PeteF3 Posted December 9, 2015 Report Share Posted December 9, 2015 One clarification: the early UFCs were only about "determining the best martial art" on the surface. The real purpose of the shows was to advertise for Gracie Jiu Jitsu--so yes, the superiority of BJJ was the expected end result. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JerryvonKramer Posted December 9, 2015 Author Report Share Posted December 9, 2015 Big hype for old man Gracie now with the entire Gracie clan behind him. This gives some credibility to PeteF3's claim just now that this whole thing is just one big pimping showcase for the Gracies. Can you say a bit more about this Pete? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JerryvonKramer Posted December 9, 2015 Author Report Share Posted December 9, 2015 Final: Gracie vs Savate Guy Gerard. Gracie gets Gerard grounded and he taps in less than a minute. Oh well. This was a bit like watching an old episode of Superstars, all squashes. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JerryvonKramer Posted December 9, 2015 Author Report Share Posted December 9, 2015 Gracie is arrogant as fuck. Heel! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mad Dog Posted December 9, 2015 Report Share Posted December 9, 2015 Big hype for old man Gracie now with the entire Gracie clan behind him. This gives some credibility to PeteF3's claim just now that this whole thing is just one big pimping showcase for the Gracies. Can you say a bit more about this Pete? Rorion Gracie was part owner in the company. They carefully selected the Gracie that was going to fight in the UFC for maximum effect. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JerryvonKramer Posted December 9, 2015 Author Report Share Posted December 9, 2015 Turns out ol Art Jimmerson wasn't that much of an idiot after all: http://www.mmamania.com/2013/11/16/5109964/ufc-1-story-art-jimmerson-lone-boxing-glove-mma Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GSR Posted December 9, 2015 Report Share Posted December 9, 2015 Big hype for old man Gracie now with the entire Gracie clan behind him. This gives some credibility to PeteF3's claim just now that this whole thing is just one big pimping showcase for the Gracies. Can you say a bit more about this Pete? Rorion Gracie was part owner in the company. They carefully selected the Gracie that was going to fight in the UFC for maximum effect. There was also some condition that they wanted to face Jimmerson in the first round to prove that Gracie Jiu-Jitsu was superior to Boxing. There's some fun and pretty brutal stuff in the early UFC's (Patrick Smith/Scott Morris, Kimo/Royce, Melton Bowen/Steve Jennum, Tank Abbott/John Matua, Tank/Oleg Taktarov, Gary Goodridge/Paul Herrara and Don Frye/Amaury Bitetti) whilst at UFC 14 you've got Mark Coleman vs Maurice Smith, which pitches an NCAA/Olympic wrestler against a world champion kickboxer in an excellent fight. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JerryvonKramer Posted December 9, 2015 Author Report Share Posted December 9, 2015 For what it's worth I am finding myself drawn to want to watch UFC 2 now. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GSR Posted December 9, 2015 Report Share Posted December 9, 2015 Ken Shamrock vs. Patrick Smith Smith has a record of 250-0!!!! He's a kickboxing dude. Shamrock gets him grounded immediately. Leglock by him. Shades of Dory Jr. Ha ha. Oh he's going for the ankle lock. And Smith taps out. There goes 250 and 0 for Smith. These fights are extremely short. Ooooooh, we get some post-match and Smith is pissed! I forgot about these 'fantasy' records that they created for the fighters! In UFC 8, Thomas Ramirez is announced as 'undefeated in over 200 challenge matches on the Islands' (no idea what this means!). He proceeded to get sparked and KO'ed in 7 seconds by Don Frye. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mad Dog Posted December 9, 2015 Report Share Posted December 9, 2015 For what it's worth I am finding myself drawn to want to watch UFC 2 now. If you approach the UFC with a pro wrestling mindset in regards to faces, heels and card placement it's very compatible. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
supremebve Posted December 9, 2015 Report Share Posted December 9, 2015 Those original UFCs are so strange in retrospect. Some of those fights were downright irresponsible. I'm going to try to explain how different styles kind of work in MMA, but I'll probably end up typing myself in a corner. So, Brazilian jiu jitsu was the dominant style during the first era of MMA, but a lot of that is because grappling is something that people know or don't know. Even a white belt would tap someone with no experience fairly quickly, because a lot of jiu jitsu is designed to go counter to what people naturally want to do. After jiu jitsu dominated guys like Maurice Smith with kickboxing and Mark Coleman with amateur wrestling figured out ways to make their lives a little more difficult. Kickboxing worked, because it turns out kicking people's legs is one of the most effective ways to sap your opponent of strength to take you down. Wrestling worked, because wrestlers weren't clueless about what to do once a fight went to the ground. They could keep their arms and necks protected while also being big, strong guys who could wreck dudes with ground and pound. The crazy thing that happened is that jiu jitsu, wrestling, and kickboxing/muay thai became a sort of rock paper scissors game within the sport. if a wrestler could get one of those guys to the ground and use their ground and pound they won. If a kickboxer could stay standing, they'd win. If the kickboxer went to the ground he basically automatically lost. if the jiu jitsu guy got a wrestler on his back, the jiu jitsu guy had the huge advantage. Then came guys like Vitor Belfort and Randy Couture. Vitor was a Brazillian jiu jitsu blackbelt except he won all his fights with his crazy hand speed and punching power. Here is a guy that no one wanted to go to the ground with, but it turns out that you don't want to stand with him either. Randy Couture was a highly decorated wrestler who had some experience as a amateur boxer and could compete with anyone striking or grappling. If you wanted to