Ask 411 MMA 12.06.07: UFC/Mexico, Ivan Salaverry, Wanderlei Silva, More

Posted by Damian Sarcuni on 12.06.2007

Is combat Sambo a weak martial art? How do you join a top fight team? Whatever happened to Ivan Salaverry? The answers to these questions and more are all in the returning edition of Ask 411 MMA!

It's time once again to ask 411 MMA! I'm Damian Sarcuni and this is where we at 411 hold our bi-weekly Q&A session on everything related to the glorious sport of mixed martial arts. We've been off schedule lately due to the holiday season as well as finding more advertising for the column but things should be speeding up back to normal from now on.

Here's our usual reminder: you can post your questions in the specified thread over at 411's MMA forums, or email us at [e-mail]. All questions are subject to editing for grammar and spelling.


You've Got Questions…




Why is it of all the disciplines on Human Weapon, MMA and Sambo are the only ones that seem to be left wanting over all the others when it comes to the two hosts of the show? – Magog

For those of you who haven't seen it, Human Weapon is a documentary series on the Discovery Channel in which two hosts travel the world over to learn and compete in various martial arts forms. At the end of each show, one of the hosts competes against a champion or practitioner of that martial art in a real match. The hosts usually fight to a draw or lose, but did quite well when studying mixed martial arts and combat Sambo.

I caught a few episodes of the show in order to answer this specific question and I noticed a few interesting things. For starters, some of the fight rules seem set up so that a draw is the most likely outcome, such as the show featuring a karate "kumite" fight. In the case of the MMA show, well, both hosts are long time MMA practitioners who already knew the game pretty well, regardless of how they made it look on the show.

As for the Sambo show, I've long had this theory that those surrounding world champion Fedor Emelianenko just really aren't all that good. Sure Fedor is the lord of all MMA and Sambo, but his teammates and training partners tend to fall prey to some really basic American wrestling and other elementary strategies. People tend to get annoyed when I talk like that though, so I will simply say that MMA and Sambo are relatively similar sports and it is a pretty quick transition from one to the other. Taking that into account, the hosts were likely more experienced than their chosen opponent. It doesn't really discount the fighting styles themselves.




Richarval needs a few good training partners:

How do fight teams (non-IFL) work? For example, how does one go about getting into Team Quest or Team Miletich? Do you have to be invited, or if you have enough money can you just pay to join up? And once you're on the team, how do you stay on? I assume that the team takes a cut of your winnings and such, but is that all there is to it? Thanks.

Obviously there are differences for each specific fight team, but generally when it comes to adding new blood to a fight team there is a set way to go about it. The way it works is that a fight gym or school will bring up their most advanced students into special intermediate or advanced classes, and those students who excel there either start to double as instructors and/or represent the school in a fight team. I know you said non-IFL, but Renzo Gracie's Pitbulls are a perfect example of this. Students join Renzo's gym simply by signing up and paying the normal fees, train there, and if they excel they become eligible to join Renzo's fight team and eventually the Pitbulls. So basically you start out by paying as a normal student and work your way up to an invitation.

Corner men get a cut of a fighter's purse, and generally you want someone in your corner from your team who knows you and knows the strategies you've been working on. Staying on a fight team is less about money and more about being useful, though. It doesn't necessarily matter if you lose all the time as long as you are helping others to improve their game. Of course, winning and gaining exposure for your team is also a big plus. It's not a cut and dry situation by any means.


Following up on that, ICTimer wants my personal choice in the matter…

If you were an athletic individual looking to break into MMA and looking for a team to train with, and you had your choice of any team in the world to train with, who would you choose and why?

Not to bring in needless technicalities, but are we assuming I love MMA more than my own city? Because I have to say, some of the best teams in the world train in the most desolate, retarded places I've ever seen. The fields of Iowa, the swamps of Port St. Lucie, on top of a giant rock with a hick name like "Big Bear". Those are great for naturalists looking to train all day, but personally I like to take a more balanced approach and spend more time in the cities. That being said, I think the place I would like go would be Randy Couture's gym in Las Vegas. It's relatively local in terms of urban areas, and more importantly the wrestling there is second to none. Right now, unified MMA rules don't have much of an answer for someone who can't stop a takedown and it's pretty easy to dominate your opponents that way.

If we take locations out of the equation though, I'd join with Team Quest so I can learn how to beat my opponents in a flash without training as hard as possible. That isn't a knock at them, by the way, I'm serious.




Mike Ray can't stand convoluted title situations.

Do MMA organizations (specifically the UFC) have any sort mandatory title defense within a certain time span? I'm asking mainly due to the Matt Serra situation. Is there a rule on the books that says, "If you don't defend a title, for whatever reason, within X months, you will be stripped of the title?"

Also, why has the UFC gone away from pretty much all tournaments? I completely understand doing away with the old 8-man, single-night tournaments, but why aren't there more, i.e. 4-man tournaments spread out over multiple shows to determine number one contenders? In certain divisions, there are several guys that deserve title shots. The champions only fight, realistically, every 4th or so PPV, so why not build a tournament around the number one contender position to build hype for the eventual title match, rather than just 'appointing' a contender?

