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Body Punching: The Future of MMA

One of the top links on the MMA subreddit Thursday was an excellent highlight of some of the more wince inducing body shots in MMA history. This brought to mind one of the questions I am tweeted pretty routinely:
“Why don’t more MMA fighters targe…

“Why don’t more MMA fighters target the body?”

It’s a damn good question.

The benefits of striking the opponent’s body and putting “money in the bank” read like a list of terrible side effects. Body shots may cause tiredness, shortness of breath, lack of coordination in the limbs and, in some extreme cases, soiling oneself.

I think pretty much anyone out there would list these pretty highly in “things I would like to have happen to my opponent while fighting him”, yet so few fighters in MMA commit to body strikes that it’s almost as if many fighters have a gentleman’s agreement only to swing for the head.

Firstly, the punching of the body involves either changing levels (the smarter, safer way) and punching, or dropping one’s hand as one punches. Obviously with an opponent close enough to hit you in the head the last thing you will be wanting to do is reach down and hook his body.

In MMA or Muay Thai one runs the additional risk of ending up on the bad end of a double collar tie. This position, with both hands cupped on the base of an opponent’s skull, is basically the back mount of the fight on the feet.

It is pretty much the worst position to be in mechanically as you will be mostly on the defensive. Fighters are occasionally knocked out while holding the double collar tie, but it is certainly only in exceptional cases.

Nick Diaz has negated this wonderfully and often invites the double collar tie simply in order to stay in posture and throw hooks at his opponent’s ribs while their arms are pre-occupied on the clinch. It’s a dangerous tactic and if you do it badly, or even reasonably well, you end up getting hit with knees like Fabio Maldonado often does from this position.

Maldonado and Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira have also been pioneering taking the under hook on one side of the opponent against the fence, pressing in with their head and landing hard body shots with the free arm. While “Big Nog” is not a particularly skilled or effective puncher, Maldonado can really beat his opponents body up from here.

A final problem with the prospect of striking the body is that it requires a degree of commitment. Against a professional athlete one is rarely going to land a body punch with single strike knockdown force. They are more common in MMA because of the rarity of their use, but in boxing a single body shot knockout is pretty rare.

Ricky Hatton and Roy Jones Jr. famously put opponents down with one good body punch, but they also fought plenty of fights where they threw scores of punches to the body and aside from the opponent slowing and tiring there was little sign of their effect.

Striking the body means committing to landing a good volume of body strikes and knowing that they will give a fighter an edge which gets sharper with every blow landed, not necessarily get the job done on their own.

If a fighter feels he can knock an opponent out with one good punch to the head, he may be in the attitude of “if i’m not swinging for his head, he’ll be swinging for mine.”

Just look at the Diaz brothers. Granted they have exceptional chins and their defense is pretty shoddy, but it is shocking how few punches an opponent can throw with power when he is answered with body punches.

Once an opponent gets hit with a body punch he is also less inclined to throw punches altogether.

When you throw a punch and your fist leaves your chin, you can move your head and lift your shoulder make the best of protecting that side. You can’t protect your body while punching.

There are very, very few punches which allow the elbows to stay in a good, protective posture. If a fighter is tagged with a good body punch mid attack he is anything but keen to immediately take his elbows away from his midsection.

The number of ways to alleviate the danger of attacking the body is enormous, and the variety of set ups shown in the aforementioned highlight definitely make it worth a watch.

0:04 Max Holloway uses a double left hook (or a lever punch) to keep his opponent’s hands high before sneaking a palm down right hook in to the body (George Foreman style) and a left hook to follow.

0:28 Cub Swanson punishes his opponent for lifting his leg to check a kick by leaping in with a left hook to the body. This kind of feinting an opponent into checking and shelling up, before sneaking a left hook through to their liver was a favourite of Ernesto Hoost. He could get anyone to check his kicks so it served him wonderfully to have the body shot as a plan B.

0:42 Jon Jones performs a simple hand trap to keep Vitor’s lead elbow from obstructing the side kick which follows.

0:49 Anderson Silva pushes Stefan Bonnar onto the fence and hops to catch Bonnar with a switch knee as he returns off of the fence. I examined this here.

1:14 Donald Cerrone is over-reacting to the threat of Anthony Pettis’ infamous high kick and leaves himself exposed to a liver kick. The exact same thing worked for Mirko Cro Cop at 2:55 and 3:05. Sometimes a reputation can serve as enough of a set up.

1:45 Is a beautiful example of something I congratulate every fighter who attempts it on, hopping up from the knees against the turtle to land knee strikes to the midsection. Beautiful.

2:20 You can see Rory MacDonald working the body up and down. BJ Penn can’t move his head with the constant threat of high kicks and body kicks and so must stand up and defend his head.

When Penn attempts to check kicks MacDonald punches him through the shell as Cub Swanson did above. When Penn bends forward in pain it is back to the high kicks which forces Penn back upright and exposes his body all over again.

3:30 Alistair Overeem demonstrates how punching always exposes the rib cage as he knees underneath his opponent’s right straight. In Muay Thai this is usually accompanied with a parry, but Overeem eats the punch.

The highlight rounds out with some beautiful Dennis Siver back kicks. These work wonderfully in tandem with the lead leg high kick which he uses to keep his opponents upright and defensive all bout.

