Technician Versus Performer / Sports

• Contrast NFL defensive end Reggie White (performer) with Bruce Smith (technician). White is known for his larger-than-life persona, dominance and memorable plays. Smith is simply known for his high numbers and durability. White is easily the more memorable player and almost always ranks higher on lists than Smith.
• Roughly the difference between New England placekickers Adam Vinatieri (performer with a particular flair for clutch kicks) and Stephen Gostkowski (high-scoring technician with a major, but often unnoticed impact on team performance over multiple seasons). Apart from a brief stretch in 2010 and the injury-marred kicker carousel of 2019, the Pats have only had two placekickers on the roster from 1996 to 2020, and they're both among the greatest at the position. Gostkowski, in particular, is the franchise leader in scoring, has helped bring the Pats to six Super Bowls, and has played a major factor in keeping the team in championship contention more or less continuously between 2009 and 2019. However, despite Gostkowski's greater percentage of regular season and playoff field goals made, his powerful leg and his consistency over a longer career at New England, his high profile missed PAT and field goal kicks (a crucial missed PAT cost the Pats a chance to go to Super Bowl 50 by way of an unsuccessful last minute 2-pt play; a missed PAT in Super Bowl LI forced the Pats to convert 2-pt plays twice just to tie the game; a missed field goal and PAT in Super Bowl LII added to an already unraveling game situation; a missed field goal in Super Bowl LIII) form a compelling contrast to Vinatieri's postseason heroics (the two kicks in a blizzard during the 2001 Divisional vs. Oakland; game-winning last minute kicks in Super Bowls XXXVI and XXXVIII, a crucial and ultimately game-winning field goal in Super Bowl XXXIX) and leave him with a complicated legacy.
• NBA basketball, where the top players can be directly contrasted against one another in one-on-one play, is ripe for this trope.
  • Wilt Chamberlain (high-scoring performer) vs Bill Russell (defensive technician).
  • Larry Bird (technician) vs. Magic Johnson (performer).
    • Special mention goes to the rivalry of these teams in general; the traditional Boston Celtics (blue-collar, team-first technicians) and their hollywood rivals the Los Angeles Lakers (flashy, stylistic and superstar heavy performers).
  • Among point guards, the passionate, flashy Steve Nash was a relatively poor defender leading a fast-paced, high-scoring offense with creative passing and scoring; the reserved Jason Kidd wasn't a terrific scorer, but played excellent defense and distributed the ball beautifully.
  • Karl Malone (Technician, no flash at all) vs. Charles Barkley (Performer, polarizing on and off the court)
  • Blake Griffin (a dominant low-post bruiser known for high-flying dunks and histrionic reactions to getting fouled) vs. Kevin Love (a versatile, low-key player with limited post presence but textbook outside shooting and excellent passing).
  • Shaquille O'Neal (performer) vs. Tim Duncan (technician). Despite having a much more fundamentally sound and complete game, Duncan was always considered boring while Shaq always got the crowd cheering wildly.
    • Duncan also has this with the ferocious Kevin Garnett; really, between Duncan's steady, slow-paced game and deliberately dispassionate on-court persona, he makes anyone look like a Performer.
  • Teammate example: Klay Thompson (a tall guard with textbook-perfect shooting mechanics and steady post moves, described by his teammates as acting the same whether he's made 10 shots or missed 10) vs. Stephen Curry (a smaller guard with an unorthodox but deadly shot, a broad repertoire of high-risk, no-look passes, and a habit of enthusiastic on-court celebrations).
  • The 2017 MVP race pitted Russell Westbrook (a flashy on-court performer with a penchant for attempting high-risk plays and padding box score stats) against James Harden (who specialized in running an efficient offense) and Kawhi Leonard (an elite defensive stopper). Westbrook won the MVP despite leading his team to fewer wins, and losing quickly in the first round of the playoffs.
• Pittsburgh Steelers (technician) vs Dallas Cowboys (performer).
