Umar vs Song: Dagestani Defense & Shooting To The Rear Hip

Why Umar Nurmagomedov’s striking hurts his ability to wrestle.

1. The Dagestani System

2. Why Didn’t Umar Just Take Him Down?

3. Shooting To The Rear Hip

4. Why Doesn’t This Happen To The Other Dagestanis?

While the Nurmagomedovs are famous for their oppressive wrestling, their takedown entries have always been messy. That was never an issue for Khabib, as his relentless pressure gave him countless opportunities to run opponents otno the cage. But the new generation of Dagestani wrestlers out of Khabib’s camp have had to be more picky with their takedown attempts.

Nowadays the camp largely produces southpaw outfighters who operate with long-range kicks and avoid tight exchanges. Umar Nurmagomedov shares this broad shape along with his brother Usman, and their teammate Islam Makhachev, though they differ in which long-range tools they favor. Their preference for outfighting changes how they can approach wrestling - more of their shots need to come in open space, where mechanical issues and lack of setup are a much bigger problem without a cage wall to plow into.

Umar and his teammates, instead of having striking skillsets built to carry them into their wrestling, often end up with their striking instincts working against their wrestling. Instead, the wrestling and top game serve to bolster their survivability and distance management, creating a game that wins by locking their opponents out of scoring offense. Rack up points with long-range tools, avoid volatile exchanges, and allow the threat of the takedown and a round on the bottom to dissuade the opponent from taking the sort of risks that could create scoring moments.

Their ability to neutralize their foes and strip away their offense has proven incredibly effective, but the incongruity between striking and wrestling has also proven one of the biggest and most consistent limitations for the style. That flaw is perhaps most clear in Umar, who lacks some of the breadth that Usman and Islam have for neutralizing aggression.

The Dagestani System

Umar started strong against Song Yadong, but his difficulty finding clean entries into his takedowns forced him to strike at length with the powerful hitter, and his predictable reactions got him into trouble. In the opening minute, he was able to capitalize on a Yadong leg kick and convert for a takedown, but his subsequent attempts fell short.

Umar has always been remarkably consistent in converting kicks to takedowns - here he needs just a slight grab of the leg to disrupt Yadong’s retraction and he’s able to beat the downblock, pinning Yadong’s left arm to his body and circling toward the back.

Some slick deep half guard work allowed Yadong to escape before too long, but his toolset became more limited after having his kick punished. It’s in this way that Umar pacifies opponents into accepting his range and trains them against their own scoring work. He’s standing too far away to punch, so you have to kick with him, but kicks get you taken down, and over the course of the fight, it becomes increasingly less clear how you’re supposed to score without falling prey to the takedowns.

Yadong can often fall into one-note aggression, but he was remarkably patient here, choosing his weapons carefully and limiting exposure to Umar’s takedowns. The biggest danger against a rangy wrestler like Umar is getting too aggressive with the rear hand and winding up with square hips as he’s shooting in, but Yadong rarely swung away upstairs.

Instead, he picked off the body at long range and looked to conceal a lead uppercut, keeping his lead hand low to ward off the takedown and sneaking it underneath Umar’s armpit. Body shots are a classic tool against wrestlers, since their main goal is to duck underneath the punches onto the hips. Attacking the body leaves you with a downblock in place should they shoot simultaneously and threatens to catch their chin if they duck into it.

Yadong’s patience made it difficult for Umar to find entries onto his hips, but patient fighting often winds up being a trap against fighters like Umar. Umar, Usman, and Islam have all had competitive fights against fighters who could avoid their wrestling for long stretches, but the wrestling threats looms over the fight even as the takedowns slow, snuffing out their opponent’s ability to score and ensuring that any successful grappling ends up the most significant moment of most rounds. Despite Yadong managing himself well in the first round and taking no damage, he wasn’t able to find big moments of his own, and the round went to Umar.

Of course, a brutal knockout is the ultimate counter to a perfect round-winning strategy, and Yadong keyed in on a habit that Umar has been repeatedly punished for. Umar and his cohort of outfighter Dagestanis are incredibly defensive fighters, focused primarily on distance control and survivability. But the difficulty of hitting them is due more to their wrestling threat and willingness to disengage than the mechanics of their defense. The defensive reactions are often predictable and messy, but they give their opponents so few opportunities to make them react while staying in range to hit them that it scarcely matters.

Whenever Umar sees a threatening rear hand, he pulls his weight back onto his rear foot and bends his knees, getting outside the punch, with a cushion of distance if the slip fails. There’s usually no second layer of sound defensive reactions, but few opponents are brave enough to keep the combination going and square up, lest they surrender their hips.

