The Fading Concept of Upset in MMA

In other sports, specifically team sports, the concept of upset comes to mind when one of the teams in competition is so vastly superior to their opponents that the idea of the better team not prevailing is simply ludicrous. The “Miracle on Ice” in the 1980 Winter Olympics is a fairly famous and perfect definition of an upset. To a more modern American taste palette, think of the Giants’ epic defeat of the Patriots in Super Bowl XLII (I seriously dislike both these teams, but I’ll definitely be a temporary Giants fan when it comes to picking one over the other). These legendary sports tales have achieved their place in our hearts because in almost all these cases the story involves a lesser team throwing caution to the wind, smiling with a mouthful of blood, and remembering why they came: the glory. This is when an upset becomes more than just possibility, it becomes a reality.

In combat sports, mixed martial arts in particular, the statistical odds required to achieve such an upset is significantly smaller than other sports. One factor involved is the one-on-one sport versus the team sport. An upset in a team sport requires the complete mental (and sometimes physical) meltdown of usually at least 5 individual, professional, athletes. What this means is the complete collapse of a team because of 1 person is more often completely avoided by a slight step-up in performance by the rest of the team. I mean, they’re supposed to be a TEAM, right? Whether you are walking into a boxing/kickboxing ring, an MMA cage, or walking onto the mats to choke or be choked; its time to either make your peace with the gods of war, or become another victim.

This directly leads to the concept of the direct finish, or the “head shot” as I like to think of it. I love explaining this to wrestlers… “you see, I don’t care how many points that you have, when I sink the guillotine you either quit in front of me and everyone there, or we wake you up with a jockstrap full of your own piss.” They usually learn this around the first time someone with real experience completely wraps up and locks a triangle on them.

For striking fans out there, just think of the first time you sparred with someone who could preventively counter you, and with serious power. Before you could uncork that KO punch you have planned you’ve already eaten 2 on the jaw and are on a knee.

Now add the concept of 4oz gloves.

See how this notion of real upsets in MMA is quickly fading?

Sure there will always be REAL upsets in MMA, like GSP v Serra, Griffin v Rua, etc. but I wanted to address the common usage of the word “upset.” When a sport is meant to emulate hand-to-hand combat as closely as MMA, and now involves the best athletes in the world, anything can happen. Its just a matter of which numbers come up when you roll the dice.

Tags: mixed martial arts, MMA, no gi, UFC, upset

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 7th, 2010 at 7:34 -06:00Mar and is filed under MMA. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.