• In the past, tennis had Andre Agassi (performer) vs. Pete Sampras (technician), at least on the outside. Agassi loathed the game of tennis (at least according to his autobiography Open), while Sampras was happy to sleep, eat and breathe the sport and merely lacked Agassi's natural charisma.
  • There was also John McEnroe (performer) vs. Ivan Lendl (technician). Not everyone loved McEnroe due to his abrasive personality but everyone could be counted on to have some kind of strong emotional reaction to him and he was the definite crowd favorite against Lendl, who had a more successful career overall than McEnroe with a positive head-to-head record against him and more Grand Slams and weeks at No. 1 to his name but was viewed by many as a personality-devoid "Czech robot" to such an extent that Sports Illustrated once described him as "The Champion No One Cares About". It's also arguably the main reason for McEnroe being typically ranked above Lendl in "greatest tennis players of all time" lists in spite of Lendl spending more time than him at the top of the game because his playing style and wins were considered to be more dynamic and exciting to watch than Lendl's Boring, but Practical consistency.
  • The fact that Johnny Mac was an American and Lendl wasn't helps too when deciding who the American public will cheer for.
  • Earlier in McEnroe's career, he had a similar, though much friendlier, rivalry with "The Iceman" Björn Borg (technician)...
  • ...who himself had another such rival in the passionate and fiery Jimmy Connors (performer).
• The artistic Barry Sanders (performer) vs. the consistent Emmitt Smith (technician).
• Calvin Johnson (performer) vs. Larry Fitzgerald (technician).
• Many quarterback examples. A few notable ones:
  • Dan Marino (record-setting technician) vs. Joe Montana (Super Bowl-winning performer).
  • Peyton Manning (cerebral, record-setting technician) vs. Tom Brady (performer with a winner's mentality). Interestingly, Brady became even more of a technician with age, even more so after Manning's retirement.
  • Eli Manning also has this dynamic with his older brother Peyton. While Peyton massively eclipsed Eli in pretty much every statistical category, Eli, particularly in the early part of his career, earned a reputation for being able to make the biggest plays at the biggest moments, while Peyton long held a reputation for the opposite. Ultimately, they ended up with the same number of Super Bowl rings at two apiece (although detractors of Peyton will argue that his second was largely won on the back of the Broncos' defense).
  • Brett Favre (performer) vs. Aaron Rodgers (technician). Favre had an extremely strong throwing arm and would take risks for big plays. At times, he led the league in passing yards, touchdown passes and interceptions all at the same time. Rodgers, Favre's successor with the Packers, has a masterful command of the playbook and the positions of his receivers, and is the most accurate passer in the league, who long had the best career passer rating^note Patrick Mahomes now tops that category and still has the best touchdown-to-interception ratio in NFL history. Both are considered among the greatest quarterbacks of their respective generations, and both have Super Bowl rings.
  • From the 70s, Terry Bradshaw (performer) vs Roger Staubach (technician).
  • Patrick Mahomes is the rare quarterback who manages to be both; he's an attention-grabbing performer known for big, flashy plays, such as his signature no-look throws^note something that's usually considered a quarterback no-no because it often ends badly, but Mahomes gets a pass because he's proven that he's capable of actually completing them on a regular basis and on one occasion completing a pass with his non-dominant hand, while also being a technically skilled player and accurate passer^note he is one of only seven NFL quarterbacks to post an interception percentage below 2%; as of the start of the 2023 season, his 1.7% interception percentage puts him fourth in NFL history with a high "football IQ". There's a reason that many think he may be the best quarterback — if not the best player period — currently in the league (he's certainly in the conversation, at least).
  • Quite possibly the most famous was Johnny Unitas (technician, perfectly ran the Colts offense like a well oiled machine, basically invented the two minute drill, the face of the NFL during the 50's and 60's and a haircut you could set your watch to) vs. Joe Namath (performer, a cannon for an arm, prone to mistakes, guaranteed victory in Super Bowl III and delivered, and very flamboyant).