Both Mario Bautista and Bekzat Almakhan dropped Umar out of his lean when he wound up pulling back from too close, or ducking into a knee. Once Yadong saw it a few times, he stopped trying to land his rear hand straight to where Umar’s head was and started pitching shovel hooks to where it was about to be.

Umar pings a jab off Yadong’s forehead and pulls his head just out of range of a powerful shovel hook. The next time they engage, Yadong takes the initiative, showing his lead uppercut again to get Umar pulling back onto his rear foot, while he hops outside the lead leg to close distance and set up his rear hand. Umar tips his hand too early and is left ducking right into the punch that ends his night.

The knockout came with Umar shooting with his head to the inside of Yadong’s stance, which is often cautioned against in open stance matchups, as it takes the head into the opponent’s power strikes. However, that threat is often overstated and can be mitigated. The true culprit is the incongruity between Umar’s striking and grappling, and the mechanical jank in his defensive reactions.

Look at the position Umar found himself in just before the knockout blow landed:

His weight is all on his rear foot with his lead foot lifted off the mat and his head looking straight at the ground. Yadong found himself with a dominant angle to land his rear hand, but his own positioning scarcely matters - as long as he can predict Umar folding himself up in such a way, he could find a heavy blow from just about anywhere. Umar’s positioning is as weak from a striking perspective as it is from a wrestling one - any shot he takes from here will leave him starting off at a deficit, having to build up through bad positioning to finish.

Why Didn’t Umar Just Take Him Down?

For wrestlers who can so reliably force opponents to cover great distance in order to reach them, the outfighter Dagestanis aren’t terribly adept at securing reactive takedowns, suffering from delayed and awkward mechanics. It’s precisely those defensive reactions, which are built around escaping an exchange as quickly as possible, that results in the mechanical awkwardness.

When Umar tries to sink his weight down into a reactive takedown, there’s no smooth connection between changing levels and penetrating. It instead comes out in three motions - pull back, stop and sink down, then move forward. It ends up taking a beat too long, ruins his positioning, and exposes him to danger. Starting the motion by pulling back onto his rear foot also ensures there’s no where to go but head-inside, as he has to initiate the takedown by leaning over his rear leg, his lead leg unweighted and unable to support a more standard entry in time.

A big part of the awkwardness of Umar’s shots and those of the rest of his team is that they fight primarily out of southpaw, but haven’t quite nailed down ideal entries for shooting in open stance matchups.

In my Takedown Taxonomy series, I examined how open stance matchups change takedown entries:

While the opponent’s lead leg is a nearer target in open stance matchups, the stance configuration makes explosive finishes awkward. In a standard double leg, the lead leg penetrates to close distance, and the rear leg follows to provide power and drive across for the finish. With both fighters in opposite staggered stances, however, the lead leg falls on the side that would typically power the finish…

The difficulty of penetrating clean onto both legs is exacerbated by the setup options available in open stance. Entering behind a jab or a fold in the rear hip no longer sets the right position to uncoil into a shot, as the head is now directed inside, and the opponent’s lead hand jams up the path anyway. The rear hand has a cleaner path, but it commits weight to the front foot, requiring an extra step to drive into a double leg.

In closed stance, jabs fit nicely into leg attacks, as the motion of driving off the rear leg onto the front foot aligns well with a penetration step, and the head can dip outside the opponent’s hip right in position to drive across their body. But in open stance, jabs leave the weight aligned improperly for a smooth head-outside finish.

The rear hand becomes a more natural setup for head-outside shots in open stance matchups:

Seokhyeon Ko demonstrates, establishing his rear overhand with the exact same motion as his outside step double leg, disguising the entry for easy penetration.

However, Umar and the other top fighters from his camp tend to possess clumsy rear hands. Islam Makhachev famously can scarcely throw his left hand straight, tending to wing it out in an arc. Umar’s is tighter mechanically, but it lacks depth and dexterity, mainly functioning on the counter. These setups benefit from responsiveness and subtlety - they become a lot easier if you can probe with the rear hand, wait a beat to see the opponent’s reactions, and exploit it with a penetration step.

Lacking a deft rear hand, Umar is left trying to finagle messy setups with his jab if he wants to shoot with his head outside:

In the examples above, Umar seems to not particularly care what his feet are doing or how his positioning is on entry, trusting that his chain wrestling will be enough to carry him through once he gets a grip on the leg. He dives at the leg, reaches for it from afar, or even falls in its general direction, laboriously chaining up to the finish once he secures a grip. His chain wrestling is stellar enough that it typically works, but a strategy built on wrestling from a disadvantage presumes a big advantage in wrestling skill and at least parity in athleticism. And that is much tougher to pull off against other great fighters.

