Umar Nurmagomedov is one of the sharper strikers among the Nurmagomedov team, but his takedowns and top control tie everything together into an elite package. In the modern era of MMA, being a good guard passer with heavy hips and a strong cross-face is no longer enough to keep opponents down. Many top fighters are active scramblers off their back who won’t stop moving until given no other option, and an effective control grappler must anticipate and shut down those options before they gain steam.
Mario Bautista proved a worthy challenge for Umar on the mat, never content to rest on his back, his defensive grappling skilled and diligent in equal measure. But Bautista’s efforts served only to highlight the depth of Umar’s grappling, as he kept pace and funneled Bautista back into dominant positions, continually anticipating his next move and locking him out.
A scramble is a rapid exchange that occurs in between standard control positions, characterized by quick movement and furious jostling to secure an advantage. To come out ahead, one must build up and retain his base while disrupting the base of his opponent. For the fighter on bottom, building a base involves several necessary steps - posting feet or hands on the mat to drive weight upwards, building hip and head height, and, ideally, aligning the hips and head together with the posts. As the bottom fighter, building up from underneath puts you in a better position to apply power, while destabilizing the top fighter’s base.
But when trying to initiate a scramble from a static control position, the bottom fighter is at a disadvantage, as his opponent on top can preemptively attack each step toward building up. Control a limb and it can’t be posted on the mat to drive upward. Drop a heavy shoulder on the chin and the head can’t build height. Or twist the head out of alignment with the hips, and the posts lose their ability to apply power through the body’s structure.
Whenever Umar got on top of Bautista, he made sure to anticipate and block the easiest escape routes, controlling his limbs to prevent them from posting, while he established control of the head and hips. From side control, he consistently used a scoop grip under Bautista’s far leg to secure him in place.
As Umar untangles himself from Bautista’s leg entanglement, the first thing he does is post his right foot and left hand on the mat to secure his base and build up height. As he sits up and puts weight onto the leg being attacked, he uses his right hand to control Bautista’s left ankle, preventing him from establishing his own base and fighting to come on top. With Umar’s weight now on top of Bautista, whose own base is compromised, the toe hold is no longer an immediate threat. As Umar settles into top position, he scoops under the far leg of Bautista. The scoop grip keeps Bautista on his back and prevents him from turning into Umar, the scooping arm physically blocking his hips from squaring to face the mat. With Bautista blocked from turning in, Umar now has some extra time to secure the position, which he does by using an overback grip to pin down the upper body, while scooching his hips in to crowd Bautista’s near leg. The scoop grip ends up woven over top the near leg and under the fear leg, preventing the far leg from turning in, while trapping the near leg between Umar’s own thigh and armpit. With Bautista locked down, Umar finally switches to a cross-face, pinning his head down and settling into side control.
One common trait shared by strong defensive grapplers is that they scramble with urgency the moment their back hits the mat. The best time to escape is the instant a takedown is completed, as it typically takes a moment for the top fighter to establish a dominant position. Finishing takedowns in a way that minimizes openings then becomes a crucial skill for controlling elite fighters, and Umar is prepared to start taking away the exits as soon as he puts his man on the mat.
Umar sits back into a crab ride and kicks Bautista onto his back. As he settles on top, Umar takes his scoop grip, but Bautista has anticipated it and already put himself on his left hip, using his right arm to block Umar from cross-facing while his left controls Umar’s wrist. He can’t block Bautista from turning as easily, but he can at least slow him down, threatening a cradle by pressuring inwards under the far leg and over the neck. Bautista tries to sit up and post out on his left arm, but Umar’s weight slows him down, allowing him to take a seatbelt grip and threaten the back. Bautista is conscious of the threat and reaches down to fight Umar’s right hand, but Umar threads the wrist through to his left hand and winds up with a giftwrap, controlling the arm behind Bautista’s back and pulling it across his face. Bautista knows how dangerous the position is and tries to fight it with his left hand, but in doing so he collapses his post and goes to his back, where Umar can flatten him out and put weight on him.
In the modern MMA meta, crafty defensive grapplers often look to turn onto all fours and wrestle up. While this goes against the traditional BJJ wisdom of never exposing your back, it makes it much easier to post and build up a base with all your limbs underneath you, so the trade off is often worth it. In my article on Magomedrasul Gasanov, I explored how his tactics to delay the opponent’s turn allow him to win or prevent scrambles:
Part of controlling space effectively is knowing how to cut off escape routes. Anyone spending as much time creating space to strike as Gasanov has to be prepared for opponents moving underneath him. If a top player is successful at blocking major escape threats like strong underhooks, one of the main concerns from there is allowing the bottom fighter to turn. Turning belly down is a common strategy to get into a quad pod and build back up to the feet, and turning over generates space and momentum that they can use to aid their escape. Knowing when the opponent can attempt to turn and anticipating their likely first steps is important in cutting it off.