• While baseball's measured pace and tendency towards staid decorum tends to breed more technicians, there are some examples (particularly among pitchers, who get the most opportunity to put their personal stamp on games).
  • Tim Lincecum and Roy Halladay, probably the two best pitchers of the late 2000s-early teens. This column from Joe Posnanski is essentially a discussion of this trope, and even their nicknames - the unorthodox, improvisational "Freak" vs. the stone-faced, surgically precise "Doc Halladay" - fit.
  • The two best pitchers of the 90s also fit. Greg Maddux, who consistently defeated hitters despite a limited fastball with better command than any pitcher of the modern age and a preternatural ability to analyze games, was the technician; Pedro Martínez, who threw a dazzling array of pitches and was famously demonstrative and feisty on the mound, was the performer.^note Interestingly, both were undervalued prospects, considered too small to ever really succeed as major-league pitchers.
  • The Yankees and Red Sox teams of the 2000s were essentially very similar, but their respective superstars fit this - Derek Jeter (a defender with limited range but steady hands, who had one of the most textbook inside-out swings baseball has ever seen) vs Manny Ramirez (a theatrical, unpredictable fielder and a "mad genius" of hitting.)
• In Formula One, Ayrton Senna (performer) vs Alain Prost (technician). From an earlier era, James Hunt (performer) vs Niki Lauda (technician). In more recent years, we have Lewis Hamilton (technician) vs Sebastian Vettel (performer).
  • Actually, given Senna's level of dedication to physical training and car testing, it's difficult to place him easily in either category. Nigel Mansell, who in testing would 'set a lap, then bugger off to the golf course', Jean Alesi, and Ronnie Peterson, who drove his team leader mad by being so completely able to instinctively adapt to a car's mangled setup and thus unable to provide any feedback, are more fitting examples of performers.
• In The World Cup, historically the South American teams are the Performers and the European ones the Technicians, with Brazil and Germany being the best examples of each respectively.
  • This South American–European dynamic holds true to some extent on the women's side. Brazilian icon Marta has filled both roles at the same time. Asian sides (plus Australia, which now plays within the Asian football structure) are mostly technicians, though current Australia star Sam Kerr has many "performer" aspects. The team with the most wins in the women's edition, the USA, is capable of playing either role as needed. And sometimes both, with the iconic 1999 team as just one example. That said, one of the USA's most iconic stars of the 21st century, Carli Lloyd, definitely filled the "performer" role. According to this SB Nation piece that ran just before the 2015 World Cup final,
    For all of the time that she is not scoring or assisting goals, she is actively hurting her team. But she scores or assists big goals in almost every big game she plays. . . . Lloyd has turned in 89 abysmal minutes plus a spectacular goal or assist enough times that it cannot be luck. Five different national team managers have kept her in the lineup not in hope that she'll produce in big moments, but knowing that she will. She always does.^note And as if to prove that assessment, she had a hat trick in said World Cup final. In the first 16 minutes. With the last of those goals coming off a ridiculous shot from the midfield stripe.
  • Compare Cristiano Ronaldo (technician) to Lionel Messi (performer). Both work extremely hard, but Ronaldo is more well-known for his work ethic and being football perfection personified, whereas Messi is cited for his football genius and otherworldly talents. It's also worth noting that this changed a bit over time - towards the back end of his career, Ronaldo's hard work extended only to keeping himself fit, with a pronounced reluctance to do the defensive dirty-work/forward pressing that's expected of a modern striker, while Messi was willing to muck in.
• Partially true in modern roller derby; while it is very much a sport, and if you can't keep up technically you will be cut from the team, rollergirls are also strongly encouraged to play to the crowd.
• In the English equestrian world: Showjumpers (performers) versus Hunter-Jumpers (technicians). The rivalry is — intense, as showjumpers yell that hunters are robotic and too focused on minutiae, while hunters wail that jumpers care more about leaping ridiculously high fences than they do about correct equitation. (From someone who has ridden both — both sides have a point.)
