Photo by Josh Hedges/Zuffa LLC

UFC Fight Night: Miocic versus Hunt brought with it one of the most dominating and rounded performances I have ever seen from a heavyweight, along with one of the worst displays of refereeing.

Through five rounds, Stipe Miocic battered Mark Hunt on the feet, in the clinch, and on the ground—and in all honesty the fight should have been stopped in the third stanza, as Miocic rained down blows from mount on a defenseless Hunt, and looked to the referee to halt the bout. Hunt was let down by his referee and his own cornermen as he was forced to take strike after strike in a fight he clearly had no hope of pulling back from the brink.

It all started with Miocic's dual pronged attack on the feet.

Firstly, he showed the willingness to duck in on lazy takedown attempts from the get go. Hunt exploded up or fought them off for a while, but that was the point. Think of when Cain Velasquez failed on those first three takedowns in his second bout with Junior dos Santos. Plenty of fans were ready to say “oh man, he can't get JDS down! It's about to get ugly.” Shooting half-heartedly often and forcing the opponent to fight is worth far more than waiting for the perfect opportunity and engaging in a one dimensional stand up bout until then.

Secondly, Miocic's jab worked beautifully. The difference between eating counter punches and needling an opponent with jabs which keep them out at arms length is in feinting. Mark Hunt might well punch with something like a thousand pounds of force, but swinging that kind of power at air every time the opponent flinches is 1) exhausting and 2) embarrassing. The more a fighter feints, the more he can convince the big counter puncher to wait a little, to become more conservative, and that's when the jabs start sneaking through.

The more the jab connected, the more Hunt shelled up. This was when Miocic went to the hand traps, the elbows, the long right hand. He put it all together beautifully.

When Hunt came out at the beginning of a round and tried to go on the offensive, the jab sneaked in and knocked his head back before he was able to swing.



Counter jab, duck the return to get the takedown, trap the leg and start hitting.

Miocic's ground work was beautiful too. Knowing that Hunt would explode up whenever possible, Miocic would take Hunt down and immediately use his leg to hook or “turk” Hunt's bottom leg. In this way, he trapped Hunt underneath him, where he could go about elbowing and punching the Super Samoan while significantly delaying the escape attempts.

A few of the better ground and pounders in mixed martial arts have favoured trapping the opponent in half guard over moving to side control—where the constant threat of the bridge means that much energy is wasted pinning the opponent, unable to posture up and strike downwards on him effectively. Randy Couture, Georges St. Pierre, Jon Jones. All loved the top of half guard.



Threatening the kimura / double wrist lock while dropping elbows.

Over-all, the swayed between impressing me immensely with Miocic's gameplan and discipline, and disgusting me with both referee and corner incompetence. The difference between a fighter getting tired of punching another fighter in the head, and the latter fighter 'intelligently defending' himself is fairly easy to see. Yet time and time again I see inept officials who are afraid to stop an MMA bout until one of the combatants is completely limp.

In boxing or kickboxing, if you take an unreasonable amount of clean blows, even if you're occasionally swinging back or blocking one, the fight is stopped out of concern for your health. MMA is still being officiated as if it is a fight to the death.

It further boggles the mind that corners are still willing to do this to their fighters. Of course the fighter isn't going to give up, a fighter works under the powerful delusion that he just needs to find that one shot, or that one chance to throw up a triangle choke. It is the job of the corner to say “okay, our man is getting brutally beaten in a fight with no hope of winning, now we throw in the towel, go home, and work to make a better go of it next time”. Poor Junior dos Santos was allowed to take horrible beatings against Cain Velasquez because his corner couldn't separate themselves from the belief that their charge had in his magical one punch power.

Hunt's corner and the doctor have a good deal to answer for. But the corner were likely deluding themselves, and many doctors see their job as only to ascertain if a fighter can see or if a cut will bleed into the eye, not to say that a fighter is clearly taking too much damage. It was the referee, John Sharp, who was to blame for allowing Hunt to take such ludicrous punishment.

Sharp's performance should be played to anyone hoping to become a referee to highlight both ineptitude of the highest order and allowing the mood of a crowd to effect the referee's decisions. Not to mention that there were occasions where both men grabbed and held the fence to prevent losses of balance, and went completely unpunished.

Odds and Sods

The rest of the card was all right, “Smile'n” Sam Alvey (his spelling, not mine) picked up another knockout win by merit of his cracking right hook, though it wasn't the most technical of affairs. Reddit's favourite, Ben Nguyen, delivered a knockout in his UFC flyweight debut—demonstrating a simple principle which will carry fights in MMA. If one fighter is loading up and swinging, and the other fighter is moving his head and throwing “weaker” shots which actually land, things are going to come apart quickly for the swinger.

Even a little head movement between blows can completely change a fight at this sort of level.

Finally, Robert Whitaker showed a beautiful left hook against Brad Tavares, but what impressed me was his use of the front kick. The front snap kick is a fantastic means of making the opponent come in. Rather than hang out on the edge of range and let the kick go unanswered, most fighters will follow it back in. This is how Semmy Schilt knocked down so many great fighters with his jab, he kicked first and got them running on to it.

Whitaker kicked, Tavares charged in, and a short left hook put him down. A lovely little combination which utilized the longest of kicks to work into Whitaker's preferred, hooking range.

With all that talk of turks and wrestling, it would be a shame to skip over Josh Barnett's performance at Metamoris 6. When Roberto 'Cyborg' Abreu got injured, Ryron Gracie stepped in to save the match and allowed us all to see Barnett grapple again after the beautiful, crushing performance he put on against Dean Lister last year. My two favourite moments had to be the lovely pass over into a front headlock from the feet:

And the step over into reverse mount to attack with a toe hold, which ended the bout.

With Glory 21 as well as Canelo Alvarez vs James Kirkland going down at the weekend as well, this was a cracking couple of days for fight fans. And if you missed any of it, you've got some fun stuff to catch up on.

Check out this related story:

The Super Samoan Goes on a Stipe Hunt