A Lesson for Tito Jones

Learning's not glamorous, and it's not fun, but it's inevitable.

In defeat, Tito Jones learned a hard lesson about letting the fight go to the judges.

During the Jones fight, I had picked Bao Quach to win while the security guard sitting next to the press section had picked Tito, so we went back and forth discussing the fight (there was a lot of time to talk, given that the first two rounds were incredibly boring). Of course, there wasn’t much dispute that Quach won the first two rounds of the fight, utilizing leg kicks which seemed to be the fight’s only effective strike until that third round.

Jones opened up in the third, landing some viscious punches. Perhaps most notably, Jones landed a hard right hand that put Quach on the canvas almost immediately after scoring a hard shot that I thought might have been a flash knockout.

In the first two minutes of that third round, Jones almost defeated Quach twice, but failed to really close the deal with groundnpound and, as the saying goes, almost only counts in horseshoes and hand-grenades.

The lesson here is one largely concerning how we think about fights, and it’s important for coaches as well as fighters. If you’re down two rounds to none, even if those rounds weren’t impressive and your opponent really didn’t impress anybody or do any serious damage, you still need to finish . The 10-8 round is rare in MMA and the 10-7 round even more so. Coming from behind to win in the third needs to happen without the aid of the judges.

The security guard, of course, was pissed when the bell rang and I told him that Quach was probably going to win. After all, Quach was bleeding and had taken more damage in two minutes than he dished out in the entire fight. The crowd, like the security guard, didn’t quite see the benefit in the lesson, and booed Bao all through his post-fight interview.

Jones, though, learned a lesson the hard way about the need to finish. If you’re in that position, you need to make it happen. If you’ve scored the flash knockout and you land in the half-guard, you need to make the groundnpound convincing and get the referee to stop the fight. Fighters who let bouts go to the judges, who can’t get past that finishing threshold, have a lot of issues, because sometimes the judges are stupid and sometimes the scoring system (especially ones which favor winning more rounds as opposed to winning one round more decisively, like the 10-point-plus system as it currently exists) is the problem.

Anyway, it’s a hard lesson, and probably not much fun for Jones, but it’s an important strategic lesson.