HaXxorIzed

I wrote about Miura. dropbox.com/s/3bfvzg9dfxll… I'll miss him.

@ThisIsNotDSP That classic joke about how Ben Askren does not involve himself in debased, dishonourable concepts such as head movement being kept alive for another generation. Sasuga Jiri.

@HaXxorIzed I’m now picking his fights depending on whether his opponent has a good, powerful left hook or not. Something about that shot which he cannot see when he enters. Almost 1-1 same left hook to the jab Pereira dropped him with in fight 2.

It's absolutely the most Jiri thing imaginable that for all the narratives about how he's too honourable or whatever to just attack the injury, the finishing sequence was him stepping in and taking a good position off feints, and then having no real options for a safe entry.

@BlueDante22 Jiri seems more interested in fitting some kind of abstract idea of himself than who he actually is, a shadow projected on a wall. That's not inherently better or worse philosophically (I suppose?), but he's applied it in a way that stagnated him as a fighter.

@BlueDante22 One of the reasons it was enjoyable to write a whole retrospective on Tony's career was because he really, genuinely believed that he needed the "right" approach that fit "him" and made a whole bespoke approach to do that. Which included adaptation.

@AINTABBRUV @RyanAWagMMA Doesn't combine well with a lot of hard sparring either. 6-9 months of heavy hard sparring early to get used to being hit I understand, but that strength and conditioning + constant hard sparring beyond the initial adjustment phase together = ruinous damage.

@HaXxorIzed @RyanAWagMMA Calavita takes years off his fighters with his goofy ass S&C programming. He's David Goggins with a degree.

The components of Pico's game are all quite good and they fit together well, but he has no poise so he's always going to have a lot less consistency than it seems like he should

@RyanAWagMMA Even an extra 2-3 years of delayed development and I think he wouldn't be as locked into a thought process of attacking all the time early as he is. Which would give some room to use some of those tools to threaten and pace a fight, rather than all offense.

@RyanAWagMMA He's become a good cautionary tale on pushing too far, too fast. Walked right into his own early-career fragility and that + the damage + the training rate = a remarkably fragile fighter, especially before he can get his game rolling.

Jiri's probably always going to have the philosophy/approach to fighting that he has. The thing that lets him down is that he's never really built reliable tools to be a bit safer and probe a bit more when he's doing it.

Rewatch everything from 1:27 until 1:22. That's where a safe, probing lead hand or reliable kick to the body from range like you see in the lower weight divisions cuts a fighter in Ulberg's position apart.

this is the face @HaXxorIzed is implicitly making in every damn conversation we have and apparently, as he tells me, *I'm* the optimistic one

@PJ11819211 By revealed preferences, we see how many of the "terminally online" left definitely, irrefutably are not terminally online of the bbcode forums environment variety. Anyone from there isn't thinking the alt-right holds anything for long, let alone moral or tactical cohesion.

A lot of libs that moved to bsky moved under the belief that the right wing had completely hijacked the cultural zeigest, that we were entering a new chud age and that it was time to retreat. They didn't realize they only had to wait like 6-8 months and see the American right

@joannadangerfd Fold the thread as evidence into a moral treatise on how can MMA analysis ever expect to understand hip or shoulder feints if they can't even understand the difference between bisexual transfem debauchery and bisexual transfem debauchery ... feints.

I have a lot of really terrible and really great interactions on here pretty frequently, I also have some weird ones but this one has to take the cake. I literally have no idea what to make of this one. its just so out there im dumbfounded I don't have a reaction. It's been a day

@ThisIsNotDSP @fenoxsky I think that's why hunting a finish is often misunderstood. There's a kind of binary assumption by a lot of analysis that you are either going 0-100 to finish or not. When it should really be able evaluating the damage you are causing, and changing the approach in real time.

@HaXxorIzed @fenoxsky Even in that Emmett fight Ilia I think coasted in round 4 behind the jab after trying to get him out of there in round 3 and taking chances - not only could he afford to, but he had beaten the shit out of Emmett as well - increase those margins because he’s hurting.

Made a video discussing the problem with having a point fighting approach in MMA. Why doing enough to win rounds is not as safe as you think. youtu.be/hV31LuI4Fug

@ThisIsNotDSP @fenoxsky It's honestly a good litmus test of why Mak or Ilia are great fighters. The second either of them see a finishing chance and it's not risking their win condition, they are homing right in on it. Why wait, and risk things?

@fenoxsky Sort of joked before that someone like Ngannou or Tom are actually "safe" fighters - you knock the opponent out early, don't need to have 15-25 minutes to take knocks here and there.

@Gioarttt I think the Gastelum fight was a wakeup call for how far his approach could go. The layers are not there in extended exchanges for Adesanya. Which kind of forced him to range, but there his finishing threats fall off if the other person offers kick defense.

@HaXxorIzed His “pick you apart at range” approach to title fights limited those opportunities just as much too.

Broadly, so much of what made Adesanya's offense and defense effective is manipulation of a few key ideas that were all built around giving him an extra half-second to react, and to "see" what you actually wanted to do.

@Gioarttt Jan is an interesting point because while Adesanya could exchange, his game isn't really safe to consistently enforce it, especially given the power differential. It becomes more opportunistic, and later fights offered a lot less opportunity.

@Gioarttt I think the key difference in the pre Costa/Jan fights was Izzy had much more consistent threats to attack mobility. Costa never had any answer to the kicks, Whittaker's game is highly adversely affected by even a few + is bounding forward to close distance anyway, etc.

@ThisIsNotDSP Hence why it took a fighter as good as Ilia to finally make him pay for it on a situation that wasn't a large size/weight difference.

@ThisIsNotDSP Volk also has a bundle of attributes that mean being in those situations cost him less on most metrics. He has more safe leads, he can use the clinch or the threat of the clinch, and he's better at handling being pushed to the defense + making you pay a price for it.