Still Jose Aldo

We examine a vintage Jose Aldo performance, diving deep on the hand-fighting and defensive tactics that neutralized Jonathan Martinez.

A 37 year old great coming out of retirement to face a top ten opponent. Usually that headline is a prelude to heartache and disaster. But the immaculate Jose Aldo has made turning back the clock something of a hobby in his late career, nearly 15 years after he first captured the title that would cement him as the longtime face of the Featherweight division.

The victim this time was Jonathan Martinez, a respectable southpaw striker with sharp inside leg kicks. Martinez looked to implement a similar gameplan that he used to foil aggressive boxer, Adrian Yañez. He took Yañez apart with the inside leg kicks, camping outside punching range and picking him off with the kicks. Martinez controlled the lead hand of Yañez to limit his engagement options, drawing him into committed rear punches that he could circle inside on to take a dominant angle for the leg kicks. I covered Martinez’s leg kicking tactics in more detail in a previous article.

Aldo at his peak was the foremost neutralizing fighter MMA has ever seen, winning his fights not with overwhelming volume or aggression, but by stripping his opponent of their most consistent tools with impeccable defense and training them to fight at his pace through punishing counters. In his later career, with his defensive reactions and ability to keep pace dwindling, he’s shifted toward a more dynamic strategy that relies on big moments to make up for a lack of consistent output. But against Martinez, Aldo showed us a glimpse of the old neutralizing Aldo, as he picked at the exposed threads of Martinez’s game, unraveling it seam by seam until barely anything remained.

It all started with the leg kicks. Martinez landed the first inside leg kick he threw, but Aldo immediately responded by pushing forward with a combination, telling him in that no leg kick would go unpunished. After a few minutes, Aldo started soundly checking the kicks.

Martinez smartly added some outside leg kicks to the mix, always a good idea when your kicks are checked, as the dual threat forces the opponent to adjust the angle of their leg for a proper check. But Aldo had no problem adjusting and Martinez struggled to create hurting blows with the outside leg kick. Unable to get his leg kicks off without eating counters or kicking right into the hard shin, Martinez quickly stopped relying on them.

Part of what has allowed Aldo to remain at the top for so long is his incredible ability to add new skills and reinvent himself far past the point where most fighters stagnate. He’s always been a nightmare to kick, effortlessly checking Ricardo Lamas’ calf kicks a decade ago before they caught on in the wider meta. But in his run at Bantamweight, he’s adopted a more square stance with a light, bouncing lead leg, which lets him lift the leg at a moment’s notice to block kicks. Martinez looked for front kicks and diagonal kicks to the body and Aldo would lift the lead leg in a cross check - a classic counter to body kicks in Muay Thai, but one rarely seen in MMA.

Adding to the Muay Thai looks from Aldo in this fight were his neat little teeps to the thigh. He used these a few times in the first round to keep Martinez off balance and make him hesitant to step forward.

First he threw up a high kick to draw Martinez into kicking back, then teeped out his base while he was on one leg. Then near the end of the first round, Martinez looked to advance with punches, but Aldo’s flicking teep kept him at range and broke his balance as he tried to step in.

Those light, flicking teeps to the thigh are a common fixture in Muay Thai. Since stances in Thailand tend to be squarer and narrower, more upright, and heavier on the back foot, it’s difficult and ineffectual to try caving the knee join in with a Jon Jones-style oblique kick. But teeping the thigh is very useful as a low commitment tool to maintain distance, preventing opponents from closing distance or transferring weight onto the lead foot, and it pairs excellently with kicks off the lead leg. Just last month we covered the top pound-for-pound fighter in Muay Thai, Khunsuklek Boomdeksian, using these teeps to reinforce distance after landing his body kicks.

With his kicks effectively taken away, Martinez was left looking for opportunities with his boxing. But since his hands typically work best in synergy with his kicking game, he had trouble making his usual setups work.

The handfighting tactics that let Martinez funnel Yañez’s offense into predictable patterns that he could exploit instead got him punished by Aldo. Handfighting can be a great tool to effectively set up one’s offense and deny the opponent’s, especially in an open-stance matchup where the lead hands line up. It can be used to set up offense by physically removing the guard, or by setting and breaking a rhythm or pattern, conditioning the opponent to expect a certain cadence of handfighting before breaking it abruptly.

Martinez used his handfighting mostly defensively, looking to cover the lead hand to remove Aldo’s jab and draw out more committed offense, but he had trouble setting up his own work on the lead. This sort of defensive handfighting is often most effective when employed by tall, rangy fighters with a wide, bladed stance and bouncy footwork.

Fighters like Conor McGregor or Stephen Thompson adopt a stance that accentuates their length and sticks their lead shoulder way out in front of them, so the hand they’re touching is nowhere near their face, while their own hand is much closer to the opponent’s face. The opponent’s jab is nullified, out of range of its target and stuffed by the lead hand as a distance closing weapon, and over-committed rear hands lead them right into counters. But when used by a fighter with a more typical stance and build like Martinez, there’s more opportunities to work around the hand control without first backing them up to the cage.

Taking the kicks away was critical for Aldo as it allowed him to be patient on the edge of Martinez’s reach. If Martinez’s leg kicks are damaging and scoring on his opponents, they have to start taking risks and walking onto his counters to get it back. But Aldo could afford to sit back and make his reads, while letting Martinez open himself up and make mistakes.

Early in the fight, Martinez would look to establish control of the lead hand and pivot outside Aldo’s foot with a jab, potentially lining up a straight right once the setup had been established. But as soon as Martinez stepped outside his lead foot, Aldo would circle inside and pivot back to face him, killing Martinez’s angle and ability to follow up. It was a reversal of the same footwork trick Martinez used to set up his leg kicks on Yañez.

Unable to pick Aldo off with kicks or set up consistent volume with his lead hand, Martinez was left with one obvious option - try to make some headway with the rear hand. But Aldo was ready to punish this with extreme prejudice.