Read more

In part one of Takedown Taxonomy, we looked at the basic, high-percentage takedown entries in MMA, breaking down their mechanics and optimal uses. Those entries will suffice for the majority of your wrestling needs and should integrate effectively into most fighting styles. But there’s always more than one way to skin a cat, and familiarity with tricky, less common takedown entries can be an ace up your sleeve.

Some of the advanced entries covered here are situational or dependent upon certain stance matchups. Others are ways to finesse an entry for fighters who lack the striking and comfort to create clean routes onto the hips. Whether you’re a clever striker looking to set up sneaky takedowns, or a wrestler who needs takedowns at all costs, there will be something in here that can integrate well into your process.

Outside Reach

In our previous discussion of outside step entries, we mentioned that shooting in on the hips of an opponent in the opposite stance is often awkward due to the distance and footwork involved. Although the clashing of the lead legs should, in theory, make it easier to reach the leg, it can be tricky to find clean entries in open stance for fighters who prefer the quick finish of a well-timed double leg over long chain wrestling sequences.

It may seem that the only options are to either bite the bullet and commit to single legs, or expend a lot of effort trying to set up awkward shifting double legs. But there is another way to exploit the near lead leg of an opponent standing opposite you. While penetration becomes messier, the leg is close enough to reach out and grab without penetrating onto the hips. It doesn’t carry us right into a takedown the way clean penetration does, but the shallow entry also takes less commitment, so we can keep harassing the lead leg until it’s time to shoot.

Open Stance

What I’m referring to as an outside reach is an entry where the lead hand makes contact with the opponent’s lead leg while there’s still room between the fighters’ hips. It involves a shallow step forward, a slight level change - not enough to immediately tip off an incoming shot - and a reach outside the opponent’s lead leg.

Unlike a double leg or a single leg, the shallow, one-handed grip on the leg does not put you in a position for an immediate finish. An extra step is needed to penetrate further and transition into a finish. But where the outside reach provides additional value is as a transitional tool. Since it’s not a full, committed entry, it can be seamlessly woven into feints, repeated over and over to frustrate an opponent and conceal the true entries, and even initiated simultaneously with a punch.

Merab Dvalishvili uses these entries liberally, and they’re one of the reasons he’s able to attempt a thousand takedowns every fight.

Dvalishvili will change levels and chuck a big overhand at his opponent while grabbing for their leg. If they focus on defending the takedown, they eat the punch, and he can bail easily with no wasted energy. But the overhand also attacks his opponent’s positioning, convincing them to straighten up and pull their weight over their rear foot. Then, without the ability to hip into him and counterbalance the takedown, Dvalishvili can run his feet forward, circling toward the leg for a high crotch, or stepping across for a double leg.

Reaching for the leg is simultaneously a takedown attempt, a setup for a big rear punch, and a weather vane to check the opponent’s response. It offers built-in, rote synergy between the entry and the punch, allowing you to repeat it over and over, forcing the opponent to guess which is coming and punishing them for choosing wrong.

Dvalishvili is a very rote fighter who tends to force attacks rather than creating subtle openings, but his constant use of the outside reach and overhand right means that he doesn’t have to worry about his opponent’s response in order to exploit it.

Every gesture toward the leg threatens both a big punch and a takedown, or even both at the same time. The opponent can never stay comfortable defending punches or takedowns, forced to expend precious mental resources on avoiding the space between them. But for the attacker, the attempt exposes and costs little, flowing in and out of transitions or making the opponent react to feints as he desires.

Since the open stance matchup provides a clear lane for the rear hand between the shoulders, there’s a lot of room to modify this entry depending on what our rear hand is doing. Overhands pair well with reaching into a double leg or high crotch, as the weight transfer of the overhand sinks the attacker’s weight down outside the defender’s lead hip.

But a straight rear hand opens up a classic MMA takedown, the knee pick:

Once the opponent has seen the rear straight a few times, we step forward and shift weight as if throwing it again, but target the chest instead of the head. The lead hand lifts the defender’s lead leg, and the threat of the rear hand moves their weight backwards, lightening the leg. The rear hand mashes into the chest and shoves the defender back, and we run forward until they topple over, unable to step their lead leg back to recover their base. With the right setup, it’s a quick and easy takedown that takes very little effort or energy.

The finishes covered so far can all be initiated from an upright posture, changing levels only after selling a punch and making contact with the leg. Entering shallow is ideal for transitional attacks, but we can make a quicker and more committed bid for the leg by throwing away the rear hand earlier and taking a deeper level change.

This was one of Glover Teixeira’s most consistent takedown entries:

As Teixeira throws his rear hand, he bends his knees and gets low, reaching outside the lead leg to secure the entry. His opponent’s vision is occupied by the punch and they remain upright while he ducks down onto their hips, stepping his rear leg through to attack an inside step double leg or high crotch.

If the rear hand is timed when the opponent steps in, it can be a powerful intercepting tool as well:

Chris Weidman times a rear straight as Tom Lawlor steps in with a lead hook. The natural fold in Weidman’s hips as he throws his rear hand takes him underneath the hook and puts him inches away from the leg. He quickly snags a grip outside the lead leg, his head already underneath Lawlor’s elbow, and Lawlor has to scramble to recovering his positioning, which gives Weidman time to finish clean.

Reaching outside the lead leg is mostly useful in open stance matchups, since the lead arm rests directly in front of the opponent’s lead leg, and the shoulder configuration leaves the chin open for the rear hand. Against an opponent in the same stance, the reach would have to occur with the rear hand, which sits much further from the opponent’s leg, and it loses synergy with a simultaneous punch.

Outside reach entries in same stance matchups are rare in MMA, but Frankie Edgar managed to build an effective system around them, so this next part will mostly be a case study on how Edgar made them work.

Closed Stance

This entry is more common in wrestling than in MMA, so it may be illustrative to first go over how and why it works in a wrestling context. In MMA, strong wrestlers generally expect to get clean shots that they can finish quickly. But in an Olympic wrestling match, you’re facing one of the world’s best defenders of takedowns, who is focused solely on stopping your takedowns and scoring his own. A perfect entry is often off the table, and getting a grip on anything that allows you to apply leverage has value.

The outside reach allows you to attack outside a leg like you would when shooting a double leg. But not only does it require less commitment than a double leg, it also leaves the opposite hand free to do something else.

World champion wrestler, Rahman Amouzad, uses an active left hand to feint around, handfight, and control his opponent’s head. Occasionally he’ll surprise them with a knee-pull high crotch, sticking that left hand in his back pocket to get underneath his opponent’s defense as he reaches inside their leg. The natural response to the high crotch threat is to withdraw the lead leg and circle away from it. But that response enables his outside reach:

Read more

I look at how it works, why it's so effective, and how to pair it with strikes for cleaner takedown setups.

For a more in-depth breakdown of takedown setups, check out my recent article where I go into detail on mechanics and tactics behind entering into takedowns:

When wrestlers transition to MMA, they often find themselves lacking their most familiar takedown setups. In many ways it’s easier to shoot on an upright opponent in an MMA stance, but the longer distance involved and the presence of striking place additional constraints on a wrestler looking to shoot. Early in their careers, strong wrestlers tend to have an easy time overwhelming opponents, but as they move up in competition, they need to start creating opportunities to make their takedown attempts count.

One of the hardest parts of wrestling in MMA is finding clean entries. A fighter who can get to the hips quickly gives himself a huge edge: takedown finishes become more decisive, less energy is expended, and the opponent has to start worrying about every slight level change.

It often seems like a golden age of open-space wrestling has come and gone in MMA, with many grapplers now preferring to pressure opponents back and only commit to takedowns on the cage. Effective open-space wrestling requires navigating distance and reading reactions in a way that can be very challenging, but the rewards are high.

Takedown Taxonomy will map out how open-space takedown entries work. We’ll lay out the core skills and tactics that create openings, then categorize the most common penetration options and how they change across stance matchups. For each entry, we’ll look at the highest-percentage finishes and consider which styles get the most out of them. In the upcoming second part, we’ll go in depth on more niche, advanced entries.

Since every fight starts on the feet, effective wrestlers must know how to use their striking to set up the takedown.

Priming The Takedown

A wrestling-based game in MMA requires a lot of energy management, as shooting over and over for a 15 or 25 minute fight is exhausting. There’s often a real cost to taking poor shots and struggling through laborious chain wrestling finishes that becomes self-evident the deeper a fight goes. On the other hand, a perfectly timed takedown entry can feel almost effortless, penetration leading directly into the finish with little time spent tensing the muscles or bearing the opponent’s weight.

