After almost 24 hours on the move, I’m finally back home to Denmark. I’ve had plenty of time to think about the Pride GP finals and its outcome. Although Brazilian fans are certainly disappointed with the performances of Wanderlei Silva and Minotauro Nogueira, we cannot overlook how amazing Mr. Mirko Filipovic was on the night he celebrated his 32nd birthday. He simply did not make any mistakes and stuck to his gameplan from the beginning. Really impressive.
Interestingly, in my point of view wrong gameplans played a big part in the defeats of Nogueira and Wanderlei in their semifinal bouts.
Silva is known for his agressiveness and killer instinct. He comes after his opponents like a madman, and usually that pretty much does the work for him. On Sunday though, he could not intimidate Cro Cop, who evaded the first 10 punches or so with extreme ease. Easy for him, I mean.
At the same time that he frustrated Wanderlei with his defensive mastery, he threw precise shots that literally picked the Chute Boxer apart. Although hurt, the hungry Brazilian kept moving forward, and like an old friend of mine likes to say, “he jumped in the abyss”. To act like that against Mirko is suicidal, and Wand never really changed gears or chose a different gameplan during his brief encounter with the Croatian Cop. True, he tried a takedown, but it didn’t work and he ended up on the bottom, not exactly the best place to be against Mirko, if indeed there is such a thing.
Minotauro was much more successful than Wand in the semifinal round. He set the pace of the match and pretty much controlled the pro-wrestler Josh Barnett throughout the 15 minutes of action, but some silly mistakes – allied to Josh’s constant pursue of victory – cost him the fight. I’ve known Minotauro for many years and I’ve had the pleasure of following him in some great moments of his career in Japan. By nature, he has a very lose game and he doesn’t mind being on the bottom, after all he has finished so many fights with triangles and armbars that he is always confident he will pull out another sub sooner or later.
However, against Josh Barnett, potentially the first of two battles that night, he should have played a more conservative game crushing from the top and just waiting for the right moment to catch his foe. Mino displayed a wide-array of sweeps, from half guard inversions to armdrags, but whenever he reached the top position, he didn’t inflict enough damage and pressure to put Barnett in serious trouble. He had a good armbar attempt at the end of round one, but Barnett was right on it and defended well.
By definition, Jiu-Jitsu is a defensive and progressive art. Make sure to avoid as many strikes as possible, improve your position little by little and do not allow your opponent to recover from a bad situation. In other words, you need to have adjustment. Great Jiu-Jitsu and MMA fighter that he is, Rodrigo Nogueira has more than enough tools to apply this philosophy to perfection. In fact, he is so skilled and tough that even when he does lose good positions, he still manages to recover and win the fight – at least more often than not.
Unfortunately for him and his fans around the world, last Sunday this gameplan cost him the fight. And that, my friends, is how the cookie crumbles.
