What Good is Top Position...
...when you're getting beaten by the guy on the bottom? Round two of last night's fight between Diego Sanchez and Clay Guida was an object lesson in why top position is not always better. While Guida did maintain top control, he got outstruck 16-3 in power shots to the head, thanks to a bevy of elbows coming from Sanchez on the bottom. Joe Rogan made the comment that those might have been the most effective elbows from bottom that we'd ever seen, but we've seen those elbows used to pretty good effect before. Anderson Silva vs. Travis Lutter and Kenny Florian vs. Joe Lauzon are some other good examples of the devastating effect of this under-utilized weapon. They very well might be the most effective strike that most fighters will never use.
An impressive showing by Sanchez is made more impressive by the advances he has made in putting offense into his guard. What a difference this was from the guard he displayed against Jon Fitch, where Sanchez landed basically no strikes of consequence on the ground. In the Fitch fight, Sanchez concentrated almost exclusively on submissions. In the fight against Guida, Sanchez threw strikes where available and still managed to latch-on a few good submission attempts.
The scores from the fight show a victory for Sanchez 30-26, though that could very easily be 29-27, as Glenn Trowbridge scored it. Round 1 was a 10-8 round, using our objective criteria (score over 100 and more than 6x opponents' score) and Round 2 goes to Sanchez thanks to his offensive guard. Round 3 is basically a toss-up, which the system gives to Sanchez on damage, but could easily go Guida's way instead.
Also, check out the stats from Joe Stevenson vs. Nate Diaz and from Chris Lytle vs. Kevin Burns.
posted by FightMetric @ 3:57 PM
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