• In Alpine Ski Racing, Bode Miller, despite having cleaned up his 'rockstar' behaviour from his early career, continued to ski with a far less pretty and orthodox technique compared to other giants such as Didier Cuche. But *my god* the man is fast...
• Boxing is a sport where technicians and performers can equally shine. Regardless of which type of fighter they are, everything else being equal, it will almost always be the fighter with the most varied and complete skill set that wins the fight, be they a performer or technician.
  • Jake LaMotta (performer) vs. Sugar Ray Robinson (technician)
  • Roberto Duran (performer) vs. Sugar Ray Leonard (technician)
    • When Leonard tried to be the performer in their first fight, he lost. He learned his lesson in their two follow up meetings.
  • Roy Jones Jr. (performer) vs. Bernard Hopkins (technician)
  • Mike Tyson (performer) vs. Evander Holyfield (technician)
  • Gerry Cooney (performer) vs. Larry Holmes (technician)
  • Tommy Hearns (performer) vs. Marvin Hagler (technician)
  • Arturo Gatti (performer) vs. Micky Ward (technician)
  • Meldrick Taylor (performer) vs. Julio César Chávez (technician)
  • Aaron Pryor (performer) vs. Alexis Argüello (technician)
  • Muhammad Ali (performer) vs. George Foreman (technician)
  • Manny Pacquiao (performer) vs. Floyd Mayweather Jr. (technician in the ring, but a performer out of it).
  • Deontay Wilder (performer) vs. Tyson Fury (also an in-ring technician and outside-ring performer)
• Ice hockey: Alexander Ovechkin (performer) vs. Sidney Crosby (technician)
  • Mario Lemieux (performer) vs. Wayne Gretzky (technician) in the 1990s.
  • Among old-timey goaltenders: Charlie Gardiner (performer) vs. George Hainsworth (technician)
• Football:
  • Generally speaking, in the El Clásico derby, Real Madrid (technician) vs. FC Barcelona (performer). Ironic, considering how Barcelona's performance value comes from their mastering the technical side.
  • The English Premier League goes through several swings of this:
    • In the first several seasons, it was Sir Alex Ferguson's Manchester United (the technicians) against Arsène Wenger's Arsenal (the performers). Ferguson's teams were always hard yet efficient, capable of beating even global giants on the regular. Wenger's Arsenal implemented a philosophy of free-flowing, intricate, attacking teamplay revolutionized the game in England and even coined the term "Wengerball".
    • For the next few seasons, Wenger's Arsenal and Ferguson's United both seemed to be performers against the brutal efficiency of Chelsea as they entered the picture as Jose Mourinho led the team to being the league's new technicians.
    • The first half of the 2010s saw the "Big Six" evolve into essentially three technicians (Manchester United, Chelsea, Tottenham Hotspur) and three performers (Arsenal, Liverpool, Manchester City), but where these teams actually fell started to vary wildly, particularly after Leicester City won the title.
    • For the back half of the 2010s, you had Pep Guardiola's heavily disciplined and drilled Manchester City as the technician and Jürgen Klopp's inspirational and unpredictable Liverpool, dubbed 'Europe's Entertainers' for their attacking flair, as the performer. City won four of the five title races between them, however - though on two occasions, only by a single point.
    • It's worth noting that both Guardiola and Klopp deeply admire each other and happily admit that they have learned from each other, mixing and matching characteristics - Klopp's Liverpool are extremely well drilled to pull off the gegenpress, the coordinated high press that forces mistakes and turnovers high up the pitch, while Guardiola has incorporated the press into his team as well as elements of Liverpool's interchanging front line, and his teams rely on the creativity of the likes of Bernado Silva, Kevin de Bruyne, and Phil Foden.