Whether a fighter finds it worthwhile to invest in developing clean entries and timing for his takedowns is, to some degree, a matter of style. An excellent chain wrestler with a devastating top game might not need to worry about timing his shots perfectly, since he can expect to stay on top of anyone he drags to the mat and severely diminish them by the end of the round. But most fighters who tend to use their wrestling offensively benefit a great deal from effective setups, from generalists who mix up striking and grappling, to back-taking specialists who don’t tend to deal much damage on top.

In wrestling, the layers of defense one must clear to finish a clean takedown are the head, hands, and hips. When striking is added to the mix, the head stops being a reliable defensive tool due to the more upright stances, but distance is added as another layer a wrestler must navigate. When faced with a shot from far away, most fighters will look to give ground or circle away, letting distance do the work for them. Move a little closer and they’ll start using their arms to downblock or frame the attacker away. If the shot gets underneath their arms, a savvy defensive wrestler will throw their hips in to halt the shot’s momentum while they recover their arms.

Executing a perfect takedown entry is all about anticipating these reactions and setting traps to get around them, convincing the opponent to expose his own hips, or putting him in a position where his defensive reactions are less accessible. Laying the groundwork for a successful takedown entry involves gathering information on the opponent’s responses through feints and safe, probing leads, feeding them different looks to see what they do. Once you know how someone will react, you can draw it out of them and exploit it.

The classic way to set up a clean takedown entry is to draw out a counter punch and shoot underneath it. There’s no better tool for gathering information and drawing committed responses than an educated jab, and it’s no coincidence that wrestlers with strong jabs tend to have an easy time getting in on their takedowns.

Georges St-Pierre made a career off flustering opponents with his jab, goading them into overcommitting on the counter, and sailing into a smooth finish underneath it. If we can convince our man to lash out and shoot underneath, we can bypass all his defensive layers at once. His aggression closes the distance for us, at least one hand is outstretched and occupied punching, and his hips are in no position to counterbalance the takedown when committing to a punch.

A perfectly timed reactive takedown often finishes itself. You can clasp your hands behind your back, ram your shoulder into the hips, and - if the timing is perfect - the opponent should fall from the collision alone. But clean reactive entries rely a great deal on striking comfort, especially in close range. They are the gold standard, but fighters without the eyes to stand comfortably in punching range and read their opponents will struggle to implement them.

One of the simplest and most effective setups for a leg attack in wrestling is to circle away from the leg you want to attack and draw it forward. This is often easier in wrestling, since when you’re tying up in close range, you can more easily sense your opponent’s steps and even feel their subtle shifts in weight. But in MMA, we can use striking footwork to our advantage to lay traps and draw out a forward step.

Chris Weidman responds to Mark Muñoz’s attack by backing up and circling off with an L-step. To continue attacking, Muñoz has to turn on the spot to face Weidman and take a big step forward to reach him. But as soon as Muñoz steps in, he ends up serving his leg on a silver platter to Weidman’s high crotch entry.

The beauty of using striking footwork to set up takedown entries is that it can trick opponents into thinking you’re out of position and generate an aggressive advance. Many fighters will routinely step out of their staggered stance to circle, using L-steps, stepping across themselves, or just squaring up to skip sideways. Whenever you leave the safety of your stance, you open yourself up for strikes. So by stepping out of stance just slightly too far away for the opponent to hit, you can get them eager to clobber you, before resuming your stance and snatching the leg as they try.

You can get as fancy with footwork setups as you want, even drawing the rear leg forward if an opponent is looking to switch stances:

Scott Holtzman has been frustrated by Mateusz Gamrot constantly backing up and circling off when pressed, so he starts bringing his rear leg forward and squaring up to herd him along the cage. Gamrot reads this and sets a trap, circling into a kick, then stepping back into the opposite stance and showing an L-step out the other way. Once Holtzman takes the bait and brings his right leg forward, Gamrot pounces on the ankle, before climbing up to a high crotch and doubling off to finish.

Another way to lure unsuspecting opponents into a deep takedown entry is by stepping back into the opposite stance. Backstepping is a common striking tactic in MMA, often employed by slick strikers, allowing them to both give ground and change the stance engagement at once. But just as it can set up a sneaky hook off the new lead side, it can also disguise a level change.

Chad Mendes had one of the best reactive double legs in MMA history, and he hit most of them off a backstep into southpaw. By stepping his lead leg back as his opponent enters, his upper body appears to rapidly retreat, encouraging them to lose their stance chasing after him. But he’s closer than he appears as his right leg stays in place, ready to change levels and yoink his pursuing opponent to the mat. This is also a great option for wrestlers who prefer to shoot and strike with opposite lead legs, which we’ll discuss more in part two of this series.

Obviously, convincing one’s opponent to offer up their own hips is ideal, but it won’t always be possible to snag such an easy entry. Some well-rounded generalists may be able to wait for the perfect opportunity to commit to a shot, but the more one’s game relies on wrestling, the more he’ll need to take risks and commit to a takedown when the opening is merely good enough. To that effect, it can be useful to dissuade the opponent from standing in a way conducive to takedown defense.

A defensive wrestler ideally wants to meet a takedown in a low, staggered stance, weight rooted on the front foot so they can quickly throw their hips in. They also want their hands low enough to downblock. Any weapon in the arsenal that punishes these responses can increase our chance of success in finding a clean takedown entry.

The classic example is the level change uppercut. Fake a move for the legs and let the opponent duck down onto an uppercut, and next time he’ll think twice about changing levels so quickly.

Al Iaquinta foils Khabib Nurmagomedov’s attempt at a single leg takedown, but finds himself stuck against the cage after pulling his leg out. Worried about another shot, he extends his hands and crouches low. Instead of trying to shoot on an opponent prepared to defend, Khabib takes the free real estate and hits Iaquinta with an uppercut and a front kick - both weapons that encourage him to stand tall and open himself up for the next shot.

Traditionally, boxing is the natural counterpart to wrestling, and most wrestlers in MMA tend to develop their boxing skills over anything else. However, we’re increasingly seeing an archetype of fighters who rely on their outside kicking game to score, while using their wrestling and clinch skillsets to snuff out punching range. Kicks don’t flow into takedown entries quite as easily as punches, but they can be invaluable to controlling an opponent’s stance and posture. A couple heavy leg kicks will get opponents picking up their leg or holding weight on the back foot, making it easier to burst forward with a takedown.

Similar to uppercuts, kicks are also useful to stand opponents tall. A fighter in a crouched posture is vulnerable to high kicks, and as soon as he abandons it, the takedown opens up. Even the threat of a high kick can take the bend out of an opponent’s legs and prime them for a level change. Khamzat Chimaev in particular is a fan of this, initiating many of his takedowns in the first few seconds of a fight, right after kicking high to get his opponent’s brain out of takedown defense mode.

All these tactics share the same goal - manipulating the opponent’s positioning and capitalizing on their reactions to open up the hips. How exactly that looks will differ depending on the individual style involved, but developing synergy between striking and wrestling is crucial for any fighter who wants to hit takedowns, as each makes the other more effective and impactful.

Split Step Footwork

The rest of this article will categorize and discuss discrete entries, but I wanted to give this its own section as it’s particularly important to MMA wrestlers. The split step is a common way to initiate penetration in wrestling, with a few advantages over a standard penetration step. It allows a wrestler to change levels directly from a closer range than a knee-over-toe shot. Zaurbek Sidakov’s split step high crotch is one of the best examples of the move in action.

Instead of pushing off the back leg and stepping forward into the takedown, the split step involves a slight hop, with both feet coming off the ground at the same time. The front foot goes forward and the rear foot back, with the rear foot hitting first to propel you forward as it hits the ground.

The reason split steps are so useful to initiate takedowns in MMA is that getting low enough to shoot is much more difficult from an upright stance. You can step forward and bend your front leg at the same time, but that mucks up your positioning, sending your momentum into the ground. To maximize momentum and attain strong positioning on entry, the level change and forward movement should ideally happen in two distinct motions, sending the momentum straight ahead. But dipping low enough to shoot directly forward is an obvious tell.

When the timing is perfect and the distance slight, you can afford to sacrifice some positioning, as it takes far less momentum to knock over an opponent squaring up and drifting forward, and you avoid giving them the opportunity to put weight on you. But when shooting from far away, every mistake is more costly.

Split steps are a great tool for initiating shots from outside punching range. Not only is it the quickest way to transition from an upright striking stance to a crouched athletic stance ready to burst forward, but the movement also gives you a burst of forward momentum. From the perspective of the opponent, you get much lower and much closer at the same time.

The split step single leg has been the trademark technique of fighters trained by the great Abdulmanap Nurmagomedov since the debut of his son, Khabib. Most Nurmagomedov-trained fighters rely on shooting from afar more than working inside and setting up cleaner entries, confident that their incredible chain wrestling will suffice once they get in on a leg, and the split step consistently gets them a grip on the leg. Before Khabib started fighting in the walled Octagon and running opponents onto the cage, nearly every takedown he secured was from the same move, setting up outside punching range, and using a split step to simultaneously drop low and propel forward.

