Stand and Deliver: Serra and Hughes had Recipe, Not Result
Published by Kal Thompson on May 25th, 2009 in Current Events

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Every now and then, the fight world needs a pair of rock’em sock’em robots just to keep the sport from becoming stagnant. While I’ll be the first to admit the fact that slugfests often look plain and awkward and lack technique, at least it’s not ballet. These days, all too often, too much strategy looks a lot more like ballet than MMA. And when was the last time you set the TiVo to capture the latest rendition of a performanc dance influenced by (thank you Google) George Balanchine?

On June 23, 2002, the late Pride organization brought us a masterpiece in excitement: Don Frye vs. Yoshihiro Takayama. True, it was ugly. The fighters were ugly. The entire match-up was ugly. However, I can guarantee that when the opening bell rang and those two men were slinging leather faster than Nolan Ryan, you were not sitting down. Your blood was pumping as hard as theirs. You were excited. You knew that you were watching a fight.

I admire the ground game, and technique, as much as any other true MMA enthusiast, but the sport needs more battles, not more ballet. When the fight is standing, stand and fight. It’s simple, yet even current UFC poster boy Anderson Silva has resorted to the “no punch, all dance” routine during his last two outings. The results have been atrocious to all who endured watching. Damn you, Michael Jackson.
Even UFC President Dana White has attributed the success of the company to one single fight: Forrest Griffin vs. Stephan Bonnar I. During that match, millions of viewers watched those two fighters battle on Spike TV. That “rocke’em sock’em” match provided the excitement that became the turning point for the company.
For a match to become a “fight fan’s fight,” there are several key ingredients. However one of those ingredients stands high above the others: personal vendetta. When you have two heaping scoops of “personal vendetta,” you expect a certain type of fight.

At UFC 98, as I was preparing to watch the proposed grudge match of all grudge matches, Matt Serra vs. Matt Hughes, I had already bought into the hype. Serra and Hughes often admitted to despising each other, time and time again. The two men had bad-mouthed each other as bad as Ali and Frazier. Serra had professed how bad he simply wanted to “hit Hughes in his big mouth,” and Hughes had expressed similar sentiment. The key ingredient was in place for a stand up war. Even though Hughes and Serra are primarily grapplers, this fight promised fireworks via fists. Yet, other than a few nice take-downs and a clash of heads that produced a knock down, the fight was more fizzle than sizzle. Bottom line, if you light the fuse pre-fight, at least set off the bottle rockets when you get in the cage.

MMA is a wonderful sport.. An aggressive ground game is exciting; and take-downs play a crucial role, but when you prepare fight fans for a throw down on the feet, please stand and deliver. The sport occasionally needs that type of fight. After all, a key to the continued success of MMA rests in the entertainment value for the average fan shelling out the bucks.