    • Starting in 2022, Arsenal rose up to challenge both Liverpool and City as something of a mix between the two. They are, without a doubt, Performers by virtue of Mikel Arteta bringing back the team-oriented attacking philosophy of old in the style of Wengerball, but with an intense pressing and possession-controlling method to starve the opposition of ball control, like Arteta's mentor Pep. Liverpool suffered an off year in the 2022/23 season, leaving Arsenal as the (relative) Performers. In 2023/24, however, it's been a three-way melee for the top spot, with City's "inevitability" making them clear Technicians, Liverpool's unpredictable frontline and lightning counter-attack making them clear Performers, and Arsenal's ruthless control, smothering defense, and juggernaut offense turning them into a "best of both worlds" between them^note At time of this edit, Arsenal have both the most goals scored, fewest goals conceded, highest expected goals for, and lowest expected goals against of all teams in the league.
    • Challenging all three of the above, to general bafflement, was Unai Emery's well-drilled and lightning fast Aston Villa side, another set of Technicians who combine clinical attacking football with a compact defence. However, as the season wore on, they started to fall off and jostle with Spurs for 4th place, which is still a monumental achievement.
  • Barcelona's tiki-taka style of play (and its predecessor, the Dutch Total Football) is based on extreme technical skill on a personal level while the tactical flow of the team as a whole is more loose. What results is a team whose individual players are Technicians but the team as a whole is a Performer.
  • One could roughly compare FC Barcelona and Real Madrid to Maverick and Iceman from Top Gun respectively: FC Barcelona plays a spectacular possession and attacking game, showing incredible talent and skills and always aiming to appeal the public, while Real Madrid plays a strategical counter attacking tactic that relies on a solid defense, then exploiting their opponents' flaws, what they do almost perfectly.
  • The 2017-18 Serie A season showed this confrontation once again between title contenders Juventus and Napoli. Six-time consecutive title winners Juventus are the technicians, with their manager, Massimiliano Allegri, favoring tactical versatility and emphasizing each player's traits to win matches even when they don't perform at their best: his playstyle can be best summed up as "minimum effort, maximum results", favoring defensive compactness over attacking flair and frequently winning with a single goal with few chances created and conceded. Napoli, instead, are definitely the performers: their manager, Maurizio Sarri, almost always goes with the same players and rarely pulls off turnovers; however, when they win, they dominate the match front, back and center with mesmerizing plays and a devastating attacking verve, conceding quite a bit from the opponents but scoring a lot more in the process. Even though Juventus won their seventh consecutive title with one match to spare despite their last-minute defeat at home against Napoli, the latter have gotten the approval of football fans everywhere in the world not just for their spectacular plays, but also for coming the closest a team has ever gotten to snatch the Serie A title away from the Old Lady in 7 years. This contrast also showed itself later in the season to a lesser extent with Champions league zone contenders Inter Milan (technicians) and Roma (performers).
    • The 2021/22 Serie A season has already shown Napoli and AC Milan going head-to-head for the league title, and even though they both play attractive, attack-oriented football under their coaches Luciano Spalletti (who also coached the aforementioned Inter Milan side) and Stefano Pioli, they do so in distinct ways. Spalletti's Napoli is the Technician: despite having a well-drilled tactical setup they are not afraid to switch things up as the game commands it, and have taken strong precautions in defense with a powerful centerback duo in Kalidou Koulibaly and Amir Rrahmani. Pioli's Milan is instead the Performer: they are a very youthful side playing brazenly attacking football which concedes far more than Napoli but also scores more, further helped by having stalwarts like Zlatan Ibrahimovic and Olivier Giroud in the frontlines.
• Figure skating in general. The best can find a balance between crowd-pleasing performance and technical precision, but many struggle and veer too far one way or the other. In the worst cases, it either becomes just an entertaining show and not a sport, or it's technically perfect but emotionless and boring to watch.
  • The 1988 Winter Olympics used this to highlight the difference between East German Katarina Witt (a beautiful and artistic skater who wasn't a particularly strong jumper) and American Debi Thomas (a terrific jumper who lacked the grace generally preferred by figure skating judges).
  • The 1992 Winter Olympics women's figure skating event was similarly billed as "the artists (Kristi Yamaguchi and Nancy Kerrigan) vs. the athletes (Tonya Harding and Midori Ito). The first two women were remarkably elegant and graceful skaters, but they could not land a triple Axel jump, while the latter women could.
