Luke Thomas stands six-foot-thirteen and is a former US Marine. He’s got me on height, but I have about forty pounds on him. If we ever met in the cage it’s a sure bet I’d take him down, provided I could get past his freakishly long reach. Fortunately we duel literary style, so in this month’s debate we look at the old days of MMA when Ken Shamrock, Big John McCarthy, and Team Quest were the heavy hitters of the octagon. Though the pre-TUF 1 era is long gone, their legacy is undetermined and their relevance still hangs in the balance. Read on to see what I mean.
Issue #1 – What happened to Team Quest?
Kelly – When I first stepped into Team Quest’s training facility in February 2007, I was awed at the talent pool before me. Chris Leben was on a win streak, Nate Quarry was about to fight for the UFC middleweight title and Josh Haynes and Ed Herman had both taken second place in season three of The Ultimate Fighter. Matt Lindland was beating up guys in Bodog and his Wolfpack were having good success in the IFL, headlined by Matt Horwich winning the promotion’s middleweight belt. Team Quest’s potential seemed limitless. Two years later, Leben and Quarry have moved to new gyms, Haynes has dropped off the MMA radar, Herman has lost two of his last three in the UFC, Horwich and fellow IFL standout Ryan Schultz are on losing streaks, the uber-talented Chris Wilson has underwhelmed in the UFC, and Matt Lindland got brutally knocked out by Vitor Belfort. What gives? Is something in the Gresham, Oregon water supply? It’s gut wrenching to see a gym that was passionately built from a car dealership by Randy Couture, Matt Lindland, and Dan Henderson’s own hands fall out of the top five training camps in the country. But the simple fact is Jackson’s MMA, American Top Team, Sityodtong, American Kickboxing Academy, and Miletich Fighting System have all posted higher win percentages. Of course I’m only focusing on the original Team Quest and not Team Quest south in California where Dan Henderson, Mayhem Miller, Thierry Sokoudjou, and Krzysztof Soszynski train. They’ve enjoyed a modicum of success while their northern contemporaries try to figure out where all the wins went. Lindland and his crew in Oregon can only look to Chael Sonnen’s recent win over Dan Miller at UFC 98 and Ed Herman’s win over David Loiseau at UFC 97 as good recent memories. Every gym goes through slumps and Quest has a crop of young fighters who may rebuild the name, but when? What does your Magic 8-Ball tell you, Luke?
Luke – Kelly, let’s underscore that last point about the “crop of young fighters.” We need to talk about them, but first, it’s important to dispel the notion that we can even talk of the “original” Team Quest. The Team Quest that built it’s name on the backs of wrestling pedigrees from Randy Couture, Matt Lindland, and Dan Henderson that used their adapted wrestling for MMA styles to facilitate the growth of the next generation of fighters. The group has long since splintered into disparate and seemingly uncommunicative factions that have themselves taken on their own identity. The team in Gresham, Oregon certainly has many talented fighters, but they seem relegated to larger regional shows as they are unable to push their skill sets to a point where they can contend with top-flight UFC talent. In many ways, they are facsimiles of their coaches, which can be problematic in a game that’s evolving by the day.
Issue #2 – Why can’t the old guard just bow out gracefully?
Kelly – Last year one of the “old guys” of the sport retired with little sound and fury when Ivan Salaverry, a class act in every regard, stopped fighting after dropping three of his last four fights. Salaverry acknowledged that the up-and-coming generation of athletes was getting too fast, too strong, and too well-rounded for a guy like him to keep up with. Now if the rest of his generation would follow his lead and do the same. Granted Randy Couture is a genetic freak who’s had success past the age of forty, but the recent talk from John Hackelman that Liddell still has fight in him and Matt Hughes’ stated desire to rematch GSP is absurd. Their moment in the sun has come and gone and they will be forever remembered fondly. But if they keep fighting they’ll end up like Ken Shamrock, foolishly chasing the false notion that they can still be a contender. As is the case for most elite athletes, pride and inactivity are a devilish concoction that makes them drunk on dreams of foregone glory and money is the shot glass that pushes them over the edge. The cash is simply too much for them to turn down, especially when their entourage fills their ears with images of them winning one more big fight, Rocky Balboa style. There’s a fine line between believing in your friend and telling him the awful truth.
Luke – How does one bout out gracefully if they don’t know how to? Or worse, what if one can’t bow out even if the desire to do so exists? That’s the salient issue, unfortunately. Some fighters long past their prime are certainly fooling themselves into believing they still have legitimate chances at regaining championship contender status or the belt itself. But those fighters are typically ones, like Hughes or Liddell, that aren’t lacking for money and a safety net in life. They’ve achieved financial stability and after years of athletic glory – often facilitated by a constant stream of self-perpetuated positive reinforcement – they simply need the self-satisfaction of knowing that where their mind leads them their bodies can follow. Alas, that’s not the situation facing Shamrock or Tank Abbott. I don’t have access to either man’s bank account, but from what I’ve been told and what we can see in similar situations in boxing, aging fighters take fights because, financially, they have to. For a multitude of reasons, they’ve ended up at the end (or long past) their athletic careers without money and no way to earn more except to do what they know: fight. There aren’t any mandatory courses in Finance 101 for fighters and they don’t have any other skills to achieve gainful employment in other fields after a career spent in fight sport. So the tragedy is less that fighters are kidding themselves they can still mix it up with young bucks of the division based on choice and more that they have to keep their car from getting reposed and to make sure their family can afford prescription drugs.
