👊UFC: Dana on Ian💯 Islam's Judo🥋 Din Quits👩‍🦰

UFC 330 post-fight thoughts by Pro fighter D Hamaguchi🥋🥊👊48 kg
US Natl Judo Chmp 45 kg

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Transcript

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Dana White is a hundred percent right when he says Ian Gary was just way too nice. Not only did Ian Gary not come out for the fifth round, bombs blazing, when we know it's a close fight, even if it was 3-1 Mahachev, apparently another judge had it 2-2. Both fighters had to win that fifth round. So Ian Gary really didn't pour it on in the fifth, but worse than that, he did the whole bowing and scraping thing before and after the fight, and right at the start of the fifth round. You know, the whole let's touch gloves, let's hug it up, let's be friends. But I think it's really more of a generational mindset. You know, Dana White and others of us are Gen X. We approach the fight game as I'm coming to kill you, you're trying to kill me. It's all fair, it's all good. But younger generation, they're more concerned about getting clicks on social media. They want to be perceived as being nice, even when you're involved in something like Combat Sport, where your job is to inflict physical damage on some other person. I feel like Ian Gary is trying to have it both ways. You know, he wants to be this killer MMA fighter, but at the same time, he wants everyone to think he's a really nice guy. And that's the problem. I don't actually believe that we're getting a true picture of Ian Gary because I feel like everything he does is performative, including having his little son be on camera. Notice that a lot of fighters keep their family off camera because they would want to protect them from the public eye. Ian knows that his little son is really cute and he's great clickbait. He also knows that speaking in Portuguese to address shoot the box is also a great soundbite. I feel like all his pre-fight and post-fight speeches are exactly that. The rehearsed, he's maybe he's had AI help him write it up, write them out so they sound good and make great little clips. But I just don't actually believe that Ian Gary is as nice a guy. Islam Mahashev did it. He got the win over Ian Masharogari and extended his winning streak to 17 wins in a row. I thought it was interesting tactically that Ian Gary's game plan was to stand in right in position, not to move around and try to peck away at Islam, but to stand there and presumably wait for Islam to do something so he could then counter it. The main issue with the game plan to wait and counter is that you're waiting. And so you're giving your opponent the opportunity to advance with their own offense. And that's exactly what Islam did. He really good strikes against Ian Gary, including a great head kick, which then stunned Gary and set up set him up for the follow-up with the grappling against the fence, takedown, and then work on the ground. To his credit, Ian Gary did stuff a number of Islam's takedown attempts. After Ian got a feel for Islam's single-leg entry, I think he was able to defend against that quite successfully. But here's what I loved about Islam's game: his judo throws. He got in three terrific judo throws, very clean. The first was an Ogoshi, which wrestlers call very disrespectfully to us judokas, they call it a hip toss. Well, Islam was able to get a very clean ogoshi throw. He threw Ian Gary right into a judo pin called Kesagatame, where he has his arm underneath Ian Gary's head and neck and shoulder, and he's sitting facing Ian Gary, putting his weight on his upper body. From that position, it's fairly straightforward to work your way into side control. So great explosive Ogoshi throw from Islam and then terrific transition right into position on the ground. The second judo throw that Islam got was against the fence. He scored what we call an O Uchigari, what wrestlers call again, much to us, much to Judoka's chagrin, wrestlers call it an inside trip. It's basically a throw where you sweep somebody's one leg out from underneath them and they fall flat on their back. Now, in MMA terms, that means Islam would fall straight into Ian Gari's full guard, but Islam transitioned. He knew he was falling into that position, so he transitioned not to get caught in full guard. Finally, the third throw that Islam got was basically a harai goshi, which is like an old Goshi with a leg sweep, a forward throw. And Islam again got this while they were grappling against the fence. Now, while those three judo throws aren't specifically why Islam won the fight, I think they he used them at the right moments and with strong transition on the ground. And that's why he that's why Islam Mahashev's judo is very effective in MMA. I feel that there's a huge distinction between grappling, which is a very broad umbrella term, and judo throws specifically, because there's such a high level of technique and timing involved in being able to execute a judo throw in in an actual combat situation. It's not the same thing as wrestling at all. Notice that there's a real explosiveness and that Ian Gary was 100% off his feet in the air. He was turned into a projectile that get then got thrown literally onto the ground. Now, judo throws aside, the one other aspect of Ian Gary's game plan that surprised me a little bit was that he did not bring it on in the fifth and final round. I feel that even though I thought Islam was up three rounds to one as they head into that fifth and final round, you never know how judges are judges will see it. So you have to assume, well, maybe if there was a close round, maybe Ian Gary is up two rounds, and so it's a tie. Or maybe, you know, it's close enough that the judges might give Ian Gary three rounds to one. So you, as the fighter, have to assume that you must bring it in that fifth and final round. And Ian Gary did not do that. He did not step on the gas, he didn't fight with really bad intentions and urgency, which is what I think he needed to do. Nevertheless, he did put on a decent showing for himself, but for Islam Mahashev, that was just a really impressive