[quote name='Maklershed']Alright, just watched it. My thoughts ..
a) That should've gone to a 3rd round. Diffley won the 1st. Magny spent half the round trying to escape heel hooks.
b) Nelson is a horrible coach. He kept screaming for Diffley to sweep with the hook and unfortunately Diffley listened to him. He lost confidence in the sub even though he was locking it in and it looked like Magny didn't know how to get out of it. So Diffley gets top control from 20 seconds. Who cares. Nelson should've shut up and let him go with it.
c) Diffley's biggest flaw (other than slow, weak, telegraphed striking) is that his takedowns are horrible so he has to rely on pulling guard. Unfortunately it doesn't matter to judges if you're on the bottom because you want to be - they just see a guy on the bottom and assume he's being dominated. If Diffley had good takedowns he'd be a force.[/QUOTE]
Diffley should have had the confidence to do what he does, which is grapple. The guy is legitimately slick on the ground and it looked like he had Magny in some good subs, but I saw the gif of him losing the heel hook in favor of ending up on top...that is uncharacteristic for him.
Also, true on his takedowns. He was driving nicely on them but didn't finish the takedown and ended up pulling guard. Obviously this Magny guy is a better defensive grappler then people would have expected, but Diffley made some mistakes in the fight by not going for broke with submissions. Its what he always does and how he got 4 first round subs in his first four fights