Mario Sperry and his gameplan

Underground
1

A lot of keyboard warriors out there criticized Sperry for his gameplan of banging with TK in his last outing. That he should have stuck to "bjj".

As a leader of BTT the guy knows strategy and I think he knows what he's doing. It just didn't pan out.

Look at it from his point of view.

  • TK had never been submitted.

  • TK has hung with the best BTTers on the ground.

  • TK is a grappler, not a puncher.

  • Sperry has KO'ed or tko'ed the last 3 grapplers he fought.

  • Busta, the Minos, perhaps Arona all good striking now and he was probably confident in his own.

  • BTT's success has relied on an all round gameplan, not just BJJ.

2

Ok, Here's the deal, I've spoke to Zen Mario last week (on phone) he gave big props to TK. He said he hit TK a couple good ones and TK shook them off, then went to shoot in for takedown, but buckled his knee. He said he couldn't recover after that and TK took advantage and hitting him.
Mario just had surgery on his hand (three pins) and had the knee MRI, but they didn't do surgery.. He said "I will be back training and ready to go soon".. For now he is relaxing with his wife and baby!!

3

Zen Mario is a "Legend" and a great guy!!!!

4

He made it an exciting fight, that's for sure.

5

I missed the talk on this one and just saw the fight -- yeah, it'd be wrong to disrespect that performance.

He did try a takedown, and actually won that early exchange on his feet, but still, I felt like it was a matter of time until TK timed those haymakers. I think it's safe to say that TK has shown the better striking skill in the past.

Big fan here, never disappointed with a Sperry fight.

TH

6

Naughty,

Nice analysis, however, Mario's ground game is light years ahead of TK (just grappling, not mma grappling)...thus is was still much smarter to take the fight to the ground and utilize his greatest advantage.

7

"He said he hit TK a couple good ones and TK shook them off, then went to shoot in for takedown, but buckled his knee. He said he couldn't recover after that and TK took advantage and hitting him."

This is worth repeating

8

they were swingin hard at eachother and either guy coulda been ko'd.

tk nearly was

9

No, unfortunately I'd say the difference in skill was pretty clear.

It's just not true that when two guys are throwing punches that there's a 50-50 chance that either one of 'em is getting knocked out.

TH

10

I think if Mario hadn't hurt his knee and got the takedown it coulda been a different outcome, he knew he had hit TK with some good shoots and had him hurt a bit. but it didn't happen that way and TK won, thats the fight game of who can survive and shake things off. once Mario hurt his knee TK took it to him.

11

another thing is TK is a better takedown guy than Sperry so that might have been a waste of energy

12

Yeah, TK shrugged off the takedown pretty easily.

Tough matchup for the Zen Machine. It was a good fight while it lasted.

TH

13

Its a shame because it woulda been cool to see them roll and to see if Mario really was "light years ahead" on the ground like some of you say. We know Mario is the better pure grappler, sure, but TK is not easy to take down, esp. since Sperry was the same size as TK, and who's to say TK wouldnt have just defended on the ground to get back up and continue to try and strike?

Mario deserves the respect of every MMA fan but its disrespectful to TK to just assume Mario would have won like that "if" it hit ground aswell.

14

sperry is OVERRATED

15

TK grappling is over rated

16

I was just talking about straight grappling: Sperry = much better than TK...whether or not that translates to mma, well I'm not sure.

17

LMAO @ Arby!!

18

Ever since Zinoviev Choked out Sperry while being mounted I have made a fortune betting against his overratedness

19

Still LMAO@ Arby!! "Overratedness"

20

Thats right Sperry is full of overratedness