt Hughes would win. But I couldn’t get it out of my mind – that guy I saw on those VHS tapes, he just ran over everyone! He was SO good! How was Matt Hughes going to beat this guy? And then I saw some training footage of Royce at the Fairtex Gym on the Countdown show, and he was training head kicks. And I was sold. "Royce Gracie is taller than Matt Hughes. He’s just going to kick him in the head, then jump on him and submit him." That was my line of thinking going into the fight.
Of course, we all know what transpired that night. Matt Hughes took Royce Gracie down, nearly ripped his arm off, and then took his back and pounded him out. He totally dominated him. It wasn’t even remotely competitive. At the end of the night, I just sat there and thought "Wow, I have a lot to learn about MMA."
The fight we saw between Randy Couture and James Toney this past weekend wasn’t that much different than the Matt Hughes vs. Royce Gracie fight. To be fair, Royce Gracie is a real MMA fighter with legit grappling skills, and he’d most likely beat James Toney in an MMA match. But he had absolutely zero business being in the cage with Matt Hughes. Anyone who had actually studied tape of the two men knew that Royce was going to get beat up real, real bad in that fight. By the same token, anyone who had watched much MMA at all should have known that James Toney never should have been sanctioned to fight Randy Couture in the first place. That fight may go down as one of the worst mismatches to ever take place in sanctioned MMA – the only one that I can think of that is worse is Tim Sylvia fighting Mariusz Pudzianowski, which ironically was also sanctioned by the same Massachusetts athletic commission.
Yet while talking with fellow fans in the lead up to this fight, the discussion was very odd. Most of them acknowledged that Randy Couture was most likely going to win, but then they’d go on to cite all of James Toney’s boxing credentials and then list all the various ways in which he could win the fight. When delving deeper into the conversation, they would bring up how he was a "real athlete", how he was a great 200 pound football player in high school, and various other anecdotal evidence to support an argument for a James Toney win. They all argued that a guy that talented should be able to pick up a lot of skills in nine months, and had a good shot of landing one clean shot on Randy Couture’s noggin before getting taken down. And because he’s a pro boxer, and world champion, Couture wouldn’t be able to absorb that one shot and it would be "lights out".
Now, we know what happened. Randy Couture came out, shot in on James Toney, took him down with an ankle pick, and was fully mounted by the time 20 seconds had elapsed on the clock. From there it was text book –stack into the fence, ground and pound, arm triangle for the tap out. Basic stuff. All James Toney learned in 9 months of MMA training was how to bear hug a guy who’s in full mount. That’s about it. He didn’t even know how to properly submit – Couture had him in an arm triangle up against the fence, and Toney said "I give", which the ref did not hear. Couture told the ref, and the ref told Toney he needed to tap. Couture put Toney flat on the mat, reapplied the choke, and this time Toney weakly tapped the mat.
The fight went down exactly like it should have. I would expect just about any well trained MMA fighter from basically any weight class to be able to do that to James Toney. And that’s no disrespect to James Toney – the man is a fantastic boxer, he’s just doesn’t have the skills to be an MMA fighter.
Looking back, we had the same thing happen in the lead up to Couture vs. Toney as we did with Hughes vs. Gracie – fans wanted to look for a reason to think that the underdog could win. No one wants to tune in to see a squash match. If the outcome is known beforehand, no one wants to watch it – it ceases to be sport. So in our minds, we create a narrative that gives a fighter a better chance than he actually has. People really, truly thought that James Toney had a chance to land that one shot on Randy Couture, even though there was zero evidence from his boxing career that he could land a one shot knock out punch on a guy in the opening seconds of a fight. It ended up that Toney had roughly 10 seconds to land that one big punch, and he never even got the chance to throw it- Couture stayed out of range, then shot in so low that Toney could do nothing but improperly defend the shot by stepping back, which landed him right on his butt.
In the end, we didn’t really learn anything about MMA or boxing on Saturday night that we didn’t already know. We already knew that a well trained grappler can take down a one dimensional striker, rough him up and submit him. It was literally no different than what we saw at UFC 1. What we did learn is that MMA fans will literally buy anything that is put in front of them. We were sold a fight that in no way, shape or form was competitive. We all knew, in our heart of hearts, it wasn’t going to be competitive. James Toney is a boxer who is far, far past his physical prime and is most likely suffering from dementia pugilistica. He had no business being in the cage with Randy Couture, who despite being 47 years old is still a pretty darn good fighter. Yet we ate this fight right up. The interest in it was positively off the charts. People were more interested in this fight than the Frankie Edgar vs. BJ Penn title fight or the Gray Maynard vs. Kenny Florian fight – two fights between elite level lightweights. People didn’t give two craps about those fights. Nope, all they wanted to talk about was Randy Couture and James Toney. They knew James Toney was going to get dominated out there……yet they couldn’t resist. Some part of them thought James Toney had a chance, that one in a million shot to land the perfect punch, and for that reason they just had to tune in and see the inevitable unfold.