Here's some amusing information for you. Both the Nevada State Athletic Commission and the New Jersey State Athletic Commission define in their rules that championship bouts last for 5 rounds, each consisting of 5 minutes. What both commissions don't do, however, is define what a "champion" is. Thanks to this nifty little loophole, MMA and Boxing organizations are more or less able to pick their own champion at their own discretion. Dana White can basically name Wesley "Cabbage" Correira the new UFC heavyweight champion tomorrow if he feels like it. That's an unrealistic thought, of course, and considering how fight organizations rely on their champions for promotional purposes the policy does make sense. Still, the answer is that title defense time spans, as well as belt ownership is all determined by the organization itself.

Tournaments are another story entirely. Usually in the United States fighters are forbidden to face more than one opponent within a certain time span that varies depending upon a doctor's diagnosis after a fight. In a sense, the act of fighting itself results in a suspension from fighting again. There are ways around this, for example if one or more of the fights takes place on a reservation or under an athletic commission that does not acknowledge medical suspensions. The California State Athletic Commission has only recently changed this and allowed for two fights in a single night which allows for four man tournaments, but the Nevada State and New Jersey State Athletic Commissions have not. The first four man MMA tournament in California did see a man get sent to the hospital on a stretcher, but that was in the opening minute of one of the first round of the night. Whether or not the four-man tournament rules are viable enough to spread to other states remains yet to be seen.




Any word on UFC in Mexico? Or hell, any word on where the UFC will be in 2008? – Mayhem Monkey

Bah, promoters always talk big a year in advance. The last time I was on a UFC conference call Dana White was talking about how in the coming year he was planning to run all sorts of shows in England, Canada, Texas, and god knows where else. Around UFC 69 there was a rumor that the UFC was eyeing the Latino marketing demographic by placing Diego Sanchez and Roger Huerta on the same fight card in Houston with plans to carry that momentum across the Mexican border. I can't say how that little experiment turned but we are now coming up on UFC 79. So yeah…never say never, but don't hold your breath either.




Jose looks for me to bring up some history.

1. What happened to Ivan Salaverry when he first left the UFC? He seemed to be doing just fine in the 185 rankings, why did he leave?

Ivan Salaverry was indeed a highly ranked and flamboyant fighter in the UFC for quite some time. Essentially, Ivan got screwed. In 2005, having won his previous two UFC fights, Ivan lost to Nate Marquardt via unanimous decision in one of the most boring matches on record at Ultimate Fight Night. This also happened to be the main event of the night, and the UFC felt that Salaverry had blown the opportunity so they got rid of him. The only reason they brought him back two years later was because Ivan went over to the WFA, which Zuffa Inc. happened to buy. With Ivan back under contract, he fought his farewell match against Terry Martin and promptly bought himself out of his last fight in order to open up his own gym.

2. How did Mark Hunt and Wanderlei Silva wind up fighting in Pride, considering the huge weight difference between them?

Weight differences are actually a welcome thing over in Japan, as fans love nothing more than to see a scrawny skilled guy take on a big, hard hitting monster. In the case of Silva/Hunt though, this was not the original plan. Going into Pride's 2004 New Year's Eve show (the most important show of the year) one of the main fights on the card was going to pit Kazushi Sakuraba against Wanderlei Silva for the fourth and final time. However, Sakuraba injured a rib in training and had to pull out of the fight. Pride made the match against Hunt not just based on size but on the fact that both men were strikers, had no fear, etc. There was also an element of wonder in that Wanderlei, a KO artist, would be taking on a man who could not really be KO'd. The result? An amazing fight resulting in Silva's first loss in five years.

3. What was the difference between Pride FC and Pride Bushido?

Pride FC was the term for regular shows run by the Japanese Pride organization. Pride Bushido originally started as a team VS team based concept show, which would feature cards pitting specific fighter types against one another. So there would be shows like Japan VS Brazil, or Chute Boxe VS Japan, etc. Eventually it became a showcase for lighter weight fighters who came from the Japanese Shooto and DEEP organizations, as well as some low profile heavyweight matches thrown into the mix. Eventually there was also a change in the Bushido rules where fights would have only two rounds, a ten minute round and a 5 minute round. They also used green cards for fighter penalties, which worked similar to Pride FC's yellow cards except you could receive and unlimited amount without losing a fight (3 yellow cards is an instant disqualification).

4. Why do people make such a big deal about the gogoplata submission?

Basically the gogoplata is a difficult submission to pull off, especially in MMA. It involves using the rubber guard, which generally requires a lot of leg flexibility. It was considered an almost mythical submission to most MMA fans until it was finally pulled off by Shinya Aoki against Joachim Hansen. If that didn't shock the world enough, a few months later Nick Diaz did it on Takanori Gomi. But the biggest shock was still yet to come, when the 6'7 Brad Imes used the gogoplata to tap out both Zak Jensen AND Bo Cantrell, consecutively.


And that's all for this week! As always be sure to check out more great coverage from the rest of the 411 MMA zone crew as we stay on the pulse of the fast paced world of mixed martial arts! There's a lot of news on the horizon, so stay tuned and thanks for reading!