be competitive going forward in the sport you had to be able to be at least competent striking, wrestling, and grappling(I use wrestling as the skill that it takes to get people on the ground and grappling as what happens once you get on the ground. It is an oversimplification of both aspects of MMA, but it makes things a little easier to understand.) After Vitor Belfort and Randy Couture you had guys like Wanderlei Silva and Chuck Liddell as the next big adjustment. The difference between Wanderlei and Chuck and the people who came before them were that they weren't trying to do everything. Randy Couture was a guy who could do almost everything, and tried to incorporate everything into his fights. Chuck and Wandy(MMA fighters seem to be referred to by their first names for some reason) could do almost everything, except they weren't really interested in doing anything other than knocking people out. So Wanderlei, who was a jiu jitsu black belt and Chuck who was an amateur wrestler rarely used those skills offensively. Chuck used his wrestling skills almost exclusively to keep people from taking him down. He made his opponents stand in front of him and deal with his devastating punching power. His entire skillset was designed to make his opponents fight on his terms. Those guys knew what they did better than anyone else and built their other skills around maximizing that aspect of their game. Next up was the BJ Penn/Georges St. Pierre generation. These were guys who could do it all, and were able to pick and choose which skills were more appropriate from fight to fight. BJ Penn was nicknamed the prodigy, because he was essentially a grappling savant. He was as good of a grappler as anyone on the planet, but could also outbox most MMA fighters. Georges St. Pierre was a guy who never wrestled competitively until he started training MMA. He was able to learn how to wrestle with a style that was essentially built for MMA. He wouldn't win a wrestling tournament, but he could outwrestle even the most decorated amateur wrestlers in an MMA context. He also was one of the most varied dynamic strikers that we had ever seen at the time. Both of those guys could decide what kind of fight they wanted to fight, whether or not they wanted to strike or grapple, and adjust mid fight if they had to. In order to beat one of those guys you needed to be able to strike, wrestle, and grapple at an elite level. If there was a weakness in your game, they'd find it and exploit it. That is a simplified version of the history of MMA, but you can kind of track how the sport changed over the years. It was conceived as a competition to see what fighting style was the best, except that was a very short sighted goal. The problem is that a battle of styles doesn't really take into account things like athleticism, coaching, and evolution. If the sport was going to survive they needed to go through all of these changes. Hopefully that was helpful. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mad Dog Posted December 9, 2015 Report Share Posted December 9, 2015 I think it's UFC 4, if you get there parv... Just skip Shamrock/Gracie. No questions, hit skip, it's 36 minutes of Gracie in Shamrock's guard and you'll never watch another MMA fight again. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
supremebve Posted December 9, 2015 Report Share Posted December 9, 2015 I think it's UFC 4, if you get there parv... Just skip Shamrock/Gracie. No questions, hit skip, it's 36 minutes of Gracie in Shamrock's guard and you'll never watch another MMA fight again. Dammit, I should have put something in that above post about how the unified rules made things better too. Having a referee who could stand fighters up, rounds and weight classes made fights more exciting. Yeah, there are times when two fighters styles make a boring fight, but you'll never see another 36 minutes of nothing fight. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mad Dog Posted December 9, 2015 Report Share Posted December 9, 2015 I still have nightmares about that awful fight. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GOTNW Posted December 9, 2015 Report Share Posted December 9, 2015 Can't believe I hadn't thought of it but Cro Cop vs Noguiera is very much a kickboxer-BJJ clash and it's amazing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cIE-uZN07aA Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GSR Posted December 10, 2015 Report Share Posted December 10, 2015 I think it's UFC 4, if you get there parv... Just skip Shamrock/Gracie. No questions, hit skip, it's 36 minutes of Gracie in Shamrock's guard and you'll never watch another MMA fight again. Shamrock/Gracie is UFC 5. On a similar vein Shamrock/Severn from UFC 9 is 30 minutes of nothingness. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JerryvonKramer Posted December 10, 2015 Author Report Share Posted December 10, 2015 Some fantastic posts from ssupremebvem here. Thanks guy. One other quick question: I've seen some people described as street fighters? What does that mean exactly? What is a real life street fighter? Just someone who grew up fighting literally in the street? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WingedEagle Posted December 10, 2015 Report Share Posted December 10, 2015 Some fantastic posts from ssupremebvem here. Thanks guy. One other quick question: I've seen some people described as street fighters? What does that mean exactly? What is a real life street fighter? Just someone who grew up fighting literally in the street? In a broad sense. In the early UFC days it generally referred to someone without extensive formal training in a given martial art or wrestling. More of a marketing posture than legit recruitment of Ken or Ryu. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mad Dog Posted December 10, 2015 Report Share Posted December 10, 2015 Tank Abbott and Kimbo Slice would be street fighters. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WingedEagle Posted December 10, 2015 Report Share Posted December 10, 2015 Even Tank had an amateur background though -- nothing of note, but its not as though he was Van Damme's buddy in Bloodsport. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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