FS 66 – Emmett vs. Burgos and the Hegemonic Masculine Culture of the UFC (transcript) (Patreon)

Although the heavyweights might have turned in a so-so main event for UFC on ESPN: Blaydes vs Volkov, the co-main delivered an instant classic that had fans wishing their placements had been switched. Josh Emmett defeated Shane Burgos by unanimous decision in a fight of the year contender, and it seems like the featherweights can do no wrong. Seriously, take a look at the top 15 ranking and you’ll see that you can mix and match anyone in there and get some great, competitive match-ups. Heading into this fight, Emmett and Burgos were both ranked in the top ten and had mini-win streaks going on. Although the heavyweights got to go on last, everyone knew that the people’s main event was Emmett vs Burgos, and they did not disappoint. 

Before we do a fight breakdown, it’s important to note what kind of fighter both Emmett and Burgos are. 

Fighting out of Team Alpha Male, Emmett is part of a proud tradition of wrestlers turned strikers that the Sacramento team is famous for churning out. After getting knocked out by Jeremy Stephens two years ago, Emmett has been on a mission to not only avenge that loss but to prove himself as the next contender at 145 pounds. If you’ve never seen him striking, imagine a better Uriah Faber that can stance switch pretty well and incorporate more lateral movement. Just like Faber, his best weapon is his right hand. Unlike Faber, instead of relying purely on swinging his overhand right hoping to catch his opponents, Emmett does a better job of setting them up. Emmett’s overhand right comes usually after setting them up with a few non-committal jabs before slipping deep to his left side to throw with extra power. This is how he was able to knock out Michael Johnson late in the third round despite being down on all the scorecards. He also dropped Jeremy Stephens in the first round of their fight with a counter right straight, although he ended up getting knocked out in the third round. This doesn’t mean his left hand is without power, Emmett dropped Mirsad Bektic with a stiff lead jab and knocked out Ricardo Lamas with a left hook. Clearly, this is a guy with legitimate power in his hands and not afraid to throw down. Thank goodness he got an opponent that was willing to indulge him.

At first glance, Shane Burgos looks like a man that doesn’t belong at featherweight. Although his 5’11” frame is definitely on the taller side, his absurd 76” reach makes him a nightmare for the rest of the division. Zabit Magomedsharipov is the tallest featherweight at 6’2”, but his reach is 73”. Despite having such an advantage, Burgos makes his living fighting on the inside. It might seem odd for a fighter of Burgos’s size and build to commit to such a style, but he somehow makes it work. Burgos’s main objective is to press forward and get his opponents to lash out at him with jabs and straights that he can slip (both towards the inside and outside) and counter with hooks and uppercuts. If this sounds familiar, it’s because it was a style favored by former boxing champions, Joshua Clottey, Ricky Hatton, and another older, obscure boxer by the name of Mike Tyson. If you need an MMA example, think of Ross Pearson before all the damage he took started catching up to him. Against Cub Swanson, Burgos was catching him over and over again with the right uppercut whenever Swanson stepped in and hammered the body whenever possible. Speaking of which, Burgos might be one of the best body punchers at featherweight, and you see this in the exhausted looks in the faces of his opponents, despite Burgos being the one that cuts massive amount of weight to make the 146 pound limit. It’s clear that both Burgos and Emmett felt they had the advantage on the feet, and there was only one way to find out who was correct.

From the moment the fight started, this almost seemed like a mismatch, size-wise. Burgos towered over Emmett and looked like a welterweight in there. Burgos started his usual forward movement followed by lots of front kicks, low kicks, and calf kicks. Undeterred, Emmett was aided greatly by Burgos moving and walking into several overhand rights and straights. This just goes to show that even if you have a significant size and reach advantage, if your style doesn’t utilize it effectively it becomes a moot point. Despite Emmett scoring with multiple haymakers and kicks of his own, Burgos hurt Emmett with knees and body shots that snuck through his defense. Of note was Burgos’s commitment to the inside low kick and calf kicks, as this was clearly bothering Emmett and kept him from his effectively moving laterally. Although it would be easy to attribute this entirely to the striking of Burgos, replays showed that it seemed that an hyper-extension suffered in the first minute was the biggest factor in what seemed to cause Emmett to slow down. Nonetheless, the fight went on and Emmett had to figure a way to work around his new handicap.