But the ability to transition directly from an upright striking stance to a wrestling posture without taking a perceptible step is useful for more than just long-range shots. For fighters with more comfort on the inside, it can set up a lightning fast reactive takedown. A fighter with a fold in his rear hip, dipping down as he feints jabs, is at least somewhat recognizable as a takedown threat. The opponent may not know when it’s coming, but he knows their weight is coiled to spring into a takedown. But the split step can take you right from a posture that doesn’t signal a takedown threat into a takedown while skipping over the telegraph entirely.

Here are a few reactive takedowns entered off split steps. The attacker moves after the opponent begins punching, yet each one reaches the hips before the punch completes, changing levels and bursting forward simultaneously. In each case, the split step takes them straight from an upright striking posture into the shot with no lag time.

It can also be used to enter into a shot when your feet are otherwise out of position:

Josh Barnett feints forward, causing Daniel Cormier to step out of stance and bring his feet together, putting him in a poor position to counter or defend. But as Barnett leaps forward with a lead hook, Cormier’s split step takes him right underneath into a staggered stance and Barnett runs into his high crotch.

The beauty of using split steps to enter into takedowns is that they can double as a striking tool, using the same preliminary motion to initiate both strikes and takedowns. Widen your feet more and you get a deeper level change, perfect for shooting on the legs, while keeping it shallow allows quicker forward drive, perfect for entering into a rear punch or kick.

In my article on Muay Thai star, Tawanchai, I covered how he uses a split step to initiate both his round kicks and his rear teeps, forcing opponents to guess and punishing them when they pick wrong. It works similarly for rear hand punches and takedowns, as demonstrated by Sanda great, Mohsen Mohammadseifi:

Mohammadseifi uses split steps to feint on the outside and propel himself forward into his rear hand. Once his opponent is conditioned to react to punches, he takes a deeper split step to get low and penetrate onto their hips. When the defender expects a punch, it takes a moment longer to react to the level change, and by that time it’s too late.

The split step is an effective tool to get low and drive forward, but it can lead into a wide range of entries. Next, we’ll categorize the primary penetration options and examine their use cases, setups, finishes, and stylistic synergies.

Read more

The DQ loss to Sterling should have been a mere speed bump in Yan’s rise - when a rematch failed to materialize due to a Sterling injury, he proved he was better than ever with a win over a game Cory Sandhagen. Finally slated to fight Sterling once more, the title was once again as good as Yan’s. He already proved he had what it took to dominate Sterling, what’s one more time? But it wasn’t to be. Sterling learned his lessons from their first fight and put on the performance of a lifetime, securing the first round with higher output, maximizing his control on the ground to dominate the middle rounds, and holding out late against a resurgent Yan for a split decision.

After the second Sterling loss, everything seemed to spiral out of control. Another split decision loss to up-and-coming contender, Sean O’Malley, that most viewers saw for Yan. There were calls of robbery, but for the second time in a row, Yan’s workrate let him down, as he failed to distinguish his offense and left himself playing catch up after early hesitation. But the worst was yet to come for Petr Yan.

Yan was on a two fight skid, but his elite talent shone through in both losing performances. A couple different bounces in a couple different rounds, and he could easily be making his fifth title defense. But Merab Dvalishvili would soon put that fantasy to rest. Dvalishvili not only handed Yan his third consecutive loss, he bullied Yan around the Octagon, overwhelming him with pace, pressure, and offensive volume. Not a single judge saw Yan winning even one round.

His first fight with Dvalishvili could have put Yan right back into title contention, but instead it thrust him into a slower rebuild. He wouldn’t fight until nearly a year later, winning a decision over Song Yadong that felt too close for comfort. His next couple fights against Deiveson Figueiredo and Marcus McGhee felt like lateral moves at best, but he turned in more commanding performances that still lacked the devastation and damage of his earlier run.

In the meantime, Dvalishvili kept busy cleaning out the Bantamweight division ahead of Yan. He won five straight after their fight, capturing the title from Sean O’Malley and defending it against Sandhagen and Umar Nurmagomedov. Yan found himself in the position Aljamain Sterling once occupied, coming into a rematch against a nightmare matchup that made him look helpless in their first contest. And just like Sterling, Yan turned in the performance of a lifetime, delivering a classic Yan beating against all odds.

To understand what made Yan’s performance so special, we must first discuss the factors that make Dvalishvili such a difficult fight for him to navigate. Yan is one of the craftiest pressure fighters in the sport, but he’s always been better at covering distance and keeping up with a retreating opponent than forcing them backwards. Yan is a defensively-minded striker and his primary methods of defense involve using his forearms or extended arms to cover his chin. So his counters mostly arrive delayed, rather than simultaneous to his opponent’s offense, and he prefers to give ground and re-engage over planting his feet and countering on the spot.

Yan’s willingness to throw up a high guard and retreat has caused problems with fighters who can seize the initiative from him - Sterling was able to busy him with enough empty volume early to throw off his offense, while building setups to take him down later. Anyone who struggles with initiative is going to have a hell of a time beating Merab Dvalishvili.

Dvalishvili attacks primarily in bursts and blitzes, but his endless cardio means that the bursts never stop coming, and his opponents never get a chance to rest or comfortably set their feet. He maintains a long distance, feinting back and forth outside immediate jabbing range, and covers it by launching himself head first into long right hands.

Dvalishvili’s willingness to throw himself off balance makes his rear hand quite a bit longer than it appears at the cost of his own stance. He’ll also throw in a couple basic mixups to keep opponents guessing, initiating it with a lead hook or hand trap, and running through into southpaw with a left hook as opponents backtrack.

It’s easy to see why Yan would have trouble advancing against someone like Dvalishvili, but what truly ties Dvalishvili’s game together is the way his striking sets up his takedowns. The motion of his long right hand also doubles as a penetration step for his takedowns, and because he’s covering so much ground with it, he can very quickly get in on the hips in great position to finish.

When Dvalishvili’s opponents see him bending his knees and heaving himself toward them a hundred miles an hour, there’s no way to tell if he’s looking to punch them in the face or grab a leg. You have to respect the right hand, or you’ll eat power punches all night, but if you straighten up or back away from it, he’ll duck in on your hips and knock you over like a bowling pin. It’s a natural response to such a long right hand to move away from it and start shifting weight backwards, but that allows Dvalishvili’s momentum to run through you if he shoots, as the feet need to remain firmly planted to hip in and halt the shot’s momentum.

This simple mixup makes Dvalishvili one of the biggest open-space takedown threats in MMA, and he can spam it over and over again until his opponents exhaust themselves physically and mentally trying to defend. This might seem like the same old “wrestler with an overhand right” setup, but you’re underestimating how much distance Dvalishvili closes with his and how that threat compromises his opponent’s positioning.

In their first fight, Dvalishvili’s cleanest takedowns, where he was able to strike directly into a finish without having to work through a long chain wrestling sequence, came mostly when he made Yan react to the threat of his right hand. Yan would throw his guard high, then get caught with his posture upright and with weight on his heels.

In the rematch, Yan built his approach around avoiding that position, making Dvalishvili struggle through every takedown attempt he could muster.

Yan needed a way to prevent Dvalishvili from backing him off at will and apply more consistent offense at mid-range. He found the perfect tool early in a dipping jab, spearing Dvalishvili with stinging jabs while maintaining a fold in his rear hip, or proactively ducking low after landing.

Read more

Effective infighting is rare in Sanda since clinch striking doesn’t score. If one tries to crowd his opponent with punches, simply grabbing an underhook or overhook will negate any points from then on, turning the exchange into wrestling or stalling. But Chengjin managed to manipulate clinching range in a way I’ve not seen previously in Sanda, hitting effectively in transitions, but also leveraging frames to keep his opponents where they could be hit and hurt.

At long range, Chengjin is a southpaw with a slick one-two and fast open side kicks, hidden behind rhythmic bouncing. But as the distance tightens, his more unique qualities show through. He appears to be a converted southpaw, possessing a dexterous and unusual lead hook.

Instead of sitting down on the lead hook and rotating his hips into it, he thrusts it out in more of a stabbing motion.

The stabbing hook doesn’t hit as hard as a full power rotational punch, but it lets Chengjin sneak it through at awkward angles and double up on it in quick succession, since the delivery eschews exaggerated hip motion. It’s one of his most useful tools for applying volume, continually occupying the opponent’s vision and threatening to interrupt them if they settle into an exchange, while at the same time setting up his bigger strikes. Since Chengjin is a southpaw, the hook comes from a blind angle outside the shoulder, and stabbing with it gives him a lot of control over the angle, so he can direct it over the shoulder if their chin is hidden.

