I knew he supposedly had an underrated ground game, and his positioning and sub finish against Soko would certainly make the claim legitimate. He's so deadly and elusive on the feet, to think he has a formidable ground game to compliment his stand-up is fucking SCARY.
What can the UG experts tell me about his ground training? How long, with who, etc?
hard to say- obviously he schooled sudoku, but sukdoku's ground game looked absolutely atrocious. all sign suggest that machida's BJJ is excellent, not sure about his wrestling?
Machida tends towards old school Jiu-jitsu and Karate for takedowns. Though his wrestling for position looked good and his defence against standard wrestling looked good, his offence was more of the old style.
What is interesting about that is that the older stuff can come back again as people forget how to defend against it.
When Lyoto initially began training for MMA, he was already a student of BJJ. If I'm not mistaken, he was a blue belt.
Inoki signed Lyoto to fight for him. Inoki then had Walid Ismael, Rico Chipparelli and Frank Trigg work with Lyoto for about a year before his debut. They continued to work with him throughout his first three years in MMA.
Even though it's been a few years and he's undoubtedly improved, his guard didn't took that great against Sam Greco, who was not known for his gnp. I see big, strong wrestlers with good gnp being Lyoto's toughest matchup.
<object width="420" height="331"><param name="movie" value="http://www.dailymotion.com/swf/x2m0ih"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always"></param></object> Lyoto Machida vs. Sam Greco Uploaded by shamandoki
Where the fuck do you think Machida spent most of his career before coming to the UFC??? Where did Henderson, Silva, Rampage, etc. spend most of their careers???
When the fuck are people going to realize that its not about where you fight but who you fight that makes someone a great fighter?
I didn't know much about Machida before I saw this fight, but he looked like the real deal to me. He easily handled Sokoudjou, who everyone was touting as the "next big thing".