Do you think it's Ironic that Gloves helped legitimized the sport, but then at the same time Gloves basically allowed striking to be so dominant. If given the choice I think that all if not most fighters wouldv'e worn gloves anyway, but to protect their hands to be used as a weopon. I'm watching IFL right now and even Jens Pulver admitted that the padding is to protect the strikers. It's just funny how mainstream society cannot grasp the concept of gloves do not help protect the fightesrs getting hit but protect the fighter doing the hitting. Gloves really saved striking for MMA. Without them MMA would still be a predominantly a submission game.
OK let me rephrase myself. No Gloves = No Boxing in MMA. Or at least to the level we see today. Knees and elbow are harder than knuckles but even those strikes are set up with punches a lot. Hence you wouldn't see them as much as you see them now.
No one was knocking people out in MMA without gloves. Nore scoring too many combos either.
LOL, and they all went on to have long succesfull careers, right Briz. Just deal with it, without gloves, striking would've been secondary today. Tank may have never been the best but was smarter than many give him credit for.
Monsta have punched the correct. Even the old bareknuckle boxing matches didn't have as much punches thrown in comparision to when gloved were introduced.
I think damn near every fighter here has broken thier hands at one point or another.
DiscoNferno is correct. I didn't realize they made those kind of gloves. I was thinking it would be cool if they made gloves you can grab with. Then saw Melton Bowan, and I was like cool, when can you get those.
Gerard didnt' technically Knocked anyone out cold, one was a ref stoppage and another was technically a tap. Keith Hackney won all his fights by Taps with beating and by grabbing the traechea. Sorry Briz, you just got to admit, that gloves saved the strikers. Strikers wouldn't really exist without them. The only strikers I see in MMA today being competetive without gloves are chuck lidell, Wanderlei, only because I seen them fight bare knuckle in Vale Tudo before. I don't know if Silva, Arlovski, or Cro Cop would be competeting reguarly without gloves. Even Fedor would use more subs than fist without gloves.
Bas Rutten
Bas Rutten may and KO'd people with open palm, which was impressive. But his first UFC matches had gloves.
So I guess the real message of this thread is thank god they introduced gloves, or else MMA would still be a small time, underground sport and a lot more boring than it is today.
exactly, an evolution in the modification of the rules inorder for the sport to achieve mainstream appeal.
in related news, Angelina Jolie is tappable.
"No. It's an evolution so that all the fights don't stop because a dude has a fucking vagina sized gash on his head within a minute of fighting and his opponent hasn't broken his hand doing it.
Get a grip."
and how is that not a modification in the rules of the sport in order to achieve mainstream success?? No gloves, equals more cuts, early stoppages, broken hands, thus less acceptance by athletic commissions and the mainstream public. Are you able to keep up with this??
It has nothing to do with evolution. An evolution would be some dramatic mutation in fighters hands so they don't break with bare knuckes. Or some training technique that will make hands unbreakable.
It's a change. And from what I remember the UFC made itself distinguishable by submissions. People knew that the UFC was down and dirty groundfighting, (at least to the average fan) and after a few UFC's they come to expect that.
In the dark ages all the great grapplers went to pride, and a lot of enhanced amateur college wrestlers that brawled a lot took over, which lead to a big UFC fall off along with the banning from cable outlets.
Go watvh old IVC. Silva was still hitting people.
Grapplers are getting better at using the gloves to affect armlocks, so it's going to come full circle.
Silva and Liddell are the only two old school bare knuckle strikers left.