Our latest MMA Twitter mailbag is heavy on submission grappling, with questions about my piece on the D'Arce choke and about the upcoming Abu Dhabi Combat Club Submission Wrestling World Championship.Your questions and comments, and my responses, for the latest MMA Twitter mailbag are below.
WabKinew: Cool. Would have liked Joe D'Arce to explain why he likes the positioning for the D'Arce a bit more. Just for insight.
I initially conceived of the piece as exactly what you're suggesting: Having D'Arce himself explain how to apply the D'Arce choke. But while Joe was nice enough to take the time to explain the choke to me over the phone, I found when I was writing up the interview that I just couldn't do as good a job of explaining it, even with Joe's help, as Frank Mir did in the video accompanying the post. So I decided to focus instead on Joe's thoughts about having the choke named after him.
mmascrapsradio: I hope you saw the back and forth me and @jordanbreen had yesterday. I hope he reads the article and sees M'arce. Heh
I did see the back-and-forth you and Jordan Breen had, and it was one of the things that inspired me to call Joe D'Arce and get it straight from the horse's mouth. One of the great things about Twitter is the opportunity it gives MMA fans to converse about the fights they see, and I enjoyed reading the conversation you and Jordan were having.
tshirtmaker What is ADCC?
ADCC is the Abu Dhabi Combat Club, which holds one of the most prestigious submission grappling events in the world. This year's world championship takes place in Barcelona, and although the organization initially said it would have high-profile UFC fighters Georges St. Pierre, Demian Maia and Nate Marquardt, it now appears that none of them will be there.
petey__h: Were the UFC fighters pressured to pull out of ADCC?
St. Pierre's manager talked to FanHouse's Mike Chiappetta about it, and it sounds like it's more a matter of St. Pierre wanting to recover from the groin injury he suffered at UFC 100. Maia told Sherdog that he wants to take some time off and then return his focus to the UFC. Nate Marquardt indicated on the Josh Gross podcast on SI.com that skipping ADCC is his own decision as well. So it doesn't sound like the UFC is forcing its fighters to skip ADCC. And the UFC's sister organization, the WEC, is allowing fighters Urijah Faber and Jeff Curran to participate.
botter: I'm guessing Faber's hands have healed enough to allow him to compete in ADCC?
Yes, from what I've heard, Faber's hands are in good enough shape for grappling, but not for striking. I'm glad to see he's staying in shape and working on his jiu jitsu skills, and I've been told to expect Faber backin the cage in early 2010.
Want to be part of our next UFC Twitter mailbag? Post a question or comment on Twitter.com, and be sure to start it with @MichaelDavSmith.
