Weekend Whoopings: Strikeforce and TUF Finale
Le vs. Fryklund
I was delighted to see Strikeforce/EliteXC pull things together and put on a great show Friday night. Tony Fryklund did nothing but facilitate Cung Le’s striking. There were multiple prime opportunities for Fryklund to shoot for the takedown, but it never happened. In the meantime, Cung surgically dismantled The Freak with kicks from every angle hitting every target. So the question is: why didn’t Fryklund go for the takedown?
It could have been just that Cung controlled the fight so well that Fryklund felt as if he had no opportunity to go for a takedown. Pace, distance, everything was dictated by Cung. From the fan perspective, we see one fighter completely dominating the fight. From the fighter perspective it’s even worse. He had an extremely low percentage of connecting shots, and that is completely demoralizing for a striker. And to make things even worse, he gets tagged with these crazy kung fu kicks while the fans are chanting his name. I think he just got beat mentally. So much so that he just didn’t believe his takedown would work.
Shamrock vs. Baroni
Despite the dude being kind of a prick, I’ve always believed in Frank Shamrock. To me, he’s among the very first well-rounded mixed martial artists. His fights in those awkward adolescent years of the UFC were always impressive with smooth transitioning from standing to the ground. For someone like me, who at that time had studied grappling and standup as separate arts, he represented what was the first glimpse of what modern MMA would look like.
Baroni on the other hand is just kind of a brute. Yes he’s good at knocking people out, but that’s only when the opponent is dumb enough to not move their head. Also, his strikes are 100% power and 100% hooks, which is something Gono exposed in a Pride fight a while back. Gono simply leaned back and extended a knee out every time Baroni came in. Anyway, his style is completely one-dimensional and that was quickly made evident by the beating that he took.
