Sparring sessions are the best way to prepare yourself to compete in mixed martial arts. They help you prepare for your contest by allowing you to practice what you’ve learnt – against a live opponent who isn’t necessarily going all out. They also help you identify any areas that you may need to work on.
However, they can often go wrong as one of the participants may go overboard. Abdul Razak Alhassan’s latest training video is a prime example of this. The video is making the rounds for how intense it is and how he’s actually hurting his partner.
The video shows Alhassan absolutely destroying his training partner. He knocks him down, but the session doesn’t stop there. He gets down to clobber him with hammerfists until he’s stopped.
Joe Rogan recently reacted to the video with surprise and awe. He pulled up the video on an episode of the JRE and replayed it.
“I watched a training session that Joaquin Buckley put on his Instagram where he did like a reaction to it,” he told his guests.
“It looks like they’re in a gym, he hits his guy with a left hook, cracks him. Might have a right hook and then hammer fists him while he’s out. Watch his right hand, boom! And then watch his hammer fist.”
Rogan, like many others, feels like Alhassan’s attacks were personal and that they were actually in a vale tudo challenge.
“I don’t know it looks like they’re in a gym training…… It seems personal. It seems like they’re fighting. Because he was KO’d with that right hand like his whole body goes limp”
Rogan even compared the hammerfist to Francis Ngannou’s infamous strike against Alistair Overeem at UFC 218.
“It was a hard hammerfist, it was like a Francis Ngannou vs Alistair [Overeem] hammerfist”
The man in the video, Alhassan, is a member of the UFC’s middleweight roster. He is a veteran, who’s known to be an explosive combatant. Alhassan is coming off a second-round knockout win at UFC on ESPN+ 75.
UFC is celebrating it’s 30th anniversary this year – this makes the formalized sport of MMA remarkably young. Just a decade ago it was common that a camp would go all out in sparring. This has substantially changed and even beasts like Khamzat Chimaev went on to caution guys to not go all out in sparring.
Chimaev recently told an interviewer (as transcribed by bjjdoc.com):
“The most important thing is mat time. You know, wrestling, grappling, sparring. That’s where you add up. Fight IQ. And, well, you work with different partners, gain experience. And running, crossfit is just to gain form.”
“The most important thing for me is not sparring, not wrestling, not training. It’s the most important thing to win a fight. If you win everyone at sparring, then you are doing something wrong.”