The phycology of a fight and the outcome

[J-Dogg]

I'm not a real experienced fighter, I have been in very fights in my life, honestly would like to keep it that way.

But I know from what I've seen, it always seems the more agressive guy wins in the fights.

Recently, watching Anderson beat Forrest, it seemed that forrest was almost beat physiologically after Anderson put his hands down and embarrassed him, it was hard for him to go on.

The same thing happend when he fought Rashad, when Rashad laughed at him after taking a shot. Forrest's punches always lacked power, but they lacked even more.

Frank Shamrock was always pretty good at beating people mentally, but lets face it, the guy has a few loose screws.

Wanderlie is the one I notice the most, it seems when he lost his intimidation factor, he lost some of his wins. He went from someone who just wanted to kill you, stomp on your head in pride, to a sportsman in MMA fighting for Dana. And his win/loss reflects that it seems.

How much does this play into things at the professional level? It seems it plays a role some what even still.

[TheOdyssey]

Fighting is a sport of will!
Aggressive, Intimidation, Strength, Speed, Precision all help greatly, but if you do not have will to keep fighting, you will lose!!!

[elpropiotorvic]

Yeah... Will is gottta be there.... Although with guys like silva I don't think there is will that counts unless ur in the same level....

[yannick35]

Tae Kwon Do being what it is today, not a very effective sport for street fighting self defense of mma still stands out a lot when it comes to will in competition.

I competed a lot back in the early 90 and it was all a question of will, speed, aggressive, intimidation, if i had all of theses i would win my fight. Sometimes the guy i was fighting was better then me on theses and i was impressed and lost the fight.

Fighting has a lot to do with mental, a great exemple of this:

Anyone that practice a martial art that has sparring no matter what the art, if you are confident and feel good about yourself you are going to be great fighting that day.

At some point if you lose a bit of self confidence and are a bit down on your life your sparring will really get a hit too and you won't be has good.

[elpropiotorvic]

I think the wanderlei case is that 1. He cant juice as much.... 2. Hes gottent some beatings on him that aré paying of now

[F4iGuy]

I agree with #2. They say a fighter in usually not the same after being KO'd. Makes sense.

[ScotchGuard]

There are different ways to intimidate your opponents. I've seen Fedor E look like he was thinking about what he was having for dinner as his opponent was staring him down. When the bell rang his opponent raged through the fight. Fedor was patient until he was his opportunity. Aoki, the light weight champion from Japan, is the same way. Very unassuming until he demolishes his opponent. I do agree that fighting is a mental game. I distinctly remember a fight in '84, yeah I'm an old fart. I stepped into the ring and when I looked at my opponent I thought to myself why am I fighting him? Because I already knew he gave up. When he threw a punch it was just like in Matrix the movie, the punch looked like it was coming in slow motion. I'm not a spit in your face, intimidation galore, type of a fighter. I guess to each his own. I think confidence comes with training and experience. I've won more than I lost but when I evaluate my losses it was because i wasn't mentally ready.

[yannick35]

With age you see things differently has well, when i was younger i always did a aggrssive stairdown, like i wanted to kill, now when i spar i have a smile on my face and enjoy myself.

I guess that with time we do get more confidence and drop the old killer attitude.