In round 2, Burgos went back to doing what seemed to be a winning formula: throwing low kicks and jabbing up Emmett while mixing in some knees and right straights. It was clear by now that Emmett’s movement was hampered and his lead leg was giving him trouble. Burgos doesn’t always jab, but when he does he can definitely hurt his opponents. Godofredo Pepey was another former opponent of Burgos that swung with hooks and overhands, and Burgos overcame Pepey by keeping him at the end of a nice stiff jab for rounds 2 and 3. Against Emmett, Burgos used some of the same strategy to success and it was hard for the shorter fighter to retaliate during these exchanges. However, Emmett wasn’t without his moments. Since the majority of his side to side movements were hampered, Emmett relied on backing up towards the fence to lure Burgos forward, where he can meet him with overhand rights and straights. This time, Emmett was more liberal with right hand leads (a favorite of Fedor Emelianenko and Henry Cejudo) and threw up high kicks from his lead side to keep Burgos from teeing off, keeping the fight competitive. Interestingly enough, Emmett also had a lot of success when he threw jabs in rapid succession to keep Burgos from lunging forward, and this was the same blueprint that Calvin Kattar used in his fight against Burgos. The jabs don’t have to be powerful, but by throwing them from the elbow (with no tell from his hips and shoulder), Burgos couldn’t get a read on Emmett and walked in a couple of them before getting hit with the follow-up right straight. Depending on how you scored it, you could make a case for either fighter being up 2-0 or tied at one round apiece. The third round changed all that.

Early on, Emmett moved around and switched stances briefly, and from southpaw he dropped his weight before throwing a short left cross and knocked down Burgos. Just like in the Mirsad Bektic fight, it was his left punch that knocked down his opponent. Burgos made his way back to his feet, and the fight continued. An inside low kick unfortunately stops the action when it goes a bit too low, but it doesn’t stop the striking when the fight restarts. Knowing that the knockdown cost him, Burgos marches forward and eats the lead overhand right over and over again. While trying to feint with his shoulders and hips squared up, Burgos got hit with an overhand LEFT, making it the second time he’s dropped from that side. I mentioned earlier that Emmett is a competent stance switcher with power in his left hand, and Burgos’s constant forward movement cost him in this fight. Burgos isn’t the best ring cutter, and his forward movements have caused him to get hit more often than he should. Now on his back with Emmett landing ground and pound, Burgos is trying to survive and eventually kicks Emmett off him by pushing his feet off Emmett’s hips. Burgos manages to survive but again, his pressure-heavy style just feeds into Emmett’s overhands and left hooks, racking up more points for Emmett. When the decision is read by Bruce Buffer, it’s clear that Emmett has secured victory, although the scorecards themselves aren’t clean across the board.

With this victory, Emmett has three impressive victories in a row, two finishes and one very exciting decision win. Although he’s on a roll, he still lacks a victory over a former champion or someone in the top five to really cement himself as next in line for a title shot. A fight against #5 ranked Yair Rodriguez could give the push that both fighters need to become the next challenger for the belt. Of course, Emmett will probably have to take some time off to see how the rematch between Volkanovski and Holloway plays out, as well as rehabbing the injury to his knee.

For Burgos, this was another tough test against someone in the top ten, his toughest since Calvin Kattar. His forward movement while slipping makes for exciting fights, but it does make himself more hittable in the process. Combined with his less-than-stellar ring cutting ability, the darting Emmett was going to be a tougher match-up than what the oddsmakers predicted (Burgos was a -162 favorite over the +130 Emmett). He’s still an exciting prospect and does get better from fight to fight, but he might have to go back to the drawing board and learn to utilize his jab and work on trying to get opponents to come to him, ala Israel Adesanya. Nick Lentz might be a good opponent for him to try and rebound against and see if his style can be as effective moving backwards as it is forward.