He’s very sensitive to opponents trying to turn underneath him and will cut them off early, before they can establish base and momentum. If they post on the mat to power an underhook he’ll strip the post or block their head with his own. He’ll use half nelsons to prevent opponents turning into him, and cradles to block their foot posting on the mat. By fighting the initial steps that allow them to generate movement, Gasanov can either keep them on their back or slow the turn down enough that the position remains static, with his weight keeping them pinned the entire time, so he can take a strong riding position that attacks their base once they’ve turned over.
Umar’s ability to frustrate Bautista’s attempts to turn over ensured that the positional changes occurred on his terms and in ways that he could anticipate.
Bautista frames Umar’s head away to keep him from establishing control of the head as he turns on his side. He tries to fight Umar’s left wrist to keep him off a strong cross-face, but Umar locks his hands together and reinforces the cross-face. Bautista is stuck halfway through an octopus half guard entry, where his shoulder is nearly in Umar’s armpit, but he can’t build enough height or momentum to fully establish a position that gives him a direct escape route. Bautista plants his feet and bridges his hips hoping to gain some space to move, but with his upper body controlled he, winds up surrendering back control.
One of the things that make elite top players like the Nurmagomedov family so daunting to fight is that every move you make thrusts you deeper underwater. They know the openings available to you before you take them, and ensure the escape attempts happen under their own timing and in positions favorable to them. Trying to escape bottom position turns into a ride down a flowchart designed to funnel you exactly where they want you.
To Bautista’s credit, he attacked any openings with craft and urgency, but Umar’s reactions were just as quick. But what kept Umar a step ahead is that he didn’t just counter each move Bautista made in sequence, instead he lead the exchange back to a control position where he could lock down Bautista’s head and hips, or remove his posts from the mat. An elite scrambler can go through an endless series of move and countermove until they find space to stand up, but take away their base and the scramble dies.
Bautista frames off Umar’s face to create space and slides in an underhook as Umar punches. The underhook gives him leverage to start turning into Umar and building up, but Umar immediately posts his right hand over Bautista’s underhooking shoulder to kill its leverage and switches his hips to step over the legs. The route straight into Umar is now blocked, but Bautista immediately adjusts and starts backing his hips out without the cross-face there to keep him flat, working up to a left arm post. Just as quickly, Umar wraps his arm around Bautista’s head and shift his hips back to the left, forcing him down over the post. Bautista switches directions to come up on an underhook again, but this time Umar funnels him into a cradle, crunching his posture down and keeping his left foot off the mat. The scramble stalls out with Bautista’s base, posture, and momentum killed, and Umar slides in a near-side underhook to flatten him out.
While keeping heavy pressure on the opponent makes it difficult for them to scramble underneath you, effective top control is a game of push and pull, knowing when to squeeze out space and when to let an exchange breath. A fighter always trying to keep maximum weight and contact is optimizing to keep their opponent in place, but their own base is stronger with limbs spread wide and posted on the ground. Likewise, a top player with open posts optimizes his own base while allowing space for his opponent to move. Against elite competition, the trick is knowing when to smother and when to float.
Umar showed great sensitivity in his top game against Bautista, maintaining both suffocating pressure when Bautista tried to resist with direct force and a frustrating lightness to move freely on top as he transitioned. Umar was willing to give up a strong position if his control became shaky and retreat to a strong base from which he could launch another attack.
Umar starts out dropping his shoulder on Bautista’s chin, but Bautista is able to start sitting up and alleviating the pressure, giving him the space to insert a frame and start turning in on an underhook. Umar doesn’t try to clamp down and push straight back in as he starts losing side control, which could risk giving Bautista a clean escape, or a chance to reverse his momentum and sneak out the other side. Instead he delays the turn with a cross-face, while opening up and using the space to circle back into guard. Now Bautista’s hips are in his direct control as he executes a textbook bodylock pass, locking around Bautista’s waist to crunch him down and kill his underhook as he climbs over the butterfly hooks and back to a strong, stable side control.
While Umar has proven himself an elite top player capable of dominating all but the best wrestlers on the mat, the most obvious area of improvement is his ability to deal damage on top. His cousin, Khabib, was famous not just for his elite control, but for the way he broke his opponents after only a short round on top, using whatever space he permitted to land devastating blows.
As Umar has tired out late in fights, committing more to ground and pound could prove useful in several ways. The sheer physical and mental toll such an assault takes on a prone opponent is high, but ground striking is also a useful tool for maintaining control. An opponent attempting to scramble under the duress of heavy punches is panicked, rushed, and often sloppy, and it can take less effort to throw a few strikes, force a rushed reaction, and settle back in an improved position than to out-scramble a determined opponent.
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