Chris Weidman Withdrawing From UFC 199 Should Be A Blessing In Disguise

Even though Chris Weidman was forced to withdraw from UFC 199 yesterday due to a neck injury he should actually consider it a blessing in disguise. This is because ever since the start of his mixed martial arts career in 2009, a key element to Chris Weidman’s game plan when he is going into a fight is to make his opponent believe that he can take them down at any time. As a result of this, Chris Weidman has chosen to sacrifice some of the fluidity when it comes to his striking. When Chris Weidman chooses to throw a straight left or right hand he tends to lunge forward just as he throws the punch because he wants to make his opponent believe that he is shooting for a takedown. While this strategy works most of the time because his opponents don’t have their hands in position to defend their upper body as they are worried about defending the takedown that the have their hands around their waist in order to have a better chance at stuffing the takedown. The downside to this strategy is that Weidman punches are often very slow and loopy because he wants to fake the takedown for as long as possible so if an opponent is able to recognize the different between a punch or takedown easily he will have enough time to move out of the way and have an opportunity to counter. His boxing isn’t the only part of striking that is very slow and loopy as his kicks are as well. When Weidman chooses to throw kicks they have a long windup to them. The reason why there is a long windup to his kicks is because Weidman primarily uses the kicks to back up his opponent up against the cage to set up the takedown.

His mechanical striking played a major role in the loss against Luke Rockhold as Weidman most likely threw the spinning back kick in order to get Rockhold to move back up against the cage. But he started to throw the kick as he was right in front of Rockhold which led to him to not have enough space to properly land the kick and missing the target completely thus allowing Rockhold to take advantage of the split second that he was off balance to land a takedown. As a result of this, Weidman knew that he needed to add some fluidity to his striking which led him to start training with Mark Henry. However shortly thereafter he accepted the rematch against Luke Rockhold which was a big mistake because if he was serious about adding some fluidity to his striking, he should have known that it would take an extended period of time to add the fluidity since he has to do a substantial amount of repetitions to remove the bad habits from a person's muscle memory and develop the new techniques a person is being taught. As a result, if he would have fought Rockhold in the rematch there is a high likelihood that he would revert back to his old habits due to the brewing rivalry and the pressure of knowing that if he loses it is unlikely that he would get another chance at the belt while Rockhold is the champion.