10 Things you need to know to be a Mixed Martial Arts Fighter #10: How to win the fight.
Everyone knows that the Mixed Martial Arts Craze is taking over America and everyone wants to be a part of the craze. The problem is that 99% of the Martial Arts Schools in America can’t teach you all you need to know to become a great MMA fighter. Why? Because the teachers don’t know all the skills necessary to become a great MMA fighter and so they only teach a little of the skills required and thus they only produce very poor MMA fighters.
So what exactly are the skills you need to know to be a great MMA FIGHTER?
- How to punch like a Boxer, not a karate player
- How to kick like a Kick Boxer or Tae Boxer, not a tae kwon do player
- How to do takedowns like a Wrestler
- How to do ground jiu jitsu with No Gi
- How to do conditioning for a fight
- How to eat like a champion
- How to get sponsors for free equipment, clothes and money.
- How to control your mind and emotions before, during and after the fight
- How to use the ring
- How to win the fight.
During the next few weeks I will be going over each of these skill sets and how and why you need to know them if you want to be a great MMA fighter.
The 10th Skill set you need to know to become a Great MMA Fighter is How to win the fight.
One of the most important things you need to know to be a Great MMA Fighter is How to Win the Fight! Ha, I bet you thought you knew that already, but what you didn’t know was there are many ways of winning the fight that MMA fighters don’t know or obviously don’t practice. So here are some ways to win the fight.
1. You can win the fight by knocking your opponent unconscious. That is probably the way 99% of most MMA fighter “plan” on winning their fights. Time and time again when you hear the pre fight interviews, even with experienced MMA fighters. They go into exquisite detail about how they are going to knock their opponent out in the first round and that you better not blink because the fight is going to be over in a flash. And time and time again the fight becomes a 3 round example of “bad boxing” not MMA. Why? Because the fighters don’t realize this won’t happen because of 2 things; one, how to actually knock out an opponent and two, that the opponent doesn’t seem to want to be knocked out. And because they are only planning on wining the fight by knock out and not by ground control and submission, or points they become very poor boxers and put on a very poor boxing match.
You can knock out an opponent by hitting in on certain “knock out points”.
These points are;
- The end of the chin…this forces the jaw back and sends an electrical charge to the brain shorting it out.
- Under the ear, where the jaw bone meets the top of the ear area.
- The temple area.
- The back of the neck (which is ILLEGAL in all MMA fights because it can cause Death).
Now anywhere else you hit someone in the head, no matter how many times and no matter what the intention will 99% of the time not knock them out. It may cut them up, make them weak, make them quit or make the referee stop the fight, but unless you hit someone on the knock out points They will not go unconscious and will continue the fight.
Unless you “short circuit the brain” the other fighter will not go unconscious. So unless you learn to attack the knock out points you are not going to win the fight with a knock out. If you keep hitting him in the nose, the mouth, the eyes, the forehead, you can get lots of points but will not knock him out. This seems rather obvious but apparently most MMA fighters don’t know this and just start punching wildly all over and yet still wonder why they don’t knock the opponent out.
2. The second way to win the fight is to out point your Opponent. This particular skill seems to be a lost art to most fighters and is not taught by many coaches or teachers, but is a great and valuable way to win the fight. When my son Teddy Gambordella was winning 42 matches in a row during his senior year wrestling, he won 40 matches by “pins” but he won 2 of his hardest matches by “points” and this was his plan from the beginning. His coach knew that if he tried to pin these 2 wrestlers, the other guys (who were famous for brawling and being extremely mean and nasty) he would probably not win the match. He would be doing their fight and would almost certainly wind up getting pinned himself or losing the match. So the coach decided to win the match by points. His plan for one of the fights was to win by takedowns and then let the other wrestler back up. Teddy would take the other wrestler down, and then let him up. Giving 2 points to himself and 1 to the other wrestler. After this happened 6 times, the match was over and Teddy won 12 to 6. He won the fight, he didn’t win any friends, or get the crowd excited, but he won the fight. His fight plan for the other wrestler was to not take him down and to tie him up, and to win on his stand up. So for the first round he just tied up with the other wrestler and then when the second round came he was on top and tied up the wrestler and held him down. No points for either wrestler, but in the last round he was on bottom and he escaped to win the match 1 to 0. He planned on winning the fight on points and followed his plan.
If you want to be a Great MMA Fighter there will be plenty of times when you need to use the strategy of outpointing your opponent, to win the fight. A great example of this occurred in the last MMA heavyweight fight where Andrei Arlovski fought the Fedor Emelianenko the heavyweight champion.. Andrei’s fight plan was to win the fight by points and if possible he could win by knockout, but that was not his plan. And this plan worked perfectly for the first 3 minutes of the fight. Andrei Arlovski was dominate and had the champion hurt several times, but unfortunately the last time he thought he had the champ hurt really bad and rushed in for the “finish” only to get knocked out because during his “rush” to finish he forgot to protect his jaw and that was it. He was winning and if he kept this up he would have won the fight by points, but instead he tried to win by knockout and lost.
If you are an MMA fighter and have the luxury of being able to “prepare a fight plan” for an opponent, you should be aware that there will be opponents whom you can plan to “knock out” and there will be opponents whom you should plan of “out pointing”. If you don’t know both of these ways to win a fight, you will not be a Great MMA fighter.