  • By the 1994 games, it was Nancy Kerrigan in the "athlete" role, with Oksana Baiul as the "artist".
  • 1998 Nagano Winter Olympics, men's figure skating free skate: Ilia Kulik (technician) vs. Philippe Candeloro (performer— and how!)
    • This inadvertently happened to Michelle Kwan (who ironically was a legendary performer— she earned more 6's (a perfect score) than any skater in history) and Tara Lipinski as well. Both girls skated flawlessly, but Tara's lively, vibrant routine edged out Michelle's uncharacteristically reserved one.
  • 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics, the controversy over the men's singles figure skating gold medal. Charismatic performer Evgeni Plushenko who skated a higher risk program which is filled with small errors, versus collected technician Evan Lysacek who skated clean on a lower risk program.
  • The 2017 U.S. Figure Skating Champions, Nathan Chen v. most of the other contenders. Chen landed five quads in his free skate, but emotionally his programs have been criticized as boring and passionless; compare Jason Brown, who took the bronze, who could not even remotely match the amount of points Chen racked up but skated a fun, spin-filled program to music from Hamilton.
  • Similarly, the Nathan Chen v. Yuzuru Hanyu rivalry (to some degree played up by the media) have often been portrayed with Chen being the technician with more understated/"normal" costumes and emphasizing the dangerous/physical side of figure skating being a sport, and Hanyu being the artist with his intense program components that are incredibly difficult but look effortless and gracefully artistic, performed in glamorous, impractical, glittery costumes. That being said, Hanyu has gathered praise for being a "consummate skater" with his mastery of both technique and artistry, as you have to be good (if not perfect) at technique in order to make hard things seem easy. One of his career goals is to land a ratified quadruple axel, a technical jump considered Beyond the Impossible.^note Though Hanyu would be beaten to the ratified quad axel by another skater—17-year-old American Ilia Malinin, who did it at the lower-level U.S. Classic in September 2022. At the end of the day, all skaters move on knife shoes at incredibly fast speeds through the air and spin multiple revolutions while they're at it. Good technique is not only needed to win but to prevent serious injuries and loss of life.
• Artistic gymnastics (especially on the women's side) too, since gymnasts have to be both technicians and performers to some degree. On balance beam and floor exercise in particular, it's a requirement that gymnasts perform creative and artistic routines rather than "a series of disconnected elements". In practice, most top-level gymnasts end up leaning towards one side or the other, counting on their strength to cancel out deductions from their weakness.
  • In 2013, you had American gymnasts Simone Biles (technician) vs. Kyla Ross (performer): Biles had a high level of difficulty and power, while Ross had lower difficulty but greater precision and had a more total performance in her choreography, as opposed to Biles who sometimes looked more like she was just going through the motions. By 2014, however, Biles had figured out the artistic side of things even as her difficulty skyrocketed, becoming the rare gymnast who is both a superb technician and an expressive and engaging performer, which helped cement her case for being the greatest gymnast of all time.
    • Ross also had this dynamic with Romanian gymnast Larisa Iordache (technician), one of the most competitive non-American gymnasts in the 2013-2016 quad, who also had high-level difficulty but tended to come up a bit short in the performance department.
  • On the 2016 US Olympic gymnastics team, Aly Raisman (technician) vs. Laurie Hernandez (performer). While both were relatively solid overall and not terrible at either side of the equation, Raisman's strength was her ability to do difficult elements and connections (her opening tumbling pass on floor, a combination sequence, is probably the single highest-value pass that's ever been done in women's floor), while Hernandez's strength was her expressiveness and natural ability to play to a crowd, making her routines fan favorites just for how much fun they were to watch. Raisman and Hernandez turned out to be pretty well-matched in 2016; they traded off second and third place finishes in the competitions leading up to the Olympics^note behind the virtually unbeatable Simone Biles, both made the Olympic team, and both won Olympic silver on their strongest events (Hernandez on beam, Raisman on floor).
