UFC 136 Results: Mark Henry Underscores Frankie Edgar's Success

In the October issue of the New Yorker, Atul Gawande asks the question: if the world's top athletes use coaches to perform better, why not a doctor or teacher? For teachers, that option exists: it's called the Kansas Coaching Project, headed by Jim Knight. The Project is not some can-do chicken soup for the soul group. It's produced real results, largely due to recognizing that at least in the school setting, it's the teacher that primarily guide's a student success, as opposed to say, standardized testing. 

"Expertise, as the formula goes, requires going from unconscious incompetence to conscious incompetence to conscious competence to unconscious competence. The coach provdes the outside eyes and ears, and makes you aware of where you're falling short. This is tricky. Human beings resist exposure and critique; our brains are well defended", says Gawande. It would be a little pretentious to cover Atul's entire thesis, which examines the use of coaching as a symbol for how much "we care about results in sports" (prompting the question "what about the results of schools and hospitals?"), and so I won't elaborate except to point out that if Mark Henry were a dime a dozen in the coaching world, well that world might be a better place for more than just fighters.

I'm not trying to anoint the man, of course. But I respect the critical eye, and Henry has that. In case you don't know who Mark Henry is, he's Edgar's boxing coach: the one shouting advice to Edgar to his face in the cage. He's got all the usual spiritual ticks too: here you can see him going to The Bible to meet his sports cliche quota before his UFC 136 bout with Gray Maynard.

I didn't notice him until UFC 125. Edgar was cracked, hurt, and beaten down within an inch of his life in the first (a story we're now familiar with, twice). As Edgar goes to his corner with a glazed, bloody look in his eyes, Henry offers him this advice: "after you throw, you have to dip. Look in my eyes! After you throw, you have to move your head and dip....get your jab going again. He's countering with a left hook. You have to watch the left hook after you throw. After you throw your right hand he's looking to land that left."

You can think of this as mundane, but it's not. Already Henry has identified what Edgar hasn't himself observed, and what he has to do to improve: move, dip after throwing the right, and look for the counter left. There are simply too many instances where coaches either don't catch what has gone wrong when a fighter is losing, or don't know what to say as remedy.

The best counterexample is B.J. Penn's corner in his rematch with Edgar: not capable of telling Penn what to do, they resorted to nondescript platitudes, and vague insults ("don't let this kid steal your belt again" or something idiotic like that). But I'd go one further and use Randy Couture as an example. At UFC 125 he was telling Gray 'not to look for one shot', and to 'just beat him up'...that the KO would come. It didn't because Couture hadn't identified the problem, which was Edgar's right hand now that he was looking for the left hook, and didn't provide a remedy: using either a jab or the inside leg kick to establish distance. 

These are not indictments on Couture or Penn's corner as coaches by themselves. After all, the in fight atmosphere is very different than training camp. But that's precisely what makes Mark Henry so special. At UFC 136 he was at it again. And again, following round 1: "don't freeze on the uppercut". The uppercut being the punch that caught Edgar. 

Those are the only words you hear from Henry, but after the 2nd, he goes back to offering technical advice with Henry telling him when to wade in for a combination, and how to defend and step out when he finishes. And perhaps just as importantly, he does so in a way that captures Edgar's attention. Yes, through eye contact, but he never speaks too fast, and whenever more than one person is talking, he pulls the "everybody shut the hell up" card which he does before the start of the 4th round. 

I hope fans give Mark Henry proper credit. I know Edgar does. There's a pattern that has emerged in each of Edgar's title defenses: the coaching advise in one corner was better, and said advice paid dividends for one fighter as a result. Perhaps it's not all that shocking Edgar won on seemingly impossible odds, twice. Give him enough time to get to his corner, and it's smooth sailing from there.

Update: I thought it'd be cool to add, that Edgar himself agrees.