MMA won't completely take over the boxing pipeline of athletic talent until they show a distinct penetration of the Latino market. Mexicans and Puerto Ricans - for the most part - couldn't give two ****s about MMA, but their great boxers are akin to gods. To a lesser degree, you could say the same thing about the African-American demographic. Think about the majority of your MMA talent right now: white Americans with NCAA wrestling backgrounds and Brazilians with BJJ backgrounds.

Problem is, you don't see a ton of Latino fighters in the heavier divisions. Middleweight and up are more American and European-centric, and those are the traditional money-making divisions.

There are no black kids in NCAA and high school wrestling now?


and obv...


and that's just 205.

Also, there's currently only 1 white American UFC champs, at 155 (2 more if you count the Cruz and Velasquez, who are of Mexican decent).

And of course the HW champ is a Mexican American with Brown Pride tattooed across his chest.

You know STA, for someone who's as good at graphs and charts as you are, you should know better than to cherrypick your stats.

I did say "to a lesser degree" first off, but anyone who knows both boxing and MMA will have a much easier time naming off prominent African-American boxers than prominent African-American mixed martial artists. The same thing applies to Mexicans. And until those talent pipelines are completely converted to MMA, boxing still has a sizeable pool to draw from. That was the original point of contention.

Also, by KneeCo saying there's only 1 white champ in the UFC right now, I'm led to believe he's looking at a 1-in-7 sample size and assuming it extrapolates to cover the entire UFC stable. That's wrong. There are currently 255 fighters under contract with UFC, of which 156 are American. The next highest contingent is 33 Brazilians. My post said the majority of the UFC's talent pool consists of white Americans with collegiate wrestling backgrounds and Brazilian BJJ guys. I realize not all 156 are white, but for argument's sake, I'm gonna guess probably around 100 are, probably close to two thirds. I also acknowledge that not all of them came from collegiate wrestling, but it's been a massive factory for the initial crop of UFC fighters before MMA-specific training facilities started to proliferate. In any case, ~100 + 33 = 133, which is a shade over half of 255. That would be a majority.

And I've only gone to this effort because by posting "there are no black kids in high school and NCAA wrestling," you're trying to make me look like I'm making ignorant racial assumptions, when that wasn't the essence of my post at all.

Think so? I do BJJ 3 times a week, boxing only once a week so you might be right. I think actually putting together boxing in sparring seemed a lot more complicated to me, but maybe grappling comes to me more naturally. I also may need to box some more heh.

I should also note my original post said the majority of MMA talent, then I went on to say the majority of the UFC's talent. Bad mistake, sorry.

Don't think you hate the blacks or anything like that geddy, you just should have written:

Cain Velasquez and Gilbert Melendez aint exactly white either btw.

Posting pics of three black guys doesn't really do anything to argue against Geddy's claim.

you realize that there are only about 30 people in the entire UFC's LHW division, yes? and the minority come from a wrestling background?

I'm not claiming that the majority of UFC/SF fighters from wrestling are black, but plenty are non-anglo. It's not very important in any case, let's put this issue to bed.

Wasn't he talking about all of MMA? Seems pretty clear to me that elite black athletes have still chosen boxing first between the two. Even if that's wrong, three guys don't prove a thing.

You also very dishonestly posted about the only division with great black wrestlers and said, "and that's just 205" as if other weight classes had a plethora of that type of black talent.

how lopsided do you think the ratio of great white wrestlers to great black wrestlers has to be for my statement to be dishonest and geddy to be correct?

There are plenty of both imo. more white ones, clearly, but that has something to do with white americans being 65% of the US population and african americans being 15%.

this isn't an argument worth taking up, bitchface. there do exist black (or at least non-white) UFC fighters from wrestling outside 205 btw.

when did this thread become a **** storm of people arguing?

Jim Miller vs. Ben Henderson Added to UFC on Versus 5

ill take this...

so the winner of this will get the winner of pettis/guida?

I think Pettis gets the shot if he beats Clay, since he was supposed to get the next shot before the draw happened.

Its funny, last month I would of told you Miller would walk through Henderson, but Henderson was really impressive over Bocek last UFC.

I definitely think this is the case. I tend to think of sports existing on a scale of "technique vs athleticism". Imagine pure strongman as raw talent/athleticism and chess as pure technique (flawed analogy but you get the picture).