As you can see, body shots are hard to land, but this actually makes fighters who want to land them work harder to set the body strikes up. I could take any MMA knockouts highlight from the Internet and there wouldn’t be nearly so much technique at play, it would be a lot of overhands and blind left hooks. But the guys in this video learned to set their strikes up, and it really shows.

Pick up Jack’s eBooks Advanced Striking and Elementary Striking from his blog, Fights Gone By.

Jack can also be found on Facebook and Twitter.

Read more MMA news on BleacherReport.com

Alexander Gustafsson: Coming of Age in a Dog Fight

UFC 165 was a tough event to sell. A largely untested European fighter was meeting Jon Jones and all Zuffa employees could do to sell the fight was put together that awful exploding head trailer. Yet those of us who tuned in to see the fight were rewar…

This fight broke a seven fight streak of title defenses in all UFC divisions failing to go to decision but you would be insane to call it a boring bout.

For just over three rounds, Alexander Gustafsson performed out of his skin and soundly drubbed the champion on the feet.

This fight produced the perfect outcome for Gustafsson. After the bout, forums and blogs were flooded with opinions and bickering; Gustafsson was robbed. Jones looked bad. Jones only wins fights because of his physical advantages. And so on.

I’m here to add my voice to the rabble and give—hopefully—a little insight into just why Gustafsson did so well and why he looked nothing like his usual self.

The Importance of Movement

Jon Jones has an easy day when his opponents come straight at him, but his brilliant leg attack made me skeptical of Gustafsson‘s chances to use his footwork. Gustafsson enjoys circling laterally and the way to counter that is to meet that with a circular strike from the side he is circling to.

A nice example is Frankie Edgar being slowed down and forced to stand in front of Benson Henderson because of Bendo’s constant threat of the low kick.

Jones, however, does not use round kicks nearly so much as he used to. Looking almost exclusively for his straight kicks to the front of the leg.

Front kicks are a wonderful means of using one’s height and keeping the distance, but missing one can leave an aggressive kicker very off balance. One need only review the Nandor Guelmino vs. Daniel Omielanczuk finish from the prelims to be reminded of that.

As long as Gustafsson threatened to stay mobile, he could put Jones off of throwing his kicks which require a good deal of accuracy.

Whenever Gustafsson stood directly in front of Jones, however, he would check kicks, move away from them or—most crucially—brace for them and immediately counter with one or more strikes.

Consequently, Jones was nowhere near as active or accurate with his kicks to the knee as he was against the plodding Quinton Jackson.

From the second round onward, Gustafsson would draw Jones’ kicks (which Jones was leading with) and fire back counters. The trip Gustafsson hit at the start of the second, and numerous combinations, came off of checked kicks or ones which Gustafsson simply took with the expectation of countering.

Jones attempted a good many back kicks which—being a spinning technique rather than a truly linear technique—can achieve the desired affect if an opponent circles into them, but Gustafsson was too wily for the most part.

Gustafsson did not simply run from side to side but would often stand in front of Jones and start plodding his way in, taking the push kicks to the knee as he did so. Fighting heavy on his front leg Gustafsson could work his body jab and his counter left hook well while Jones tried to keep him off and had little effect.

Earlier this week the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter published an article on Gustafsson likening the “baptism by fire” that he was receiving against Jones to that of Ingemar Johansson in his first bout with Floyd Patterson.

To take nothing away from Johansson, however, Gustaffson looked nothing like his countryman in the ring.

Johansson knew that he must land his right hand—variously called “Ingo’s Bingo” and “Thor’s Hammer”—to win.

Gustafsson instead worked Jones from head to toe with everything in his tool kit. He jabbed, body jabbed, hooked, kicked low and took Jones down and found numerous holes for his own “Bingo” in the middle of all of this.

Variety is the spice of the boxing game and Gustafsson threw curry powder into Jones’ eyes time and time again.

Understandably, Gustafsson‘s work rate and unfamiliarity with 25 minute bouts led to him slowing in the final stanza. Round five was pretty much all Jones. Gustafsson had let a few snapping high kicks come uncomfortably close to his jawline throughout the bout because of his relaxed posture, but in round five he had neither the strength to stop them nor the energy to move away.

Proper Boxing

If UFC 165 did not make it abundantly clear, boxing technique still has a long way to come in MMA for most fighters, and good boxing technique can bewilder even the best all around fighter in the world.

By technique I do not mean leaping across the floor the quickest or holding one’s hands tight defensively as Georges St. Pierre is so brilliant at. I mean the creativity which a skilled boxing technician has on the feet.

Many coaches treat the body jab as a nothing punch in MMA, yet from the second round of this title bout onward, Gustafsson‘s body jab allowed him to go on offense.

Standing directly in front of Jones he would jab for Jones’ solar plexus then immediately return to an upright posture to hit Jones with a jab, right straight or left hook in the head.

Punch variety confuses people far more than speed or power alone can, something which Junior Dos Santos has been showing in the heavyweight division for some time. While Gustafsson got hit a few times as he attempted uppercuts from a misjudged range with his hands down, something I alluded to in my last article, for the most part he looked like that most mythical of creatures in MMA—a skilled boxer who can stop an elite wrestler’s takedowns.

Jones’ Ring Science

Being blown away by Gustafsson‘s performance shouldn’t let us detract from Jones’ own work, however. The champion outlasted the challenger and battered him through the last round and a quarter with experience and grit.

