2010 HeavyMMA Awards: Submission of the Year

Historic submission takes home award

The 2010 HeavyMMA Awards keep coming at you.  Today, we present our Submission of the Year.  There are a ton of things to consider when picking out a truly memorable submission win.  Creativity, magnitude, situation, difficulty – it’s hard to find one submission that embodies every aspect.  We narrowed it down to four finalists and just couldn’t ignore the impact that one submission win had on the entire sport in 2010.

And the winner is…

Submission of the Year

The Submission of the Year

Jeff Cain: I think there are some slick submissions that certainly deserve recognition for creativity and whatnot, but tapping out Fedor has only been done one time in history, and it was in 2010 to Fabricio Werdum. The myth, the winning streak, and the top heavyweight ranking disappeared from the Russian’s resume in a single choke.

Jeremy Botter: There were much cooler (and more technical) submissions this year, but for historical significance, nothing comes close to Werdum’s triangle on The Last Emperor.

Matt Brown: Any MMA fan knows how much this triangle changed the entire landscape of mixed martial arts.  Fabricio Werdum, in a single move, bumped Fedor Emelianenko from the top spot in the pound for pound list, the heavyweight rankings and even began debate on whether Fedor was ever deserving of all the praise in the first place.  While there might have been fancier sub wins out there, none had a larger impact on the sport of MMA than this one.

Honorable Mention:

– Nick Pace, “Pace Choke” over Will Campuzano

Jeremy Botter: It’s a rare thing to pull out a submission that few people – including 2nd degree jiu-jitsu black belt Eddie Bravo – have ever seen. But that’s exactly what Pace did against Campuzano, blowing Joe Rogan’s mind and sending us media folks scrambling to figure out exactly what he’d done. The only downside? Pace missed weight, so he didn’t win the Submission of the Night award. I bet that doesn’t happen again.

– Cole Miller, modified kimura over Dan Lauzon

Spencer Kyte:  Fabricio Werdum’s triangle on Fedor was more historically significant, and Anderson Silva’s ending to his fight with Chael Sonnen was the best last-minute miracle of the year, but in terms of straight-up submissiony goodness, I’ll take Cole Miller’s combo finish on Dan Lauzon for Submission of the Year.

– Anderson Silva, trangle over Chael Sonnen

Matt Brown:  After getting beaten down for over 22 minutes, Anderson Silva pulled off a championship-saving triangle choke that shocked the world.  The belt was all but Sonnen’s who had won all four rounds going into the fifth and final frame, but “The Spider” was able to pull off the greatest comeback of 2010, extending his unbeaten streak within the UFC to 12.