Even at very high levels of boxing, some of the most important stuff is simply "I am faster than you". Hand speed and reaction time can absolutely cover tons of flaws in positioning and technique. In fact, it's fairly common for elite boxers to do something like leave their hands low or wing punches nontechnically at times, because they know they are so fast they can make up for the less-than-perfect technique. Even with as much technique as boxing has, an extremely large part of boxing is natural athleticism meaning "hand speed + reaction time + hitting hard + chin" = talent.

In high-level BJJ, this is rarely the case. You rarely see elite level BJJ players who wow you with athleticism, because BJJ is nearly all technique. Marcelo Garcia is/was a 170 pound grappler without much noticeable physique or athleticism who absolutely dominated grappling and finished 3rd and 2nd in the ABSOLUTES of the biggest grappling competition on the planet in consecutive competitions. Think about how absurd that would be in the context of boxing. If a worldwide boxing contest was held, with any boxer welcome to try to qualify, could a 170 pound boxer ever conceivably make it to the finals? Would that happen in wrestling, or kickboxing?

It happens in BJJ because technique is so massively important even over athletic gifts. I think the common-ness of smaller grapplers being able to easily dominate larger grapplers, even when those larger grapplers are also elite level, shows how much technique dominates natural gifts/athleticism. There is no argument to be made that Marcelo Garcia choked out eltie HW BJJ black belts because he was an ungodly physical specimen. He's utterly unremarkable physically. He just has unreal technique. The nuances of BJJ seem to run so much deeper than the nuances of many other sports, which in the end come down to "Do this technique this way, but also be REALLY FAST AND STRONG". For BJJ, strength and forcing a technique often hurt you because there's always a counter, so the only way to advance is ever more refined technique.

I know this can never really be proven in a rigorous sense, but I believe it's true. I'll leave with one final anecdote that I think illustrates my point very well. Rickson Gracie, original god of BJJ, was training his team of black belts at his gym for a huge upcoming competition. These were all very high level black belts who competed at high levels. Rickson announced that they would be drilling mount escapes that day. That's a super basic technique you teach white belts in their first week. Understandably, they were all annoyed and complained, and wanted to drill more advanced, sexy positions.

Rickson said "Ok, let's see who can escape mount." He mounted each of his black belts one by one, and not a single one could escape from his mount. He then proceeded to allow each of his black belts to mount him, and escaped from mount from each one in under 30 seconds. They spent the rest of the practice drilling and re-drilling the extremely fine points of mount escapes. Even at the high black-belt level, extremely basic moves like mount escapes have dozens of factors dealing with hand position, hand fighting, body weight distribution, wrist control, submission (armbars, chokes, hammerlocks) defense, hip rotation, hip position, momentum creations, etc, all of which must be accounted for and have counters, which have counter-counters, etc.

Really good post, and I agree with almost all of it. I think size plays the biggest roll in BJJ in the beginning stages. I used to dread having to roll with bigger guys, but I am about a year in now and usually don't mind at all, especially newer bigger guys, cause I know what works and what doesn't now and can handle them accordingly. I mean if you put a guy against me similar in skill and toss 30 pounds on him (I am about 170) yea I am gonna have a hard time, but I think guys like Mareclo are just THAT good and can compensate and out skill larger Black belts, no matter how big they are. I think the exceptions are guys like Roger who is a pretty big guy and probably the best grappler on the planet right now to boot.

I think the only thing I kinda disagree about, is about Marcello not being "athletic". While he may not be a stand out to some, I hear from guys who had trained with him that he is very deceptively strong, and in fact his speed and agility is really what can give people fits (the quickness in the way he armdrags guys to get their backs etc). Throw that in with his unique style and techniques that he more or less adapted to it, and he is a beast. I am hoping to maybe fly to New York with my instructor this year and do 2 weeks at his gym, would be a dream of mine.

c_c is right

http://mmajunkie.com/news/23586/broc...ane-carwin.mma
gg brock, carwin vs jds

http://mmajunkie.com/news/23589/juni...ane-carwin.mma
jds -260 carwin +200

jds to win, but I like Carwin +200

me too

wait how the **** is jds -260 against carwin...

I might sound way off but I see carwin as the favourite

why is he the favorite in your eyes?

nah, you're way off. JDS is better everywhere after the first 90 seconds and has better technique before that. if he stops the freight train, he wins.

are you guys just thinking hes gonna gas out like he did vs lesnar?

dos santos almost gassed out vs nelson... carwin woulda probably put him out in 1 minute.


JDS isnt better everywhere, he has less power (imo), less takedown offense and less takedown defense.