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Michael Chandler joins a long list of fighters to score front kicks knockouts in the UFC. Lyoto Machida knows the technique well as he's scored a huge front kick against Vitor Belfort and a similar one against Randy Couture.
Lyoto Machida notes that many people would criticize the kick from a technical standpoint but he was very impressed with how it was pulled off. Michael Chandler now has a huge highlight in his short career in the UFC.
“I’m the type of guy that sees the martial arts in a global way,” Machida told MMA Fighting. “‘Oh, this mae geri, this front kick had no technique, he kicked from down up.’ Did it work? It did. If it worked, it’s good.
“We tend to diminish [others]. It’s not easy to land a kick like that. [People criticize,] ‘If his feet was like that, or his knee was a bit bent.’ I don’t care. What matters to me is how effective it was. [If] I’m going out to hunt and I have the best weapon, but I wasn’t effective, what’s the point? [If] my weapon isn’t that good, but I went there and killed the animal? That means I was effective, that I did it well.”
Lyoto Machida admits he used to be very big on technique in the past but now feels differently seeing as how it worked. The former UFC champion sees the effectiveness more than the actual technique.
“I’ve looked at things that way in the past, but now I don’t,” Machida said. “Martial arts, like the name says, is art. And like art, anything can come from it. You look at a painting from Leonardo da Vinci and sometimes you don’t see beauty, but someone with more sensibility than you will be able to see something there. ‘This is so beautiful, look at what this person thought.’
“It’s the same thing with a kick like this. I look at martial art in a holistic way, you know? Did it work well? So it’s a 10.”