Everyone talks about the liver kick, but if you look at Anthony, he started out right handed punching the right hand side and did a little switch-step on a punch and he ended up catching Donald when he switched to the left and he didn’t even realize it. He did some punches and followed it up with a side kick followed up with a step-knee on the cage, almost threw the elbow, had a few punches and a body punch and then a kick. Even in that short fight he had some small, a little diversity of all his strikes if that makes sense.
Striking is certainly evolving, jiu-jitsu is evolving in MMA, wrestling is evolving, but if we can just focus on striking, we’re starting to see not just guys getting better, like Daniel Cormier throwing combinations, but certainly the best practices are being disseminated, but in terms of evolution and adaptation, in your mind, where is it headed?
It’s not even near its ceiling yet. Everyone in the sport is getting better at everything and it’ scrazy. Non-wrestlers are getting good at wrestling like GSP, jiu-jitsu has always been great and now I think striking, a lot of people realize striking makes you money. The fans, the general fan gets excited about striking.
But I mean in terms of changes. You guys are doing the off the wall stuff, but it’s not that you’re just doing that although that’s certainly a key component. You saw guard play being the initial jiu-jitsu component in MMA and now it’s more about back control or mounting or guard passing to the side. Demian Maia is a perfect example of that. In striking, what are some key things that guys are more leaning on now than they used to?
A lot of things, the evolution, everyone is getting better at defense more than anything. They need to get better and if your defense is good, you can be as aggressive as you want. I think a lot of people too have to understand that MMA striking is different than K-1 striking or Muay Thai kickboxing. It’s a completely different fight when you put MMA gloves on when you have to deal with the takedowns and all these other moves that are a completely different fight. A lot of people don’t necessarily train MMA.
A lot of people don’t realize I’m a kickboxing coach, but we rarely train kickboxing alone. We train our kickboxing from an MMA position and that’s why our guys are so good at it because they’re at a threat to be taken down constantly so they don’t just do kickboxing alone. That’s like for our beginner students at our academy. We do kickboxing constantly in an MMA format and we do a lot of MMA sparring. Everything, if you’re rolling, you’re used to getting hit at the same time. If you’re standing up striking, you’re used to get wrestled at the same time. It’s a very important thing to integrate and that’s something I’ve really tried to focus on over the years in MMA.
If Pettis went to do any sort of standard kickboxing with Thai rules, how do you think he would fare?
He got invited to do a K-1 match in ’09, but we were busy with the WEC and with my history with K-1, when I’d taken fighters, they were a bit iffy on paying the fighters so that’s why we didn’t put Anthony in the K-1.
Do any of your guys get relatively major invites like that?
Sergio Pettis, Anthony’s brother, has fought a Muay Thai bout already. He fought Muay Thai at age 17. I am getting back into the striking realm and I’m helping out with Glory and I’m getting kids interested in doing it again. It’s a great outlet and I see an opening for kickboxing. I don’t think it’s ever going to be as big as MMA, but with that, it’s a great opening to share the market. I think it’ll have a place and a lot of MMA fans will watch kickboxing.
So if someone asked me what is the talent disparity between the world’s best boxer in terms of striking, at least boxing striking and the world’s best MMA fighter in terms of their boxing striking, I would tell you it’s pretty significant. There’s nobody in MMA that can do what Floyd Mayweather does, not even close I would say.
