This article is the fourth in a series of daily releases counting down the top thirty fights of 2008. We will release a new article each day starting from #30 all the way up until the end of the month.
Top 30 Fights of 2008: #27
Amir Sadollah vs. C.B. "The Doberman" Dollaway
The Ultimate Fighter: Team Rampage vs. Team Griffin Finale - 6/21/2008
"How could you choose a fight where someone named Amir wins," you say? Well, sorry Johnny Reb, but I'll have to nominate one of "them terrorist folk" for the number twenty seven slot of my top thirty fights of 2008. Now I know how committed you are with your "These Colors Don't Run" bumper sticker on your pickup truck, and your plastic Jesus bobble-head on the dashboard, but this particular "Islam fella" did some pretty amazing stuff both leading up to and in this fight. So unload and remount your buckshot on the rear window of your '73 Ford Supercab, and pour yourself a cool glass of delicious Southern style lemonade while I tell my tale.
Amir Sadollah was the extremely unlikely hero of season seven of the popular Ultimate Fighter show aired on SpikeTV. Prior to TUF, Sadollah had no professional mixed martial arts experience, and was thusly not considered a threat, while also being the underdog in each of his four fights on the show.
At the time of the show, Amir was only a white belt in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, yet somehow managed to submit three out of his four opponents. When fighting for a spot to join the other fighters on an eight week testosterone driven crusade to destroy everything in the house in which they would live, he submitted Steve Byrnes half way through the second round.
Once he had earned his place on the show, the half Irish, half Iranian martial artist was penciled in against Gerald Harris. Harris had already compiled a fairly solid amount of wins in smaller fight promotions, and had a very impressive wrestling pedigree to boot. He was the clear cut favorite by just about everyone in the match, and right from the get go, as expected, he muscled and bullied Sadollah around the cage with relative ease. From big slams to brutal ground and pound, Harris was en route to an easy win until our unlikely hero knocked him back to his high school teaching job with a sneaky knee that no one saw coming.
After the Harris fight was friend and apparent psycho, Matt Brown. After a round and a half of great striking and clinch work, Amir again beat the odds by submitting Brown via triangle choke to earn himself a spot in the semifinals against season favorite, C.B. "The Doberman" Dollaway. Regardless of how much we knew it would hurt to see the prototypical American jock, just about everyone assumed Amir was good as dead.
And then it happened. C.B. pounded his way right into an armbar against the cage. The world had been turned upside down, and hell had frozen over. Amir beating C.B. was a crazy turn of events. This brings us to the actual fight I've nominated, where Amir fights none other than the man he had just beaten to earn the spot in the finale. Lightning can't strike twice, right?
Not only did it strike twice, it struck the same person the same way in the same exact place. Almost exactly as he had won on the show, Amir caught C.B. in an armbar from guard up against the fence. There were virtually no differences in the armbar he had beaten C.B. with before. All bets were off, and the greatest underdog story we have ever seen on the Ultimate Fighter came to an astounding close. All thanks to a lanky kid from Virgina with a mullet.
So aside from the fact that each fight was an out of this world, unbelievable come from behind victory, what was so significant about Amir's win at the finale? After all, this isn't the Top Thirty Storylines in Mixed Martial Arts of 2008 list, it's the Top Thirty Fights. So technically, all the mumbo jumbo feel good stories leading up to the fight don't count, right? Well, there was a real lot to be seen by Amir Sadollah in his battles to becoming TUF victor. For anyone looking deeply enough, he showed the world of MMA one very important thing:
Mixed martial arts is nowhere near maturation. Hell, it's not even wearing a training bra yet. In fact, I'd say it's safe to say that Sadollah showed us that mixed martial arts is still very much an infant in the process of it's evolution.
Unbeknownst to many, Amir is a black belt in Sambo. Other than Fedor Emelianenko, who has obviously used the art to great success, there are not many practitioners of the Russian martial art competing in MMA today. So it is safe to say that most guys or girls fighting in the cage have not encountered and dealt with the mechanics of Sambo. We're told that mixed martial artists are well rounded, so by that logic, there arsenal of wrestling, boxing, Muay Thai, and Jiu Jitsu should have adapted to Sadollah's strange attacks relatively quickly, right?
Unfortunately for the TUF7 winner's opponents, that was most certainly not the case; as evidenced by the fact that Sadollah was landing Sambo kicks on his opponents with literally zero opposition. The best example of this was his utilization of the front ball kick, a strike seldom seen in MMA (and not to be confused with the teep, or push-kick, a traditional Muay Thai strike). Front ball kicks use the ball of your toes to deliver a powerful, forward driving strike with all of the force being concentrated through a small impact surface to result in higher amounts of damage. Amir was using this strike on his opponents' faces. Not only was he using it on their face, but they hadn't the slightest idea as to how to deal with it. It's not that they blocked the kick incorrectly, they just flat out failed to react.
Because of the young age of MMA, most competitors are not yet fully adapted to the seemingly infinite dynamic of martial arts. Very few fighters have evolved to the level of fighting adaptively. Most fighters are still at a level of training where rather than adapting to situations, they program themselves to fight one way for each fight. If you're fighting a wrestler, you program yourself to defend take downs. If you're fighting a striker, you program yourself to maintain the distance until you can get it to the ground. But how do you program yourself to fight someone you don't understand? Further, how do you program yourself to fight someone you don't even know you don't understand? There is literally no awareness of many types of attack we haven't yet seen adapted to MMA.
That is the next step in the progression of MMA. Right now, fighters prepare for each fight specifically based off of their opponent. Eventually, this will become an obsolete method of training, as the demand for fighters to adapt in the moment will become more and more pivotal as the amount of tools used in the cage increases. The dynamic of modern martial arts is becoming increasingly more complex, and preparing on a fight to fight basis won't hold up as the rate of increase perpetually gains momentum. Second nature adaptability will reign supreme over watching fight tapes of your opponent to prepare.
Amir's quest to winning TUF7 was a real eye opener for many. To me, it was a great, great thing to see. It was really a look into how much we have to look forward to. It revealed how young mixed martial arts really is, and with that, how much is possible in years to come. That the evolution of combat is taking place right before our eyes, throwing everything we've been using to defend ourselves throughout the ages into the cage to test it out.
Now we must wonder: where will this experiment in combat take us as it unfolds?
Stay tuned for #26 of the MMATorch Top 30 Fights of 2008, which will be revealed with a full article tomorrow. Now check out yesterday's #28 fight of the year...
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