View full size photo »

With all eyes in the fight world focused on this weekend's battle between Fedor Emelianenko and Brett Rogers, I thought it would be worthwhile to analyze the fight from a slightly different perspective, examining both men's stand-up from a kickboxing viewpoint. As a disclaimer, I fully understand that these are two different sports, with different needs and styles of striking. That said, this is a fight that many feel will be won or lost on the feet, so perhaps we have something to gain by looking at each man's striking.

For Rogers, the stand-up game can best be summarized in one word - power. The man has extremely heavy hands, and has used those hands to stop every opponent he's faced. From a technical standpoint, he has so far not shown a wide range of techniques, but he hasn't had to. His primary weapon has always been his short hook, which he throws repeatedly from the right and left, usually catching his opponent with the right and dropping him. It's not the most technically exact punch, but Rogers throws it in a very effective way.

Key to his punching is that when he throws these hooks, he alternates: right hook, left hook, right hook, left hook, using a good amount of speed for a big heavyweight. The end result is a high output of punches, and an inability for his opponent to simply circle out to one side and avoid damage. This is exactly what led to his defeat of Andrei Arlovski. With punches coming from both sides, Arlovski made the huge tactical mistake of backing straight up. When his back hit the cage, he had nowhere left to go and Rogers' punch found its home. Rogers combines this punching skill with a Chuck Liddell-like ability to go in for the kill when his man is hurt, leading to his 100% KO ratio.

Continue reading this post »

View full size photo »

Heavy.com's Jonathan Snowden sat down with Strikeforce's Light Heavyweight Champion, DREAM and K-1 veteran Gegard Mousasi about his upcoming bout on November 7th against Sokoudjou in Strikeforce on CBS. Gegard, a fighter from the Netherlands found his homeland to be inhospitable for his dreams of pounding grown men in the face with his fists.

"In the Netherlands they like sports like cycling, darts and ice skating, there isn’t any interest in MMA.There is a big difference with countries like the USA and Japan," Mousasi said. "It won’t be big in Europe. Maybe in countries like Great Britain and Germany because the combat sport is popular there, like boxing."

They delved into Gegard's jump into the deep end of Japan's top competition as well as his alliance with the world's top heavyweight fighter, Fedor Emelianenko.

After two years as an MMA nomad, taking fights where he could find them after the sudden demise of PRIDE, Mousasi found his way to DREAM, PRIDE's replacement as the leading MMA promoter in Japan. He was almost an afterthought in their Middleweight Grand Prix, stacked to the brim with better known fighters like Paulo Fihlo, Jason "Mayhem" Miller, and Kazushi Sakuraba. Mousasi outlasted them all, submitting Melvin Manhoef, the most feared striker in the tournament and knocking out Ronaldo Souza, the most feared grappler in the tournament. Suddenly he was among the top fighters in the world at middleweight. It was also the last time he would fight at that weight. Still in his early twenties at the time, Mousasi simply couldn't make the weight anymore. He was growing bigger and stronger-and more confident. Much of that has to do with training alongside the best fighter in the world.

"Standing next to Fedor, I feel so much bigger than him," Mousasi said. "When you train with him, he feels like a middleweight. He’s as strong as a heavyweight but as fast as a middleweight, so I think that makes him special. If I can take my speed as a middleweight, have that explosiveness and mobility and move up to heavyweight, I think that’s something a lot of them don’t have."