Maynard: Hall fight was ‘the most annoying bull$#!@’

Although after 23 years, mixed martial arts is becoming a sport on its own, as the name implies, many fighters draw from distinct martial arts. That has rarely been as clear lately as it was at The Ultimate Fighter 24 Finale, when Ryan Hall faced Gray Maynard.

Maynard employs a high percentage wrestling/boxing game. He also has a blue belt in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu.

Ryan Hall has a highly refined and innovative Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu game, particularly from the bottom. He recently supplemented it with surprisingly effective karate techniques, that he developed training with Thanh Le and Ray Thompson, father and coach to #1 welterweight contender Stephen ‘Wonderboy’ Thompson.

Hall’s BJJ + Karate proved to be > Maynard’s wrestling + Boxing. Hall struck from the outside, literally ran from the punching range, and did everything in his power to be taken down where he could work his 50/50 Guard and other innovative ground techniques.

While Hall received some boos from the audience, in fairness, he was no more running from Maynard’s boxing than Maynard was running from Hall’s ground game. Each wisely refused to engage where they were weakest, and Hall won, well outstriking Maynard from the outside.

Maynard reflected bitterly on the fight in an interview with Jonathan Snowden for Bleacher Report.

“I’ve just been going over it in my head,” said Maynard to Snowden, at 5:00 a.m. “I checked it out on tape. It’s definitely frustrating. I get that you want to play keep away. But every time a guy gets within two feet you can’t just sprint away or just drop to the floor. He literally just dropped down to the floor. To the f***ing floor. I’ve never seen that in my life.”

“Everyone who knew him told us that he was scared to death of getting punched in the face. But this is MMA. You’re bound to get punched a couple of times. I understand he’s good at jiu-jitsu. Here’s a job for him—he has to learn how to take me down. You can’t just drop to your butt. … But where are the rules at? Who is enforcing the rules?”

“We asked the ref [Chris Tognoni] in the locker room before the fight, what he was going to do. If he’s on his butt, how many times do you have to tell him to get up before you start taking action? And he told us there were rules against timidity and that if he avoided fighting he was going to ding a point. Well, what was happening? The referee had no control.”

“I should have seen if he was everything he claims to be. I would have played the game a little bit more. We were going to test him. The plan was to push him up against the cage, get the double and test him in half guard. But I couldn’t get near him without him dropping to his back or running away.”

“I understand that he wants to avoid punishment. But we signed the dotted line to give the people a fight. They came to see a fight. If you want to do jiu-jitsu, that’s fine. Take me to the mat, if you can. There has to be rules in place to stop that from happening.”

“This was terrible. We didn’t give the people a good look. We didn’t give the sport a good look. I don’t want to fight that guy again. That was the most annoying bulls***.”

Maynard reasonably said, “he has to learn how to take me down.” But as reasonably, Hall could say that after fighting as a professional for over ten years, Maynard has to earn more than a blue belt in BJJ, the art from which MMA was born.

“I tried to put him in either the fire or the frying pan,” said Hall afterward. “He chose the frying pan unfortunately for me, because I am a lot better at the fire. Unlike grappling, which is a control sport, MMA is a damage sport. It really is in your interest, if you can, to get through these fights as cleanly as possible. Fortunately, in this instance, I was able to do it.”

There are a number of intriguing fights for Hall going forward. Maynard is now 2-6-1 in the past five years; he had been on an eight-fight win streak previously.