Just the best title i could think of but this is a bit of a continuation of David Camarillo's thread "How can Hughes lose to BJ?" which quotes Rickson in describing how time limits effect MMA bouts.
Here is the quote from Dave's thread:
Rickson Gracie: "I don't think the level of the athletes is sinking. I see the time of the fights as being diminished, that the athletic part of athletes is more and more involved with hard training, sometimes even steroids. So people become super-men, super-strong, super-aggressive, super- explosive, and all that energy added to the low time limit reduces the need of showing technique.
You have to be a bull, to get in there and win with your horns, not with your mind. So this natural development of the sport lets technique to be left aside a little bit. This makes fighters level themselves down, because the sport no longer demands them to pay attention to detail.
If you take off the gi and go into a five minute bout where you can use all your strength at once, nonstop...; Why even bother about detail, technical carefulness? What you need are muscles! Besides, all styles got mixed up, there is no more style versus style, the athlete has a basic notion of how to defend because, in general, defending is a lot easier than attacking, so all you have to do is explode and resist for five minutes.
So most fight finales nowadays end up being sudden knockouts. You don't see as often a technique, a triangle, a back-taking. It all becomes sort of void of technique."
I'd like to copy/paste my 2 posts on that page but just wanted to see what everyone thought of the seeming irony or double standard of those who supported that arguement and now also seem to be saying that BJ was the better fighter "when they were fresh" or whatever. Or that BJ "dominated" Hughes in the first 2 rounds when they were at even strength so to speak.
This is what keithwsII posted on that thread:
"I think the overall irony of this post and many others is, matt is considered a weaker fighter for using conditioning as his main weapon to defeat BJ.
Didn't the Gracies rely on this same strategy when there were no time limits.
Yet, people consider them more technical than their opponents eventhough their techniques were unable to come into play until their opponents fatiqued."
Is this not true?
And didnt Royce used to say something about dropping 2 guys off on an island and the difference between knowing someone will be back to pick them up in an hour or not pick them up at all until they were done fighting or something?
Well, maybe its just me but arent the same people who were behind that arguement also now saying that its really only a test to show your "technique" for the first 2 rounds or it all doesnt really count when 1 opponent tires?
So which one is it?
No time limits of just 2 rounds or however rounds BJ or the BJJ guy needs to get off first, fatigue or injuure then void the rest of what happens next?