Urijah Faber Gets Finished, But I Don't Like This Type Of Stoppage....

Well, this is my first article.  I've been trying to think of something that I actually care about and been having a hard time.  The guys on here are so good and cover subjects so well.

Last night Urijah Faber lost his title to a very game opponent and while I recognize this as a normal and legitimate stoppage it's also the kind of stoppage that I don't like and I'll tell you why.

Faber wasn't hurt there.  Did you see how fast he got up?  He wasn't dazed, he wasn't shaken, he was fine.  If he'd just taken that hard shot that put him down, but hadn't been jumped on, the fight would have gone on fine and I think he easily could have recovered.

The trick in MMA to finishing a fight is to jump all over your opponent at the first sign of weakness and throw non stop punches because the ref will stop the fight.  Just ask Chuck Liddell or Wanderlei.  Those guys are great finishers but if you look at a good deal of their fights they didn't actually stop the guy, they just threw a lot of punches.  The ref will stop the fight regardless of if you're hurt or not.

I'm not a fighter, but I wrestled, did a little boxing, took kenpo for years and I train now.  I've also been in a good deal of street/bar fights when I was younger.  Every once in a while you run into the guy that just goes nuts and throws a ton of stuff at you.  Any real fighter will tell you the best thing to do is move away but if you can't then the best thing to do is cover up well.  They can't keep throwing that much heat like that for long, they'll gas so fast.

It annoys me that they'll stop a fight just because someone threw 10 punches where maybe 2 landed well and that fighter isn't even hurt from them.  It's a real strategy to cover up, take a little damage, and let the guy punch himself out, then you have your way with them.

If they used this stoppage method in boxing then we'd never have had the joy of seeing Ali's "rope a dope" which he famously used against George Foreman at the "Rumble in the Jungle".  He actually PLANNED to be hit over and over and over because he knew he could cover up, take a small amount of damage, tire George out and then do away with him.  It was a brilliant strategy and it worked.  It's also something that the refs would never let happen in MMA.

I think a ref stoppage should have to do with someone being hurt not the number of potentially worthless punches the opponent could fire off.  

They'll say that the fighter wasn't intelligently defending himself but I'd like to know what the intelligent defense is for that 30 seconds when someone is giving you all they got?  Besides cover up.  They obviously don't consider that the right answer.  Should they use old karate techniques and actually try to block each punch Ralph Macchio style?  Should they try to hug their opponent like boxing?  

I've won plenty of fights where someone was hitting me hard over and over but because I was well covered up it really didn't do much damage.

Am I alone in my thinking?  Do you guys think these type of stoppages are right or do you think the refs should wait until that the guy really isn't defending.