Polish MMA - What do you think?

The fear factor would be too high. Fedor strikes fear into his opponents, even Mirko in his prime was being chased around the ring. Fighting Fedor is a test of nerve. If I fought him, he could open his arms and let my 105kgs ass smack him straight on, it'd be the Mark Hunt syndrome, when r u gonna hit me harder? I couldn't drop him. The nuts, aha, that's the trick. Nail him there slyly and u r off

that wasn't fear of fedor that you saw, that was mirko's need to stay in the range of his left leg. one could argue hunt chased him too but neither fights were his opponent chasing him as much as they were mirko trying to keep the distance for his most effective tool. observe the kongo fight, there he did fight on the inside and looked awful (neither fighter really looked good), he certainly was smart for trying to make the distance play to his strengths.
With hunt, he actually nailed him with the big kick but hunt is hunt.

you'd think mirko would become more comfy on the inside but it just hasn't happened

i doubt the elite pro fighters really fear eachother at all. I do agree that fedor tests his opponents composure though, a lot of that comes from him employing his own gameplan so well. and that is couture's main strength-ring generalship. a fight between those two is like a fight between arguably the 2 best ring generals there are.

i think fedor's chin is good, not avg but good. fujita hit him flush and had him in more trouble than he had wandy in their fight. but damn, talk about the will power to stay up.

I agree with u 2 a point but Crocop was clearly retreating from Fedor, more than his leg reach permitted. He knew that Fedor would take him down and start to pin him. Crocop had the strength to parry Fedor's pounding fists but knew that he'd waste a fair bit of energy in the process. Crocop seemed happy to trade blows at times but Fedor is simply better on the ground and holds his ground better. Thanks for the text btw Ian

well he likes to move into the zone and out of the zone, but i got the impression he was looking for a cushion, let's say he needs 1.5 meters (overly technical, i know) for him to launch and connect with that kick, all anyone has to do then is just close quick on him-exactly what emelianenko did. he knows his game how close he has to be to not be in danger of a takedown.

You brought up a good point in trading blows with fedor BUT the whole reason fedor lets lose with his fists is to close the distance for a trip or throw. Crocop wasn't only exchanging but he has to moniter that whole time, when he's in close ofcourse against anyone with a ground game, looking to defend the shoot or bodylock.
Everyone knows he's not a threat as far as takedowns so he gets stuck playing kickboxer against an increasingly savvy field of strikers who can perform high percentage low-risk takedowns, or vs primary grapplers who have enough foundation in boxing or kicking to set up their takedowns. it's sad cause i get the impression he is a good person and very professional, i hope he gets back on the winning track.

any upcoming local galas, if you know of any then gimme a shoutout and we'll head out to it?

I know the european bjj tourney went on in portugal this weekend, and really hope the guys from the club did well (well all the polish reps really) and there's a tourney in dortmund in week or so, it's what most of the technically sound ground guys in polish mma need to be doing to up that part of their game.

Crocop is a super dude, a real prankster too. He's widely respected and is also a politician of sorts in Croatia. He's a real family man too. For an interesting perspective on coiling in boxing, check out the Youtube video with Lennox Lewis and Chris Eubank. It looks at the distance aspect for striking. What Crocop did in that fight to good effect was to keep himself on his toes whilst Fedor pursued him like a troll. I'd love to go to an event Ian. As long as we'd be watching a bjj tourney and not a bj tourney, right? Hehehe. Bytom is the best bet, I've never been there. I echo ur sentiments about Crocop getting back to form, word has it that he suffered a cracked rib against Cheik Kongo. That's gotta hurt!!

