I have never heard of any of the fighters competing on Saturday’s Total Fighting Alliance event “Pounding at the Pyramid.” That said, if you’re reading this you should go. For starters, although I am a devoted fan of mixed martial arts, I am a recent transplant to Long Beach and am only slowly gaining familiarity with the fighters on the local scene. In fact, it would be a much bigger surprise if I had heard of the fighters on the card.<\/p>\n
Further, in my experience spectator enjoyment of a mixed martial arts event is not significantly lessened by lack of knowledge of the fighters. One of the most enjoyable aspects of watching the sport is that anything can happen, and that seems doubly true when you are witnessing fighters you know nothing about.<\/p>\n
Although I certainly can’t give you a detailed breakdown of the main event between lightweights Bobby Green and Toby Grear, I’m more than happy to give my general thoughts after examining the records of both fighters. The first thing that I did was scan their records for fighters that I was aware of. Between the two fighters I found three matches against opponents that I had any familiarity with. Two of these were losses by the fighters on display this weekend, and neither one of the results revealed very much. Bobby Green lost a decision to dominant wrestler Josh Gaskins, and Toby Grear was knocked out by aggressive and heavy handed striker Victor Valenzuela. Neither of these results tells me all that much as both Gaskins and Valenzuela are very tough opponents. However, Grear also won a decision over IFL veteran and fellow striker Brett Cooper. This tells me that Grear is a legitimate force on the feet, as Cooper is a very quality opponent.<\/p>\n
Although the validity of statistical analysis is dubious in combat sports, it can help shed some light on an otherwise unknown situation. Green is listed at 3-1 against opponents with a combined record of 12-6; Grear is listed at 5-4 with his opponents combining for a record of 41-29-2. What becomes immediately apparent is that Grear has considerably more experience, and has it against considerably more experienced opponents. Another thing worth noting is that all of Green’s wins have come by way of submission and four of Grear’s five wins have been stopped with strikes. What we’re left with, on paper, is a striker versus grappler match that features a promising up and comer against a crafty veteran on a win streak. So despite the fact that I have never witnessed either one of these men fight I am very excited for “Pounding at the Pyramid.”<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"newspack_sponsor_sponsorship_scope":"","newspack_sponsor_native_byline_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_native_category_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_style":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_placement":"inherit","inline_featured_image":false,"newspack_ads_suppress_ads":false,"newspack_popups_has_disabled_popups":"","_":"","_author_alias":"","cap-aim":"","cap-description":"","cap-display_name":"","cap-first_name":"","cap-jabber":"","cap-last_name":"","cap-linked_account":"","cap-newspack_employer":"","cap-newspack_job_title":"","cap-newspack_phone_number":"","cap-newspack_role":"","cap-user_email":"","cap-user_login":"","cap-website":"","cap-yahooim":"","newspack_article_summary":"","newspack_email_html":"","newspack_email_type":"","newspack_featured_image_position":"","newspack_hide_page_title":"","newspack_hide_updated_date":false,"newspack_post_subtitle":"","newspack_show_share_buttons":"","newspack_sponsor_byline_prefix":"","newspack_sponsor_disclaimer_override":"","newspack_sponsor_flag_override":"","newspack_sponsor_only_direct":"","newspack_sponsor_url":"","newspack_article_summary_title":"Overview:","newspack_show_updated_date":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"newspack_spnsrs_tax":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-5730","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5730","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5730"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5730\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5730"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5730"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5730"},{"taxonomy":"newspack_spnsrs_tax","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newspack_spnsrs_tax?post=5730"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=5730"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}