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Originally Posted by DA2
People dont realise that Chuck is actually a very accomplished wrestler and more than capable of looking after himself on the ground - the difference is he uses his ground skills to get himself where he wants to be ie) standing up. He only has 3 professional MMA losses and one of those was 6 yrs ago. Look at his fight with Couture when he lost - Randy knew that to take him down was gonna be fuckin difficult and so he knew it was gonna have to be striking that was gonna win the day. Chuck is sooooo difficult to takedown youve almost got no choice but to strike with him.
In a similar way - Matt Hughes aint likely to knock someone out standing up, so he uses striking (not great on Hughes but definitely getting better) to force his opponents into positions where they can be taken down, and once your down with Hughes is pretty much "asta la vista baby"!!
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Liddell was a collegiate wrestler so his takedowns and defence of takedowns are very good. But he doesn't train in the ground game. Just watch any of the interviews with him on his training regime or his his actual training sessions for that matter. He doesn't practice any form of submissions, ju-jitsu, or even the ground and pound stuff.
He doesn't practice them because they aren't in his gameplan. Problem with him is that he has been fighting against guys that aren't as talented as those in Pride. That's the major reason he doesn't travel to the international tournaments anymore. He doesn't want to fight guys like Silva and Cro Cop. Its easier to stay in the US and fight guys like Horn and Babalu. Those are Two guys he wouldn't be able to KO because they would force him to fight their fight and not be worried about his power since they fight in the open weight competitions all the time. Cro Cop won one of the last open weight championships. You wouldn't see Liddell do that.