Gracie Barra sent six representatives in total to Portugal... four gold medals and one silver.
over a thousand people entered from across Europe. I have a friend who trains BJJ at Gracie Barra Poznan and they sent only three representatives there and won three golds. three European champians from the same club... incredible

Robert Zmuda (GB Gdynia) Silver
Anna Jarus GB Poznan Gold
Błazej Stateczynski GB Poznan Gold
Przemysław Wojnowski GB Poznan Gold
Maciej Polok (GB Tychy/ Katowice) Gold
Robert Trzcionka (GB Tychy/ Katowice)

it should be noted that Robert Trzcionka won all his matches when it came to the team tourney.
he was the defending champion f or his weight class but was sick as a dog when he left for Portugal. he is really better than his placing in the individual tourney. he was bloody sick and after being ousted early on in the tourney came back to win all his matches in the team tourney (the only one to do so).

There will be a tourney in germany in march and polish competitors will do very well there.

F. shamrock recently mentioned the so called pending "anti-trust" lawsuit against Dana White due to the monopoly factor...I dont know if he was joking....

It'll be interesting to see how Brock Lesnar will fare against Frank Mik. I think Brock will take him from an early onslaught. It depends on the ref, if the ref is one of those who jumps in quickly then Frank is screwed but, otherwise, Frank could armbar him. I favour Brock here

if lesnar gets a hold of him he will just do a body slam on him and it will totally wreck the other guy :P :D

Just as I said, it depended on the ref, he let Mir continue after taking a solid beating and chalk up the win

i have not heard that myself but it is the sort of thing Shamrock would say
he has a wicked sense of humour though
Dana White is taking Randy Couture to court for loss of earnings and Randy damaging the UFC's reputation. this has the potential to be a PR nightmare for them. I cannot think of a more popular fighter. Randy is intelligent, articulate and a great ambassador for the sport.

The Minotaur wants Randy after beating Tim Sylvia....Dana White hates it when any fighter from Pride beats his own....even though he bought out "Pride FC".....

Kimbo Slice Vs Tank Abbott, any predictions? Tank Abbott will get taken out in the 1st round. Kimbo moves well for a big dude and will catch Tank square on the jaw. Kimbo has surely learned from his slip-up against Sean Gannon and now has more stamina. Tank's level is more like Bird, the big black dude Kimbo beat up

it all depends on whether Tank has trained or not. Tank is the harder hitter and has better standup. he is no slouch on the ground either. Personally I will go with Tank, the loveable drunk that he is, although I am starting to think that he is getting a bit washed up. I expect to see a frantic flurry of punches coming from Kimbo in the first minute if Tank is still standing at the end of the bombardment, he will probably win.
it is a difficult fight to call, both of them can bang.

now back to Polish MMA for a moment...


http://www.ibjjf.org/results/2008euro.htm

these are the results from the BJJ Championships in Portugal.
Loads of medalists come from Polish clubs
mainly from the West of Poland: Poznan (Gracie Barra and Strefa Walki) or Szczecin (Berserkers) or Gorzow Wlkp (Pretorians)

Kimbo won't be afraid and his training from Bas Rutten will pay off. Kimbo has yet to be hit really hard tho. I think he can take a punch. Kimbo will emerge as the victor!!

Good on you Seanus, you may be right. We will have to wait and see.
It looks like Tank has trained for the fight. There is even footage on the internet of him running up a hill. Which is a lot more than his training for his previous boughts.
At least it ought to be a good fight - none of this 'handbags at ten paces' malarkey

Great posting alligator!! Yeah, he has really pounded the streets to get into shape, the old Ozzy Osbourne way. 30 mins on the exercise bike, immediately followed up with a cigar, cocktail and Mars bar. Then, hell to leather on the bike again for 40 mins, 2 cocktails etc, so it goes.

yeah and the week before the fight, he will cut down on the cycling to get himself into peak condition:-) I saw his last fight he admits to being completely out of shape, he insinuated that he was drunk on the plane on the way to London for the fight. He was frantically trying to get an early knock out as he knew his conditioning was awful. His take down was pretty good though. However he was completely out of condition and more or less finished after the first 30 seconds.
I still think that Tank Abbott along with the Gracies are the most important thing to happen to Martial Arts in the 20th Century. They have between them debunked most of the nonsense about martial arts. I remember training Kung Fu once in the early 1990s and being told that we were not allowed to spar or practice our techniques as it was too dangerous and we would seriously injure each other.
Utter nonsense, the sifu did not want his students to realise that what he was teaching them was useless.
A Kung Fu master once told Tank Abbott that he could easily beat him but was not allowed to demonstrate his techniques in a fight, to which Tank replied that he could fly but was not allowed to demonstrate how he did it.... Priceless
Roy Shaw the bare knuckle boxer and former armed robber was once asked if he had ever fought any martial arts practioners to which he replied 'it is hard to know what they were trying to do with them sprawled out unconscious at your feet'