  • In the 2017-2020 quad, Canadian gymnasts Ellie Black (technician) and Brooklyn Moors (performer). Black generally edged out Moors in scoring due to Moors having particularly low difficulty for the elite level, but Moors' complex and elegant floor routines are fan favorites and considered among the most fun to watch.
  • In a broader sense, there's the era of gymnastics in the late 20th century that was characterized by a (comparatively^note they were still doing things that 99% of humans will never do, just not as high difficulty as what would come later) less difficult but more elegant style (the performer era) vs. the era of the 21st century characterized by more explosive difficulty at the expense of somewhat less focus on artistry (the technician era). The question of which is "better" ultimately comes down to personal preference, as it's hard to make direct comparisons because the routines in each style and the standards by which they were judged are so different (neither style of routine would be likely to fare well in a competition in the opposite era); suffice to say that both sides have their fans as well as their detractors.
• The Beijing vs London Olympic Games Opening Ceremonies have drawn this comparison, with Beijing painted as a spectacular but somehow soulless demonstration of state power (technician) and London as a less showy but more heartfelt show of the quirkiness of Britain (performer).
• Snooker: The 1985 world championship final between Steve Davis (technician) and Dennis Taylor (performer), the contrast highlighted by it also being a Back from the Brink win for the performer. Later on, the 90s rivalry between Stephen Hendry (technician) and Jimmy White (performer).
• This happened at the 2013 FIFA Confederations Cup when Tahiti (performer) competed against all other teams of its group, especially Spain (technician). Sure, the Tahitians lost each match, but it didn't really bother them, since their goal was to enjoy the tournament, and as a bonus, they won the crowd too.
• In Mixed Martial Arts:
  • Randy Couture (Cool Old Guy who had to rely on guile and tactics to make up for his age) vs. Chuck Liddell (brawling knockout artist) are a prime example. Couture won the first fight, but the loss forced Liddell to become more technical himself, after which he managed to beat Couture twice.
  • Two faces of the UFC in the early 2010s: Georges St-Pierre (technically impeccable wrestler) and Anderson Silva (counter striker with some showboating tendencies).
  • Kazushi Sakuraba (performer) vs. the Gracie family (all technicians).
• Rugby union: Depending on context, "Northern Hemisphere" (NH) may refer to either a team from a country north of the equator, or the style of play stereotypical of teams from there, and "Southern Hemisphere" (SH) may refer to the same for the south of the equator. NH style rugby is very much technician while SH style rugby is clearly performer. There are exceptions to this stereotype, like France and Japan who are both performers, and South Africa who are closer to technicians, while New Zealand, often considered the strongest team in the world, have both aspects in spades. England (technician) vs. France (performer) is known as "Le Crunch", and is one of the biggest matches between Northern Hemisphere teams. In particular, the French national rugby union team is renowned for its "French flair" where the players can score tries out of nowhere (in fact, one of its most famous tries is remembered as the "try from the end of the world"), compared to the other Northern Hemisphere teams who play a more pragmatic style (especially England). While the French haven't had as much success in the Six (formerly Five) Nations or Rugby World Cup as England have, and also have a losing record against England, they're still more successful than any other Six Nations side; they have more wins against New Zealand than any other Northern Hemisphere side, and have also reached as many World Cup finals as England have (although unlike England, they failed to win any). It's said that "you never know which France will turn up" for any given match. When French flair was abandoned under coach Philippe Saint-André,^note who ironically, in his playing days, started the attack that ended in the "try from the end of the world" it resulted in one of the worst eras of French rugby, picking up a wooden spoon in the 2013 Six Nations and suffering the heaviest ever World Cup knockout stage defeat (13-62) against New Zealand. It was only during the turn of the decade under Fabien Galthié that France started rediscovering their flair and again becoming one of the teams to beat in rugby, probably aided by witnessing Japan displaying their rendition of the flair during the pool stages of the 2019 Rugby World Cup.