After watching UFC 299 and feeling as though it was one of the best events that UFC has had in the past few years there was a few things that I took away from it. One of those things was how annoying Michael Page's new style of fighting is and then when I thought it over I began to think that this could actually be an innovation / adaptation that we could end up seeing a lot more of as UFC evolves.
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MVP made his UFC debut at UFC 299 and while I knew a bit about him from Bellator this was the first time I had ever watched a full fight of his. When he was stacked up against another Kevin Holland I really didn't care who was going to win because I knew little enough about Page to be indifferent towards him but also knew that I don't particularly care for Holland because his fighting style is one that I consider "boring." Little did I know that Page's style has the potential to be even more boring than Holland's.
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Page has a very unorthodox and unusual fighting style that is based in mobility and evasive maneuvers. He stays at a long-distance and does a lot of backing up or what I refer to as the "run away!" method of fighting. But every now and then while he opponent is chasing him down he will counter-strike and land some quick kicks and punches. These tend to not be terribly powerful strikes, but they are strikes nonetheless. A fighter with this sort of strategy has a good opportunity to win on the judges scorecards and like most fight fans, I hate it when fights go the distance and are left up the judges, because they frequently either get it wrong or have no choice but to award the bout to the person who had the most strikes, even if those strikes didn't really result in any damage.
He doesn't do much on the ground or at least didn't in this fight but much of this has to do with the fact that Holland was either unable to close the distance between them or wasn't going for takedowns. According to the fight stats, Holland attempted to take MVP down 5 times and succeeded in 3 of those. The reason why you don't remember these takedowns being very effective is because Holland was unable to do anything with this time on the ground as Page is quite good at avoiding damage on the ground and he, at least in this fight, appears to excel at getting out of the situation.
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This tactic of staying at distance and even taunting your opponent can be quite effective because the other guy is going to get frustrated of chasing you down and eventually they are going to make mistakes. While Holland actually attempted and landed more strikes these strikes were normally just glazing strikes that MVP was able to take nearly zero damage from with head movement and because he was almost always backing up.
MVP's strikes didn't seem to hurt Holland in any meaningful way but they were more impactful and therefore considered "significant" in many more situations.
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While this style of fighting is something that I sincerely hope other fighters do not adapt, you can't really argue with how effective it is. You can't kill what you can't catch and for all 15 minutes of this fight Kevin Holland was chasing him around the octagon mostly to no avail. When I look at what Holland could have changed about his game plan to be more effective and cause more damage I am kind of at a loss as to what he possibly could have done. In most fights, if one fighter wants to damage their opponents capacity for movement, they will chop at the legs but how are you going to do that when the guy opposite of you simply moves out of the way whenever you go for the legs? You could suggest that they simply rush MVP but he is extremely evasive and one of the most agile fighters I have seen in a while and this is why Hollands takedowns were so ineffective.
I can't really think of any other fighters that really used this method before but there was some hints of Anderson Silva influence that seemed apparent in MVP's fight style.
I sincerely do NOT like this type of fighting style and think it has massive potential to be very boring and have the crowd booing very quickly in future matches. However, if Page is simply going for "W's" on his resume, this tactic is likely going to get him there. What it wont get him, is the crowd on his side and therefore, big paydays.
So if you were in Page's corner, what would you advise? On one side a W is a W regardless of how you get it, on the other hand I think the ultimate objective for any MMA fighter is to get to the top spots and get big fight purses. I don't see that being offered to Page given his current style but I suppose he could adapt it to be more damaging and score a brilliant KO or two here and there. I can't say what the future will hold for him, but it will be exciting to see who they pair him up against in the future. Apparently, Page scored a 26 second KO in his last Bellator match and if he can bring that to UFC, it could up his value in the face of the fans.