In addition to the repeated spinning back kicks which Jones used to corral Gustafsson every time he began circling, he also connected some nasty roundhouse kicks on Gustafsson‘s right arm as the Swede circled to his right.

Jones’ greatest moments in this bout were undoubtedly his double spinning elbow and his high kicks.

The high kicks were simply snapped up from stance throughout the fight and often caught Gustafsson off guard even while he was fresh.

The spinning back elbow in the fourth round which did the damage to Gustafsson‘s will and face was an attempt to punish Gustafsson for his inside slip (which took him into the path of the elbow). The genius came in that Jones attempted it once, then immediately did exactly the same thing and connected it flush.

Just as “no good fighter” will lead with a right hand, no good fighter will attempt the same technique twice in a row. That makes it all the more surprising when a truly elite fighter does it.

After a fighter misses a spinning technique he is expected to get tentative and try it again later in the fight, not immediately.

Styles Make Fights

How then did I—and in my defence, most others in the fight game—not see Gustafsson as having much of a chance against Jones?

Firstly there is the issue of competition. Some fighters are great at wrecking less than stellar competition, but others rise to the occasion much better if they are put in front of someone truly terrifying.

Chris Weidman and Alexander Gustafsson both never fought a top five contender until they met the champion, and both astounded us with their all around skill in their title fights. Gustafsson didn’t look half so good against Thiago Silva and a shambling Mauricio ‘Shogun’ Rua as he did against Jones.

A second, and more important reason is that old adage of the fight game; styles make fights.

Immediately after the fight there was talk of how Jones struggled with someone his own size, and this much is true, but the assertion that he only wins because of his size advantage over his opponents is clearly ridiculous.

Jones excels at using his reach advantage. He does so better than anyone in the MMA game. Alexander Gustafsson is pretty mediocre at using his reach.

Rather than avoid the danger and fight from the outside against shorter opponents as Jones does, Gustafsson will move in close against much shorter opponents and attempt to fight them from a range where they can both strike.

While Jones is much more effective with his reach, it took Gustafsson meeting an opponent of similar stature of his own to properly apply the game that he has always wanted to.

Slipping inside of Jones’ strikes and coming back with combinations, moving inside of Jones’ kicks, this is the kind of stuff that one would have trouble doing as a taller fighter, but it all worked so well for Gustafsson against the first opponent of similar stature that he has met.

Many have called for Jones to make a move to heavyweight but honestly after last night, seeing Gustafsson‘s full boxing style come out against a gigantic light heavyweight, I feel like Gustafsson might have more success at heavyweight than Jones would.

He simply doesn’t use his reach well enough as a giant in his division, at heavyweight he would be able to employ all the slick moves he pulled off against Jones.

I always steer well clear of predictions because it’s all guess work to me, but I would be very surprised if Gustafsson didn’t turn into something very special in his next few bouts.

Pick up Jack’s eBooks Advanced Striking and Elementary Striking from his blog, Fights Gone By.

Jack can also be found on Facebook and Twitter.

Read more MMA news on BleacherReport.com

Eddie Wineland: Style and Grace

I like Eddie Wineland. Watching him fight is a study in style and grace in MMA as he glides and bounces around the cage. Too many fighters are happy to simply wade in and lock horns.
At UFC 165 Eddie Wineland will meet Renan Barao for the interim …

I like Eddie Wineland. Watching him fight is a study in style and grace in MMA as he glides and bounces around the cage. Too many fighters are happy to simply wade in and lock horns.

At UFC 165 Eddie Wineland will meet Renan Barao for the interim (but in reality the actual) Bantamweight title in a match which is being largely overlooked because of the Jones vs Gustafsson main event.

Today we will take a brief look at Wineland’s tendencies and skills.

The first thing to note is that Wineland loves to move. Normally the taller of the two combatants at bantamweight, he will stay on the outside and look for long punches when he can bait an opponent to step in to meet him.

With Wineland and Gustafsson fighting in one night this weekend we could well be set to see a thoroughly worn out octagon mat by the end of the night. Wineland, as with any other movement-based fighter (e.g. Frankie Edgar, Alexander Gustafsson, Dominick Cruz) can be a little stifled by low kicks as he either ends up taking them while in no position to brace, or has to pick up his lead leg to deal with them.

Wineland’s last two opponents, Scott Jorgensen and Brad Pickett have hardly been the kind of fighters to take advantage of that, but it showed up briefly in the Pickett bout as Pickett buckled Wineland’s stance with a couple of kicks.

W. C. Heinz described Sugar Ray Robinson as a master of firm prose, reluctant to waste a word. He contrasted this with Willie Pep who was more “a poet, often implying, with his feints and with his footwork, more than he said.” Obviously Eddie Wineland is nowhere near Willie Pep or Ray Robinson but I enjoyed this contrast of styles and the different methods used to get the job done.

Renan Barao is not dissimilar to that description of Robinson. When he wants to kick he kicks. When he wants to jab he jabs. He is fast, and has tight, crisp technique, but he makes nowhere near the effort to lie to his opponent that Wineland does.

Wineland is more in line with that description of Willie Pep’s methodology. He is one of the few fighters who uses feints effectively because he is one of the few fighters who doesn’t feint once and wait to see if it works. Wineland’s feints are constant and embedded into his bouncing and his rhythm. He will feint with his shoulders, with his hands and with his feet.

