Quote:
Originally Posted by RFremont
Hey Anthony, I dont train in MMA or anything like this so I dont understand; why didn't Rich defend or break out of the clinch? Rich looks bigger/stronger than Silva and I'd bet that he is stronger; why didnt he just overpower Silva?
I remembered this one TUF fight where Rich Franklin and Matt Hughes were the coaches, and Hughes's fighter had Rich's fighter in the clinch and kept kneeing him and you could hear Rich in the corner yelling over and over again "Don't let him do that to you!" Ironic.
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The Plum Clinch, as it's called in Muay Thai is a pretty off balancing technique. You are pulling your opponent's neck and head towards you and down to your waist. The whole idea of the attack is to off balance your opponent. When you do not have balance/base, you can't attack, as you saw with Rich Franklin.
The offensive part is that you can attack, because you have excellent base, the knees are the main weapons of attack, Silva did a clinic on Franklin, on how to do the Plum attack.
The first part of that attack is to attack the floating ribs, to soften your opponent up. Once Franklin's arms came down to protect his ribs, Silva went for the head, and broke his nose.
Most ppl can't understand how powerful that grip is from an experienced Muay Thai fighter, you are so off balance, you just have to hang on. In that type of situation, imho Rich Franklin should have blocked the knee and rolled through to the ground, rather than take all those shots.
My hats off to both fighters, I can't wait for the rematch!