Chengjin’s left hand is used more sparingly, typically as an intercepting counter or set up off a quick leg kick.

Read more

Read more

While I enjoy just about any combat sport I can get my hands on, most of my time is spent watching MMA or Muay Thai, so those are the typical arts you’ll see me reference. But for the discerning martial artist, there’s endless value in studying a variety of arts, as slight differences in ruleset or culture can produce unique material for adapting to a more open ruleset. If you watch enough outside the combat sports orthodoxy, you’ll quickly find that a lot of techniques which at first appear ineffective actually work quite well when honed to proficiency, and that can often only happen under a ruleset whose specific constraints allow them to flourish.

So today I bring you three weird fighters from sports you probably don’t watch a lot of, but I’m certain you’ll find some value in their unique styles. We’ll look at a Russian karateka who uses his Karate skills to box up MMA fighters in the pocket, a top Kun Khmer fighter who relentlessly hunts his opponents’ rear legs, and a Malagasy Moraingy specialist who fills 30-second rounds with creative and unorthodox combinations.

Alexander Matmuratov: Karate Parries & Deflections

When we think of Karate fighters in MMA, the image that comes to mind is that of a fighter standing far away in a long, bladed stance. The driving principle behind that is the idea of Ikken Hissatsu, or to kill in one blow. Originally a figurative dictate to strike with commitment and make every blow count, the metric eventually became a target and its influence grew to shape competition format. The end result is the point Karate we’ve all become familiar with, where the fight is stopped and reset after a clean blow is landed.

A sport without exchanges doesn’t produce effective fighters on its own, but in ironic fashion, the primary design principle that held point Karate back as a complete striking art also turned out its most important import to the world of continuous fighting. Once point Karatekas started rounding out their skillsets, and MMA fighters of other backgrounds began incorporating point Karate drills and tools, it became clear that a specialty in avoiding all contact until the moment of impact is incredibly useful.

But as effective as the point Karate meta proved for distance management, it’s also homogenized their competitive contests. Most styles of Karate traditionally teach many stances, with a variety of purposes and foot positions, but the principle of one touch death incentivizes fighters to get as side-on as possible and disregard anything but their longest, straightest weapons. Instead, boxing has taken over as the main influence in pocket fighting, with even Karate-style fighters tending to abandon Karate’s unique inside weapons in favor of boxing techniques.

Alexander Matmuratov is a Russian Karate stylist who goes against that trend. While he’s integrated Karate techniques well into a broader skillset, he operates at length in the pocket and he does so with an unmistakably Karate flare. Matmuratov’s original art was Shotokan Karate, but he later diversified, training in Combat Sambo and ARB (Russian Military Hand-to-Hand), and winning championships in Koshiki Karate, a style of point Karate with continuous exchanges.

Matmuratov makes effective use of the old point Karate staples - he uses in-and-out bouncing footwork to set up entries and disengage, pairs a chambered round kick with side kicks and hook kicks, and knocks foes out with spinning kicks. But what’s most interesting about Matmuratov is where he diverges from the point Karate competition meta and borrows from the old textbooks.

He cycles through different positions within his stance, all more square than the standard point Karate fare. His typical stance sees his lead foot pointed directly forward, enabling quick kicks off either leg. But he’s ready to step diagonally into the opposite stance or draw his lead leg back square, where he can rapidly change directions and side step effortlessly.

Standing more square than a typical MMA stance allows Matmuratov to flow quickly into that squared up strafing stance, juking out opponents and circling away as they try to walk him down. He can also play with what weapons he’s showing, stepping into the opposite stance to open up a rear kick to the open side or close a shoulder to his chin as his opponent attacks. When he wants to spring forward, he’ll bounce into a wider, set stance and hide it in the motion of his footwork, often taking a split step to propel himself into a lunging rear hand.

You’ll often see fighters adopt a squared up stance as their back nears the cage, but much of the time it’s an involuntary result of running out of space, and few use it to its full capabilities. Matmuratov’s comfort in attacking from that sort of stance is fairly unique. With his feet level, long straight punches become more difficult without a front foot to transfer weight to, but both sides of his body end up about the same distance to the target. He can throw both hands with the same speed and power and without an exaggerated weight transfer, the blows are difficult to read.

Matmuratov often attacks in blitzes, walking his punches forward with square hips and shoulders.

Stepping forward with his leg opposite the punching hand adds power to the punches even without boxing-style hip rotation. Since he’s walking forward rather than rushing blind, his attacks out of the blitz are responsive too. He’ll pump out a few soft punches to draw up a guard and send a hard hooking blow outside it or smash the body. He’ll also anticipate counters and look to send a knee or kick to the ribs underneath them. Matmuratov’s hands serve to block and disrupt the opponent when he isn’t punching, and he’ll change levels and dip out the side if he anticipates a return.

While Matmuratov does a good job mitigating the openings his squared up combinations leave, there’s still a lot of inherent risk to stepping through combinations involving multiple shifts. A key aspect to making it work is picking the right time to leave stance, where the opponent isn’t in a strong position to counter, especially as a shorter fighter who usually needs to close distance to reach his man. Matmuratov’s most consistent entry to his blitzing combinations is to change levels underneath a jab and enter to the body.

Getting underneath the jab gives Matmuratov a short window of relative safety where he can step in and follow the punch as it retracts. By the time they recover, he’s gotten off a few blows and crowded them, smothering their opportunity to counter. Part of the reason it’s such an effective counter is that it’s unexpected - a fighter who just dipped beneath your jab is typically looking for a big right hand or left hook upstairs, but rattling off a combination to the body while plowing forward isn’t anyone’s first guess, and it allows him to set up further surprise shots upstairs.

The square stance of Matmuratov enables him to get in underneath the jab and rattle off a few quick punches before the opponent can counter. If they retreat or throw up a guard, he can keep working with quick, short punches. While these punches lack the fight-ending power of a hook with full hip rotation, his forward momentum and shoulder rotation get some juice into them, and over time they’ll wear down on an opponent’s gas tank if not curtailed.

Matmuratov’s marching footwork also plays in perfectly with his front kicks. In MMA, front kicks are typically used as a long-range tool by fighters trying to hold ground or avoid exchanges, but they’re useful for closing distance too. During Matmuratov’s blitzes, if an opponent backs farther away to recover some space, he’ll flick the ball of his foot into their tummy rather than risk rushing onto a counter.

The front kick flows right out of his stepping punches, as if a punch falls short, he’s already stepping forward, positioning his rear leg on the open side for a powerful kick. He can link exchanges together by stepping through into a front kick as his man disengages, then planting his kicking foot down right in front of them and resuming his flurry. The front kicks also cover his own exits, as he’ll occasionally step back to a level stance and intercept his opponent with the kick as they follow.

But the most interesting aspect of Matmuratov’s skillset to me is his defense. He’s a difficult man to score clean kicks on - not only does his square stance allow him to quickly pick up a leg and point his knee outwards to check, but he has a deep bag of crafty counters to punish kicks. He’s proficient in the Karate-style cross catch, the mechanics of which we’ve gone over previously.

It’s against spinning kicks where Matmuratov’s cleverness really shines, however, as he consistently hits one of the coolest counters I’ve seen in combat sports. When faced with a spinning back kick, Matmuratov simply powerbombs his opponent on their head.

When he sees the spin coming, he dashes outside the kick, drawing his rear foot and shoulder forward to crowd it and letting it fall onto his lowered arm in a scoop grip. He then grabs inside the shoulder to keep his opponent’s shoulders level and prevent them from bellying down. Finally, his far leg bumps their planting leg out at the thigh and he tosses them straight at the mat. Bumping high on the leg is key to getting good elevation, just like in a well executed Thai-style sweep but instead of pushing them over an invisible table, he’s chucking them at the ground like Kevin Nash.

There’s a lot of neat little tricks in Matmuratov’s game, but his unorthodox defense in the pocket is by far the coolest. The big problem with using a Karate style attack on the inside is that it is, by design, a very upright style. They tend to punch with a straight back and momentum that goes in a straight line, without the innovations made by boxing in rotational weight transfers and hip fold that naturally take the head away from return fire.

Without smooth hips folds, a fighter needs to be skilled in anticipating the openings he’s leaving and covering them with his arms if he’s to operate at length on the inside. But a high guard is tricky here too, since it doesn’t mesh well with the chain punching sequences, and leaves a lot of gaps for small gloves to sneak through. Instead, Matmuratov has found a way to incorporate traditional Karate deflections into his attack, covering the exposed parts of his head with forearm or shoulder, or even just swatting his opponent’s blows out of the air.