Wineland doesn’t change his game around whether they are working or not, they just serve as an extra layer to make life a good deal more complex for his opponent.

In his most recent bout, against Brad Pickett, Eddie Wineland also displayed a neat trick from the repetoire of the great Archie Moore. If you have followed my articles for a while you will know how highly I, and most others in the boxing community, regard “The Old Mongoose.” The strategy which Wineland imitated (though he probably came to it through his own experimentation of course) was Archie Moore’s famed “left cross.”

In an interview with Sports Illustrated before his challenge for Rocky Marciano’s title, “Ageless Archie” remarked:

The left cross, it’s a different punch. Not many of them throw it. They don’t know it exists. Anybody tell you they no such thing as a left cross, you tell them they’re a liar. Why isn’t there such a thing as a left cross? There’s a right cross, and you got two hands. Anything you do with your right hand you can do with your left hand.

By squaring the hips, one can throw a left straight with a full hip twist as one would throw a right straight. This is the technique which Wineland used time and time again against Pickett. Squaring his hips to fake a right, Wineland would shoot his left straight through Pickett’s head when Pickett came to close in on him.

Against Scott Jorgensen, Wineland showed no need to wind up on his jab. Each time Scotty came at him, Wineland jacked the smaller man’s head back with a stiff jab straight out of his stance, normally slipping the incoming strike at the same time. Slipping the jab and landing one’s own is boxing 101.

Wineland is also excellent at convincing his opponent to close in on him before nailing them with a hard right straight. It is doubtlessly his money punch. Brad Pickett ate right after right as he chased Wineland. It really was the story of that fight.

If I had to pick a flaw in Wineland from that bout I would say that he suffers from the same fault which I pointed out in Gilbert Melendez to a friend a while back—he doesn’t “close the door”. Because Melendez and Wineland both consider their right hand a fight finisher (and evidence very much suggests they both can be) they both consequently consider it a combination finisher, which it rarely should be.

Both men will throw a flurry of punches culminating with a right hand, then just drop it and slowly move back into stance, wide open to counters.

Regular readers will be used to me saying this by now but the defensive genius of men like Mike Tyson, Floyd Mayweather and Roberto Duran was made much easier for them because they put themselves in a position where they rarely had to react.

Reacting is tiring and requires a fighter to be on a hair trigger all fight. If you throw a punch and immediately take what Mike Tyson’s team called “defensive moves” afterward, you massively reduce your chances of being hit with a counter and remove the need to react to one. Just watch Mayweather versus Juan Manuel Marquez—after every good combination he is either behind his lead shoulder or ducking out of the way.

Of course it doesn’t matter nearly so much when you are out of range or your opponent is moving away, but Melendez and Wineland regularly finish with their right hand within punching range.

If you finish a combination with a right hand—in most instances a mid-range punch—you are still in punching range, you are not behind your lead shoulder or moving out to the side, and your head is waiting on a platter. Eddie Wineland outclassed Brad Pickett so thoroughly for the most part that it was very noticeable when Eddie threw a right hand, stood still and got hit with a left hook which never should have troubled him.

Will Eddie Wineland beat Renan Barao at the weekend? I have no idea. I’m not even sure that he has done all that much to warrant a title shot, but too few fans are familiar with Wineland or appreciate that brilliance which he routinely shows in the cage.

Watch the fight and appreciate two very different, technical and clever strikers going at it.

Pick up Jack’s eBooks Advanced Striking and Elementary Striking from his blog, Fights Gone By.

Jack can also be found on Facebook and Twitter.

Read more MMA news on BleacherReport.com

Jon Jones: The Greatest of All Time?

In the fight world, there is a grotesque fascination with one phrase: The Greatest of All Time.
Type it into Google and I am sure that you will find forum threads from all over the internet on whether Joe Louis or Muhammad Ali was the Greatest of All T…

In the fight world, there is a grotesque fascination with one phrase: The Greatest of All Time.

Type it into Google and I am sure that you will find forum threads from all over the internet on whether Joe Louis or Muhammad Ali was the Greatest of All Time. Then someone will bring up Rocky Marciano, or an elitist will bring up Jack Johnson or even Sam Langford and say that they could paste the fighters of today.

Not a day goes by that I do not receive a question along the lines of, “Hey Jack, who would you say is the greatest fighter at x of all time?” These range from the open and vague to the bizarrely specific. “Who is the greatest right-handed southpaw in lightweight history?”

And why shouldn’t fans have this fetish for absolutes? One on one combat is the single most absolute of activities. Fights decide who is the better of two men; if you lose you are the weaker man, and if you win you are the stronger.

Of course, that is not how fighting really works. A fight is a one-off event and a lot more enters the cage than the men seen walking into it. Hundreds of man hours are put into each fighter’s performance; not just his own, but his team’s man-hours.

The question which comes up in forums time and time again, and the question which I am concerned with today, is whether Jon Jones is the greatest light heavyweight, or even the greatest fighter, in this sport’s short history.

It all depends on what you’re ranking—skill, athleticism or achievement?

There are only a few light heavyweights whom one could argue exceeded Jones in any area and those would, for most people, be Chuck Liddell, Wanderlei Silva and perhaps Mauricio Rua and Quinton Jackson.

Skill and Technique

In terms of skill, we are living in a different era from the days of Liddell and Silva. When those men were dominating on different sides of the world, they were considered incredible strikers because they had knockout power.

