It was my personal observation of the fights that most times the participants initiated a haphazard looking wrestling td really as a means of ducking a straight punch to the face with no actual intent (or perhaps good enough technique) to fully employ the td.
But, it is precisely that
very fact that makes it one of the most useful fighting techniques.
This wrinkle to the clinch game is something many highly successful boxers do very well, and is one of the most useful things you can learn how to do from boxing; every time a pugilist or ducks under to dodge a blow and/or enter the clinch, that can be exactly your cue in MMA or fighting in general to... dodge their blow and enter the clinch.
A cripsy double leg is one of the most simple, reliable, and effective counters to an opponent looking to step in with a heavy shot. Even though there are no takedowns in boxing, the form is so effective they
participate in it anyways; virtuous practitioners naturally converging on useful modalities even independently of each other.
On the subject of the thread... to be honest, i actually enjoyed watching the Gustavo/Agayev match.
This may seem surprising, but i actually like point fighting, as both a training and competitive modality. One of the most well known and well respected combat sports on the planet is a point fighting style even. Namely, olympic boxing.
I don't think it is coincidental that several of the greatest all time greats in recent years, such as Andre Ward, or Floyd Mayweather, or Vasyl Lomachenko, were also highly successful in the amateur style. It is easy to imagine ways in which you can do point fighting wrong, but the
essential nature of such a structure, i think, is valuable and can be used to target valuable habits.
There is potential i do think here, for this rule-set to fill a niche, that 'missing link' which coheres striking in neutral and takedowns in neutral into an organic whole. Or basically, how to have MMA stand up, without actually being MMA? No major combat sport heretofore really provides this. Muay thai comes close but the scoring criteria doesn't really incentivize or place great importance on the takedown aspect. San shou could have been this, but their rule-set has become increasingly overwrought and restrictive over the years, and in any case it simply hasn't really caught on bigly anyways.
I enjoy thinking about how agents may adapt to certain systems or rule-sets resulting in certain behaviors, and the way i see it, one way you could swing this would be to approach it in an angle that would also riff off of the point fighting systems these guys would be familiar with.
Some hypothetical motions towards a 'holistic neutral game' ruleset; the usual method of victory shall be 'first to X' number of points, or 'sets'. For now, lets say 10, but it may be more or less as desired. The manner in which one may score a point and reset shall be; the opponent touching any part outside the boundary; the opponent touching any part besides the feet onto the ground; landing three uninterrupted strikes on the opponent in a row without answer. Total victory by KO or sub is also in effect (a sub under such a ruleset may not be a
likely method of victory, but simply having the
possibility open is important, and influences how the athletes will think and prepare and perform).
To spice up the action and encourage more aretic displays of skill, you could add further 'total victory' criteria as well, such as; if the opponent touches down or goes out of bounds while in 'chancery', that is, while you have taken their back or put them in submission hold, then the match ends there by 'technical fall'. This solves the potential gamesmanship issue of people 'escaping' a potential sub by scoring on themselves to reset, while also further encouraging performances like you're an action movie star, such as earth's greatest living martial artist, Sensei Steven Seagull. (Also in yielding applications to resolving physical altercations in less escalatory matters, but hey.)
Examples of being 'in chancery' would be things such as, a front headlock or chinstrap grip, a double wrist lock/kimura grip, a standing arm triangle grip, a waki-gatame/strait arm-lock takedown, or
a wristlock turn over. 'Taking the back' here means both head and chest behind the opponents shoulder with a bodylock grip, or a seat belt grip, or a merkle grip.
Another criteria could be, starting at three completed sets onwards, or at 30 or more total strikes together landed, whosoever has a 50% or more differential in strikes landed, takes the match there by 'technical knockout'. This would help further reenforce/incentivize intellectual banging while also in the context of takedown work.
There's plenty of ways you can do it differently here too, to open or emphasize different things; such as voiding the points by striking altogether and just having points by takedowns with strikes legal, along with the total victory criteria; or, by shifting scoring a point from touch down to scoring a point by
hold down, for anywhere between 3 to 30 seconds, during which time you may also strike, and/or which a technical fall may be scored by putting them in chancery within a short period of touch down (like 3 to 5 seconds say).