The Official Machida Sub-forum

[Rainmaker]

He will be a champion in due time no doubt

[junglejym976]

I love watching him fight. He'll be champ one day.

[greghow]

Agree. Many/most people think that muay thai is the most effective striking style, and that karate is for little kids. Guys like machida and the karate guys from K-1 show what karate is all about.

[ventrue]

I am waiting to see how he does against Tito. That will answer a lot of questions for me.

I will be cheering for Machida. He is definitely one of my favorite fighters.

[Shotokhan]

Originally Posted by Litany

Absolutely

Definitely!

[super_orr]

Originally Posted by HHJ

hes rapidly becoming one of my favorite fighters to watch

Machida - the intelligent fan's champion

That is elitist bullshit at its finest.

[TeamDNA]

Originally Posted by JustSomeGuy

I'm still not convinced he will be champ, but he has definitely impressed me so far. Having a long MA background and being able to appreciate strategy and technique in fighting, I do like to watch him fight.

His Shotokan takedowns kill me. I love seeing him make those work in the ring. Comparing those to Freestyle, Greco Roman and even Judo take downs, they are much smarter strategically and require much less effort and risk on Machida's part than the usual fare. I like them better than even the brilliant BTT takedown techniques. I bet 90% of the UFC fans think his opponents just slip a lot, hehe.

If he actually trains with Anderson Silva, then both the 205 and 185 classes are in trouble. If those guys could cross train each other and pass off techniques between themselves, those two weight classes will have a lot of headaches dealing with those two fighters.

Anderson trains with Big Nog so there is chance that Brazilians could own all three division of UFC such as HW, LHW and MW. That would be sick because they are all having a Black Belt BJJ. Oh my....

[TeamDNA]

Originally Posted by black snake

machida could barely beat penn and vernon tiger white please lets be real i love the guy and even picked him to beat soko but he has no power and has never been in the ring with someone like chuck or wandy or tito or shogun or even that huge goof griffin .....rampage would hurt him bad ....all those guys are to strong and powerful for him.....mark my words tito will win that fight.... but i see him beating the rest of the ufc,s other lhw like bonnar rashad jardine houston the other silva and lambert and james irvin etc....

Soko is much stronger then all the guys you listed yet Machida tooled him badly therefore, I do belive in Technique over power and MMA fights are all about Techniques not POWER. If the power is the only resource in MMA then Mark Coleman and Kevin Randleman are the only champs we will see. They all got TKO'd by smaller and more technical fighters.

[kasra00]

Originally Posted by Rambamatic

I have been a huge Machida supporter for a very long time, and have been saying for years that he is going to be a world champion one of these days. There have been a lot of threads about Machida since the last UFC and new fans discovering him. However, there are a few very specific things about him that I would like to present for discussion that have been largely overlooked:

1. His fighting style is very much traditional karate based in its strategy and execution. Like Cung Le, for example, here is a fighter that brings a traditional martial art into the ring and makes it work. This is a very important aspect of his game that has ramifications beyond just Machida as a fighter....it challenges a number of assumptions that we have had about TMA's since MMA changed our outlook.

During his last fight, right before he dropped Soko for the final time that lead to the submission, Rogan commented that Soko "is being sucked in my Machida. He's getting mesmerized by what Machida is doing". I thought that was a very interesting and accurate assessment of how Machida fights and how his style works.

2. Because of his style, he takes very little damage in every single fight, even though most of his fights have gone to decision (and this has to do, in large part, with his karate-based stand-up style). In taking so little damage in his fights, his longevity as a fighter is greatly increased. For example, look at Wandy...his fighting style has caused him to take a lot of damage in his fights over the years, and whereas he's a great fighter and one of the greatest 205ers ever, I truly believe that the damage he's taken over the years has significantly shortened the life of his career.

3. Watching Machida fight is like watching a work of art by Matisse or Picasso....it's value is not immediately apparent without the proper background and education in what you are seeing. Unlike watching Wandy or Chuck throw hard leather, which virtually anyone with very little experience or education can appreciate, with Machida you need a certain understanding of context, technique, and interpretation in order to appreciate and understand what you are seeing and why it's important.

4. Therefore, I think that not only is Machida important because his fighting style is challenging assumptions and generally indicative of a paradigm shift in how we think about TMA's in MMA, but also because I believe that he's going to have a very long and influential career, and that career is going to cause many fans to educate themselves further into the nature of the art, and serve as the catalyst for a deeper discussion about technique, style, and execution in MMA.

That's it. Any comments or anything to add would be appreciated.

Thanks

Thank you very much for writing that.
That's pretty much how I feel about Machida. The fact that you had to write something like this I think is indicative of a broader topic in MMA, thats the fan bases' general knowledge of the sport and athletes. I think its vital that meaningful discussions and debates occur. It facilitates our understanding and continued education in the sport and the arts its born from. I ve learned interesting things myself reading some of the threads on sherdog.

(INSERT JOKE HERE) And at times, a link or fight reference has been the start of learning something entirely new either about a system a fighter or mma as a whole.
It' ll be awhile before we'll see casual fans as a whole appreciating the intricacies and breaking down fight philosophy the way its done commonly in other sports, that would require a much more knowledgable population of fans outside the hardcore.
Until then threads like this will hopefully introduce more fans to the technical aspects as well the various fight philosophies that gave birth to mma the sport.

Well done.

[kasra00]

Originally Posted by RealSlimShady

no, you're thinking of Tim Sylvia.

if you mean to compare it watching paint dry...