The attrition tactics which Jones and so many other UFC champions use today—low kicks and body shots, especially—were barely present at all when Silva and Liddell took their titles, and were only starting to become more popular when PRIDE was bought out.

It is easy to forget that when Silva and Liddell excelled in PRIDE and the UFC, respectively, it was more than enough to simply be good at two areas of the mixed martial arts game. Because Liddell could stay on his feet and had heavy hands, he was untouchable. Similarly, Silva was an ultra-aggressive striker with enough of a ground game to get by.

Today’s mixed martial arts competition has turned into a real tactical battle. Each fighter can do well enough in each area of combat (for the most part) to have a good go at each, and should the fight be going south in one area, they may attempt to transition the entire fight to another.

Jones is, along with Georges St. Pierre, the most well-rounded fighter to grace MMA to date. Not only can he wrestle better than anyone in his division, he can out-strike the best there, too.

Wanderlei Silva was never in complete control of where the fight was taking place, which necessitated his aggression when the bout was actually on the feet. Chuck Liddell could control where the fight took place against grapplers, but often his takedown defense involved him opening up his defenses on the feet.

The two outside contenders for “greatest of all time” consideration, Mauricio Rua and Quinton Jackson, suffered similar deficiencies, particularly later in their careers. Shogun was a whirling dervish on the feet and had some neat trips and great ground-and-pound, but he could not stop a takedown to save his life. Jackson could keep his hands high to box and still stuff even Jones’ takedowns, but was absolutely stifled if he could not get into swinging range.

Jon Jones is the first great light heavyweight who is in complete control of where the fight takes place. One of the reasons that my Killing the King: Jon Jones was so difficult to write was that there is no simple answer to his effective use of reach and great wrestling.

In technical ability alone, as you would expect in a rapidly evolving sport, Jon Jones is by far the best-rounded light heavyweight to date. His ability to fight to a different gameplan in each fight is also something which could not be seen so readily in the fights of Silva or Liddell.

Athleticism and Build

This is an interesting one to consider. Obviously, there hasn’t been a light heavyweight built like Jon Jones. There aren’t even that many human beings built like Jon Jones with his Sonny Liston-esque wingspan.

An 84-inch reach on a 6’4″ frame is certainly disproportionate and unique, but also Jones is incredible athletically. His success as a wrestler will testify to that, but his brothers, Arthur and Chandler, with whom Jones obviously shares a huge amount of his genes, are both successful players for NFL franchises.

When Jones began to excel in MMA, we were fed the lines about super-athletes and how they were now coming to MMA. In truth, Jones could be the first of many, but there just isn’t enough money here to draw athletic youths away from more lucrative career paths from which they will get more esteem or the chance of a scholarship.

Compared to the wild young man from Curitiba who got into fighting because he was short and fat, Jones is obviously more in line with a traditional sports star.

Jones is, athletically and physically, a big fish in a small pond in today’s mixed martial arts picture.

Young men who can compare to him in athleticism or physical gifts will simply not be forthcoming unless they truly love fighting more than the prospect of excelling in another sport, or until purses in the UFC become more respectable.

Achievement and Competition Fought

This, more than anything else, is what most people think of when rating a fighter pound for pound or claiming that they are the greatest.

Considering that Jon Jones is now suffering from having cleared out all the familiar names in his division, it is fairly safe to say that he is accomplished against top level competition. Jones demolished Shogun, Jackson, Machida and Evans—undoubtedly the biggest names in his division.

Recently, however, Jones has been given the kind of irrelevant tune-up fights that Wanderlei Silva is so often criticized for receiving in PRIDE. Of course, Chael Sonnen and Vitor Belfort are a little bit more dangerous than Kanehara ever was, but the matches were still irrelevant and did little to improve Jones’ list of accomplishments.

Where Silva went on a four-year undefeated streak against names such as Dan Henderson, Kazushi Sakuraba, Hidehiko Yoshida and Quinton Jackson, there were also a great many filler fights in that time.

In the meantime Chuck Liddell was being fed grapplers who wouldn’t trouble him on the feet so that he could continue to sprawl on people and knock them out when they got tired or desperate.

But then two of Jones’ biggest wins are over men who had been through more than a decade of fighting before they met him. Certainly they had proven themselves in the division at the time, but equally, how weak is a division if the same names can be in the Top 10 for so long with so few notable new fighters coming through.

Jones was part of a batch of new light heavyweights who got us all excited, yet so many of the others utterly failed. Who remembers Luis Cane or Sokoudjou?

Is Jones the greatest light heavyweight in MMA history, then? Certainly he’s held the belt for the longest since the UFC bought out PRIDE. He has a more impressive set of skills and ability to fight to a gameplan than any previous champion, and he’s beaten many of the old favorites. It’s hard to argue against those credentials.

On a bittersweet note, however, Jones’ success highlights not only the lack of athletically gifted young prospects coming to MMA, or the changing nature of the game, but the remarkably stagnant nature of the light heavyweight division. With so few young light heavyweights coming up, we have to wonder where Jones goes if he can keep wiping out named opponents.

Pick up Jack’s eBooks Advanced Striking and Elementary Striking from his blog, Fights Gone By.

Jack can also be found on Facebook and Twitter.