Against the best competition each of this generation’s top Dagestanis have fought - Merab Dvalishvili, Alexander Volkanovski, Paul Hughes, etc - constantly wrestling from a positional deficit is less feasible, and the wrestling becomes less of an outright fight winner, serving more as a tool to kill any further scoring in a round once they’ve racked up an advantage on the feet.

On the rare occasion Umar faces another southpaw, his shot entries make a lot more sense:

There’s nothing complicated about Umar’s setup here, but the penetration and finish are much more coherent. An inside step takes him right into a high crotch, attacking his opponent’s lead hip with his feet in the correct places, and his head mostly falling into position right outside his opponent’s hip. It takes little adjustment from there to run the pipe and get on top.

Without Yadong squaring himself up and giving up his hips, Umar had to close distance himself to secure the takedowns, and he struggled to wrestle out of the positional deficit he constantly puts himself in.

Umar dives on a double leg from afar with little setup. He gets a grip on the leg, but winds up on both knees with his weight far forward of his hips. That would be enough to finish the takedown against many fighters, but Yadong is a strong defensive wrestler and a monster athlete, so he gets his left hand back to crossface and keeps his hips heavy, stopping Umar in his tracks before he can recover his posture.

Shooting To The Rear Hip

With less than reliable head-outside shots, Umar ends up taking a lot of his best shots with his head inside. In Takedown Taxonomy, I covered shooting with the head inside extensively, and Umar was one of the main examples I used.

It’s true that shooting with the head inside opens up counter knees and uppercuts, but that’s a better argument against predictability than against shooting with the head inside. Any move is the wrong move if made when the opponent is anticipating it.

It’s important to remain aware of the threat, not so we can avoid shooting in the first place, but so we can disarm it. Feints allow us to check our opponent’s reaction and hide our intentions. An opponent remaining set to instantly uncork a powerful counter at the slightest hint of a head inside shot is one who can be feinted out and punished, and that punishment serves as the perfect disguise for a real entry.

When shooting with the head inside, one of they keys is to penetrate to the opponent’s rear hip, rather than just switching head position on a normal penetration step.

A head inside double leg sends much of the penetration’s momentum off to the side of the opponent. If you draw a straight line from the attacker’s lead leg, lead shoulder, and head, it continues into open space beyond the defender, instead of cutting through their center of gravity. The initial impact doesn’t hit as hard, and the power step of the rear leg doesn’t cohere with the finish as easily, since it ends up driving toward the head-side instead of across the defender’s body.

This is where I want to draw a distinction between shooting with the head inside and penetrating to the rear hip. Compare the entries of Gregor Gillespie and Umar Nurmagomedov below:

Gillespie’s head falls on his opponent’s rear hip as he makes contact, but his lower body is positioned better to finish a head-outside double leg, his momentum making contact only with the lead hip. If we imagine his lower body staying in the same position and his head moving to the outside, he’s now in a standard inside step double leg, ready to take a power step with his rear leg and drive across. But his lead leg is far too shallow to drive into a finish, as it’s nowhere near his opponent’s rear hip, and he can’t power step with the leg since it bears his weight. Umar has the same leg forward with his head on the rear hip, but his lead leg is deep enough that it can power his drive across the opponent’s body, his entry crashing his shoulder into the opponent’s rear hip. Umar has both hips under his control and can exert all his force directly on the opponent’s center, while Gillespie is driving off line of his opponent’s hips.

Umar is much more comfortable shooting this way than taking more standard head-outside shots. His jab, which is his only reliable tool for setting up his takedowns, is much more useful for setting up shots to the inside:

Umar frequently uses the inside angle to jab orthodox fighters, stepping inside their lead leg to shorten the path of his jab. That puts his feet closer to their rear leg, where he has less ground to cover to reach their rear hip. Stepping inside the lead leg also lines his face up with the opponent’s rear hand, encouraging them to throw hard and square their hips for his shot.

As slick as these setups are, especially compared to his clumsiness in shooting outside, a lack of comfort and subtlety with his boxing tools make them a rare trick for Umar rather than a consistent route to his takedowns. He prefers to position himself outside jabbing range, so he ends up spending little time probing and touching with his jab, gathering information on his opponent’s reactions, and building the comfort to draw out the punches he wants to shoot under. In the second clip above against Almakhan, Umar gets a great setup but ends up rushing his entry, letting his jab and penetration go at the same time as a rote, pre-set move rather than drawing and sensing the opening. He succeeds at drawing out the overhand, but buries his head to the ground and misjudges distance, forcing him to abandon a double leg for a high crotch as he jams his right hand on Almakhan’s leg before he can secure the far hip.

