You Want Action? Then Get Rid Of 'Standing Them Back Up'

There has been a lot of talk recently concerning wrestling’s effect on Mixed Martial Arts, namely its detracting from the action of fights. The claim is that wrestlers are flooding in to MMA with 'lay-and-pray' tactics and using their top position dominance to grind out decisions.

But there are many problems with this assertion, the biggest being that in fights that end up being mostly 'lay-and-pray' the fighter on the bottom can be just as much to blame as the fighter on top. Often we see in the modern 'striker versus grappler' matchup what we are actually seeing is two mixed martial arts fighters, one with a heavy strength in grappling over the other.

So the 'striker' spends his camp practicing defensive grappling; stopping ground and pound and defending submissions. Examples:

Jon Fitch against Ben Saunders: Jon Fitch is a black belt in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, an NCAA wrestler with some Judo experience. Ben Saunders is a Jeet Kune Do striker who had just earned his brown belt in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu.

Fitch, not surprisingly, took Saunders down and controlled him the entire fight and was showered with boos for 'laying-and-praying.' But what many people didn't talk about was Ben Saunders' defensive grappling, he gained double wrist control in a butterfly guard.

Saunders scratched and clawed to gain and regain this guard all fight, a guard that's sole purpose is to get sweeps. To elevate the top man's hips and escape or sweep, but Saunders never once elevated and just used the threat of it to stop Fitch from passing and used the wrist control to stop submission attempts and most of the strikes.

Josh Koscheck against Paul Daley: Again another total mismatch in terms of skills and this boiled down to Koscheck wanting to get half guard and rain down punishment and Daley wanting to get back to full guard.

In the full guard Daley locked down, breaking down Kos' posture and then would just hold him there.


And this is where we find the common thread, both Saunders and Daley were banking on the ref to step in and stand them up. This is an extremely common tactic for guys who are not very able on the ground, stall the action any way they can to the point where they get a free stand up via an upset crowd and a bored ref.

It makes sense, it saves energy and it minimizes the amount of damage fighters take and it opens fewer chances for submissions.

So I move to have the 'ref can stand up the fight' struck from the books, the only way to get up is to get up.

And then the ref does actually stand the fight up, like Dan Miragliotta standing up Fitch while he was in the process of punching Saunders and it just encourages this behavior. Go back and watch the fight and see how much action in the rest of the round after that stand up, almost none because Saunders is hoping to get stood up again.

Some people will baulk at this and claim that this will lead to more boring fights as fighters stall their way to wins. I would counter that with the fact that the honus is now on the bottom fight to escape as quickly as possible.

Look at the Ronaldo Souza-Joey Villasenor fight, Villasenor knew he couldn't roll with Souza on the mat and he knew he couldn't stall his way to a stand up, so his whole focus on the ground was 'escape.' He did it from guard, half guard, side control, and the full mount against one of the best grapplers in MMA.

Fights will play out more because either the bottom fighter will be able to escape or sweep or his attempts will open holes for strikes or advancing position, or it will sap the strength of the bottom fighter and allow the top position fighter to lock in a submission.

Get rid of the easy way out and it forces the bottom fighter to make a move, take a risk. In short it forces action, in the correct way not in subjective and idiotic stand ups because some local ref has no clue what Jiu Jitsu is...

If you don't that happens in the big promotions, go watch the Souza-Villasenor fight.