Eurosport - Wed, 22 Oct 16:39:00 2008
In his final blog for Eurosport-Yahoo!, Marcus Davis breaks down his submission victory against Paul Kelly and says the fight went exactly as planned.
Adopted Briton Davis, 'The Irish Hand Grenade', has been blogging for Eurosport-Yahoo! in the build up to his fight against Paul Kelly at UFC 89.
Marcus beat Paul after the Englishman tapped out due to a guillotine choke 2:16 into the second round.
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Obviously, I was enormously pleased with how the fight went against Paul Kelly. It basically went exactly as planned, exactly how we laid out.
Mark DellaGrotte had worked out the gameplan and I followed his direction exactly - and the result was the same as 12 out of the 13 fights we have worked together. That's not a bad ratio!
I am really grateful to have Mark in my corner, and I was listening to his direction right through the fight. I was able to hear every word he said; his accent stood out clearly against all those screaming Brits.
When you fight me, you are not just facing me; you are also up against a Mark DellaGrotte gameplan and an awesome bunch of my training partners.
I have looked at the fight on tape over the last couple of days and I have to admit I am completely satisfied. I am my own worst critic and there are obviously things that I would have done differently, but the fight was fought exactly as I had talked about in previous blogs.
The fight was won on intelligence and on controlling the range. I had been talking about controlling the distance and working on different footwork and angles, and it worked perfectly.
People have told me that they expected Paul to be a bit more aggressive, but it is hard to be aggressive when you are swinging and your opponent is not where you expects him to be. I didn't allow him to fight the fight he wanted.
There are a lot of pictures from Saturday night of Paul having his face crunched by my fist, and that was important to me. At the start of each round, I wanted to land a couple of hard punches just so that he would still respect my power.
Then I wanted to use the leg kicks and body kicks to mix it up, to make sure that he recognised that there were other ways I could hurt him; to keep him guessing and effectively use all the tools that I have.
And it was great to again win a fight on the ground with a submission, to show that while I can still punch as hard as everyone remembers, I am as much of a danger if you try to take me to the ground.
People should know by now that if you try and take me down, there is a good chance that you will get submitted. Paul attempted one takedown, and ended up in a guillotine.
I got to watch quite a bit of the rest of the card, and was impressed with Terry Etim and Dan Hardy; I thought they looked great.
Terry looked very sharp, using his lengthy reach and kicks really well. I thought he fought really intelligently and didn't over-expose himself, which was very important.
Dan showed just how tough he is, and I was really impressed with how he managed to control his emotions on the biggest stage in the sport in front of all those people. And the way he took those three vicious knees and still got up to win the fight just shows how much of a man he is.
The UFC have another big show coming up this weekend, and I will be paying particular attention as there is a big fight from my division on the card, Josh Koscheck against Thiago Alves.
In my opinion, Josh is the second-best wrestler in the whole of the UFC, behind Georges St Pierre. I think you will see that Thiago is going to have a difficult time with Josh's takedowns, which are better than those of Matt Hughes, Thiago's last opponent.
But Thiago is all-round very solid. His submissions might not be all there yet, but he is very hard to keep down and hold on to on the ground because he is so strong. He walks around at over 205lb normally, which is an enormous cut for a welterweight to make, but it makes for such a strong fighter.
It's definitely a fight I'll be keeping an eye on as I look to my future in the UFC.
That will be all from me in my blogging here. Thanks for reading over the last few weeks; I hope Paul and I gave you an exciting fight.
Until, Dublin (hopefully...), Marcus.
Marcus was speaking to Alex Sharratt
Comment 1 - 1 of 1
another solid performance from davis, great fighter great person future champion, all the best to the main man in ufc.
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