11–20 of 29 posts
Seems like they didn't account for weight cutting? Sadly, a lot of efficacy in the ufc today comes down to who can cut more weight and be the bigger fighter. Maybe wide faced people are better at cutting.
A better title for this research would have been "Steroids seem to help people win fights" As an MMA coach, I think a more likely explanation is the wider faces correlate to high testosterone, including steroid use, which in turn correlates with more wins in the Octagon due to strength and stamina, not necessarily "fighting ability". If you want to look at raw fighting ability, take a look at any member of the Gracie…
As soon as people caught up to BJJ they became irrelevant in MMA. Also when they faced somebody with ground game they had tons of issues (IE: Sakuraba "Gracie Killer")
Matter of fact recent performances by Gracies in MMA were embarrassing.
>http://www.mmamania.com/2010/2/10/1304038/cousin-renzo-rolle...
Etc.
So my pet theory is that most skills in life come from a bit of early talent + lots of opportunity to practice. From this perspective, a thin-faced fighter with some natural talent and great resources could break this mold and be extremely successful. This to me looks similar to when people started discovering that left-handed pitchers tend to confuse things in baseball.
In addition, if their fantasy explanation for this correlation is another silly "evolved for punches" theory, why would you pick UFC fighters - who are in a sport where brutal matches can be won and lost with very few punches exchanged? If you still chose to use them, why wouldn't you use the records of their fights to discover how many punches they actually took in the fights that they won or lost?
[1] http://espn.go.com/espn/otl/story/_/id/10500652/therapeutic-...
So my pet theory is that most skills in life come from a bit of early talent + lots of opportunity to practice. From this perspective, a thin-faced fighter with some natural talent and great resources could break this mold and be extremely successful. This to me looks similar to when people started discovering that left-handed pitchers tend to confuse things in baseball.
But on average that thin-faced man is going to be at a genetic disadvantage, which I believe is the point of the article. Of course there will be outliers, and of course you can overcome some natural deficiencies with training, but on average they will hit limits that wider-faced men will naturally surpass. The article doesn't go much into the strength of the correlation, so I'm not sure how big a difference it reall…
More importantly, having a wider face is not a direct advantage. It's an indication of a disposition. This is dissimilar to height of players in basketball where you can in fact be too short to be effective. Because of this I'd argue that while looking at it as an average the findings could be very much valid, looking at an individual fighter will yield very different results. You could find that a thin faced fighter might actually be superior to a wide faced fighter precisely because he is thin faced.
A better title for this research would have been "Steroids seem to help people win fights" As an MMA coach, I think a more likely explanation is the wider faces correlate to high testosterone, including steroid use, which in turn correlates with more wins in the Octagon due to strength and stamina, not necessarily "fighting ability". If you want to look at raw fighting ability, take a look at any member of the Gracie…
Pretty much, the article bears this out even.
'The researchers speculated that one causal mechanism may be higher testosterone levels - certainly past research has shown men with higher basal testosterone have wider faces, as well as greater strength and aggression.'
Though it's surely often misapplied, the terms 'gh/steroid/juice jaw' didn't develop out of thin air.