Gracies got beaten with the Judo Master Kimura...thus "Kimura armlock"...go google it..
Sakuraba is the Gracie Hunter...Gracies and Brazilian Demo team studied with Greco guys...and with some Catch Wrestlers...they are not Jitsu anymore....they may have brought out the Grappling range....but the late Bruce Lee already had that, in fact in everyone of his movies he ended the fight in the grappling range...Bruce lees grappling instructor was Judo Gene LeBell...who incidently challenged Helio gracie..who backed down....Gene LeBell studied Catch as Catch can with Ed Strangler Lewis...
I dont know too many Gracie or Brazilian devotees who can even HANG with a CatchWrestler....Tony Ceechine, Matt Furey...go to Scientific Wrestling.com...Brazilian Jitsu guys are dead....Im in NyC and will challenge anz Brazilian ***** do Greco+Catch+Boxing....Couture scared the **** out of Gonzaga....so much blood...

I am well aware of it. The Gracies were so egotistical that they named the 'shoulder' lock after Master Kimura.
I was not trying to suggest that the Gracies are invincible and that Brazilian Jiu Jitsu beats all other forms of fighting. Neither am I trying to suggest that Tank Abbott is anything more than a bar room brawler.
In the 1970s and 80s it was enough to say that you were a black belt in Origami and the other other guy was likely to back down. I used to work with a gypsy bare knuckle boxer who was working the doors in London clubs in the 70s and he told me lots of stories about guys who thought they knew Kung Fu or some form of dancing karate becoming unstuck. Many people believed that if you studied a martial art it meant that all those hours of punching thin air guaranteed that you would win every fight and the other guy would not even land a punch.
The Gracies challenged masters of other styles to fights. Without the Gracies there would be no UFC and we would be having academic arguments about whether aikido is better than tae kwon do.
As for Tank, he was not a martial artist at all. He was a big strong guy who fought in bars and he made a lot of theoretical martial arts masters look very foolish indeed. He had a lot of boxing and wrestling experience.
Wrestling particularly 'catch as catch can' is very effective. You only have to look at the MMA fighters with good wrestling backgrounds and what they have achieved.

well that fight looked like a work.

kimbo's shots didn't seem to land clean and then suddenly tank did a face first dive, that's two fights he's had that were both very suspicious looking. I guess with all the money spent on promoting him and the production (bringing in some florida based rappers and hype machine) that the promoters spent on kimbo alone, they really couldn't have anything less than a guaranteed win for the black hope of mma.

It was also shady as block of flats in Nowa Huta because Tank's been in way tougher battles than the minute or so i just saw. The only times i've seen him laid out were against cabbage carrera, belfort and pedro rizzo.

It's sad to see in this sport when there are a half dozen fighters here in Poland that could do better. How come we aren't seeing a push in chicago. there are huge opportunities there for a polish contingent to generate a lot of interest (read dollars) there.

edit-bjj is not dead at all, Mino, serra, gsp, bj penn, hughes, anderson silva, almeida, f. shamrock all rely or have relied heavily on bjj.

And now look at polish mma it's sooooo influenced by bjj that it's almost laughable to suggest otherwise.

