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When men swinging their fists in fields got tired of breaking their hands and turning their ankles, gloves were brought in, and rings with agreed upon sizes and surfaces became mandatory. Resin on the mat, slack in the ropes, and the weight of the gloves all became a huge deal to trainers and fighters in boxing. The rules attempt to make everything even on fight night, the fighters look to get every advantage in negotiations.

The rules in the UFC have changed over time, and they are by no means perfect, but they look to be staying in roughly this shape for the foreseeable future.

We often tout the champion of the moment as the best fighter in the world. Really, they're the best in the world 'at UFC'. Or MMA, under the unified rules of MMA. A few small changes to the rules of MMA could turn the rankings, and the techniques we see used, upside down. We'll steer clear of the usual knees to the head of a grounded opponent and yellow cards for stalling, and we'll start simple and get more outrageous.

Allow Grabbing of the Fence

If something is banned, it is usually because it's sport-breakingly effective, boring, or potentially dangerous. Fence grabbing can be a little of all three columns, but can be a great equalizer. Let's take an example from way back in the day—Don Frye getting up from underneath Mark Coleman. Coleman was having his way with Frye, and attempting to crush the life out of Frye with the chest compression / neck crack that Josh Barnett used to finish Dean Lister. Frye's fingers found the fence, and he hoisted himself out and up.

Certainly, using the fence to get up would take some of the pressure off of the feet in wall walking, and might even help to combat the “laming it out” we saw from Johny Hendricks in the last round of both of his matches with Robbie Lawler.

But it goes both ways. Frye got back to his feet against Coleman, and was promptly taken down again. This time Coleman held the fence to stay tight to Frye as he threw a knee to Frye's dome. Notice too, that this demonstrates the danger of allowing fence grabbing—Frye's wrist is yanked almost all the way around while he is holding the fence. All it takes is someone's fingers or toes to get stuck in there while they're slammed to the mat, and they'll break easily.

But can you imagine Daniel Cormier's dirty boxing if he were allowed to hold the fence? Against Frank Mir, Cormier ratcheted Mir's arm up with an underhook to expose Mir's ribcage, then attempted to knee said rib cage along the fence. If Cormier could have secured the underhook in place with a grip on the fence, Mir wouldn't have been going anywhere, and Cormier would be able to throw his full weight into his knees, with no fear of losing balance or position.

Cormier has a strong underhook on Mir's left side. Cormier rests his arm on top of the fence. Referees have shown less willingness to allow this lately.

Alternate Future: Wrestling practice is dropped in favour of chin ups.

Adjust Cage Size to Weight Class

Earlier this year, I swore off watching Floyd Mayweather's fights live, and promised that I'd only catch up on them if I had heard it was a great fight. Why? Because much of Mayweather's game these days is won in the negotiations. He says he wants a twenty-six foot ring, and his opponent decides how badly they need to get paid. Welterweights running around a twenty-six foot ring, when the classic Queensbury rules allowed heavyweights up to a twenty-foot ring, are just tedious and frustrating to watch. Mayweather simply got on his bike in his rematch with Maidana, and tied up whenever he couldn't get away in time.

When the WEC lightweights came over to the UFC, there was a great deal of speculating over why finishing rates dropped and formerly exciting fighters became less interesting. One of the most significant changes between the WEC and the UFC was the much, much larger cage that the UFC used for its events. A bigger cage means a larger amount of space available away from the “danger zone” along the fence. A fighter can often comfortably run around the octagon without any chance of his opponent cutting him off—just watch Starnes versus Quarry.

Notice that Starnes only hits the fence when he stops to flip off Quarry. He managed to run all night on a reportedly broken foot.

Yes cutting off the cage is an important and under practiced skill, but every attempt to cut off the cage is an effort, and not all of them work even in a small, square ring. In a gigantic, near circular cage, your chances of forcing action against a tentative opponent are significantly reduced.

But more than that—the cage is a surface to bridge off of and work your back up against. If you're a six-foot heavyweight getting taken down, you have a much better chance of being within shrimping distance of the fence than a five foot three flyweight. Hemingway's remarks about everyone being the same size lying down do not apply to ground fighting.

In this day and age, it cannot be impossible to create an octagon which can quickly have the fence panels either shifted or removed and replaced with smaller, closer in ones. The grounding points for the smaller fence could easily be covered with matting and canvas when the light heavyweights and heavyweights came out, after all.

Alternate Future: With the UFC struggling to get anyone to care about flyweight bouts, John Lineker is one of the few guys who cuts off the cage well anyway. In a cage more suited to his size, he could be a terrific draw.

Sloped Ground

This one I'm just including for fun, because it raises so many questions. Traditionally, in martial arts—just as in battle, it has been the higher ground which has been favorable. Yet in MMA, that may not be the case.

There was an organization, a little while back, which attempted to do something no other fighting organization has tried since. Yamma Pit Fighting used a cage identical to any other MMA cage, but the mat sloped upward towards the fences. Despite the idea of “Pit Fighting” (which was Tank Abbott's official style, wasn't it?), the Yamma cage was more a mat with a wheelchair ramp all around the edge.

Yamma held an ambitious, one-night heavyweight tournament in their first event and it was regarded by many as the worst MMA event ever. To hold a tournament in the US, Yamma had to ensure that no fighter was in action for more than twenty five minutes. Consequently, the first two rounds of the tournament were one round fights. Wrestlers Travis Wiuff and Chris Tuchscherer quickly realized that the small ramp near the edge of the cage—designed to facilitate wall walking, apparently—actually worked to trip opponents up. Takedowns were scored, fighters were held down for five minutes at a time, and the fights entertained no-one.

But what about a full length MMA bout on a sloped mat? Either steeply sloped towards the fence, or slightly raised in the middle (like a plate in a restaurant, designed to make you think you're getting your money's worth). Or perhaps a two level design either way around?

Why is that interesting to me? Well in traditional martial arts, forms and writings about fighting on uneven ground focus on front leg of the fighter on higher ground. If you have the higher ground, you repeatedly remove the front foot from the opponent's range and throw out kicks to the face (which is just there, level with your hips). If you have the lower ground, you catch the kick and look to throw them by it, or your dive after the lead foot. But these things aren't competition tested in high level MMA matches like so many other ideas from traditional martial arts. We have no idea if they'd have any efficacy at all.

It would be fascinating to see if strikers took the higher ground in hopes of landing high kicks and wrestlers took the low ground in hopes of diving on the lead foot. Certainly striking effectively from lower ground, and wrestling from higher ground, are both hard to do.

Why shouldn't it happen? Well, partly because of the Yamma, and partly because it's gimmicky as hell. But mainly because the injuries would be horrible. And frequent. Think about how often fighters are turning their ankles or tearing up their knees anyway. Fighting on sloped surface wouldn't be playing with fire, it would be sticking your face in fire and poking a bear.

Alternate Future: Kazushi Sakuraba low singles rule the world. Roberto Satoshi Souza is the pound for pound greatest fighter of our era.

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