Read more MMA news on BleacherReport.com

Alexander Gustafsson: Strategically Sound, Defensively Flawed

Alexander Gustafsson has been touted as the next big thing for as long as I can remember hearing his name. Next weekend he meets Jon Jones for the light heavyweight belt at UFC 165 and we are all anxious to see if he can back up this hype.
In the fight…

In the fight world you are only ever as good as your last fight, in fact the last fight on Gustafsson‘s record reads as a massive step up in competition despite the declining athleticism of Mauricio ‘Shogun’ Rua. Today we will briefly examine that bout.

Of course plenty of fighters have had mediocre showings and gone on to look incredible in their next bout so don’t put too much stock in Alexander Gustafsson not having a chance of defeating Jon Jones. I shall try to point out the habits which Gustafsson has shown before and which were still evident in his most recent bout.

Height and Reach

The first thing to note is that Gustafsson uses his height well.

So much is being made of Gustafsson‘s height and reach—his height being on a level with Jones but his reach being a more proportional length than Jon Jones’ remarkable reach. The amount we are hearing about it reminds me of the ludicrous talk about glove sizes and heights in the lead up to Shane Carwin versus Brock Lesnar.

Height has the same effect as reach in a bout if used correctly because when an opponent is forced to punch upward he loses reach. Extend your arm out straight in front of your shoulder and you will be able to reach further in front of you than if you start bringing your arm up to eye level or higher.

As a brief aside (or a neat fact for you to bring up with a friend if you’re looking for an excuse to segue into fight talk), it is for this reason that if you go into many coffee houses or newsagents you will notice that the staff standing behind the counter are elevated on a higher floor than on your side of the counter.

This is so that the person serving you is stood over you in case of a dispute. Firstly for the psychological affect brought on by the silliness of shouting upward, but secondly because should someone take a swing at the staff over the counter they would have to swing upwards.

Gustafsson‘s Defense

Against Shogun this was the story of the bout. Gustafsson would throw three or four slapping strikes to land a good one on the end, and Shogun would swing alternately, mainly hitting air.

Gustafsson showed the same jab-jab-body hook, jab-jab-low kick stuff that he has shown before, but in this bout his uppercut really seemed to be wasted. The uppercut is a punch for use against a hunched fighter when he is charging in on you, or for keeping a fighter upright for hooks.

Gustafsson, however, throws it at range as a long and ineffectual strike. Chasing with the uppercut never works nearly as well as catching a fighter ducking in as Gustafsson did against Silva.

Shogun was too upright for the uppercut to ever have much effect at range, yet whenever he got in close and Gustafsson threw it, Gustafsson dropped his non-punching hand so low that he ate an overhand each time.

This brings me to the main problem with Gustafsson‘s otherwise polished stand up game. Gustafsson is remarkably easy to time when coming in.

Gustafsson does great work when an opponent is chasing him and he is using the Machida strategy of “retreat, retreat, retreat, step in,” but on offense he can be overzealous.

On offense Gustafsson suffers from a similar fault as Donald Cerrone: if an opponent gives ground he’ll chase them with strikes, land a hard low kick and generally make their life miserable. Long, looping techniques which can catch an opponent even if he is retreating at top speed. Should the opponent stand their ground and trade however, both Cerrone and Gustafsson struggle.

A brilliant example was the telegraphed low kick which Gustafsson threw at Shogun in the opening round of their bout, clearly expecting Shogun to retreat but instead finding himself right on top of the Brazilian, taking a punch to the face then being taken down.

If the famously limited wrestling of Shogun can get a fighter down when he kicks like that, it’s not a great thing to attempt against Jon Jones.

Something to notice throughout is that Gustafsson has just never learned to keep his hands up and defend himself well at all because of the height advantage he enjoys in many of his bouts. In the intercepting knee at the top of the article you can see that if Shogun weren’t so disadvantaged in height against Gustafsson he could have flattened the Swede.

The same is the case in every instance in which Gustafsson was caught in that bout. Shogun is not a polished striker. The greatest part of his game was his incredible kicking ability but since that has been destroyed by terrible luck with knee injuries all that is left is a rather heavy handed brawler with little strategy.

Thoughts on the Big Fight

I am sure that I am seeming terribly pessimistic of Gustafsson‘s chances in his title bout, but it is important to remember that he did make Shogun miss an awful lot. Shogun’s connection rate in the bout was pretty shoddy and while Gustafsson‘s wasn’t much better he is a volume striker and connected far more strikes overall.

When Gustafsson is moving or has finished his strikes and is getting out of range again, he is superb. The problems come in his dropping of his hands as he comes forwards and relying on being too far away rather than taking any defensive measures after he has landed his strikes.

Now another fighter who somewhat resembled Gustafsson in some of his strategies (mainly the baiting of the chase as Gustafsson did against Hammil and Silva) also shared the same basic flaw of dropping his non-punching hand when engaging. Jones and his team exploited that masterfully with a long right hook and later the superman left hook which dropped Machida as he attempted his legendary left straight counter.

It is unlikely that Gustafsson‘s sloppy defense during strikes has gone unnoticed by Team Jackson/Winkeljohn. Let us remember that it was only Rashad Evans’ decent defensive form that stopped him from being put to sleep by the counter elbows which Jones was chucking at him every time he stepped in.