What does this all mean? It means big business for the UFC. They were able to sell a fight that was a totally one sided squash match, and people ate it up based on nothing more than James Toney running his mouth and the perception that he might, just *might* land that one punch that changes everything. The UFC now knows the blueprint to selling a fight that’s difficult to market – you put the underdog out there, you get him talking trash, and you get people convinced he has a chance, no matter how narrow. And if people think the guy has a chance, they will tune in. Hell, if they got me to think Royce Gracie was going to knock out Matt Hughes with a head kick back in the day, I’m sure that they could get plenty of people to really, honestly believe that Jon Fitch is going to beat Georges St. Pierre in a rematch, should that fight ever take place.
The FanPosts are solely the subjective opinions of MMA4Real readers and do not necessarily reflect those of MMA4Real editors or staff.
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The UFC now knows the blueprint to selling a fight that’s difficult to market – you put the underdog out there, you get him talking trash, and you get people convinced he has a chance, no matter how narrow.
Yep…crazy upsets happen just enough to keep this method valid too.
I’m sure that they could get plenty of people to really, honestly believe that Jon Fitch is going to beat Georges St. Pierre in a rematch, should that fight ever take place.
LOL…I dunno dawg…if a 5 year old saw the first fight…they’d know that Fitch as absolutely no chance of ever beating GSP….that was one of the worst beatdowns for 5 rounds ever….
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that was one of the worst beatdowns for 5 rounds ever
Nothing else comes close. There have been one-sided five round fights, but where so much punishment was dished out? That picture is still chill-inducing.
If I was a hungry man with a gun in my hand and some promises to keep...
BJ vs Diego was a pretty bad 5 round beating, although it didn’t make it all the way through the final round.
But you just KNOW that people would latch on to a talking point for the fight, and run with it. “Oh, Fitch is so much better now. He’s so much more improved. He’s so hungry. GSP threw everything he had at him in that first fight and couldn’t stop him! Fitch is coming for that belt baby!”
Hey, it sounds a lot more rational than “James Toney only needs to land one punch”. For crying out loud, James Toney was a considerably smaller underdog to Randy Couture than Frankie Edgar was to BJ Penn in their first fight. That tells you how much people had latched onto the idea of James Toney having a chance in that fight.
It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat. - Theodore Roosevelt
I do think people would generate a sensible narrative for that rematch.
But it would probably be more along the lines of “Fitch has to know this time around that he can’t out-wrestle GSP. If he goes in with the same gameplan as last time, he’s toast. He has to go for broke, similar to Shogun/Machida II.”
But there’s simply no way that anybody goes into a fight with GSP as anything other than a massive underdog. He’s just that good.
If I was a hungry man with a gun in my hand and some promises to keep...
Yet people really, truely belive Koscheck has a chance against GSP this time around, just because he says he’s going to train different and come in with a different game plan. Like that somehow is going to change the fact that GSP is a better wrestler and far superior striker than Koscheck.
But people will totally and completley believe that Koscheck has a chance, while pretty much writing off Fitch, who’s a considerably better fighter than Koscheck, all things considered.
You know what the funny thing is? If GSP goes in and fights Koscheck, Shields and Fitch in his next three fights, chances are he’s going to lose to one of them. Those are three damn good welterweights, and GSP can’t keep this run up forever. You can’t keep batting 1,000 at that elite level. Eventually, you will screw up and someone is going to knock you off your pedestal when you do.
It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat. - Theodore Roosevelt
I kind of agree.
GSP’s run has been amazing. Although, I do have to say that I think Kos has the best shot against him, simply because he can uncork serious power when he throws technique to the wind.
But that’s a little bit like saying “A 20% chance is better than a 10% chance.” It certainly is, but neither is anything approaching good.
If I was a hungry man with a gun in my hand and some promises to keep...
Koscheck has the best chance of the three because he’s the only one who can really get any offense going. He could possibly catch GSP with some absurd haymaker, stun him and put him down. After all, this is the same man who got knocked all over the cage by Matt Serra. It’s not like he’s incapable of being hurt. But Fitch and Shields have never shown any capabilities of doing something like that. Sheilds would have to take submit GSP to get him out of there, which is a tall order. It’s doubtful is Sheilds could get that fight to the ground, and if he could, I don’t really know what he could do from there. He’s a top position BJJ guy mostly, and GSP has a pretty good defensive guard. I don’t think Shields would be able to hold GSP on his back long enough to get to any sort of dominant position, let alone set up a submission. Fitch has an even taller task – since he has no clear cut way to get GSP out of the cage, he’d have to go in there and try to outhustle the man for 25 minutes.
