Takedown Taxonomy: A Guide to Takedown Entries in MMA
Everything you've ever wanted to know about setting up 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.