This is not to say that Gustafsson cannot beat Jones. To say that with any amount of time spent watching MMA would be flat out ridiculous. We can’t predict anything that will happen. He’s a keen kicker and he’s a smart fighter, something which the higher weight classes are particularly short of. He blends trips into strikes masterfully in a way which is reminiscent of Anderson Silva or Fedor Emelianenko, and he’ll pick up visually stunning trips from striking range.

Additionally Jones’ last two matches have not been against elite light heavyweights but rather against middleweights in tune ups. In both matches Jones got injured despite the seemingly safer nature of the bouts. This could be a sign of Jones slipping, or simply a sign of him underestimating Vitor Belfort’s guard and suffering a freak injury against Chael Sonnen.

Stay tuned for a look at Eddie Wineland and Renan Barao!

Pick up Jack’s eBooks Advanced Striking and Elementary Striking from his blog, Fights Gone By.

Jack can also be found on Facebook and Twitter.

Read more MMA news on BleacherReport.com

Killing the King: Bridging the Gap with Jon Jones

I began my Killing the King series back in September of 2012 at Bloody Elbow with Jon Jones. One year and some of the champions have changed places, but Jones remains dominant in the light heavyweight division. I feel as though now, with a few more good fights under Jones’ belt, it is a good time to reevaluate the strengths and flaws of the light heavyweight king.

I will put it out there now, having a big punch is not nearly enough. Anyone who is saying “he’s never faced a boxer like x” or “no-one with hands as heavy as y” is really basing their case on very little. In the light heavyweight division of 2013 very few of the top 10 can’t knock an opponent out with a good punch.

Forrest Griffin is retired, Tito Ortiz is off in Bellator and though Chael Sonnen beat Shogun a few weeks ago, he is unlikely to be continuing in the light heavyweight division. The light heavyweight who lacks punching power is just not all that common in the upper echelons nowadays.

It makes great pre-fight hype in interviews, but “he’s never been hit like I’m going to hit him” or “once he tastes my power…” are not solid game plans for bringing down a fighter who has taken on a truly mixed bag of elite competition and smashed them all.

Reverse Engineering

Some fighters frequently use strategies which a traditional game plan can be implemented against. Anderson Silva pulls straight away from punches at the waist in almost every fight. I pointed to this in my Killing the King: Anderson Silva and suggested that convincing him to overextend could be a sound traditional means of hitting him cleanly. This wasn’t clairvoyance on my part, simply understanding the boxing game wherein it has happened hundreds of times before.

It happened to Randy Turpin, Muhammad Ali, Prince Naseem and Roy Jones and just about every other fighter who routinely pulls straight back from punches—they just recovered their senses to a standing eight count instead of an angry Chris Weidman ground and pounding them.

Other fighters lack such trademark tendencies. When a fighter looks truly terrifying and one begins to think “where on earth do I start trying to break this guy down?” the best method is to find what he is really great at, then work backwards from there.

Jon Jones is a fantastic wrestler, but more and more we have seen him grind his more dangerous opponents down at range on the feet. Something which Jones has really pioneered in MMA is the attacking of the lead leg and body before moving to his excellent wrestling and ground and pound.

Now Jones’ wrestling is high level but not unstoppable. There was a reason he chose to grind Quinton Jackson down over four rounds rather than trying to muscle Rampage to the floor and finish him there in the opening round. Rampage stopped all of Jones’ attempts to take him down and keep him there in the first three rounds until he was tired and visibly injured.

So assuming that his challenger has decent enough takedown defense to at least dissuade Jones from immediately rushing them to the clinch and rag-dolling them to the floor, the early part of a fight at least should be a stand up one.

Now Jones’ greatest weapon is his kicking game, particularly his destructive low kicks and body kicks.

Jones, unlike almost all big men in MMA, actually uses his reach superbly and circles out whenever he is in danger. Whether a fighter wants to take Jones down or knock him out, he has to get close enough to do that and in order to achieve this he must find a way of bridging the gap.

The Trouble with Hitting Jon Jones

One of the reasons that Quinton Jackson and just about anyone who needs to get into punching range is such an easy match up for Jones is that in order to swing they need to get close enough to transfer their weight from their back foot to their front foot (for a right hand such as Glover Teixeira’s go to lead) or onto their front leg and then back again in a left hook (as is the favourite of Jackson and Shogun).

Each time Rampage, Rashad Evans or Vitor Belfort even began to close in on him, Jones would shoot out a thrust kick to the body or lead knee, or a brutal roundhouse kick to the head or lead leg. If you can’t even put your lead foot down in range of Jones, you sure as hell aren’t going to connect hooks on him.

Something interesting about Jones is that his new reliance on his grinding kicking game has necessitated a move away from his lead foot heavy stance which I remarked on a year ago. Jones is now fighting from a more upright, kick enabling stance and consequently shoots less for his opponents’ hips or legs, instead doing his best wrestling mainly out of the clinch.

If Jones’ challenger stays in a crouched, wide stance, hoping to stop shots and swing with all his might, he is just playing into Jones’ new game. Wide stances are slow to check kicks out of and that allows Jones to kick at his opponent’s legs with impunity.

To check kicks effectively and give oneself time to react without having to completely move one’s weight, a higher stance is needed. We don’t see many high stances in MMA but one of the best examples is Jose Aldo. He will stand very tall with his feet in almost a Muay Thai like stance, underneath him and ready to check or switch and kick. But Aldo, like a few really good kickboxers, can move from this Muay Thai like stance into a more aggressive boxing base when he steps in to attack.