Matmuratov’s square stance leaves his shoulders relatively level, which means there’s some daylight for strikes on both sides of his face. But as the shoulder rotates into a straight punch, the punching shoulder briefly covers the chin. Matmuratov is conscious of this and will pattern his punches in a way that covers openings. When I say he defends punches with his own punches, it sounds like the sort of nonsense Koji Oishi infamously employed against Nick Diaz when trying to boop his punches straight out of the air, but Matmuratov does it in a much more sensible way, throwing away punches just to get shoulder or forearm in front of an oncoming attack.

Matmuratov will often end combinations or start engagements with an awkward swivel jab, or a corkscrew hook with his shoulder internally rotated. Whether the punch lands or not is immaterial, as the purpose is to get his shoulder in front of his chin, covering against an orthodox rear hand or southpaw lead hook, and with his minimal rotational weight transfer, he can answer with several blows in the time it takes his opponent to recover from their more committed weight transfer.

Read more

Read more

The white whale of Muay Thai fanatics and collectors was discovered recently, as footage emerged of the legendary fight between “The S…

Read more

Read more

Poirier’s massive first round in their second fight was kicked off by his shifting combinations, set up by his subtle rear hand lead. I covered the tactic in my article on Magomedrasul Gasanov:

One of Poirier’s trademark moves is shifting forward behind his rear hand to track a retreating opponent and wallop them with his new rear hand out of an orthodox stance. But he doesn’t just throw the rear hand and go automatically, he’s constantly flicking it out to bait and draw and check the opponent’s reaction.

He’ll flick out his rear hand and duck in at times, then when his man responds by backing up, he’ll fill the space with a forward shift and blitz them down:

The key here is that the noncommittal rear hands disguise his intentions and give him lots of information on how his opponent will react. Poirier’s comfort in the pocket is astounding, but it’s bolstered by his ability to anticipate reactions he’s already seen through less committed offerings.

While Holloway hadn’t entirely bucked his tenancy to give ground straight backwards, he was aware of the opportunities it presented Poirier and resolved to take them away this time. He proved much more willing to plant his feet and counter, ducking down underneath Poirier’s shifting combinations and running him onto hooks. One of the trickier ways he stymied Poirier’s forward movement was with an intercepting body kick.

I’ve been critical of some aspects of Holloway’s kicking game in the past. Despite his versatile repertoire, awkward mechanics and weight transfer on his round kicks, as well as a tendency to throw with his kicking hip pulled back limit their utility as a consistent, fight-controlling weapon. But he’s always used them well as ancillary tools, and his body kick proved an excellent way to control the initiative against a fighter looking to push him back in bursts.

A common archetype in Muay Thai is a kicker who stands in a square, narrow stance and uses quick, precise, scalpel-like kicks on the counter. If you see a Thai in a wide, set stance with weight on the front foot, they’re typically more of a thudding power kicker, but standing square and narrow keeps the weight distributed to quickly pick up a leg on a moment’s notice.

Holloway’s movement and footwork bear closer resemblance to that sort of kicker (like View Petchkoson, pictured above) than the heavier, more sure-footed and rhythmic steps of a more traditional open-side kicker like Superlek or Sitthichai.

One important key to kicking on the counter is moving efficiently while at the same time keeping the weight distributed to quickly bring the leg up on a hair trigger. Holloway’s weight distribution tends to be very even, prioritizing ease of movement over ability to deliver power or employ defensive head movement, and that even weight distribution kept him in position to time his kicks.

Another key to kicking off the backfoot is that it often comes off a hopping pivot. Holloway will shift his weight slightly onto the kicking leg as he backs up, then suddenly take a slight hop, the ball of his planting foot pushing off the ground and elevating slightly, then rotating in the air before touching back down in its post-pivot position. A hopping pivot allows one to cheat slightly on the weight transfer and get the kicking leg up immediately, which is important when using it to intercept an advancing opponent, as any delay can mean running out of space.

Read more

That 22 year old fighter was Asaf Chopurov, who I’ve now come to see as one of the best prospects in MMA. Chopurov is a young Azerbaijani who fights with experience beyond his years. He’s very active, racking up a 6-0 record in almost two years of professional competition, with two of those wins coming over quality opposition in Lavrentyev and Nikita Mikhailov.

While Chopurov has little experience in professional MMA competition, he has a decorated amateur record, where he went 34-1 and won the 2021 IMMAF tournament at Bantamweight. Chopurov is part of a growing wave of fighters who amassed lots of competition experience before going pro, but he got all those amateur fights out of the way within the span of a couple years, leaving him with ample time to develop further as he moves up in professional competition.

Packing so much experience into such a small window of time paid off for Chopurov, who is fantastically well rounded and clearly comfortable everywhere. While he wins fights primarily with his grappling, he’s looked comfortable striking on the feet and in transitions, with an especially sharp clinch game. Once he gets on top, he’s proven to be a serious threat for both submissions and damage, finishing all but one of his pro bouts.

Striking

Chopurov displays a good deal of poise at range, sure-footed in his stance and movement. He works actively with kicks, showing hip feints to back opponents up and conceal his attacks.

Chopurov fights smoothly out of both stances, though he’s most comfortable in orthodox. His kicks and hip feints serve to hide his stance chances, and he’ll occasionally pick up a leg as if to kick and march into a kick from the opposite stance, walking his man toward the cage while keeping them on the outside.

Chopurov is comfortable jousting at range with fluid in and out movement, but his main goal is to move his man back to the cage and start wrestling. He has an unusual degree of comfort in close for such a young fighter and is capable of herding circling fighters with diagonal steps, steadily invading space to force them backwards. Though his willingness to engage at close range can sometimes lead to Chopurov eating a wild punch, as his comfort overshoots his defensive reactions at this point.

Once his opponent nears the cage, he’ll look to cut off their lateral movement with a leaping lead hook or wait for them to lash out, where he can duck in on their hips.

Chopurov competes mainly on the Russian scene, where strong wrestlers are abundant and pocket boxers are in short supply. We haven’t had many looks at how he performs in extended exchanges, since most of his opponents are looking to wrestle or content to back out of range, but the little we’ve seen has looked solid.

While Chopurov’s defensive reactions aren’t yet skilled enough to make him a huge threat on the counter, he’s sharp about proactively drawing out strikes to counter, and capable of closing distance in combination while keeping his feet underneath him.

In his second pro bout, Chopurov dropped his opponent with a lovely bounce-back right hand off a body hook, but he hasn’t done anything like that before or since. His knockdown of Lavrentyev came off a slick combination, hopping in with a jab and flicking out a distracting lead hook to cover a deep step into the right hand that landed over top Lavrentyev’s framing arm as he retreated.

Right now his counters are limited to giving ground and returning, but his positioning and ability to step with his punches on the front foot has impressed. There’s been a couple hints of hidden depth elided by his dominance thus far, and as his competition improves and he’s forced into deeper exchanges we’ll get to see how much deeper the well goes. But it’s clear that Chopurov’s defensive reactions are his biggest drawback on the feet. He tends to stand upright and neglects to use his hips, which when paired with his comfort invading space, often leads to him eating overhands early, and he needs to take several hard leg kicks before he offers a counter or defensive response.

In the clinch, Chopurov is a strong wrestler and striker who pairs bodylock takedowns with active striking and transitional nuance.

Chopurov is good at using his strikes to find openings to improve position, and his experience against wrestlers on the amateur circuit has acclimatized him to finding space to strike against neutralizing opponents.

Wrestling

Chopurov is a varied and dynamic wrestler with consistent routes to his takedowns both at range and on the cage. In the clinch, he mainly looks to hit bodylock takedowns or hunt for the back:

An interesting quirk in Chopurov’s clinch wrestling is that he’s keen to shove his head into guillotine grips so that he can quickly straighten up and duck under to the back. He’ll even pry open his opponent’s arm to create space to slot his head in. With the cage in front of him, there’s no way for the defender to turn it into a clean submission attempt unless they can break his posture, and by wrapping up his head they expose their own back.

Away from the cage, Chopurov’s grounds opponents mainly through reactive takedowns, ducking in on their hips as they punch.

He has good drive on his double legs and while his position on entry isn’t always great, he does a good job quickly changing the angle and chaining off when he encounters resistance. As he starts backing opponents up with his striking he’ll use his rear hand to cover his penetration step. The proactive setups could use some fine-tuning, but for a fighter this early in his career they’re solid.

Like with his boxing, Chopurov has not encountered a lot of resistance to his wrestling so far. But when he’s faced opponents who could reliably shut down his first offering, his chain wrestling has looked excellent.

Chopurov will look for go-behinds if he encounters a cross-face on his double leg, and smoothly transitions between high crotch and single leg finishes, steadily improving his positioning as he destabilizes his opponent’s base.

On the defensive side, Chopurov has already had a lot of the poor decision-making common of inexperienced fighters ground out of him on the amateur circuit, and as a result he’s a nightmare for opponents looking to wrestle.

