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- Jul 10, 2017
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Yeah I agree with a lot of Asian fighters being held back by loyalty to their small gyms. It's one of the reasons why I can't back Inoue here against Schnell. I think Naoki has all the technical tools to become really good, but there's other things like strength, conditioning, weight-cutting, that come into play. He just won't be physical enough to compete with a lot of UFC level guys.
I do like the fact that guys like Song Yadong and even Daichi Abe are taking trips to the US to train. Yadong has made multiple trips to TAM and Abe is now training with Bang Ludwig in Colorado. TAM is obviously a great choice for smaller athletic guys like Yadong. Not quite sure if Bang Muay Thai will translate well at 170 since it's so volume-based and is better for smaller weight classes with higher SPM, especially since Abe seems to gas out easily. Colorado's altitude might be helpful for Abe's cardio, however.
1.5 years is a long time for a guy like Yadong to improve. Look at how much better Sayles looked yesterday after a year of intense training at Alliance. However, the difference here is that I haven't heard too many people heap praise on Yadong yet in the gym and Yadong is only a part timer at TAM with still the majority of his training in China. 1.5 years only part timing at TAM is definitely not enough to improve both his striking and his grappling IMO so I might just stick with my 2u bet on Arantes unless I hear something new about him from TAM gym mates or if I can find that Skrivers fight. If he looks as good as he did against Khandare against Skrivers, I would probably buy out part of my bet.
TAM is good for Yadong because watching some video, when Yadong gets taken down or ends up on his back, it looks like he doesn't use proper technique to reverse or sweep, he just tries to muscle out which expends a lot of energy and is bad news against a grappler like Arantes. With a better camp like TAM, they also strategize better on how to beat an opponent with a gameplan and focus on an opponent's weakness, the fighter just needs to execute. Watching some smaller Asian organization fights in general, it doesn't look like they have a gameplan or watched opponents tape, they are just straight brawling. Not trying to convince you out of your bet, your points are valid and I'm still on the fence on how I want to play it.
I'm really curious about Abe Daichi training at Bang Muay Thai, obviously the altitude training is going to help him with his cardio, not sure how much though, some people just have better cardio than others. Abe Daichi has always been an accurate striker with good counter punching but he could really improve his use of angles at a place like Bang Muay Thai. We know Li Jingliang is going to shoot takedowns but it's not so easy to land takedowns when your opponents is not stationary right in front of you and is using angles. +295 is really tempting even for 0.5 units.