Jones is going to keep the opponent off of their front foot anyway with oblique kicks and thrust kicks. It is the opponent’s job to make sure that he is lifting his knee and checking kicks rather than simply taking them, being slowed down and beaten up in the process.

A great example of a world-class kickboxer who remains very light on his front foot until he is absolutely ready to get into range and start punching is Giorgio Petrosyan. Petrosyan will use his lead leg to check kicks and then set it down in a longer stance and begin punching, or will pick his lead leg straight up to teep and throw his opponent off.

It never ceases to amaze me how few MMA fighters, even when training for a bout against a renowned kicker, do not seem prepared to check low kicks. Not only is refusing to check low kicks simply giving the opponent points and damaging a fighter’s own objectives, but checking kicks well can easily put an opponent off of throwing them or injure him in the process.

The Korean Zombie was the first fighter I have seen fight Jose Aldo and actually look prepared to check kicks. Everyone else I have seen Aldo fight has been crouched and ready to throw their own punches, leaving their lead leg on a platter for the Brazilian genius.

As soon as Aldo threw his first kick against Chan Sung Jung, it was checked and Aldo broke his foot in the process. It isn’t uncommon to see powerful low kickers injure themselves as they kick into a good check.

In fact if one makes the effort to “knee spike,” checking with the top of the shin and knee cap rather than the middle of the shin, they can pretty much ensure that the opponent connects on something which is harder than his shin bone.

Ernesto Hoost, an incredibly wily veteran of the Muay Thai and kickboxing world, won the second match of his 2002 K-1 Grand Prix winning run by checking Ray Sefo‘s low kick in such a way.

If Ray Sefo, who has been smashing bags and kicking folks in the leg on multiple continents for years, can hurt himself on a good check, Jon Jones (who has picked up the kicking game relatively recently) can too.

What Jose Aldo and Jon Jones are doing so well is fighting a kickboxing bout against guys who want a tough man contest.

Getting in with Punches

At this point, or at least for his next two bouts (assuming he wins the first), Jon Jones is lined up to fight two fighters who can really be considered rounded fighters but who have cut their niche out on the feet. Gustafsson through hyperactive movement, and Glover Teixeira through power.

It is not beyond either man to catch Jon Jones and put him to sleep (it is certainly even more of a danger as he is coming off of two “gimme” fights against middleweights and could be complacent), but nothing that they have shown to this point shows any signs allowing them to walk through the kicks of Jones to get close enough.

I will look at the style of each man in detail through the coming weeks I am sure (Gustafsson sooner than Teixeira), but here I shall attempt to outline both men in brief. Gustafsson‘s game is to back up and hope opponent’s run onto his punches (a la Anderson Silva / Lyoto Machida), or failing that to circle with dozens of faked strikes and then land a meaningful one.

Teixeira’s game is fairly simple, he walks forward until his opponent panics and throws a punch at him, then connects a cross counter: a right hook over the top of the opponent’s jab. Nat Fleischer called it “unquestionably the most severe blow that can be dealt” in boxing and I am inclined to agree. This is the hardest punch most can throw, connecting on the temple as the opponent is focused on his own strike. It pretty much assures at least a wobbled opponent if it lands correctly.

Unfortunately both men have the same flaw: getting to their opponent. It’s easy against fighters who only attack with their hands such as a declining Shogun or Rampage, but a little harder against someone who is going to try to invert your knee joint as your do so or tie you up on the way in.

In order to get in on Jones it might be the best idea to do what is traditionally ill advised against a wrestler—lead with a kick.

Treating a bout with Jones as a kickboxing match until it reaches the clinch might genuinely be a better idea than remaining ready to sprawl all bout and getting ones legs battered in the process before being tripped from the clinch.

Something I touched on last time I examined Jones in detail was that many fighters with good offensive skills have picked them up along the way and it is usually an accumulation of things that have troubled them in training. Bas Rutten’s love of leg locks and specifically knee bars after losing to Ken Shamrock twice by them is a nice example.

Jones’ love of the oblique kick might well reflect firstly it’s annoying affect on one’s stance and opportunities to engage. Certainly it is a more difficult kick to grab a hold of than the standard rear leg roundhouse kick to the thigh.

Inside low kicks are also something I have said could work against Jones. Rampage knocked Jones’ lead leg straight out of his stance with an inside low kick, had Jones standing wide open, and proceeded to do nothing with it.

Getting Jones’ legs up underneath him or forcing him to lift one up negates both his movement (he is very good at circling away from danger) and his ability to shoot a double. Jones doesn’t shoot so much anymore but as a tall fighter he suffers from something of a telegraphed level change if he stands tall. Keeping his legs underneath him also serves as something of an early warning system on the shot.

Of course kicking Jones brings it’s dangers but ultimately fighting Jones is never going to be a walk in the park.

If a fighter can accept the threat of Jones’ takedowns in the clinch and get out of the mindset that he must be squatted at all times in case of a shot, he will have better success in checking or punishing Jones’ kicks, and this is the first step towards getting close enough to land cleanly on Jones.

Pick up Jack’s eBooks Advanced Striking and Elementary Striking from his blog, Fights Gone By.

Jack can also be found on Facebook and Twitter.

Read more MMA news on BleacherReport.com