performance, especially after this move up to a higher weight division. I have to admit I'm really not an Ian Gary fan. I am an Islam fan, but that notwithstanding, even if I was an Ian Gary fan, I still would have wished that he would have fought with more urgency in that fifth and final round. Nevertheless, who would you like to see Islam face next? Who do you think is a fair matchup for Ian Gary? Let us know your thoughts in the comments. Thank you. And don't forget, you can listen to this podcast on Spotify, on Apple Podcasts, on iHeartRadio, and through the podcast addict app. So you can find us anywhere you listen to your most favorite podcasts. I'll see you there. Thank you. Dean Thomas quits cornering fighters. Thomas was a former fighter himself. He then became an MMA coach and also has worked as a fight analyst for the UFC. Dean said he had committed himself to working with Gillian Roberts Robertson to take her career as far as it could go. And that after her loss to Mackenzie Dern, I guess Coach Thomas felt that that was it. That was, you know, the pinnacle of uh Gillian's career. And so he wants to step away and as he said, do a Matt Sarah, stop and stop cornering fighters. Now, I can't take I can't blame any cornerman who decides that they've had enough of the profession because it is incredibly draining. It's not just putting in your hours in the gym and then showing up on fight night. I mean, the job is really 24-7 at a certain point because there's so many things that you have to manage, including potential injuries, getting sparring partners, the weight cut, all of the above. And then, of course, there's all the personal things that can happen outside the gym that can affect a fighter's performance and even their training schedule. So as the coach, you're you get involved in that as well. But here's one question I have, and of course, I doubt either Gillian nor Dean will ever probably speak about it publicly. But did the training camp not go the way Coach Thomas wanted it to? Guessing just from looking at Gillian's performance, because she didn't fight with urgency and throw punches with bad intentions, notice that how at how many of her strikes actually fell short and they didn't have any juice on them. That to me is a telltale sign that a fighter did not put themselves through hard sparring. At some point in your fight camp, I mean, or maybe at all points, you have to put yourself through that horrible sparring where you get a sparring partner in and they know that you're fighting soon, and then their job is to bring it to you because your opponent's gonna bring it to you. So it has nothing to do with being a nice person or kind person or best buddies. If you're there to help your sparring partner out and you care about them, you will try to put a little juice on your punches. You don't have to try to hurt them, but you do have to put a little bit of juice on it, and you gotta step to them with that type of pressure that they're gonna feel from an opponent. It's not just touch sparring, and that that's kind of what it looked like Jillian was doing out there. So my question is I mean, Dean Thomas is an OG fighter, he he's like a Gen X fighter. He knows darn well that in the 80s, 90s, people threw down in their training camp. And so did he ask for hard sparring and Gillian and maybe the other coaches didn't want the hard sparring. So that's a tough position to be in as a coach because then Dean knows walking into that cage that his fighter is not as fully prepared as she could have been. And so there's a limit to how much he can ask of her in the cage because she didn't put herself through that in the gym. And so it's very difficult if that's the the position that the coach is in, because they know they can't ask their fighter to do something that was never rehearsed, and they know they can't ask their fighter to bite down on their mouthpiece and just give get tough and just go out there and let it loose because the fighter never did that in training camp. Their body and their mind just isn't gonna just flip a switch suddenly and a fight. If anything, their body and their mind will go into the uh in the other direction because the body and mind will go into survival mode, not attack mode. Now, I think honestly, we could count the number of significant punches that Jillian landed. We can count them on one hand and we'll have fingers left over. The best round for her was the final round where she did get McKenzie down on the ground and was able to administer some of her very good, very effective ground impound, but that simply wasn't going to be enough to either cause McKenzie to quit or tap or have the ref step in and stop the fight. And winning one round out of five is definitely not enough to win the decision. Regardless, I mean that's a matter that's between the coach and the fighter. One other situation I can think of recently would be Derek James and Ryan Garcia, and then also Derek James and and Errol Spence, where it was Errol's dad who determined that he shouldn't spar due to a hurt rib. That was something that Derek James revealed on the PVC Desk Guys podcast. Sorry, I forgot his name, but if you're interested in that podcast, I'm sure you can find it if you just search for Derek James. Regardless, I'm not sure if this is a generational thing or what it is, but it seems to be in general in combat sport, the younger athletes or the athletes figure that they don't need to do hard sparring for whatever reason. Like somehow they're gonna pull this off in the actual fight. Whereas if you came up as a Gen X fighter, it was every day was it was rough and tumble every single day. And if you're tough enough, you stick it out and you actually improve, you know, you forge yourself through the fire. So was that the case with Gillian Roberts and Dean Thomas? Hopefully, we'll never know because I'm hoping they just keep that between the two of them. But that is my suspicion, using my eye of discernment from a great distance. Well, let me know what you guys think about that theory. I look forward to reading your comments and your fan mail. Thank you.