It’s funny, Koscheck is probably the worst fighter out of the three, but he’s the best offensively, so at least he seems to have a chance. We can see him winning. When in reality, it’s the grinders who usually pull these things off. Nobody thought Frankie Edgar was going to beat BJ Penn because they couldn’t invision a scenario where he would get Penn out of the cage. Didn’t matter in the end. He shut Penn down. The guy who beats GSP will most likely do the same thing.
Then again, this is MMA. We’ll sit here and do all this prognosticating, then Fitch will come out in a rematch with GSP and knock the dude out cold with an overhand right, even though we said he didn’t have a way to finish the fight.
It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat. - Theodore Roosevelt
Hijack.
i’m learning that sig off by heart, i love that shit… my Dad taught me loads of stuff like that, always find they resonate fantastically…
“Often your tasks will be many,
And more than you think you can do.
Often the road will be rugged
And the hills insurmountable, too.
But always remember,
The hills ahead
Are never as steep as they seem,
And with Faith in your heart
Start upward
And climb ‘til you reach your dream.
For nothing in life that is worthy
Is ever too hard to achieve
If you have the courage to try it,
And you have the faith to believe.
For faith is a force that is greater
Than knowledge or power or skill,
And many defeats turn to triumph
If you trust in God’s wisdom and will.
For faith is a mover of mountains,
There’s nothing that God cannot do,
So, start out today with faith in your heart,
And climb ’til your dream comes true!”
~ Helen Steiner Rice
If you think you’re beaten, you are,
If you think you dare not, you don’t.
If you’d like to win, but think you can’t,
It’s almost a cinch, you won’t.
If you think you’ll lose, you’ve lost.
For out in the world you find -
Success begins with a fellow’s will,
It’s all in the state of mind.
Life’s battles don’t always go,
To the stronger or faster man.
But sooner or later the man who wins,
Is the one who thinks he can.
~ Anonymous
The heights by great men reached and kept were not attained by sudden flight, but they while their companions slept, were toiling upward in the night.
~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
"If Michael Bisping ever addresses me in public comment again, I will bury him where he stands." ~ Chael Sonnen
by RearNakedPoke on Sep 6, 2010 6:32 PM EDT up reply actions
Thanks man. That one by Helen Steiner Rice really hit home for me. My Dad’s been in real bad shape latley and I’ve been taking care of him. For some reason, that poem really touched me. Thanks for sharing it.
It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat. - Theodore Roosevelt
sorry to hear it
hope he gets well soon dude. yeah that’s my favourite fwiw (is the deepest…)
"If Michael Bisping ever addresses me in public comment again, I will bury him where he stands." ~ Chael Sonnen
by RearNakedPoke on Sep 11, 2010 4:30 PM EDT up reply actions
He’s starting to do better, thanks.
It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat. - Theodore Roosevelt
excellent.
"If Michael Bisping ever addresses me in public comment again, I will bury him where he stands." ~ Chael Sonnen
by RearNakedPoke on Sep 12, 2010 5:25 PM EDT up reply actions
just ask Buster Douglas.
Gatti. Dekkers. Pele. Aoki. Kang. Vanderlei. Basillio. Harry Greb.
by theworldsoldestsport on Sep 9, 2010 10:54 AM EDT up reply actions
i was at lagasse's stadium in the palazzo when that fight happened and everybody and i mean everybody wanted to see that beatdown
toney did not land anything if i remember correctly. i did not bet it b/c it was -750 but everybody liked it and were laughing at toney.
I'm all about covering the spread and moneylines. Glory favors the bold. Chance favors the prepared mind. Luck, well i have that too. University of Utah goes to the Pac-12 conference in 2011. I expect them to compete immediately for the conference CG. Brock Lesnar will defeat Cain Velasquez. The most hated and misunderstood person on the MMA blogs.. Utah and Boise take care of business in week one. Don't be surprised if they both go undefeated.
by wolfmanshowlforever on Sep 24, 2010 6:28 PM EDT reply actions
He landed three or four punches from his back to Randy’s ribs while Randy was in mount. I seriously doubt if Randy even noticed them. That was the most one sided main card UFC fight in a long, long time. Toney never even defended himself.
It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat. - Theodore Roosevelt
by Brian Mayes on Sep 24, 2010 10:05 PM EDT up reply actions
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