Austin Hubbard vs Max Rohskopf. We’ve seen countless times where a fighter hints that they’re having a trouble with the fight, or if they’re battling an injury that they don’t think they can overcome to win. It’s all but an outright plea for their corner to read between the lines and either ask if they want to stop the fight or straight up call it off. Fighting itself is tough enough as it is, and the athletes involved are often too tough for their own good. This is why they have trainers and coaches who are supposed to look out for their best interest and most importantly, THEIR SAFETY. It’s bad enough when you have fighters like Raquel Pennington and Anthony Smith telling their corners that they’re done, only to be sent out for more punishment. Rohskopf told his corner NINE times that he was done. Have you ever said something nine times, only for your voice to be ignored? We’re not talking about repeating your order at Starbucks, this is a fighter who is basically begging with his coach that he can no longer continue. Instead of acknowledging him, Rohskopf’s coach, Robert Drsydale, ignores the constant “call it” pleas and instead tries to motivate him to push past his exhaustion. Now, it could very well be that Drysdale has seen Rohskopf come back from worse and win, or that Rohskopf is the type to need tough love moreso than others. But as a human being with functioning ears, listen again to the 50 second exchange between fighter and coach. Rohskopf clearly stated, with no hesitation, “I don’t want to do this anymore.” How can you not be confused as to what he wants his corner to do?

If you’re just reading the results, the official decision is written as TKO (retirement). It doesn’t capture the gravity of the situation. Drysdale not only refused to stop the fight, he told Rohskopf to clinch and end the fight with him on top. This wasn’t a back and forth battle like the Emmett vs Burgos match-up, Hubbard was clearly winning the fight with all judges scoring the second round 10-8 for him. Unless an exhausted Rohskopf had some crazy submission or one punch KO power he was hiding the entire fight, he was only going to go out there to absorb more damage. So who stopped the fight? A Nevada State Athletic Commission inspector. Once Rohskopf refused to move from his stool, he asked him directly if he wanted to continue and he said emphatically, “no.” The fight was over, but it seemed like no lessons were learned. Drysdale was adamant that he did nothing wrong, and that Rohskopf just needed a mental push. Rohskopf’s manager, Brian Butler, blamed a preexisting turf toe injury combined with fatigue as the reason why he couldn’t continue. Guess what’s missing in all this? An actual apology and acknowledgement that they might be in the wrong. Rohskopf took this fight on extremely short notice and he was making his UFC debut, this wasn’t for the world title or a dream-match against a top contender, there was no point in sending him back out to prove what a badass he is.

There’s a recent MMA editorial on Bloodyelbow.com by Tim Bissell called The Mitchell Paradox. It’s a eight part series that takes an uncomfortably close look at the career of David Mitchell, a former UFC fighter and veteran of the Nor Cal fighting circuit. The entire editorial is worth your time, but it shows the ugly side of the fight business. These athletes are human beings with bodies that take damage like yours and mine. They aren’t immune to long term brain damage or permanent injuries to their nervous systems. Fighters go through the kind of physical and mental trauma that would make NFL players feel bad for them. With all this stacked against them, don’t they deserve to have trainers and coaches with their safety in mind? Like Rohskopf, David Mitchell had promising talent and a head coach that was a jiu-jitsu whiz. He started by dominating the local circuit before getting his shot at the UFC. I won’t spoil the rest of the story, but his journey is heart-breaking and has shades of Rohskopf in there. I don’t know what the future holds for Rohskopf, but I do know that unless the culture of MMA changes, we will be seeing a death in the UFC sooner than later.

The incentives of MMA (and specifically the UFC) makes it so that entertainment and violence are placed above technique and longevity. Why compete in a technically proficient manner when it won’t earn you extra money and you’ll always be at risk of getting cut? If fighters have financial reasons to swing wildly just so they could get a chance to win an extra $50k bonus, you bet your ass they’ll start throwing haymakers exclusively to try and get that money. Fighters have gone from thanking their coaches and family to begging Dana White for a post-fight bonus. Can you imagine any other professional sport where the athlete has to ask for money from the league president after a match? Not only would that be embarrassing, you’d be hard-pressed to call it a real sport. I don’t have the answers to fixing this kind of behavior, and even if one comes along it won’t change things overnight. All I can ask from you, the educated fans, is to try and understand where fighters are coming from and realize when they say they’re done for the night, it doesn’t make them any less tough. We should be allowed to fail freely and without judgement, after all it’s in losses where we can make the greatest improvements. Please don’t fall into the propaganda machine of how only “real” fighters will push through all their pain and find a way to win. Sometimes, saying “no” IS the toughest thing you can do.