Chopurov reacts to shots rapidly and quickly looks to fight grips or pull wrestlers off his legs with a strong overhook. He’s very tough to beat in upper body situations, with great hips, and has the balance to fight out of wrestlers hiking his leg up high to finish a single leg.

While Chopurov won’t be an easy fight even for high level grapplers, there are a couple holes in his defensive wrestling. He’s more prone to making bad decisions when pressed against the cage, as he’ll often abandon his whizzer and reach across to punch, which leaves his hips open. But he’s always been able to scramble up quickly and that is a quick fix for someone who otherwise shows great tactical awareness.

The other issue is that he often assents to defensive wrestling, content merely to stop the takedowns. Elite wrestlers with great persistence may be able to neutralize a lot of his offense just by making him play defense against the cage, even if the takedowns are failing. Chopurov isn’t a very large Bantamweight, which could compound the issue against elite athletes.

But fighters who can get Chopurov to the ground don’t have an easy ride either. He’s a fantastic scrambler with cat-like hips who’s urgent about creating opportunities to escape. Like we mentioned when examining why Joaquin Buckley failed to escape form underneath Kamaru Usman, the best time to launch an escape is immediately after the takedown, before control is established. Chopurov starts creating space, building his base, and elevating his hips before the takedown has had a moment to settle.

While Chopurov is easiest to take down when he’s reaching across his opponent’s body on the cage, he’ll quickly post out and look to build up his base, then use elevators to kick opponents over if they overcompensate on pressuring into him. However, more advanced wrestlers will be better at riding and tying up his legs, so better decision-making when defending double legs on the cage will still go a long way.

Chopurov has an incredible ability to not just go with his opponent’s momentum to escape their control, but to create those momentum swings with his own actions and then exploit them. Chopurov will switch directions when he’s unable to force himself through an opening, switching between underhooks, elevators, and backdoor escapes, each attempt baiting commitment from his opponent that he can exploit with the next link of the chain.

One of the reasons he’s such an effective scrambler is that he’s focused on building hip and head height with each successive movement. Often fighters will come up on an underhook from half guard and push through pressure to belly down as their posture is crushed, funneling them into a worse front headlock or back take. But if Chopurov can’t force his way through his opponents pressure while keeping his posture strong, he’ll post out and start sitting up to build height, and it makes the next step easier whether he wants to keep pressuring in or drop back for a rollunder or elevator sweep. He often ends up sneaking out between his opponent’s legs in awkward situations because of that instinct to build height when he encounters resistance. Chopurov brings a wrestling mentality to his scrambles and it makes it incredibly difficult to lock him down in static control positions.

Back Taking

Chopurov does much of his best work on top, but unlike most grapplers on the Russian regionals, he doesn’t follow the standard cage riding mold. Chopurov primarily looks for the back, his process on top more akin to Alexandre Pantoja than most fighters coming out of the Caucasus and Central Asia. Since those circuits are chock-full of excellent wrestlers and scramblers, but often lacking in BJJ finesse, developing his back control is a great way to become a difficult matchup for his current opposition. But it will also pay off against UFC competition, as giving up the back to escape from bottom has become standard practice in high level MMA.

Once Chopurov gets a rear bodylock in the clinch, he starts looking to trip out the legs and sit down into back control.

Chopurov will keep the body lock and use crab rides to stretch his opponent’s base out until he’s ready to put both hooks in. If they’re able to get their feet on the mat and build up before he can fully take the back, he’ll follow them back up, keeping the bodylock, and repeat the process over again. The beauty of the broomstick style trips he uses is that they’re low effort and can be chained together endlessly until one succeeds.

While Chopurov is capable of finding rear naked chokes both from a standing body triangle and with his back to the ground, he’s most dangerous in back mount with his hips forcing his opponent to their belly. When his opponents drift to one side while defending the choke, he’ll look to hip in and force his way on top, where they have to post out to avoid being flattened.

Back mount is the easiest position from which to finish a rear naked choke, since the defender can’t both defend the choke and post at the same time. Chopurov has heavy hips and devastating ground and pound from the position, as Lavrentiev found out when he was immediately flattened and squashed as soon as Chopurov got on top. He also controls the transitions into and out of the position well. He’ll use half nelsons to slow opponents turning belly down while he works his way into back mount, and if they turn back on top he’ll look to snatch their neck in transition.

Chopurov has shown an excellent ability to retain dominant positions and counter attempts at scrambling out of his back control. Entering off the rear bodylock and crab rides helps - with both hooks in place, your own hip mobility is limited, but by entering from sitting down into a crab ride, Chopurov can keep his hips disconnected until he finds a good opportunity to get his hooks in. When riding on top, he’ll disengage a hook if opponents start elevating their hips, disconnecting his hips from theirs to avoid being tipped over.

He responds quickly when opponents turn into him, establishing a grip under the far arm to anchor himself and posting out with his near side so he can rotate his hips with their movement. He’ll often keep the back as his opponents stand up, but he also knows when to drop the body triangle and go back to his bodylock and broomstick sequence. Chopurov’s ability to move with his opponents and disengage when necessary allows him to stay in control and avoid ending up on his back, and his low effort entries off trips and crab rides ensure that he can get back into a dominant position while expending less energy than his opponent.

At only 23 years old, Asaf Chopurov has built a well-rounded, comprehensive skillset and scored wins over quality, experienced fighters. He’s nowhere near a finished product yet, but he’s already a difficult fight for anyone but the top fighters at Bantamweight.

While I’d still like to see him deal with fighters who can force him into exchanges or apply consistent high level wrestling pressure, Chopurov has an excellent base of skills to build on. I anticipate him making an impact in a major promotion within a couple years, and it would come as no surprise to me if Chopurov develops into an elite fighter.

If you enjoyed this article, check out How Ilia Topuria Became the Greatest Puncher in MMA:

You may also enjoy The Spider’s Web: Dissecting Anderson Silva’s Clinch Mastery

When Jack Dempsey was sparking out bigger men at the height of his boxing career, he fancied himself a natural puncher. A man fortunate enough to have been bestowed by fate gifts in the art of smashing up faces and separating heavyweights from consciousness. But in his retirement, he started reverse engineering his mechanics to teach them to others, and found that his thought process changed. Thinking through each step reminded Dempsey just how much expertise and labor went into constructing the puncher he became, and he came to see the art of punching as something that is taught rather than a quality inherent to a fighter.

Outliers who push the edge of the spectrum certainly make it hard to deny that power can be a gift. Every so often, a fighter comes along who seems to strike with the fist of god himself, capable of otherwise impossible feats of brain damage. What else could possibly explain Melvin Manhoef, a natural Middleweight who needed only 18 seconds to topple Mark Hunt’s legendary chin - a chin that made it through the early 2000s K-1 Heavyweight gauntlet without ever losing consciousness, surviving clean head kicks from fighters like Mirko Cro Cop along the way.

No amount of training and instruction can turn someone into a Manhoef-like puncher, but neither was Manhoef slumping elite fighters night after night. Freakish power does not bring along with it a freakish ability to apply that power. The science behind delivering power can be learned and improved by anyone, but an elite athlete who becomes a student of the game separates himself both from those who rely on their natural gifts and those without any.

Ilia Topuria is a phenomenal athlete, but he was not simply bestowed with the touch of death and marked by destiny to wilt everything in his path. The biggest punching threat in MMA, the one most likely to fell his opponents because he will both find their chin and find it hard, is something Topuria learned to be. Even in early fights, it’s clear that Topuria and his trainers invested a great deal in developing mechanics that allow him to transfer enormous amounts of weight into thunderous blows without losing his balance, the subtlety to put fist straight to jaw, and the timing to create collisions at the perfect moment. Topuria is what boxing historian, Kyle McLachlan, would call a composite puncher - one whose mechanical and tactical nous is integral to his ability to wallop, in the vein of Sugar Ray Robinson or Joe Louis.

Now that Topuria just secured his fastest career knockout over one of his toughest competitors in Charles Oliveira, let’s look back at his path of devastation and examine the skills and subtlety that left some of the greatest fighters to ever compete lying in broken heaps beneath him.

Read more

Trindade’s run through the Grand Prix solidified him as one of the best Featherweights in the world, as he dispatched Kento Haraguchi and Chadd Collins brutally, each inside a round. While he fell to Petchpanomrung in the finals, the 24 year old gave a great account of himself, taking Petchpanomrung to a competitive split decision.

Their first fight made it clear that Trindade was destined to challenge for Petchpanomrung’s Glory Featherweight championship before too long, and with a full camp dedicated to the fight and five rounds to distinguish himself, their rematch would be a more formidable challenge than any Petchpanomrung has faced since his 2023 loss to Chadd Collins.

