Rematch?

There are a lot of obstacles that come with rematches and they usually seem to be more difficult for the winner of thefirst fight rather than the loser. Usually the loser takes the stance of, “I made mistakes that cost me the fight, so now I get a chance to fix them and the outcome of this rematch will be different.”

Where the winner, thinks, “I did everything I was supposed to do. I executed the game plan, and I won as I expected to.” So now for the rematch, what does the winner do to improve his performance for the next fight?

Does he look to implement a new game plan? The first time they met the game plan worked perfectly. Do we change it? (If it isn’t broke don’t fix it right?) Is the other camp going to change their game plan to adjust for the problems they had in the original match?

For instance, Frankie Edgar just defended his title against BJ Penn and showed even more dominance the second time around. Did he change his game plan or did he just implement the same game plan with better execution? Did BJ Penn adjust his game to change the outcome of their first meeting?

In the Cruz-Joseph Benavidez rematch, as a coach, I found it difficult to get comfortable with the game plan we employed in the first bout. We didn’t change much from the first time, but for some reason I found myself questioning our plan. I somehow had to make it a little different to give Dominick the feel of an entirely new opponent.

We had questions as to how much Benavidez had improved, and how he would adjust to Dominick’s wrestling, speed, range, and timing which were things that Benavidez could not answer during the first fight.

Did spending 15-minutes in the cage with Dominick give Joe an advantage? In order to ease some of the stress of questioning our first game plan, we decided to add a few moves to Dominick’s game plan -- moves that worked better than expected -- to give Dominick the edge he needed to control the fight. So in reality we didn’t change game plans from first fight, we just added to it.

Rematches are expected in this sport, especially with the new talent coming into the UFC, WEC and other promotions.  Outcomes of close, contentious fights also tend to create even more hype for promotions to build rematches and trilogies!

As a fan I love them, I enjoy the story lines.  As a coach they are not as comfortable for me as I would like, but I guess I have to get used to them.  I learned a lot from this one, and in a weird way I am looking forward to the next one.