Seand Strickland and Brad Riddell Failure to Launch

Whippy McGee

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There are some fights, where you know the opponent is a banger coming in and the guy just stands right in front of him with shit defense. This happened to Strickland and Riddell. It must seriously suck to train for months and months with all the sacrifices that entails and then to serve yourself up without mounting any offense.

Strickland stood right in front of a world class striker with his hands down. Was that actually the plan? It seemed obvious to me how that would play out.

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Brad Riddell did the same thing a bit earlier. Again, his opponent was a known striker.
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... who could also guillotine and dazed Riddell.
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I don't know the answer. I don't have the Fight IQ of the coaches. But, it seems some actual defense and perhaps closing the ground to where a striker can not go completely off on you?

It may just be that I was geared up for a fight in each instance, and instead it was a fast, one-sided, ass kicking. I loved the knee delivered by Masdival on Askren, but I also felt a bit cheated as I would have loved to see that fight go at least one round.

Are these flukes, great fighting by the opponent, or just bad defense? Or all of the above?
 

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Strickland is an also-ran / never-was. Riddell is overrated.
 
Strickland/Riddell isn't comparable.

Brad is a striker as well and Jalin didn't exactly have the credentials of someone like Alex Pereira.

He didn't stand in front of Jalin the way Sean did with Alex. He was moving well. He landed a good leg kick on Jalin. On the second kick, he got caught with a good counter.
 
Suredawg in a nutshell, lol.

Sean is 20-1 @ MW and legit top 10 even tho the division is shite right now but Riddell was/is overrated. He's good don't get me wrong but I dunno how he got ranked. Dober was a good win and was briefly ranked himself but shouldn't have been either. Ismagulov, Guram, Alvarez, Moicano etc. are clearly better overall fighters and unranked.
 
I think fighters often get stuck with what they are comfortable with when they get nervous in fights.
You go to your autopilot safe place while figuring things out. Sometimes that can be very costly and the unsafest place to be!
Overcoming fear is a big part of fighting in or outside the cage. Strickland might have problems with that.
 
Strickland/Riddell isn't comparable.

Brad is a striker as well and Jalin didn't exactly have the credentials of someone like Alex Pereira.

He didn't stand in front of Jalin the way Sean did with Alex. He was moving well. He landed a good leg kick on Jalin. On the second kick, he got caught with a good counter.

This. Riddell has a loooooooong list of kickboxing fights. He's a very legit striker.
 
Strickland was very tippy toe BJ Penn'esque. I'm like wtf is this guy doing? The result was glorious.

What do you mean?

Strickland fought exactly like he always does? Or did I miss something?
 
There are some fights, where you know the opponent is a banger coming in and the guy just stands right in front of him with shit defense. This happened to Strickland and Riddell. It must seriously suck to train for months and months with all the sacrifices that entails and then to serve yourself up without mounting any offense.

Strickland stood right in front of a world class striker with his hands down. Was that actually the plan? It seemed obvious to me how that would play out.

View attachment 930747

Brad Riddell did the same thing a bit earlier. Again, his opponent was a known striker.
View attachment 930748

... who could also guillotine and dazed Riddell.
View attachment 930742

I don't know the answer. I don't have the Fight IQ of the coaches. But, it seems some actual defense and perhaps closing the ground to where a striker can not go completely off on you?

It may just be that I was geared up for a fight in each instance, and instead it was a fast, one-sided, ass kicking. I loved the knee delivered by Masdival on Askren, but I also felt a bit cheated as I would have loved to see that fight go at least one round.

Are these flukes, great fighting by the opponent, or just bad defense? Or all of the above?

Ego is the answer.

Couldn't have happened to a better guy in Strickland's case. He just such a POS.
 
I was surprised to discover Riddell is just 5'7. Not easy to mount an offense against a guy 8 inches taller. Not making excuses for him but I can understand being a bit hesitant to throw and taking a minute to get going. Too bad he got blasted before he started working.
 
I was surprised to discover Riddell is just 5'7. Not easy to mount an offense against a guy 8 inches taller. Not making excuses for him but I can understand being a bit hesitant to throw and taking a minute to get going. Too bad he got blasted before he started working.
Yeah. No matter how good of a striker you are being at that big of a height/reach advantage as well as being the slower guy is going to be a tough task
 
Sean is 20-1 @ MW and legit top 10 even tho the division is shite right now but Riddell was/is overrated. He's good don't get me wrong but I dunno how he got ranked. Dober was a good win and was briefly ranked himself but shouldn't have been either. Ismagulov, Guram, Alvarez, Moicano etc. are clearly better overall fighters and unranked.

Riddell has lost to Fiziev in a closely contested Striking battle by spinning hook kick and got dazed and subbed against Jalin. He is losing to other top 10-15 guys. there is no shame in that.
He might not make the belt, but he isn't losing to scrubs. He also matches up really well with all 4 you mentioned.
 
Riddell was just physically outmatched. Looked like different weight class fighters in there. But he's a legit striker, believe he instructed at tiger muay thai for a while. Just really hard to fight another striker when you realistically have the height of a bw/fw vs someone with the height and length of a MW/LHW. They described it well that even at Riddell's kicking range Turner was comfortably within punching range at the same time. That is rough to try and work around.
 
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