Trindade took another fight in the interim, facing YA-MAN in an open gloved kickboxing match and battering him with his trademark left hook. The fight was called off in the third round after three left hook knockdowns in as many rounds.

After the win over YA-MAN, Trindade found himself right back in with Petchpanomrung, this time over five rounds for the Glory title. Trindade looked like a world beater in his recent run minus the Petchpanomrung fight, but the fighters he ran through - YA-MAN, Collins, and Haraguchi - were aggressive bangers willing to sacrifice defense for offense and walk onto his power. Petchpanomrung was a different challenge, his defensive aptitude uniquely suited to defusing Trindade’s powerful combinations.

Like the typical Thai outfighter, Petchpanomrung has had his roughest fights against swarmers who can get on top of him and stay there, bullying him in chaotic exchanges and denying him the clean reactions he likes to execute. From his famous knockout at the hands of Muangthai in his Muay Thai days to his difficulties with Chadd Collins, whose swarming pressure overwhelmed Petchpanomrung’s defensive radar but got him clobbered by Trindade, Petchpanomrung is near unbeatable when given space to work, by can be made uncomfortable through continual encroachment.

Read more

Read more

Anderson Silva was born to be a swarming pressure fighter, but cruel circumstance forced him to dance. When watching his earliest fights, it becomes clear that what “The Spider” wanted to do most of all was trap his opponents in a corner and go absolutely feral on them. Early Silva was a blindingly fast striker with whips for limbs, throwing out all sorts of different weapons his opponents had never seen before. He would stalk them to the ropes aggressively, square up to trap his confused foe, then unleash his entire arsenal while yanking their head around or stiff-arming them in place.

So why isn’t that always the Anderson Silva we remember? As good as he was on the inside, wrestling was an uphill battle for him. If his opponents flinched away as he closed in, they were in for a world of pain. But if they timed his forward step with a takedown, Silva would collapse as soon as someone touched both of his legs. An aggressive, pursuing Silva was a reactive takedown artist’s dream, as he’d square his stance, extend his arms out, and walk right into them, or throw his weight past his feet punching. There was little keeping wrestlers off his hips, and once they were there, Silva’s response left much to be desired.

But even when Silva became the slick hit and move stylist that dominated the UFC’s Middleweight division for years, elements of that square, swarming Muay Khao remained. He spent most of his time bouncing around in a bladed stance, poking with his jab and his long range kicks, but his hurting weapons still came mostly out of the square stance, either through backstepping counters or putting his former A-game into use during brief flurries against the cage.

The benefits of a square stance for aggressive clinch fighters are fairly straightforward - its power for corralling an opponent and tracking their lateral movement is the reason Thailand’s Muay Khaos tend to have some of the squarest stances you’ll see in striking. But Silva’s willingness to square his stance moving backwards had some interesting and rarely-seen utility in getting to his clinch as well.

Silva liked to give ground not by stepping his rear foot back first and following with his lead, as is traditional in boxing. He would step back first with his lead foot, taking it all the way back into the opposite stance. It allowed him to take large swaths of ground, but it also squared his shoulders, making it easier to grab on with both hands.

As his opponents closed in behind their lead hand, he’d extend his own and take it on the shoulder, looking to control the head while switching stances backwards. His stance switch lines his rear shoulder up with the opponent’s rear hand, letting him once again catch the punch on his extended arm and secure both hands around the head. When Silva found opportunities to pressure opponents against the cage, he’d flow into the clinch more naturally, squaring his stance to present both arms for grabbing.

Once Silva had both hands around the head, fans knew they were about to see something special. Silva had a varied and multifaceted clinch game that made use of many positions, but he’s almost single-handedly responsible for popularizing the double collar tie in MMA due to his devastating offense from the position.

The Double Collar Tie

Silva may not have been the first MMA fighter to employ the double collar tie, but the position quickly became synonymous with him. His first UFC title fight came only a few months after his debut, when he was still relatively unknown to American fans. But that didn’t last long, as Silva turned in the most violent yet beautiful clinch destruction the MMA world had ever seen, mashing Rich Franklin’s midsection into paste with his knees before going upstairs to finish him off.

From that moment on, crowds and commentators alike would go wild whenever Silva locked his hands around a head, assuming a finish was imminent. It quickly became known as a near instant loss condition - if you found yourself in Silva’s clinch, and you couldn’t escape right away, it was all over.

But before Silva’s double collar tie became one of MMA’s most famous weapons, it had its origins in his early swarming style. It was largely a reactive tool used to control his opponent’s response to his aggression. Silva would pressure toward the ropes, square up, and shock them with a barrage of straight punches. When they panicked and tried to duck in on him, his forearms were outstretched, ready to lock the head and batter them with knees.

It also doubled as his primary method of defending takedowns, sticking the forearms between himself and his foe as they dove on his hips from ten feet away, and daring them to rise back up with his knee cocked to drive through their jaw. But as Silva grew more experienced and the takedowns he face grew less telegraphed, he relied on it less as a defensive wrestling tool and developed more nuanced routes to the hold.

In today’s game, the double collar tie sees much more widespread use, but it’s rarely the killshot that it appeared in Silva’s heyday.

So what changed? Have modern fighters learned how to deal with the position, or was Silva doing something back then that they still haven’t caught up to?

It’s a bit of both. It is true that Rich Franklin’s poor clinch awareness made him the perfect canvas for Silva to paint a masterpiece. But Silva faced other fighters who knew what they were doing in the clinch and his responses were nothing short of masterful. The level of clinch skill in MMA has improved tremendously, spurred on by Silva himself as much as anyone, but even in the modern game there are very few who use the double collar tie with the nuance and skill of Anderson Silva.

Positional Basics

While MMA fans typically know it as the “Muay Thai Clinch,” the double collar tie sees more sporadic and situational use in Muay Thai. It’s primarily a transitional position used by very tall fighters, as the double forearm grip necessarily leaves space for a savvy opponent to start breaking the grip, meaning that a well prepared clincher needs to anticipate and punish counters instead of hunkering down and clinging to the position.

The double collar tie offers strong control of an opponent’s posture, allowing an attacker to weigh down on their head and crunch them into knees or throws. Because it’s a double inside grip, it also offers superior leverage for turning and steering as opponents struggle to escape it. With the forearms creating a frame and holding the opponent in place, the attacker can bring his hips back to throw powerful knees without losing position.

The hands should meet at the crown of the head, rather than the lower on the neck, offering superior leverage to crunch the defender’s posture down. The elbows and forearms wedge into the collarbone, locking the defender in place and steering them as they push or pull. As the defender struggles and rotates their hips and shoulders to wiggle inside the tie, the forearms follow to redirect them and maintain the hold, pushing across the attacker’s center line if necessary to close the gap between the elbows. Head position within the double collar tie can vary - when throwing knees the head will often need to come up, but tucking the head in tight in between attacks can help shield it from wild punches and tighten up the position.

Footwork is also of critical importance for maximizing the position’s potential. Prolific Muay Thai fighter and historian, Sylvie von Duuglas-Ittu, asked the great Muay Khao Langsuan Panyutapum why knee fighters are worse in today’s Muay Thai, and he responded that everyone is flat-footed nowadays, where Muay Khao used to move around on their toes.

Staying on the toes facilitates greater mobility, allowing rapid turns and micro adjustments in positioning, keeping the attacker ready to change the angle at all times and respond to the defender’s attempts to wiggle their shoulder inside or break the grip.

This was something that Silva understood in a way that few other MMA fighters have:

As Rich Franklin Pushes forward, hoping to collapse the distance and force himself between Silva’s elbows, Silva stays on his toes and bounces as he turns. He’s on his toes to begin with, allowing him to react immediately to the shift in weight and pressure, and he cranks down further on Franklin’s head with each bounce as he turns out along the cage. Staying on his toes allows Silva to find the holes in Franklin’s positioning - initially he has his left leg back and Franklin turns to hide behind his hip on that side, but Silva quickly switches his feet to knee the open side. Note also how Silva’s left forearm tightens and passes across his body to stay inside of Franklin’s shoulder as Franklin turns side on.

Another element of Silva’s double collar tie that still sets him apart from modern fighters is the technique and efficiency of his knees. It’s still rare to see MMA fighters throw sharp knees in the clinch, and you’ll see a ton of hipless “stay busy” knees, or soft knees to the ribs that land with the inside of the leg. Silva was far more precise and vicious, choosing his targets carefully and throwing knees meant to damage.

