Clay Guida still feels Gray Maynard game plan "played out perfectly" at UFC on FX 4

By: Jamie Penick, MMATorch Editor-in-Chief

Despite a widespread criticism of his performance at UFC on FX 4 last week, Clay Guida continues to see nothing wrong with the way he fought Gray Maynard in Sunrise, Fla. His strategy in the fight was to avoid the attacks from Maynard, and avoid getting into a firefight or grappling battle with a superior wrestler and harder hitter.

That strategy technically worked, as he didn't suffer much damage in the fight, but he seemed to forget the offensive component of the fight, as his avoidance led to very little action in the first three rounds, and turned the crowd against him. Still, Guida remains unapologetic for how he performed, and vehemently disagrees with the criticism aimed his way.

"I thought the game plan and strategy we came up with, I thought it played out perfectly, almost too good as a matter of fact," Guida said in an interview with "Inside the Cage" on ESPN 760 in West Palm Beach, Fla.. "Yeah, we could have landed a couple more combinations here, we could have gotten into wrestling a little bit more, but Gray is a very dominant wrestler. He's a very good counter wrestler, too. I've only seen him be taken down once, maybe twice, in the UFC, and that was by Frankie Edgar, and was just for a brief moment."

"I thought we did enough to stop his wrestling. He gave us his best double leg blast takedown that no one stopped in the UFC and in his mixed martial arts career. We stuffed it on numerous occasions. We stood him up. We landed the two and three punch combinations. We stunned him with kicks. He was swinging and missing like Sammy Sosa in one of his worst slumps. We left him frustrated. We left him with a face of desperation when he was flipping me off and cursing me and dropping 'f-bombs' in the cage. Need I go on?"

It was here that Guida began to get a bit indignant and petulant about the entire fight, launching into a tirade about how the fight played out and the way the judges scored the fight.

"Yes, I can still go on," he continued. Let's see. Oh yeah, I defended the submission. I got to half guard and I passed his guard. Oh, did I mention I stopped his takedowns? Yeah, I stopped his takedowns. I kicked him in the face three or four times cleanly. I rocked him in the fifth round. Let's see, what else? Oh yeah, did I say that we were more elusive than he's probably seen any opponent? Oh yeah, how about the time I moved and he ran face first into the cage. Need I go on? Let's see. Oh, the judges. Yeah, the three blind mice. Yeah, they definitely got paid for their job that night. They did a hell of a job. I want to commend them and the New Jersey Athletic Commission for blowing another [one], taking someone's victory."

But it wasn't just the judges or the fans coming down hard on his performance, as UFC President Dana White was vocal in his opposition to the gameplan. He even stated that Guida's performance was similar to that of Kalib Starnes in his infamous bout with Nate Quarry. Needless to say, Guida wasn't in line with the criticism.

"Yeah, I wasn't very thrilled about it, but I spoke with Dana Sunday after the fight, after I watched it and we kind of hashed things out," Guida said. "As far as how I thought [I did], I won pretty much each round. I can maybe see it 3-2 somehow for me, but I thought it was 4-1. I thought we almost pulled the shutout on him."

Penick's Analysis: I've gone over this already this week, but the major issue with the performance was the lack of offense to go along with a smart defensive strategy. Guida couldn't go punch for punch with Maynard and survive. Likewise, had he engaged in a grappling bout instead of playing solely defense it wouldn't have been a smart strategy for him either. He wasn't going to be able to beat Maynard unless he completely avoided damage throughout the fight and found a way to get in offense himself. Unfortunately, he only accomplished one part of that plan, despite his protestations to the contrary. You can just look at the numbers to see the issue. Through the first three rounds of the fight, Guida landed a combined total of 24 strikes. For comparison's sake, in the fight many tried to equate this performance to in Carlos Condit's win over Nick Diaz, Condit landed more strikes in the first round than Guida did in the first three. Not only that, but Condit had landed more strikes through two rounds of his fight with Diaz than Guida did the entire fight with Maynard. This wasn't a good performance, and he needs to get it out of his head that it was. He had a solid defensive gameplan, but didn't do anything else to claim the fight decisively.

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