Total-MMA.com

By: Bill Thompson

Edmonton, Alberta, Canada was the host for another Maximum Fighting Championships, MFC, card on Saturday night. It wasn’t a special card that featured any must see bouts. However it did have a fighter in the main event that is a known commodity in the MMA world, and a fighter that spurred the idea for my topic this week. Pete Spratt was choked unconscious by Ryan Ford, a promising young Canadian fighter, in the second round of their contest. The question in regards to Spratt is how did a man that was once scheduled to face Matt Hughes for the UFC’s welterweight title end up being fodder for young up and coming talents? The answer lies in Spratt’s journeyman status, a fighter that is good enough that beating him means you do have more than just potential. However, the bigger question is why did Spratt become a journeymen fighter? How did such a promising fighter become relegated to this level of competition. Lack of skillset would be the answer to that question, but that leads to an even bigger question. Why would a fighter in this day and age have a limited skillset to work off of? There are a few reasons for this, some are damning to the fighter while some are the harsh reality of combat sports.

The first subject to tackle will be the world class skill fighter. These would be the fighters like Mark Coleman, Mirko Filipovic, Royce Gracie etc. They are fighters that are so good in one specific skill that they can ride that one skill all the way to the top of the MMA world. Mark Coleman was an outstanding wrestler, and he learned early on that he didn’t need anything outside of his wrestling ability to dominate in MMA. Mirko Filipovic is a world class kickboxer with an amazing sprawl and those abilities allowed him to reach the top of the sport. Royce Gracie has jiu-jitsu skills beyond anyone else in the sport and he knew because of this that he would win. However for all three men their major inherent skill ended up being a detriment to their development as fighters. What need did Coleman have to actually learn how to be a striker or to learn jiu-jitsu when his wrestling was more than enough for him to win? This line of thinking never allowed any of these fighters and many others just like them to fully develop as fighters. While they may have reached the top of the game with their respective strengths, they were not able to stay at the top as the game changed and grew. While there are other factors to their downfalls, lack of a well rounded skillset is one of the major ones.

Next in line we have the fighters that do train in a well rounded style but don’t for one reason or another have a great aptitude for some skills. Mark Hominick is a great striker that trains full time in jiu-jitsu, but despite all that training he has never been able to fully adapt jiu-jitsu into his game. He falters when the fight hits the ground and it is not for a lack of training, it is because of a simple lack of aptitude for the ground game. In this case you shouldn’t fault the fighters, because while they may be weak in one area there really isn’t a thing they can do about it. They put in the time, they train, they work hard on their craft. But, they don’t have the aptitude to become the well rounded fighter that they need to be. These fighters will reach the upper echelons of the sport, but they will usually be stopped right before they reach the top of the game. When you are lacking skills in certain areas you need to be world class in at least one area. These fighters lack that and coupled with their inability to soak up other skills they will fall short of being the best of the best in the sport.

That brings us to the Pete Spratt’s & Cheick Kongo’s of the world. Fighters that don’t even bother to train in more than one area of their game. They take a skill that they believe themselves to be good at and refuse to expand upon it. They are good strikers, wrestlers, submission artists, etc. and they believe that is all they will need to become champions. Unlike the first grouping they don’t have world class skills in any area, just good ones. Unlike group number two they don’t lack the ability to learn and do good in any given skill, they lack the simple effort of training in other skills. For this group of athletes there is no way around it, they are a waste of good talent. Pete Spratt has known for years that he is a good striker that lacks any ground skills whatsoever. Despite that knowledge he has never sought out a camp to help him become more well rounded, nor has he bothered to even train in the rudimentary aspects of jiu-jitsu or wrestling. This is laziness and stubbornness personified on the part of these athletes. They don’t deserve to reach the top of the mountain because they are not willing to put in the work to get there.

Finally we have the complete MMA fighter, the fighter that makes life hell for any of the fighters above. Fedor Emelianenko, Matt Hughes, Tyson Griffin, Jon Fitch, Josh Koscheck, BJ Penn, Matt Lindland, etc. These fighters all have a great base to work off of, but that base skill isn’t enough for them. They take their base skill and they expound on it greatly. They take their great wrestling skills and have the aptitude to become great strikers and great submission artists. But, not only do they have the great base skill and the aptitude to improve, they also have the drive to train at it non-stop until they are a more complete fighter. They are the present in MMA, but it’s important to note who started this trend and who is the current flag bearer.

The originator of this thinking would be Frank Shamrock, a fighter that is a very polarizing figure in MMA. There is no in-between with Shamrock, fans either hate him or love him. However, even those that hate him need to recognize just what Shamrock did for this sport. Shamrock took a great skill in submissions and built upon it, he put forth the work to become a great striker and to improve all his other skills. Shamrock was the first fighter on the big stage to show what a well rounded and complete fighter could do, and it was scary to behold. Shamrock paved the way for the fighters I listed at the start of the paragraph. Shamrock paved the way for Georges St. Pierre, a fighter that has taken everything Shamrock originated to a whole new level. There may have been better fighters historically than GSP, but there has never been a fighter as complete as GSP. A fighter with great skill across the board and all the intangibles to go along with it. GSP is the current model for everything that a fighter should strive to be. The even scarier thing is that MMA is growing, and that a few years from now there will be someone else even more complete than GSP, just think about that for a little bit.

The point of this little exercise was to show that MMA is changing. The old ways are dying out, and the fighters need to realize that. The days of relying on your one world class skill set to carry you are over. No longer can you have an inability to adapt to certain skill sets and expect to succeed. And, most of all there is no longer any place for those that are not willing to improve their skills and grow as fighters. The days of Georges St. Pierre and Kid Yamamoto are upon us. We fans can bask in this for as long as we like, because it is truly something to behold. But, the fighters need to adapt and change with this new landscape or they will be left behind in the dust.