Kimbo was always gonna win that fight IMHO. He wants a piece of Tyson now. Not gonna happen but what a paycheck for both guys that'd be. Who should Kimbo's next opponent be? I say Crocop. I think u'd see fear in Kimbo's eyes for the first time.

fair play to you Seanus, you were right

i found a clip on Youtube it is very nasty and grainy however it is still watchable
youtube.com/watch?v=N093yuecHvg

Foreigner 4 may have a valid point - if you look at the final knockdown Tank manages to be knocked clean out but still has the presence of mind to land on all fours like a cat. If he was knocked spark out he would not have landed in a press up position

at least they both came out with the intention of banging
it looks like the end of the line for Tank now though - he should go back to professional wrestling

that was the final thing that makes it look so dodgy and i actually only picked up on that point about an hour or so ago when i took one last look at it. falls with his right hand as support, starts to get up then plays hurt a lil more. That is a man taking a dive for dollars.

Yeah, it looked shady. I think it's too early for Lesnar Vs Kimbo. That'd be a biggie. Kimbo Vs Tim Sylvia is the one people wanna see I think. I'd love to see Fedor Vs Kimbo, Fedor would need to be ultra cautious but would take him

there is a much better clip on muchosucko
muchosucko.com/show/kimbo_slice_vs_tank_abbott-40020

for the final knockdown Tank does not land in a press up position. His left arm was down by his side and he lands on his right arm
i could not see this on the earlier clip as it was too grainy

having said that Tank had clearly given up at this point. I think he could have got back up but did not want to keep taking punishment.

As for Kimbo, he is not much of an ambassador for the sport. There are enough people who want to see MMA banned without Kimbo bragging about knocking an earlier opponent's eye out of its socket and boasting that years later his victim has to walk around wearing sunglasses due to the permanent injury he sustained

Bas Rutten is not much better by saying that he admires Kimbo because Kimbo likes to hurt people. This kind of thing does not happen in boxing and look at the number of people who would like to see boxing banned.

There are those who could shake up Kimbo but he ain't gonna fight them any time soon. Butterbean is next in line apparently, he will hurt Kimbo a little but, for me, it's Kimbo all the way on that one. Too fast for the big man. Brock Lesnar has the ability to beat Kimbo but that one's a while away. Belfort should step up, Kimbo would be on the back foot against him. Mir is too gifted technically for Kimbo. Tito Ortiz is possible.

personally I would like to see Kimbo get a good hiding. However he is very marketable so his management would like him to cash them a few cheques first before putting him up against a top-class fighter.
Butterbean is a powerful yet morbidly obese striker but I think he is too much of a one-trick pony to make an interesting fight. Kimbo has fought far better boxers in MMA and triumphed already.
I would love him to fight Brock Lesner - that would be a very profitable fight for the organisers. The PPV sales would be supersonic.
Belfort and Tito are too light. the athletic board would never sanction the fight unless they had been locked in a shed for several months and force fed cake :-)

Frank Mir would take Kimbo to the mat and snap his achilles tendon

I would love to see more Polish fighters in the UFC and similar MMA events- however I do not think that it will happen soon. With Zuffa buying Pride and running it into the ground it meant that Brazilian Top Team and Chute Boxe are more or less finished as organisations and the top Brazilian fighters are all heading state side. The North American market is simply flooded at the moment with experienced Brazilian fighters who would have otherwise been fighting in Japan.

Frank Shamrock recently joined the Catchwrestling board of Scientificwrestling.com...
Josh Barnett is training Rampage Jackson....Gracies will only let you know who they beat..in the early days they did beat martial artists who had no knowledge of the grappling range...as well as ****** street fighters...but they never let on about how they got whipped when some wrestlers came in and threw them around.....WHY do you think they all went to Japan and Pride in the early years including Helio?....to avenge their losses by Judo and UWF wrestlers who went right thru them ....I am a CatchWrestler in NYC...my privates are Gracie and Machado black belts who come to me for counters to their system...they recently informed me how they recently added the "Crucifix" a wrestling move to their repertoire.....I laughed...they know throws not takedowns...Go and RENT the early Pride fights and watch all the Brazilians get taken to school....including the classic....Dan Henderson knocking out Renzo with an uppercut when he attempts to "shoot"....