Compare Umar’s entries above to TJ Dillashaw executing a similar shot:

Like Umar, TJ uses his jab to draw the rear hand and shoot underneath, but the details are much more subtle. TJ takes a short beat after his jab, keeping his eyes on Lineker to see his reaction, while Umar tries to stuff the jab and shot together so that he doesn’t have to react. As Lineker’s wide swing comes, TJ gets underneath it and continues looking in the direction he wants his momentum to go as he penetrates knee over toe, spearing Lineker off his feet. When he makes contact with Lineker’s hips, it’s timed so perfectly that Lineker’s hips become as light as a feather, while Umar buries his head into the ground and almost seems surprised when he bumps into Almakhan’s hips.

Umar found a similar moment against Yadong, but he wasn’t ready to turn it into a takedown entry:

Umar touches Yadong’s lead hand twice to set up his inside jab, but he follows it up with a rote combination as Yadong stands in place and looks to land his own rear hand, leading to a clash of heads. Yadong’s right hand counter gives Umar the perfect opening for his head-inside shot, but he’s locked into striking and not prepared to capitalize.

Without the sensitivity to draw out and anticipate specific reactions with his jab, Umar ends up letting good opportunities to shoot pass by and settling for much weaker chances. And his defensive instincts on the outside fight against his desire to wrestle:

Umar raises his rear leg, showing a kick, and shifts forward into a takedown. In the first sequence, Morozov waits a moment to throw his overhand as Umar settles into southpaw, and Umar hits a clean head-inside double leg. In the second sequence, Almakhan fires off his overhand earlier and Umar’s defensive instincts end up getting him in trouble. The setup is fine and the forward shift works to draw out Almakhan’s rear hand, but as Umar sees it coming while he shifts forward, his instinct is to pull his weight backwards and shell up instead of flowing into the takedown, which leaves him open to the overhand.

Why Doesn’t This Happen To The Other Dagestanis?

Umar has proven uniquely vulnerable compared to the other top fighters coming out of his camp, even though they share similar weaknesses in their takedown entries to some extent.

The biggest factor in Umar’s penchant for getting hurt is that he relies far more on his shot takedowns than the rest of his team. Both Islam and Usman are active clinch fighters who tend to enter the clinch and threaten trips and throws when their opponents get aggressive. Falling back on the clinch allows them to use their relatively janky reactive takedowns more sparingly, control the flow of the fight more consistently, and avoid falling into predictable and exploitable reactions.

When comparing how they fight against strong defensive wrestlers, the gap becomes even more clear. Islam reserves shooting at range over and over for weak wrestlers and fellow southpaws, against whom his shot is much more efficient. Against stronger wrestlers, his shot becomes more useful as an entry into an upper body clinch, where he can hit overhooks throws and trips.

Usman Nurmagomedov shares Islam’s focus on clinch fighting, but he also understands how his striking flows into his wrestling much better than the others in his camp.

Usman spends more time in an orthodox stance than both Umar and Islam, which allows him to take more efficient inside step penetration. But he also has far more depth in pairing his striking and grappling, using transitions in the clinch to set up his shots, or throwing kicks to get his feet in the right position to shoot. He also uses his rear hand much more deftly than the others, allowing him to close distance without overextending and to set up clean head-outside shots in open stance matchups.

To some extent, the issues with Umar’s game are baked into his style, but his specific choice of tactics exacerbates his risk compared to similar fighters from his camp. When Yadong remained patient and made Umar come to him with the takedowns, his lack of comfort striking into them let him down, and gave Yadong time and space to draw out and punish his predictable reactive shot.

Every time Umar has been dropped in his UFC run has come out of his predictable and mechanically messy reactive takedown. Even developing a couple different possible reactions to the same inputs that now force him into the level change could make the opening much more difficult to exploit. His clinch game isn’t as deep as that of Islam or Usman, but few fighters in his division are a threat to him in the clinch, and keeping opponents guessing between clinch entries and reactive takedowns would make his level change trickier to punish, while a few reliable takedown setups on the lead would go along way toward making him more consistent.

If you liked this article, you may also enjoy Takedown Taxonomy: A Guide to Takedown Entries in MMA and Takedown Taxonomy 2: Advanced Setups: