Author: Jack Slack

UFC Fight Night Travis Browne vs. Alistair Overeem: A Show of True Grit

Alistair Overeem proved once again at UFC Fight Night: Shogun vs Sonnen that he is one of the most talented choke artists in the world, and I’m not talking about his famous guillotine. More than that, Travis Browne showed the kind of toughness which on…

Alistair Overeem proved once again at UFC Fight Night: Shogun vs Sonnen that he is one of the most talented choke artists in the world, and I’m not talking about his famous guillotine. More than that, Travis Browne showed the kind of toughness which one does not usually see in the heavyweight division.

The heavyweight division, whether it be in boxing or MMA, has always been characterized by the emotionally fragile giants who populate it. Sure you see crazy comebacks, but almost inevitably they are a big punch which lands while flailing wildly and hoping for a way out. Very few men at heavyweight can sit through a pasting and grit their teeth until things get better.

It is often the case that the heavyweight division is dominated by smaller men who have the cardio, the work ethic and the lack of a bully mentality that allows them to come back from the horrible bull rush, which large heavyweights almost invariably attempt in the first minutes of a fight.

The men who can endure — the Muhammad Alis, the Antonio Rodrigo Nogueiras and the Fedor Emelianenko —will always be remembered as the greats, while the Alistair Overeems and Brock Lesnars will always be remembered as terrifying but only so long as they get their way.

That Browne can show such durability as a relatively large heavyweight is a great sign. 

From the beginning of the fight, Overeem showed his brilliant aggression with a perfectly varied assault. Body shots, knee strikes to the legs and midsection and flurries of punches upstairs, despite the inevitable joking about “K-1 Level Striking” following his knockout loss, Overeem looked every bit the world class striker in the first moments of the fight.

 

Overeem showed, once again, the finest knee strikes in MMA. Moving Browne to the fence, Overeem did an excellent job of avoiding being tied up close and smothered. Overeem used his head underneath of Browne’s to keep Browne upright while moving his own hips back enough to create room enough between the two fighters’ torsos to throw knee strikes through.

Overeem was able to drop Browne with a beautiful side knee (criminally underused in MMA) as Browne returned to the feet from defending a guillotine attempt. 

Now I can’t break down heart. I can’t tell you how Travis Browne got back up off the mat and ate numerous more knees to the midsection and a couple to the head and went straight back to work. What is important is that he did, and once back on the feet, he got to work with a clear game plan.

Something which fans often lose sight of is that styles make fights, and no amount of “MMath” can accurately predict how a fight will play out. Overeem’s K-1 Grand Prix title is a real achievement, only idiots use Mark Hunt and Overeem’s losses by strikes as evidence that K-1 lacked legitimacy. What Travis Browne did was to exploit something in Overeem’s game which world champion kickboxers missed.

Badr Hari famously got revenge on Alistair Overeem for his 2008 loss to the Dutchman by countering with his right straight inside of Overeem’s open left hook. What Browne and his team did was to find a flaw in Overeem’s defense rather than his offence.

From the moment he was back on his feet and free to work, Browne bombarded Overeem with flicking, high roundhouse kicks and front snap kicks to the midsection. This is a technique which I spoke about the other day in reference to Conor McGregor, and one which is used by far too few fighters. One of the few other major proponents of front snap kicks to the body in MMA is the current light heavyweight king, Jon Jones, unsurprisingly also a student of Browne’s coaches, Mike Winkeljohn and Greg Jackson.

To me the real beauty of martial arts is that there are so many places to look for weaknesses or even characteristics, which could be considered strengths but can be turned against a fighter. One basic concept from boxing is that an upright fighter is basically invulnerable to the traditional uppercut.

Archie Moore (whom I examined in a video in the week) was one of the greatest technical boxers ever, and before his match with Rocky Marciano he observed in an interview with Sports Illustrated Marciano’s habit for missing uppercuts so often.  Moore insisted that the uppercut is a defensive punch: not to a specific strike from the opponent but a counter to their posture and aggression. If an opponent leans forward, as many more aggressive fighters do without realizing, it is the time to uppercut them and no other time.

We can extend these principles to other strikes from underneath as well, such as the flying knee and the front snap kick. Both of these techniques Browne attempted. As Overeem plodded forward and carried his head well forward of his hips, he was in the perfect position to be struck from below.

Browne completely eschewed punches and threw kicks almost exclusively, switching between roundhouse kicks to the head, and front snap kicks to the body and head. Each time a snap kick hit Overeem’s midsection he looked peeved. Each time a snap kick came up through his guard he looked downright confused.

The technique is not at all common in kickboxing, and I honestly wonder if anyone in Overeem’s camp was ever going to start throwing front snap kicks at his face. Overeem’s stance—crouched with his head forward of his hips—is tailor made for this kick on reflection, and it was a great spot by Browne’s camp. 

Overeem’s double forearm defense was stifled by the fact that when he tried to bring his elbows in to block the kicks’ path, Browne immediately clipped him with a roundhouse kick around the side of Overeem’s arms. 

With the victory, Travis Browne takes a step forward into serious consideration for a title shot in a division which is sparse on championship prospects. Further to this, Browne is a 6’7″ heavyweight who can head kick, stick to a game plan and survive a horrible pasting to come back strong. He might be rough around the edges, but there is always room for him to grow into a truly elite heavyweight.

With his second loss in a row, Alistair Overeem faces the threat of another streak of losses as famously plagued him before his move to heavyweight, but ultimately up until he was masterfully stopped in his tracks, he was dominating Browne and looked every bit a well rounded force.

Overeem will almost inevitably get another chance to prove himself, and with the lack of fighters using the front snap kick and the inevitable reevaluation which will take place in his camp after this, it is hard to see Overeem dropping below the likes of Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira, Roy Nelson or Frank Mir in the heavyweight ranks.

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

Conor McGregor: More Than Just Hype?

Ahead of his second UFC appearance on Saturday at UFC Fight Night 26 in Boston, Conor McGregor’s hype train has reached a scale comparable in size to the mythical Irish Rover. How deserved is the hype?
Well, he’s won titles in two divisions, but they w…

Ahead of his second UFC appearance on Saturday at UFC Fight Night 26 in Boston, Conor McGregor‘s hype train has reached a scale comparable in size to the mythical Irish Rover. How deserved is the hype?

Well, he’s won titles in two divisions, but they were in small promotions devoid of the kind of talent that is in the UFC.

He has outstruck everyone who has stood against him and has a good enough ground game to take the offensive, but he’s never fought a wrestler who has tried to blanket him.

His upcoming match with Max Holloway will tell us nothing about either man’s future prospects against the elite wrestlers of the division, who serve as a watershed for world-class talent and exciting journeymen to roll down opposite sides of.

However, it is not necessary for every fight to demonstrate a fighter’s skill in adverse conditions or serve as part of his development. Indeed, sometimes it is good to have fights that are as fun as this one promises to be.

Few fighters have remained hidden from stylistically difficult opponents forever—with perhaps the exception of Nick Diaz, who managed to get a title shot at the best wrestler in MMA without fighting a great wrestler in more than half a decade.

Those who want to see McGregor laid on by a great wrestler and tested will see it at some point, but for now sit back and enjoy what promises to be a great stand-up bout.

While Holloway has shown to be a cut above the average MMA striker, hooking off the jab wonderfully and mixing in body work, he has not fought anyone as highly touted on the feet as McGregor. The Irishman is in the same boat. He just fought Marcus Brimage, who held a significant reach disadvantage yet insisted on swinging at McGregor anyway.

McGregor is a bread-and-butter striker who does a handful of things well. As a southpaw, he only needs to do a few things well. Even in this day and age, a southpaw is an unusual opponent.

One peculiar wrinkle in his game is that while he is mainly a boxer, he uses front snap kicks extensively. This seems to be because he is a counter striker predominantly and doesn’t like putting himself at undue risk.

The front kick is the longest strike one can throw with little commitment to move out of stance, and as he withdraws his leg, he often finds his opponents coming at him with the aggression that they lacked before getting kicked in the bread basket.

Front snap kicks to the face are becoming commonplace in MMA nowadays, but snap kicks to the body are rare because of their lack of obvious impact.

If a roundhouse kick delivered with the shin hits an opponent in the body, you and most of the spectators know about it. If a snap kick connects with the ball of the foot, there is no big bang, but the damage is there.

Men who target front snap kicks can use them to degrade an opponent’s will to fight. The difference between connecting with the ball of the foot to the well-muscled and padded abdomen and to the exposed and brittle floating rib or solar plexus is enormous. 

The example I always use is that of Katsunori Kikuno. He is not a great boxer or grappler, but through front snap kicks alone, he outstruck Eddie Alvarez for the best part of 10 minutes before being taken down and submitted.

If Alvarez, one of the best strikers in the game, struggled against an opponent exclusively using this kick, you can consider it undervalued when no one else is making the commitment to practice it.  Jon Jones also has much success with this technique, but it gets lost between the audible slaps and smacks of his low kicks.

The keystone of McGregor‘s game should be obvious to anyone who has watched him fight: He has a fantastic counter left straight. He thrives under pressure, baiting the jab or right straight from his opponent, leaning back or to the left to evade the punch and coming back with the left straight. It is a simple technique that relies on timing and anticipation.

McGregor manufactures a situation—through his pre-fight antics and talk, his bravado in the ring and his biting kicks—wherein the opponent must come after him. 

His control of the lead hand whenever the opponent is in range (unless he is looking for a counter right hook, which we’ll talk about at another time) guarantees the opponent will attack with his longer, slower rear hand. This gives McGregor the knowledge of what is coming and time to prepare the counter. Lead hand control is a staple of good southpaw strategy, at least versus the far more common orthodox fighter.

So much of good striking is about becoming excellent at basic counters and strikes. The part that many miss, however, is that practicing a technique hundreds of times on the mitts and bags is not going to make the occasion for it appear in fights.

Name an elite striker or grappler and then think of his favorite technique; you will realize that opponents know that information too. The brilliance of Roy Jones, Anderson Silva, Marcelo Garcia and the like is in being prepared for anything but manufacturing a situation where they can do their best work.

Shutting down the lead hand, aggravating with front kicks, capoeira techniques and bravado, and giving the opponent a target for long enough to think about committing—these are the secrets of McGregor‘s simple but beautifully subtle game.

While Holloway’s decent jab and lead hook might not play that much of a role in the southpaw versus orthodox matchup, it will be interesting to see how well McGregor holds up against a more rounded striking assault. One of the great weaknesses of the purer boxers in MMA is that their choice to fight in the manner of a boxer leaves them exposed to the low kicks that traditional boxing doesn’t have to deal with.

McGregor’s long stance and dependence on footwork will make it interesting to see what low kicks would do to throw off his game. Even if he picks up his leg to check them, he would have to stand still, and no one can pull off lean-back counters that well while standing on one leg.

While we are expecting a stand-up war, it would not surprise me at all if either man looked for takedowns. Both Holloway and McGregor have well-rounded games and like to show it. I can’t make any predictions, but all the factors on paper point to this being an entertaining scrap.

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

Chael Sonnen: His Own Worst Enemy

With the exception of freak cases—such as Mark Hunt—it is hard to think of many fighters who have turned their careers around the way Chael Sonnen has.
Sonnen went from middle-of-the-pack middleweight to one of the biggest pay-per-view att…

With the exception of freak cases—such as Mark Hunt—it is hard to think of many fighters who have turned their careers around the way Chael Sonnen has.

Sonnen went from middle-of-the-pack middleweight to one of the biggest pay-per-view attractions in the UFC. Sonnen‘s success came through two means: First, he talks constantly, brashly and humorously. Second, he grinds down more exciting fighters and makes them look average.

Trash-talk is an age-old method of getting people to tune in to fights if you are, frankly, just not an entertaining fighter. Who can forget the pay-per-view success Tito Ortiz was, even when he was a decade removed from finishes over fighters not named Ken Shamrock?

A fighter can talk all day about how he’s going to destroy his opponents, and it doesn’t matter that he doesn’t manage it; people will tune in hoping to see the trash-talker get knocked out.

Who can forget Sonnen talking up his bout with Jon Jones to the point where many forgot it was just a tune-up match for the light heavyweight champ? Ironically, Jones’ injuries in the Sonnen and Belfort fights indicate there is no such thing as a truly safe fight, but that is another story.

Trash-talking aside, Sonnen puts a brutal pace on opponents and simply wrestles them on the feet and grinds on them from the guard. His striking is one note and awkward and his defense on the feet is porous at best, but it doesn’t matter because if MMA has proven anything, it is that so few men can knock a fighter out before he gets to the clinch so that Sonnen barely needs a stand-up game.

Sonnen is known more as a blanketing top player than a powerful ground-and-pounder, but his skill from inside the guard deserves some examination.

Sonnen‘s ground game is peculiar because it defies what is generally taught as the primary principle of fighting from inside the opponent’s guard, which is to keep your hands off the mat.

If a fighter in guard leaves a hand on the mat, he can expose himself to the overhook and all the attacks that can come off that. Or he leaves himself vulnerable to the rubber guard or Shawn Williams guard, which are used to move to omoplata and get out from underneath the opponent. He also exposes himself to the underhook, which can be used to take the back if the opponent can get his hips out. 

Here is Mauricio “Shogun” Rua (Sonnen‘s upcoming opponent) demonstrating an omoplata against Ricardo Arona as Arona places his hands on the mat rather than on Rua. Don’t look into Shogun’s success too much; this was years ago when Shogun was in the best form of his life and had two healthy knee joints, but it demonstrates the principle well.

Sonnen spends a remarkable amount of time in the guard, postured down and with his hands on the mat. He gets away with it because of his ability to stop his opponent from moving their hips and his hand fighting.

Take what I consider to be the best example of a textbook Sonnen performance: his destruction of Nate Marquardt. Each time Sonnen got Marquardt to the mat his hands would be on the floor, and Sonnen would be underhook or overhooking an arm and looking to attack. 

Each time, Sonnen would circle a hand in and jam his palm underneath Marquardt‘s chin to stretch him flat and create space to free his arm or strike. Sonnen prevented Marquardt from moving his hips out to make use of his underhooks, and each time Sonnen could get his hand on Marquardt‘s chin, he would step one leg up and begin landing decent punches to the rib cage.

Body strikes on the ground are consistently undervalued. In the few performances where I have seen good body strikes on the ground, I cannot help but think they affected the bout significantly.

Matt Hughes had great success against BJ Penn in their second match with elbows to the body from guard, as did Antonio Rogerio Nogueira against Tito Ortiz. Quinton Jackson used fantastic elbows to the body throughout his PRIDE tenure and Georges St-Pierre gassed out BJ Penn in their second meeting with hard punches to the body as he stood to pass. 

Sonnen‘s brutal cross facing and chin pushing not only wear opponents down and limit their options, they also set up some nice strikes. Sonnen very rarely postures up in guard as Georges St-Pierre and Jon Jones do to strike, but rather stays low, pushes off his opponent to arm’s length, then drops a hard elbow. 

Sonnen is more of what I would term a static ground-and-pounder than a dynamic one.

Where men like Fedor Emelianenko and Cain Velasquez would batter their opponent while passing guard and hit them more as they tried to recover guard, using the movement to open the path for strikes, Sonnen is very good at holding position and muscling out short strikes.

Sonnen can pass guard, but he lands far fewer effective strikes when he gets caught up in half guard or even when he gets to side control than he does from closed guard.

In their second bout, Anderson Silva actually looked to be trying to get to half guard, where Sonnen is far less effective, with strikes rather than staying in closed guard. Whether Silva desired to be in half guard or not, Sonnen landed with none of the effectiveness from half guard that he did from closed guard in any round in their first meeting.

The one occasion on which Sonnen consistently postures up is once he has put his opponent’s head against the cage and they have nowhere to shrimp away to. From here Sonnen will stand, drive his hips forward and then come down with heavy punches on his crumpled opponent.

Similar to the infighting boxer who does his most damaging work once he has an opponent on the ropes, Sonnen does his best ground-and-pound once he has moved his opponent into the fence.

Sonnen can pass the guard and has shown some neat tricks from there, submitting Brian Stann after pulling a neat transition to change sides from side control, but at his best, Sonnen is in the closed guard exploiting the MMA world’s lack of top-notch guard play. 

Sonnen‘s greatest strength, however, is also his greatest weakness. He is, by all intents and purposes, his own worst enemy. Driving such a high pace from guard while simultaneously not playing safe from a traditional jiu-jitsu perspective, he has often found himself on the wrong end of a submission.

There are numerous “lowlights” out there like this one that illustrate the difficulty Sonnen faces against truly savvy guard players.

His high pace also tires him out and makes him reckless. At the beginning of each round against Marquardt and Silva, he would drive forward at exactly the same pace and attempt a takedown. Sometimes, he would get it clean and easy; other times, he would eat a hard kick or knee as he dived after it.

In the second Silva bout, he waded forward and ate a nice backstep counter which visibly changed his demeanor before he attempted a wild spinning backfist and suffered the highlight-reel TKO we all remember so vividly.

We will look at the details of his bout with Mauricio “Shogun” Rua later in the week, but for now it is sufficient to say that Chael Sonnen at his best serves to separate the chaff from the grain. He is a man who can take down just about anyone within 15 pounds of his own weight and will force them to play from guard.

It is said that the truly great boxers can box their own game, but can stand and fight when they must. A good mixed martial artist can play his game, but it is being slammed onto his back and put through the meat grinder with a fighter like Chael Sonnen in his guard that will tell you whether a good mixed martial artist has what it takes to be great.

 

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

Alistair Overeem: The Man Who Should Be King

If you ask me to point to a fighter whose potential far exceeds his accomplishment the first name off of my tongue would be that of Alistair Overeem. That might take some by surprise because The Demolition Man’s list of accomplishments already dwarfs m…

If you ask me to point to a fighter whose potential far exceeds his accomplishment the first name off of my tongue would be that of Alistair Overeem. That might take some by surprise because The Demolition Man’s list of accomplishments already dwarfs most competitors on the MMA scene past and present.

Holding the Dream and Strikeforce heavyweight titles as well as the K-1 Grand Prix 2010 title—the most sought after prize in kickboxing—Overeem might well make a case for most accomplished all around heavyweight in combat sports already. 

Another more cynical way to look at it is that Overeem’s MMA belts are from second rate organisations which lacked the depth of roster to even be dishing out belts to begin with. The Dream belt was pretty much created on Overeem’s say-so anyway—it carries little to no meaning—and the Strikeforce belt was won from Paul Buentello long before Strikeforce bankrupted itself by stocking up on elite heavyweight talent.

Despite fighting in PRIDE and the UFC during their peak years, Overeem has been unable to win a belt in either. In PRIDE he was a gangly, inexperienced light heavyweight who often looked exhausted by the end of the first round due to his grueling weight cut—but his failure to win a belt at heavyweight in the UFC is by far the more surprising fact.

As a light heavyweight Overeem was simply a gangly and unorthodox fighter who ran in with jumping knees and nice trips from the clinch. It was his transformation into elite heavyweight which brought with it a significantly improved striking game.

The majority of vitriol directed at Overeem by fans, fighters and even pundits stems from his rapid weight gain. But steroids, horse meat or magic—none can explain away his revolutionary improvement on a technical level.

Every time Overeem loses, those who dislike him for his weight gain and arrogance will clamor to tell anyone who will listen about how Overeem has been exposed. The truth is that Overeem hasn’t been exposed as anything but lazy and arrogant. 

You will remember from the Antonio ‘Bigfoot’ Silva bout that Overeem basically had his way with Silva on the feet and in the clinch—showing good head movement which is not something he is traditionally known for. Unfortunately, the constant bobbing and ducking eventually got him caught with an uppercut and later a right straight as he ducked again.

This, it could be conceded, is a flaw which has gotten Overeem into trouble once before. Remy Bonjasky dropped Overeem in K-1 with exactly the same short-right straight as Overeem bent forward too soon in anticipation of a punch and had nowhere to go. Bobbing and weaving just isn’t Overeem’s strong suit and it’s daft for him to go to it just to prove a point.

Then rumors abounded again about Alistair Overeem’s weak chin. Though, I feel if you can use a near 300-pound giant hitting a fighter square in the jaw as he ducks into it as proof of a weak chin, I think we won’t have many tough fighters left.

Overeem has every skill he needs: elite grappling, elite kickboxing, a devastating clinch and some of the best ground and pound in heavyweight history—yet he stumbled at the last hurdle.

It is not that Overeem cannot fight smart—he realized that he is a good grappler but he ruthlessly stuck to striking against Fabricio Werdum and Brock Lesnar. Yet Overeem is prone to overestimating himself at times. Yes his grappling is fantastic—this is a guy who won the European ADCC trials with a streak of guillotine submissions—but in PRIDE he actively sought to grapple with Fabricio Werdum in their first meeting.

He did magnificently and impressed everyone present by rag-dolling the Jiu Jitsu master… until he got tired proving his point and was submitted by the man who has been grappling the truly elite his entire career.

The exact same thing happened against Bigfoot. Bigfoot is truly flawed as a fighter—he is a crushing top player but can’t wrestle well enough to get there, and he has a huge punch but not much skill on the feet.

Overeem could have brutalized Bigfoot in the clinch or bludgeoned him with kicks and heavy punches. Instead, he chose to dance around, slip punches with no guard up to protect himself and generally try to prove through unnecessary means the end which we all already knew—that he was a better fighter than Bigfoot.

This brings me to the sad conclusion about Alistair Overeem. He should be able to beat just about everyone who is put in front of him, but he probably won’t. If he did match up against Dos Santos—as we have all wanted for so long—I would put money on him being able to hang decently on the feet with Dos Santos.

I would also expect Overeem to completely avoid moving to the clinch, working his trips or doing work in any of the areas in which he has an advantage. 

The simple question, “Would Overeem box Dos Santos?” should amply sum up the situation which Overeem is in.

Overeem went on an incredible run and was well on his way to becoming the most accomplished mixed martial artist to date, but he started buying into his own hype and forgot that at this level of the game you must do what your opponent can’t and avoid what they can.

Perhaps the loss to Bigfoot will be enough to bring back the Overeem who grappled Cro Cop and struck Lesnar and Werdum, perhaps it will just encourage him to prove his worth in foolish ways even more.

I shall watch his bout with the dangerous Travis Browne with anticipation and excitement—and I am sure you will all too.

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

UFC 163: Freak Injuries

UFC 163 was a strange event overall. Lyoto Machida lost a decision in Brazil, Thales Leites outstruck a British striker and, in the main event, neither of the fighters looked anything like they have through the rest of their careers.
There was a lot to…

UFC 163 was a strange event overall. Lyoto Machida lost a decision in Brazil, Thales Leites outstruck a British striker and, in the main event, neither of the fighters looked anything like they have through the rest of their careers.

There was a lot to like in the night, but equally it rarely went as expected and casual pay-per-view buyers tend not to enjoy that.

We’ll look at Machida vs. Davis in my next piece, and props are due to Thales Leites, who showed the excellent jab, which seems to be working its way through the Nova Unaio team like a glorious infection.

Fight cards often carry an accidental theme—whether it be robberies, knockouts, armbars or something else, a card will be remembered in a fan’s mind for one element which seemed to recur through the night. 

UFC 163, as I viewed it, could not help bring to mind the simple fact that the human body is not designed for striking. As much as boxing and kickboxing have become beautiful sciences, the human skeleton just does not hold up well when bounced off of other hard objects.

In the opening televised bout, Jose Maria Tose did a fantastic job of making highly touted striker John Lineker look very average.

Through constant movement and switching of stances, Tose was able to keep Lineker off of him and avoid looking inactive in the long breaks between his own strikes,  something which Dominick Cruz does masterfully. 

Lineker stalked, waiting to throw his right hand in answer to the snapping kicks which Tose was throwing out with little behind them. Tose, however, caught Lieneker completely off guard with a good spinning backfist which he connected mainly with his forearm.

The wonderful thing about unorthodox techniques like the spinning backfist, is that they act as a true equalizer in a bout where one side has a clear technical advantage.

Lineker spent the remainder of the round looking awkward and plodding, not really looking anything like the dangerous striker he came in as. The bout unfortunately ended as Tose seemed to injure his standing leg on a kick and fell to the floor with Lineker following and finishing him with strikes.

One of the dangers of having such active footwork and attempting to switch stances unpredictably and kick out of both is that fighters are not always going through practiced foot movement. Every fighter can shuffle in all directions from their favored stance without thought, and the kicking footwork of someone like Tyrone Spong—who has repped out thousands out switch kicks and shuffle up-kicks—is something to behold.

The problem comes when jumping between stances and trying to play the mad man. Often a fighter can come down awkwardly or not have his weight set right to kick. Kicking from a bad position is such a dangerous habit, not just because one can be countered or bundled over, but putting all of your weight on one knee while in fast motion is a dangerous proposition at the best of times.

Being a crazy and hopping around does make conservative strikers of even the most aggressive fighters—a nice comparison is with the hunting method of the stoat—but if a fighter gets carried away, he can do more damage to himself than the opponent. Just look at Patrick Cote blowing out his knee while bouncing around on one foot in his bout with Anderson Silva.

Another fighter who was punished for his unorthodox form at UFC 163 was The Korean Zombie, Chan Sung Jung. Jung had unarguably been losing the bout, but he was hardly battered from pillar to post. Aldo himself was reportedly fighting on a broken foot which was captured in some gnarly stills and photos from the bout. 

Noticeably absent from the bout was Aldo’s respected and brutal low kick. On the one occasion that Aldo did throw it, he seemed to clip Jung’s knee cap and relented from the strategy for the rest of the bout. This foot swelled up throughout the bout and demonstrated amply that even experienced, conditioned kickers can injure themselves if their foot ends up in the wrong place at the wrong time.

The more Aldo moved on his feet at the start of the second round the more uncomfortable he looked. Despite boxing well, Aldo was eventually forced to go to his wrestling. Midway through the second round, Aldo slipped a left hook and took an angle beautifully, then noticeably stumbled and failed to follow up as the Zombie moved away and reset the distance.

Aldo looked sluggish moving away from punches with his footwork, and after eating a good overhand, soon got the fight to the mat.

The third round was fought predominantly in grappling, but for the few moments at the end of the round that the two featherweights were striking, Jung actually got the better of it. 

In the fourth round, Jung’s own injury ended the fight for him just as he was starting to look like he could have some success.

In answer to the arcing right which Jung had connected well a couple of times in the bout, Aldo slipped and threw back his own left hook.

Unbeknownst to Aldo, the punch acted more as a shoulder crank as Jung’s arm got caught between Aldo’s elbow and neck. 

 

I pointed out before the fight that Jung has some of the most self-endangering punches in MMA, winging with almost straight arms and connecting with the inside of his fist or wrist.

What is peculiar, though, is that this injury was not simply a bad connection, it was a miss and an opponent’s counter missing and cranking the arm as it moved past its intended target.

Would I suggest it’s a great idea to throw arcing rights like the Zombie? Probably not, but it works for him and he did hit Aldo clean with the same punch a couple of times. Unlike Tose’s injury, Aldo and Jung’s ailments were simply things that can happen when you are trying to hit another man as hard as you can.

That they happened in the same bout is even stranger, but then it is the unpredictability of the fight game which keeps us coming back.

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

Jack can also be found on Facebook and Twitter.

Read more MMA news on BleacherReport.com

UFC 163 Lyoto Machida: The Karate Master

The term “karate master” conjures a strange duality of notions. To one person, the phrase “karate master” evokes images of the comic character in an action film who sweeps his hands in bladed motions through the air before being felled by a single punc…

The term “karate master” conjures a strange duality of notions. To one person, the phrase “karate master” evokes images of the comic character in an action film who sweeps his hands in bladed motions through the air before being felled by a single punch from the square-jawed protagonist. In another conversation, “karate master” might bring to mind a powerful figure of fighting prowess whose hands and feet are dangerous weapons. The term is used mockingly by those who are practiced in more commonly practiced combat disciplines, and with wonder by those who practice karate.

To the author, “karate master” brings to mind but a few men and women of true note. This scarcity of masters is not for lack of trying to meet the mythical shihan. The author has traveled to Tokyo for months at a time in order to train at the Japan Karate Association. Despite a great many years experience in the art and having trained under a good many tougher karateka than most have the privilege to, I can still only point to a small number of true masters of karate.

When karate is considered as a martial technique whose very nature is in the form of techniques in their appearance and performance, there are more masters on earth than one could shake a bo at. Training in dojos with All-Japan champions in both kata (forms) and kumite (point sparring), I have been privy to some beautiful technique and dazzling speed of movement. Immamura, Kawawada, Ogura, Ogata; each impressed me enormously and was capable of technical prowess which I cannot come close to imitating, but I would consider them masters of karate in form alone. 

When we consider karate as a martial art, that is, a fighting method, the number of true masters in the world drops into single digits. Lyoto Machida is most certainly the most accomplished karateka in the world today in actual combat against trained opponents.

 

The Machida Method

Machida‘s modus operandi seems to never change. Controlling the centre is a boxing strategy which extends to chess (or vice versa) because of the offensive options opened to the player who achieves this. Machida never, ever looks to control the centre of the octagon and win points based on aggression. Instead he flits around the outside of the cage.

Each time an opponent moves to attack Machida he darts away as if scared or overly cautious and each time his opponent becomes more and more frustrated that they cannot mount an effective offensive. 

Fighters are taught from very early on in their careers to cut down on telegraphing when striking. If a fighter takes a step before he attempts his strikes, it is clear when they are coming. By maintaining a larger than normal distance, Machida forces the opponent to take a step before they can hit him. In effect, when he eventually stops back tracking and steps in with a punch, he is acting in counter to this step.

Machida isn’t a huge power striker, nor is he one of the stronger men in his division. When Machida does knock opponents out he completely starches them. This is the kind of power which can be generated from a collision rather than an exchange stood in place or by chasing strikes.

Machida‘s kicks are an annoyance at best for the most part (brilliant KO of Couture aside) and serve the same purpose that many of Anderson Silva‘s low kicks do: to get him ahead on the scorecards and force a chase from an opponent who has been told not to chase him.

Whatever Machida chooses to intercept his opponent’s charges with—his left straight, his springing left knee or his newly shown lead elbow strike—he sets it up the same way. False retreats offer little threat to the fighter using them (spare the low kicks to the trailing leg which Machida has shown a weakness to) as he is moving out of range, they limit exchanges, and they force the opponent into a counter-puncher’s game. Absolute reluctance to lead with authority—as Lyoto Machida and Anderson Silva have occasionally shown—tends to alienate fans, though.

 

Machida Karate versus Traditional Karate

This intercepting of the opponent mid strike or sen-no-sen is commonplace at karate point sparring competition but—and here is the key in differentiating a karateka from a karate master—these competitions are normally simply match after match of karateka exchanging gyaku-zuki (reverse punch or the rear hand straight) and the point being awarded to whoever the judges think landed first. 

Competition karateka, and by extension the vast majority of karateka in the world, do not have anywhere near the level of defensive savvy that one will see in boxers or kickboxers with the same amount of experience because their chosen sport does not require it.

Scoring in karate competition is entirely subjective and everything that happens after the first punch is irrelevant to the result of the scoring of that exchange. Hence we see karateka leap across the mat with unparalleled quickness, land their punch, then stand in range with their hand on their hip, playing up their posture to judges (often while turning their back) and giving little regard to their opponent’s return.

Is there skill to traditional karate competition? Most certainly, competitors on international teams are ridiculously quick in their execution of their actions, but there is also great skill to all number of non-combative sports. Those who are called “Master” in the karate world are almost invariably clued in only to the technical details of how they would like to see basic air punches and kicks be performed; few have anything worthwhile to offer on fighting strategy or method.

Make no mistake, Lyoto Machida is pretty much one-of-a-kind in the Shotokan world. He is intelligent enough to apply his karate against elite fighters, but also to realize many of the shortcomings that karate training can and does bring. 

The old adage that a karateka‘s hands and feet are deadly weapons or should be like swords is often taken to mean that a karateka should smash his hands against a makiwara day in and day out or rep out thousands of punches. I put it to you that Lyoto Machida‘s hands and knees are as impotent as anyone’s out in the open—it is his understanding of strategy and his relationship with his opponent which makes him such a dangerous striker.

It is when an opponent becomes infuriated with Machida‘s Will-o’-the-Wisp movement and charges him that Machida‘s short rear straight is turned from a simple thrust of the fist into a telephone pole in the path of a sprinter. 

 

A Little Karate History

In concluding an article on why I believe Lyoto Machida is one of a handful of men in the world who can legitimately be called karate masters, it might be interesting to look a little at karate’s history in brief.

Karateka have been very reluctant to grow or adapt as a whole; their love of tradition is well known, but karate itself is a method developed in Okinawa from Okinawan wrestling techniques, Chinese kung fu, Taiwanese boxing and other methods from abroad. Okinawa as a small, weaponless island under oppressive samurai rule had to develop methods of self defense and the Okinawans were more than happy to learn from anyone who had anything to offer.

Karate originally contained a lot more rough neck-throwing movements and was certainly anything but a polished, competitive striking martial art. It was for the most part used against untrained aggressors, plain and simple.

Sparring came to karate very late after it came to mainland Japan. Kenwa Mabuni (founder of Shito Ryu) played with the idea in the thirties, as did Gigo Funakoshi (son of Gichin Funakoshi, founder of Machida‘s Shotokan style). 

Sparring became more popular when karate moved into the universities and the Japan Karate Association worked to make a competition system for Shotokan. To put it another way, the idea of the ancient high kicking karate master is a myth. Circa 1960 karate sparring looked like this, while the significance of head movement, footwork and combinations had been demonstrated amply by Joe Louis almost twenty years before this.

Lyoto Machida brings to the octagon not only a karate style, but a style all of his own. If karateka hope to actually have something to show for all of their effort in the dojo, Machida is the man to look at. His methods are sound, simple and effective, not to mention easy to practice (though difficult to master). His fighting method relies on skill and anticipation, not speed, and yet the traditional karate community refuses to sit up and pay attention to a true genius at work.

In a world where most touting the “Master” moniker have it for time served or adopted it to attract a few more punters into their dojo, Lyoto Machida is perhaps the closest thing we have to a true master of karate as a martial art.

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

Jack can also be found on Facebook and Twitter.

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