One Coaching Curiosity
Kyte: Coaches see the sport differently and look at the sport differently than anyone else, picking up on different things and paying attention to movements, habits, or intangible pieces that others might not notice, but that could have a significant impact on the action inside the Octagon.
Every matchup offers its own unique collection of elements that might pique a coach’s interest and get them paying a little closer attention to once the fight gets underway.
So what is that one thing in this matchup?
Nicksick: I love that this is a rematch, even though it was 2018 the last time they fought. I like that it’s a rematch because these guys have been so good individually — they’ve only lost to the same guys, (Charles) Oliveira and Khabib (Nurmagomedov) — and there is a lot of very good improvement from each man in that span.
I wonder what will they try to take from their first outing? What will they try to re-apply into this fight? What worked very well for one guy that they’ll try to over-compensate for as far as your opponent goes?
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The thing that is always intriguing to me is does the guy that won come back with that same mentality or game plan? I say that because I felt like Stipe (Miocic) thought that he was just going to go out and do the same thing to Francis (Ngannou), where we had to come up with a whole different strategy. So I wonder if Poirier is going to come back with the same strategy that worked the first time and will Gaethje have a counter-attack to what they implemented in the first fight or will he start over again?
From a coaching element, I’m interested to see what similarities and differences you’ll see from that first fight from the guy that lost.
Marshall: I wanna see if Poirier can draw Gaethje into brawling, because if he can, I think he knocks him out again.
If I were Poirier, my game plan would be to get Gaethje on his heels — we saw in the Khabib fight and against Oliveira, when you put him on his heels, he starts doing that “put his head down and chuck” thing. It works for him really well until he runs into Poirier, Oliveira, Khabib, most likely Islam.
Kyte: I’m so fascinated by this one because, obviously, Gaethje is so much fun to watch, but he’s another one of those guys that is just a little bit short of being as good as he could be because he’s willing to get into those car crashes and demolition derbies.
Marshall: You know I hate this, right? I hate picking apart the faults of people that do the sport that I did and are so much better than me at doing it; I feel like I’m Monday Morning Quarterbacking.
I tried to be good and I just wasn’t as good, so I always hate saying what these guys are not good at because they are so much better than I was, but yes, that is Gaethje’s drawback is that you can get him into those car crashes. And it’s one of those things that is inevitable.
It’s so hard, when you feel like you’re losing a little bit — because that’s when he does it, and he is losing, because the other person is making him walk backwards. But we’re going to see what happens if he stings Poirier early.