The technique on Silva’s knees was as vicious as it was beautiful. He didn’t lift his knees straight up, but rather drove his hip into them for devastating power. They tended to land with the hard part of the knee just below the kneecap, and he’d adjust his hip based on distance. If his hips were far back, he’d drive the knee straight up the middle, often targeting the vulnerable solar plexus, and at closer ranges his hip rotates out and back in to add power, tilting to get the hard part of the knee on the floating ribs. Salvos of body knees directed the attention downstairs and hid sudden large steps back that opened room to knee the head. As opponents panicked and exposed different openings, he’d take what was given, switching his feet to knee the open side as they squirmed in desperation.

Anyone content to sit in Silva’s double collar tie without a plan to escape was dead in the water, a sitting duck about to be brutalized with a never-ending series of knees to their liver, sternum, ribs, and nose. But opponents with calculated responses didn’t have an easy go of it either, as Silva had preternatural awareness in the clinch and remained prepared to counter their attempts at foiling him.

Dynamic Control & Punishment

It’s a consistent principle across all combat sports that balance follows the head. If you can stuff your man’s head down so he’s looking at the ground, or push it out out of alignment with his hips, his ability to do just about anything is severely compromised. A head in alignment with the posterior chain is key to finishing a double leg takedown, throwing a proper punch, or applying any leverage in the clinch.

One of the main benefits of the double collar tie for control is that it applies leverage directly to the point on the opponent most critical for balance. Since it’s a grip that necessitates some space and gives the defender room to pummel inside, that balance-breaking ability needs to be used to its fullest extent to maintain control.

It’s true that Rich Franklin wasn’t well prepared to counter Silva’s clinch, but every time he tried to get something started, he’d find himself yanked off balance, forced to catch his feet as Silva peppered him with knees.

Read more

Jean Silva is the UFC’s newest star at Featherweight and so far he’s appeared the total package. He’s active, amassing five wins in a little over a year with the promotion. He’s exciting, finishing every one of those wins and peppering his fights with flashy, high-octane moments. And he has the personality and theatrical flair to avoid falling through the UFC’s ever-widening matchmaking cracks.

Silva’s personality isn’t just an act for the microphones either. Jean Silva is constantly amusing himself in his fights, as he points at his opponents, gestures around like a maniac, or plays the “made you look” game. But anyone fooled by the silliness is in for a rough time, as the antics sit atop a bedrock of ferocious killer instinct and a carefully constructed approach to fighting.

Stylistically, Silva takes a lot of familiar elements and blends them together into a fairly unique game. The deep influence of traditional martial arts like Karate and Tai Kwon Do on MMA can be seen in his approach to distancing, as he likes to fight outside jabbing range and goad opponents into walking onto intercepting counters. But his first martial art was Muay Thai, and it shows in his ancillary tools as he makes crafty use of elbows and knees, making him much more potent on the inside than the typical fighter of his mold.

The most peculiar part of Silva’s UFC run is that he’s fought nothing but southpaws thus far - five of them in a row. It’s proven a happy coincidence for him however, as the primary weapon in Silva’s arsenal is a cracking left hook. His comfort at long range and punishing counter hook make him a stylistic nightmare for southpaws used to controlling an orthodox opponent’s lead hand and coming in straight.

The Distance Trap

When Lyoto Machida first pioneered the art of standing far away, it was a revolutionary fusion of Karate and MMA, the likes of which we’d never seen before. By now the tactics Machida used to frustrate opponents and convince them to rush onto his intercepting counters have percolated down so thoroughly that they’re regularly employed by fighters who aren’t otherwise Karate-coded at all.

Jean Silva is one such fighter who likes to set up an extra step away from his opponents, outside their immediate jabbing range. Fighters used to gathering information with their jab tend to struggle with this distance, as their primary range-finding tool is removed and they’re forced to guess at the distance or figure out a new way to close distance. If the opponent proceeds as usual, they need to take two steps to reach Silva, and the first step tips him off to counter on the second.

One of the trickier aspects of fighting as far back as Silva does is that there needs to be a reason for opponents to close the distance. Often fighters who look to stay all the way outside and draw opponents onto them skew tall and long for their divisions, as they can hit from further out and skip back when a return salvo is launched, forcing engagements on their terms as they rack up safe points from outside. An alternative is to get really good at kicking and not getting kicked.

Silva doesn’t have the size or length to safely needle shorter fighters with jabs, but his slick, efficient kicking game allows him to command the fight on the outside and force opponents to close distance, where he’s waiting with coiled power. His time in Muay Thai gave him smooth, mechanically sharp kicks that he can fire without a labored weight transfer to tip it off. He mixes up his kicks to the body and head, and has even shown an unusual fearlessness in kicking fighters looking to take him down.

Silva looks to punch off his kicks often, launching a right hand as his kicking leg touches back down. Kicking tactics in MMA have lagged well behind boxing tactics as the striking talent has grown, and it’s still rare to see MMA fighters put their punches and kicks together fluidly. Punching as the kicking leg retracts is a common tactic in kicking sports, as it punishes some of the more reliable counters to body kicks. Since MMA fighters tend to stand a good deal farther apart than in other continuous striking sports, punching off his kicks also gives Silva a method of closing into his punches without exposing himself to counters.

Silva’s Muay Thai experience left him with sound defensive responses to kicks that make it even more difficult for opponents to compete with him on the outside. Often you’ll see highlights of fighters with Muay Thai experience (like Rafael Fiziev) slipping head kicks by leaning back at the waist, and the reason this is a common tactic in Muay Thai is that kicks to the arms score, so there’s an incentive to make high kicks miss entirely instead of blocking with the arms.

He’s proven very difficult to hit clean with kicks. In body kick battles, his mechanics and speed give him an edge, and he can reliably read and sway back from head kicks. His wide stance accentuates this, keeping his rear foot farther away than his head appears and giving him lots of room to pull it back out of range. Most fighters trying to kick with Silva offer only naked kicks, unable to build off their threat to exploit his defensive reaction, so he’s able to score comfortably on the outside and goad them onto his counters.

Open Stance Hand-Fighting

The way Silva handles the hand-fighting in open stance engagements also makes him an unusual opponent for southpaw strikers and a tricky fighter to close distance on. The bread and butter of many southpaws is controlling the opponent’s lead hand to land their rear down the pipe. The lead hand control cuts off the orthodox fighter’s jab and keeps the southpaw safe as he steps in to land his left. With the lead hand controlled, all his attention can be devoted to his opponent’s rear hand as he feints and sets traps to land his own, allowing him to draw out and punish it.

Of course, these tactics are open to both fighters, but southpaws bank far more practice hours in these sorts of engagements and tend to build their approach around them, while orthodox fighters find themselves there far more rarely and may not even have high level southpaw training partners. Watch any Conor McGregor fight and you’ll see this in action as his shorter opponent reaches out to meet his extended hand, feeding McGregor access to hand control and giving him valuable distancing information at a range where they can’t yet touch him.

Silva doesn’t fall into the trap of playing patty cake with fighters who are longer and more experienced at it. Against southpaws, he’ll go for the occasional hand trap and rear straight, but for the most part he’s content to let his opponent lead the hand-fighting while keeping his lead hand tight. His opponents often grow tentative, reaching out for a hand that isn’t there, or watching him take a short step back once they touch it, knowing he wants them to step forward again and commit.

Controlling a fighter’s lead hand is a good way to seize initiative - you don’t need to time your attacks as precisely if you can secure an advantage before engaging. But Silva would rather compete on pure timing and bet that he can time his entries and counters better than his opponents, keeping his lead hand tight and coiled to strike. By denying the handfight, he can often get his southpaw opponents stepping into him blind and make them pay.

Silva’s patient approach played a big role in his knockout of Melsik Baghdasaryan. Very little happened in the roughly four minute fight, but as Baghdasaryan failed to find entries on Silva, continually reaching out to control Silva’s lead hand only for Silva to pull it back tighter or step back, he grew more willing to step in and open himself up to counters. As soon as Baghdasaryan was willing to step in and attack without the safety of hand control to cover his entry, Silva was waiting to smack him with a counter hook. Only a minute later, Silva landed another lead hook, circling his hand around distractedly while inching closer, drawing Baghdasaryan into reaching out to cover a hand that was already hooking around his outstretched arm, setting up a right hand that felled him.

When Silva leads, he often does it by setting traps with his footwork or entering off-rhythm instead of through touching the lead hand. By pulling away from the hand-fight, he denies southpaw opponents their familiar tactile sense of distance and ability to anticipate through touch, and changes how the entries occur to terms they’re typically less comfortable with.

This Left Hook Kills Southpaws

When orthodox strikers fight a southpaw, they often get lured into the distance game, neutralizing their lead hand and fencing with their rear. The collision of the orthodox and southpaw’s lead legs naturally forces a longer default distance, which can prove awkward to fighters not experienced with that dynamic.

But for the savvy orthodox striker who can avoid getting locked into the rear hand battle, the left hook offers some distinct advantages against a southpaw.

Read more

Read more