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An interesting interview over at BJPenn.com with Vinny talking about the time he spent at Sonnen's camp teaching submission defense and other grappling tips. As far as his own career goes, he says he has 6 weeks left in the period where M1 Global can match any offer he receives. So, he's waiting out the 6 weeks before he talks business with the UFC.
And he dropped some thoughts on Anderson's BJJ game
And then this absolute gem of a story...
Chael makes fun of a lot of things. … But he picks stuff up really fast. And the stuff that we worked on, I can guarantee you if he has the chance to use it in the fight, he will do it. If it’s a submission, if it’s a guard pass, whatever, I guarantee you he can do it. If he gets the chance, he can catch Anderson with something.
Chael’s a pretty good grappler. Even though he’s made mistakes in his fights, overall Chael’s a good grappler. He just makes mistakes in submission defense, so pretty much that’s what we worked on. And of course some attacks, control, some of that basic stuff.
Basically what we worked on was top game. We did work some submission defense, of course. But the best thing is not to get caught in a submission in the first place. If you’re just working submission defense, you have to first be in a submission. You don’t want to get that far. A lot of people ask me when they hear I was training Chael, ‘Why don’t you just work triangle defense?’ No! For me to teach you triangle defense, first I have to teach you how to be in a triangle. And I don’t want him to be there in the first place.
Chael’s a pretty good grappler. Even though he’s made mistakes in his fights, overall Chael’s a good grappler. He just makes mistakes in submission defense, so pretty much that’s what we worked on. And of course some attacks, control, some of that basic stuff.
Basically what we worked on was top game. We did work some submission defense, of course. But the best thing is not to get caught in a submission in the first place. If you’re just working submission defense, you have to first be in a submission. You don’t want to get that far. A lot of people ask me when they hear I was training Chael, ‘Why don’t you just work triangle defense?’ No! For me to teach you triangle defense, first I have to teach you how to be in a triangle. And I don’t want him to be there in the first place.
Here’s another point. A lot of people hype Anderson’s Jiu-Jitsu game because he got his black belt from the Nogueiras. But not every black belt is a high-level black belt. You just happened to have got a black belt under that guy. It’s not like he has great sweeps. It’s not like he has great submissions. How many submissions has he gotten [in the UFC]? He submitted Henderson. He submitted Chael; that’s two guys. And he submitted Travis Lutter. So that’s three guys. He’s even got a couple submission losses. They may be eight years ago, but they’re still losses. So I feel like this whole thing about Anderson being a black belt doesn’t make much of a difference in the fight.
It’s not that I’m not impressed. People think that if you have a black belt under certain guys, it automatically means you’re excellent at it. It doesn’t mean anything though. Black belts are not always going to have black-belt skills. The whole fight with Chael, [Silva] was on his back the whole time. I’m not saying he’s not good, he just might not be as good as people think he is. He spent 23 minutes on his back [against Chael]. He should’ve got something in those 23 minutes. Yeah, he did. He got the submission. But he was trying the whole time and he couldn’t get it. So like I’m saying, it’s not like he’s not good — he is good — just not as good as people think he is.
It’s not that I’m not impressed. People think that if you have a black belt under certain guys, it automatically means you’re excellent at it. It doesn’t mean anything though. Black belts are not always going to have black-belt skills. The whole fight with Chael, [Silva] was on his back the whole time. I’m not saying he’s not good, he just might not be as good as people think he is. He spent 23 minutes on his back [against Chael]. He should’ve got something in those 23 minutes. Yeah, he did. He got the submission. But he was trying the whole time and he couldn’t get it. So like I’m saying, it’s not like he’s not good — he is good — just not as good as people think he is.
On Chael’s check … you know how they have a line for what the check is for? He wrote ‘Defeat Silva.’ So I kept a copy, because I thought that was pretty funny.
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