Issue 3 – Should the UFC and the Nevada State Athletic Commission reinstate “Big” John McCarthy as a referee?
Luke – BloodyElbow.com’s Mike Fagan compiled data on which currently practicing referees have officiated the most professional MMA fights. The results, it turns out, indicate that the amount of fights a referee has officiated is positively correlated with their perceived ability to properly enforce the rules and find the most opportune time for a stoppage. So, pop quiz? Guess which referee is not only the most experienced, but the most widely regarded as the best in the MMA business? That’s right, “Big” John McCarthy. I understand McCarthy burned bridges after his retirement from refereeing in 2007 with both Keith Kizer, Executive Director of the Nevada State Athletic Commission, and UFC President Dana White. McCarthy believed Kizer to be inept and White to be insufferable and heavy-handed. But if McCarthy can demonstrate an ability to still properly officiate a professional MMA fight, then the NSAC has a responsibility to reinstate him at once. Yes, McCarthy has to apply first and the UFC has very little say about which referees can be assigned where as that is the job of the commission. But the commission does have a responsibility to make sure the fights are run by professionals and to protect the health and safety of the fighters. There is, quite literally, no one better at that than “Big” John McCarthy. The time for personal squabbles is over. The fans and the fighters deserve more.
Kelly – I was ready to disagree with you and propose that we fix the current crop of referees in MMA and educate new ones when Yves Lavigne stepped on his dick again. His failure to impose his will and show Pete Sell mercy when Matt Brown was slaughtering him at UFC 96 was not the isolated incident we all thought it was. Lavigne once again failed in his duties to protect a downed fighter when Drew McFedries knocked Xavier Foupa-Pokam back to grade school on the same night that he stopped a fight between Kyle Bradley and Phillipe Nover prematurely. Add to Lavigne’s infractions Dan Mirgliotta’s reputation for stopping fights too quickly and Steve Mazagatti’s propensity to let them go too long and you’ve got a crop of officials who have apparently lost their way without the leadership of Big John. Herb Dean is probably the best of the current referees, but even he is inconsistent when it comes to fouls in the ring. In my opinion he robbed Nate Marquardt of a win against Thales Leites at UFC 85 by deducting a point from Marquardt that he didn’t deserve. I’m usually an advocate of fixing the crack in the door instead of buying a new door, but it seems the current UFC refs need the leadership and stability Big John provided, as do the fighters, fans, and promotions.
Issue #4 – Does there need to be criteria to specifically define what makes a 10-8 round in MMA?
Luke – Whether or not there needs to be criteria to specifically define what makes a 10-8 round is not clear, but what is incontestable is that efforts should be undertaken by the Association of Boxing Commissions and other stakeholders to determine if guidelines can be established that help define criteria for a 10-8 round that are reasonably applicable. We should be cautious about any rule change, lest we make adjustments to the unified rules that actually unfairly weight performances in fights incorrectly, but as it stands, there are no criteria in the Unified Rules whatsoever. We are telling judges, often the same judges who are barely familiar with MMA at all, that they are free to use their best judgment in determining what does and does not qualify for a 10-8 round. That is at best dangerous and at worst downright negligent. I get the sense we are leaving far too much for error in the hands of only the partially competent for the sake of not tampering with “what works.” But clearly something is rotten in Denmark and at the very least, an initiative to determine if a reasonable set of criteria can be collected that offer some assistance or guidelines in defining what does and does not make a 10-8 round seems justified. One need only watch the first round of Brian Gassaway vs. Forrest Petz to realize what happens when functionally MMA-literate judges are asked to score pivotal, action packed rounds. We are right to be cautious about any rules adjustment, but we do the sport and its fighters a disservice if we are cautious to the point of disregard.
Kelly – Unfortunately our sport falls into the same category as ice dancing when it comes to scoring. Everything is subjective and what looks square to one judge is perpendicular to the other. I don’t think you can develop criteria for a 10-8 round without establishing criteria for a 10-9 round as well. That means a complete changeover to a point–based system so there’s no doubt who wins a fight. As it is now, aggression and octagon control are two of the judging criteria for an MMA fight, but both of them are outdated. We’ve all seen fights where a grappler works submissions from the bottom of his guard and controls the tempo of the fight. That’s his style, but no matter how effective he is or how many submissions he almost gets, he’s not on top and therefore will be behind on the scorecards. I believe a clear point system is a good idea, but it opens up a whole new set of challenges, not just for the judges, but for the fighters as well. With a point system fighters would change their strategies completely and look to score instead of finish the bout. And of course there’s the issue of weighting the criteria properly, which means determining what’s more important-takedowns, strikes, or submission attempts. No one would ever agree to a common answer to that question, but at least we’d be on the right path to reforming the current system that is definitely broken.
