How important is coaching in MMA?
In general, I believe that we place too much importance on coaching, especially in MMA. In studying the Top 10 Fight Team’s records against each other I discovered that there is a chicken and egg type scenario with “elite” MMA coaches.
That is to say, it’s impossible to find a statistical way to tell if “elite” fight camps are elite because they happened to have a transcendent star who buoys their record like a Jon Jones or if the coach had a hand in creating that kind of star.
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It’s difficult to tell exactly how good any particular MMA coach or camp is. What is not nearly as difficult is seeing when a coach or team is not helping a fighter, at all. So in this article, we’re going to take a look at five times a coach was to blame for a fighter’s downfall.
#5 Josh Thompson and Javier Mendez
There are many ways a coach or fight camp can cause a fighter’s career to fall apart, there are coaches who are outright incompetent, (cough, Edmund, cough) coaches who spread themselves too thin or aren’t the right fit for a particular star and there are those old school coaches that think “Iron sharpens Iron” even though the actual process to sharpen iron involves no such thing.
Javier Mendez and the American Kickboxing Academy (AKA) are of that old school mentality and, as a result, AKA has more fighters pull out of fights than any other gym. According to a study done by Bloody Elbow’s Michael Hutchinson, AKA fighters pull out of a whopping 18.43% of their fights compared to a 10.26% average.
That’s almost twice as many fighters failing to make it to fight night! Of all the fighters who have suffered from this including Cain Velasquez, Josh Thompson’s has suffered the most. For years it was believed that Thompson, Eddie Alvarez and Gilbert Melendez were the best Lightweight fighters outside the UFC.
Both Alvarez and Melendez were able to make it to UFC title fights, while Thompson never seemed to be healthy enough to put it all together. It also didn’t help that the judges totally messed up in his loss to Benson Henderson.
While Mendez and AKA were certainly partially responsible for Thompson becoming a world class fighter, you have to wonder if he would have been able to capture UFC gold if he wasn’t sparring with Luke Rockhold, Daniel Cormier and others.
#4 Rashad Evans and The Blackzillians
You could make a case for a number of fighters whose careers were either temporarily or permanently de-railed by joining the recently disbanded Blackzillians.
I easily could have made similar arguments for Eddie Alvarez who went on to capture UFC gold after he left Boca Raton, but I think the fighter who had his career most affected by the Blackzillians was ironically its founder; Rashad Evans.
We all know about the fallout between Jon Jones and Rashad Evans and how he left Greg Jackson’s camp before their fight. What people might forget is that Rashad was coming off one of his best wins ever over Phil Davis with Greg Jackson in his corner.
He ended up setting up the Blackzillians and changing to coaches who were not prepared, right before having to fight the best MMA fighter of all time. No bueno. Rashad has never seemed the same after that loss and has been plagued both by injuries and lacklustre performances such as his loss to Rogerio Nogueira.
Recently with the breakup of the Blackzillians, Rashad has admitted to bouncing around his last few camps to avoid the “drama” at the gym. Rashad Evans is a warning for those fighters considering leaving a successful gym to start their own thing. It doesn’t always go the way you think it will.
#3 Brock Lesnar and his “coaches”
Brock Lesnar never trained with a real MMA coach or team and still won the UFC Heavyweight championship. I will argue, that accomplishment is more of an indictment of the UFC Heavyweight division than anything else.
Lesnar has had a variety of “coaches” over the years, including Erik Paulsen and Rodrigo Medeiros. But the problem is Brock writes all the checks, so he gets to call the shots. Various sparring and training partners reported that they were told not to go too hard on him, and Brock’s team allegedly brought in jobbers to build his confidence.
Obviously, the health problems that derailed Lesnar’s career would have taken a toll, no matter where he trained, but it’s hard not to imagine a “what if” scenario where Lesnar left the comforts of home and traveled to American Top Team or The MMA Lab and ended up being the greatest of all time.
I think of Lesnar as MMA’s Shaq. He gave a 75% effort, won enough to justify that he wasn’t a loser, and had the best possible time he could. In that respect, he kinda won.
#2 Rory Macdonald and Firas Zahabi
Now we get to the hottest of my HOT TAKES. I believe that Firas Zahabi is a good coach who knows more than I do about MMA. Having said that, I think he ruined Rory Macdonald’s career and here’s why: Firas has often said that with Rory he had to and I’m paraphrasing, “Tame a wildcat”, meaning that he had to rein in Rory’s natural aggressiveness and wildness in fights.
This wildness is obvious if you watch Rory’s fights before he got to Zahabi, including the Carlos Condit fight, which allegedly was the fight that led Rory to Firas. The problem is that Firas went overboard.
He did what a lot of great MMA coaches do, including Eric Del Fiero at Alliance, in that he tried to re-create his most successful fighter (GSP for Firas, Dominick Cruz for Del Fiero) with Rory. At first, it worked great! Rory was on a great run until he fought Robbie Lawler.
Not only did Lawler beat Macdonald twice, he may have altered his career by breaking his whole face during their rematch at UFC 189. The exact kind of damage Firas was trying to keep him from suffering by changing his fighting style.
The question is would a more aggressive reckless Rory have been able to beat Lawler the first time and get a very winnable fight against Johny Hendricks for the UFC title? All I know is Rory Macdonald was hailed as a future Champion and never quite made it. I think it’s fair to ask how much of that blame falls on Firas Zahabi.
#1 Ronda Rousey and Edmund Tarvaryan
Last and certainly least, the worst coach in all of MMA, Edmund Tarverdyan. There’s not much to say that hasn’t already been said by his own corner audio during the Nunes fight, but revisionist history and weak division aside, Ronda never developed under Edmund.
This meant no matter how great Ronda was, it was only a matter of time until the division caught up to her. If she had gone to a real coach, she might still have lost but she’d at least know what she did wrong instead of being told everything she does is beautiful.
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