Did that fight look weird to you? I know its possible to take Anderson Silva down and Chael Sonnen is a good wrestler, I get that, but when you were watching it did you feel a little bit weird? Not just weird that Anderson Silva was getting dominated, but that this wasn't a normal fight.

Anderson Silva wanted to submit Chael Sonnen to prove a point

• Chael Sonnen insulted the Noguera's
• Anderson Silva came out in a gi and a black belt, he never does that
• Anderson's camp made a big deal about putting the black belt on him at the end (putting a belt on and tying a proper knot is important in Jiu Jitsu)
• Anderson Silva held onto the submission a little longer after the fight was called, to make a point
• Anderson's the type of guy who would do something like this just because he can

Edit: Well it's the next morning, and now I do think Anderson wasn't going to "throw" the fight, but he did give favor to jiu jitsu techniques in this fight, and Chael successfully messed with his head to some degree. In the first round I thought Anderson Silva straight up looked DRUNK. He was getting hit repeated in standup exchanges, and I don't think it was that the first punch rocked him (looked like it just knocked him down because he was caught squared up).

Also thanks to MikeD for linking the post fight interview quote:

"I've been training jujitsu for a long time and out of respect to (Antonio) Nogueira I wanted to finish this fight by a submission," Silva said through an interpreter. "I had a bad injury to my rib. The doctor told me not to fight but I believe the show must go on. It's not an excuse. I wanted to come in and put it on the line, and that's what I did."

I've noticed that Greg Jackson fighters have been losing more than usual lately. Rashad, Marquardt, Guida, Stevenson, Jardine, among others. Now my question is do you think it's significant?

Alot of fighters have been flocking to Greg Jackson, does the increase in number mean a decrease in eliteness? Does Greg Jackson have less time to focus on each fighter now that he has more? Is it bad luck, or are they starting to drink their own Kool-aid?

What do you think?

I've always been thinking about the relative value of leg kicks to MMA, and since Shogun surprised me with his leg kick clinic recently I thought I'd write up my thoughts on a few cases of where leg kicks worked and didn't work and why I think it went down that way. After the jump I'll have specific cases, but here are the general ideas on legkicks offensively or defensively:

Offensively using legkicks:

• legkick offense is ineffective if you just try to walk up to someone and throw a leg kick, unless they have terrible defense
• the best time to leg kick is in a combination, such as backing someone up with jab and then hitting them with a legkick
• If you're going to throw a soft legkick, might as well not throw it unless you're just baiting the counter

Defending the legkick:

• footwork- move away from it, so remarkably simple. It's surprising how many fighters look very "heavy" on their feet
• step into it and counter, or takedown- the power of the kick is at  the end of the fulcrum, IE the shin, if you step in you're taking this away, finish with a punch
• pshychology- make it not worth someone's while to throw leg kicks anymore by combining the two above strategies, I'll get into this more in my examples
• note: it's my personal opinion that checking a leg kick is the worst defense, its much more preferable to use the other strategies since it minimizes damage and is more psychological

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