Quote Originally Posted by Gotch View Post
Paulson has been around since before MMA came to the states. He was a JKD guy associated with the late Larry Hartsell who first influenced me to add grappling to our kickboxing based martial arts training. Paulson and Barnett are occasional students of catch legend Billy Robinson. In fact due to Billy's age they demonstrated most of the moves for him on his catch-as-catch-can instructional series that was put together by my old friend Jake Shannon.

Paulson's striking style is sort of a JKD / Thai hybrid that I can't see being effective for Brock and although catch based submissions are the way to go with trying to teach any life-long wrestler submissions, it is always an uphill battle. Also, Paulson has never really been noted for his cardio or cardio training.

Your point about Brock needing a camp that treated him like one of the fighters instead of THE fighter is right on target IMO.
In modern MMA, Barnett is the absolute best catch wrestler IMO. Sakuraba is the best ever, but Barnett is by far the best active fighter.

Barnett has a gas tank for days, but none of the bigger Paulson fighters are known as cardio machines as you said.

No offense, but I do not believe a fighter can rely specifically on JKD and be successful in modern MMA. We've saw training videos of Lesnar striking, and supposedly he really worked on his Muay Thai, but it was never evident in any fight. He was never the better striker in any fight, even tho he knocked Herring down and finished Couture. His technique was putrid, he was so stiff striking he could never be successful. His leg kicks, which he liked to throw, were painful to watch. He never put any force behind them at all.
If Lesnar would have devoted himself to MMA straight out of college and went about it the right way (training at a real camp, having outside instructors and using a wide variety of sparring partners), he could have become one of the best HW fighters ever with his size and athleticism.

I will admit, I believe the illness took quite a bit out of him. The fighter we saw fight Mir was not the fighter that stepped in the Octagon against Overeem. He was timid and looked to just get it over with as fast as possible. He did not try for a real TD, just that half ass attempt that Alistair easily shrugged off.

But what surprised me the most was the fact that Overeem bullied Lesnar around the cage. He pushed Lesnar into the cage with ease, was able to easily dictate position, and was generally the stronger man in the cage which shocked me.