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By: Jason Amadi, MMATorch Columnist
Some troll who chose to identify himself as "Arn Anderson" writes: To everyone defending AS for ducking Weidman and wanting "money fights", why are you ignoring or refusing to address the aspect of TIMING?
GSP, Diaz, Bisping, Belfort, Belcher, and Rockhold are all locked up, albeit for different reasons, and wouldn't be able to fight Silva till next Spring, Rockhold probably longer. He and Weidman fought within a couple weeks of each other, they will be ready again at the exact same time. The timing is perfect for those two to fight and no one else.
And LOL at Jason's "editorial" about "money fights" not calling out Silva for ducking the biggest money fight there is, Jon Jones (who is on video saying he wanted to fight Silva, and only retracted the statement later after Silva said he had no interest), but being ok with the smaller opponent GSP. We get it, you're a fan, but please.
A: The reason I write about mixed martial arts (aside from the money) is so that a small segment of the MMA community can move past this "I don't like this fighter, so everything he says is bad and I hope he loses" foolishness and see things for how they really are.
Ed Soares and Jorge Guimaraes are playing a game in the media. Chris Weidman is a quality fighter that no one knows, and no one cares about yet. So what Soares and Guimaraes are doing now is downplaying Weidman as a contender and talking up ridiculous fights that'll never happen. Do you really think that the people who helped make Anderson Silva a millionaire wholeheartedly believe that there's any money in Anderson Silva vs. Rich Franklin III?
This whole campaign makes Chris Weidman a sympathetic figure that people want to see succeed and ensures that whenever the Silva-Weidman fight takes place, it's a significantly bigger deal than it would have been had they just accepted the fight from the beginning.
All of this "Anderson Silva is scared of Weidman" and "Silva would rather face Rich Franklin again" nonsense is exactly what we're supposed to be talking about in order to build interesting in a potential Silva-Weidman bout.
There are actually people asking Dana White on Twitter whether or not Anderson Silva is allowed to turn down opponents. Everything is building towards Silva-Weidman perfectly. More people are talking about Chris Weidman than at any other point in his career because of this.
Weidman is hosting an upcoming UFC Fight Club Q&A. I can guarantee you that Weidman will continue his campaign at the Q&A, and fans will shower him with sympathy and effusive praise. This whole thing is brilliant and people like you are exactly the types that Silva's management think about when they thumb through their money and give inflammatory quotes to TATAME magazine over the telephone.
Jimmy writes: I think Michael Bisping is running down all these fighters just to get his name out there to try to get title shot. He's a big mouth and he's never had a quality win over anybody. He needs to keep his opinion to himself until he proves otherwise. He just an overrated big mouth. That loses a lot of people respect.
A: What's so weird about Michael Bisping is that he tends to look best in defeat. For a long time his claim to fame was losing a really close decision to Rashad Evans. Now it's the even closer decision loss to Chael Sonnen (I actually thought Bisping won that fight). I feel like those losses might actually be a better indicator of how good he is than any of his wins.
What's so brilliant about Michael Bisping is that his mouth has always positioned him to where he only needs to beat one really good opponent to get a title shot. Bisping was guaranteed a middleweight title opportunity if he defeated Dan Henderson at UFC 100. To get to that point, he'd only beaten Jason Day, Charles McCarthy and Chris Leben. That's pretty incredible.
As far as Bisping keeping his opinions to himself goes, let's all hope that's not the case. He's obviously very good at marketing himself and promoting fights, and that's a valuable asset to the UFC. Obviously, since UFC 100, Dan Henderson has done a lot more to establish himself in the US, but before knocking out Michael Bisping, he'd yet to gain any real momentum stateside. Wanderlei Silva pretty much re-established himself by beating him and he was Rashad Evans' first big name win as well.
Bisping is a really big name for a guy without any top ten wins. I just can't bring myself to knock that sort of hustle.
Alex writes: How does scoring actually work? I have looked online to see MMA scorecards and all I can see are the values assigned per round under the 10 point must system. Do the judges keep notes during the round or do they just watch and choose a value for each fighter at the end of the round?
If this is the case then why do the announcers always refer to certain things (takedowns, full mount, submission attempts, etc.) as "scoring points" with the judges if at the end of the round the judges just give it to whom they think won the round either convincingly or overwhelmingly?
A: Since things like punches and takedowns don't really have numeric values assigned to them in MMA, it's impossible for things to actually "score points." To be honest, maybe they actually do take the time to look away and write things down, and that's why we get so many horrendous scorecards.
But seriously, when announcers say things "score points" they're talking about things that really stand out in the minds of the judges like late takedowns or big slams. Like you said, at the end of the round they just write down the scores.
Feel free to follow me on Twitter @JasonAmadi and direct your "Ask the Torch" questions to mmatorch@gmail.com.
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