MMA isn’t exactly starving for polarizing figures at the moment: Tito Ortiz, Dana White, Nick Diaz, Kimbo Slice, Paul Varelans…I could go on for possibly another three to four minutes of empty thought.
Lyoto Machida is now on that list, not for being “unprofessional” (emphasis on the quotes), “unseasoned,” or “the name that didn’t belong in that sentence,” but for being “boring.” Like all the other controversial gentlemen, everybody has an opinion on this one.
Nobody’s really “puzzled” as to what they think: he’s an obnoxiously tedious fighter or a genius who has to aim if he is to do any wrong. Even then, he aims successfully, so he wins.
My analysis of these extremes will help tell you understand where you fall.
“The guy sucks and bores me to tears. There’s nothing exciting about his style. He doesn’t finish people, doesn’t hit hard, and I can’t wait ‘til this CRUSHING BORE runs into a ‘real striker’ so he finally gets exposed and the Machida hype train disintegrates—not only itself but all the fans inside it.”
Saying he sucks is too subjective to do anything with, except for the fact he’s undefeated and has beaten tougher guys in his 13 fights than most guys in MMA have even FOUGHT. Most people who make an argument like this in the first place will make a point of first discrediting his wins.
"B.J. Penn was at a 94-pound deficit." What’s the point of fighting B.J. Penn at all if simply fighting somebody heavier means a real, MORAL victory regardless of the outcome? Isn’t that a lose-lose?
"Rich Franklin was fighting out of his natural weight." Rich Franklin is bigger than Lyoto Machida. If one wanted to claim that he was INTIMIDATED into moving down a weight class, one could do so with the evidence that nobody but Machida had beaten him.
"Sokoudjou was overrated and has no ground game." Somebody had to get the world-class Judoka to the ground to do anything confusable with winning a fight. And now that said Judoka has knocked out his third-ranked 205 lb. fighter, is he still overrated? At what point does it stop being an accident?
Can anybody even remember the guy being in trouble? After he got out of Tito’s triangle armbar will you take something like that seriously again until he taps or falls asleep?
Saying he’s boring is obviously easier to “substantiate” than saying he sucks. He doesn’t chase you down and try to bulldoze you like Wanderlei, nor does he look exclusively for the knockout at the earliest possible time like Chuck.
He doesn’t seem to be in a hurry, and the fact that he hasn’t shown the UFC audience he can knock somebody cold yet is reason enough to think his punching power is inadequate.
Even on the ground, he seems to look less for submissions, and more for simply scoring. When you define “exciting,” in no dictionary will you find “adj. - guy who doesn't go for the finish.”
Though being 5-for-5 in his UFC career, he’s finished only one of them, albeit the best: Sokoudjou with an arm triangle. That also happens to be the only “real striker” of the five.
Sam Hoger, David Heath, Kaz Nakamura, and Tito Ortiz are not going to be releasing any striking instructionals in the near future, if so they would go unpurchased.
The rest of the top guys for him to fight happen to be good enough strikers to have the word “top” at least loosely attached. His next opponent will almost certainly be either Wanderlei or Thiago Silva.
The champ is tied up, Chuck is tied up, Shogun’s out until November or December, and the other two who would be most apt to be confused for guys worthy of being mentioned in the same sentence as the aforementioned (Forrest and Rashad) are tied up.
Wanderlei has said he’s been told his next opponent is Machida or Thiago, and the very nature of the structure implies he’ll either be waiting a while to fight, or be fighting one of those two.
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