Dan Hardy and great MMA wrestling debate
When mixed martial arts was being pioneered as a sport in the 1990s, it was pitted as a way to test out differing styles of combat against each other. In those days it was Brazilian Jiu Jitsu which quickly
became the supreme art, as any MMA fighter very rapidly had to learn the art to succeed.
Today, the main art is increasingly becoming American collegiate wrestling, either freestyle or less commonly Greco-Roman. Three of the five UFC champions are wrestlers. Frankie Edgar just dethroned B.J
Penn at lightweight, Georges St-Pierre (who does not have a wrestling background but has arguably the best wrestling in MMA) at welterweight and Brock Lesnar at heavyweight. Moreover the two remaining non-wrestlers to hold belts, Mauricio “Shogun” Rua and
Anderson Silva are both facing upcoming challenges against wrestlers.
It’s got more than a few fans worried. Too often fights dominated by wrestlers such as Gray Maynard, Rashad Evans, Antonio McKee, Jon Fitch and many others are seen as being very boring, suggesting that
there may have to be rule changes to the sport to keep it exciting. The problem is the “lay and pray” style, where a fighter simply takes another down and prevents him from getting up without doing significant damage to win a decision. This has since been
accompanied by “wall and stall”, which involves pushing a fighter against the cage and holding him there for the duration of the fight.
Enter Dan Hardy into the debate. He recently challenged for GSP’s belt at UFC 111, and found himself taken down at will throughout the fight. Like many British fighters, he doesn’t come from a wrestling
background, and he threw his two cents into the ring, writing for thisisnottingham.co.uk.
“I think the problem is there's beginning to be too much wrestling in UFC Octagon, not too little of it in the gym. There are a lot of people out there calling themselves 'UFC fighters' who are nothing
of the kind. In the UFC, you should go for finishes," he wrote.
"You should work for 15 minutes to knock your opponent out, submit him, or improve your position to give yourself the best chance of doing either. But there's guys out there who just want to use wrestling
to hold a stalemate for 15 minutes, without ever risking going for ground and pounds or attempting submissions."
Afterwards Hardy faced quite a bit of criticism along with some support for his comments. But his detractors accused Hardy of simply making excuses for his being completely outwrestled and dominated by
St-Pierre in his title shot. But Hardy insists that’s not the case, as he later wrote in response.
“The column wasn't about wrestling's place in MMA, it was about using wrestling purely to stall and avoid fighting,” he said, and specifically mentioned his fight with GSP.
“This isn't about my fight with GSP either. He beat me fair and square. I would have liked him to have tried to do more damage but that's only so he would have given me more space to get back up.
"Obviously that's not something Georges was looking to help me out with. He controlled me well and worked for submissions and nearly got two if you remember.”
So is Hardy right? Hardy argues it’s not time to change the rules just yet, but rather to interpret them differently to punish wrestlers for “timidity,” which is banned in MMA rules.
Overall, such a move seems inevitable. Before anything else MMA is entertainment, and if the fans aren’t entertained, they’ll move on.
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