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UFC on Fuel 10: How Werdum Tapped Nog and Silva Starched Feijao

UFC on Fuel 10 provided some exciting matchups and as many of you will have already heard, broke the promotion’s record for most submission wins on a card. It is always good to be reminded that cards which are short big-name matches can still provide i…

Today I would like to talk about three fights which took place last night, Fabricio Werdum vs. Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira and Thiago Silva vs. Rafael Feijao from UFC on Fuel 10, and Mamed Khalidov vs. Melvin Manhoef from KSW 23.

These matches provide wonderful examples of several different principles in combat sports, and I hope you will join me in appreciating them.

Fabricio Werdum vs. Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira

I spoke in the lead up to this fight about Werdum’s improved kicking and love of the collar tie vs. Big Nog‘s new “clinch against the fence” style. I believed that much of the match would come down to Nogueira’s ability to take Werdum to the fence.

I have previously criticized Werdum’s ringcraft, as he routinely fights just a foot or so from the fence on the feet, and I shall not be changing my view of that today, as he did exactly the same thing against Nogueira. The main issue was that unless an opponent has Stefan Struve levels of obliviousness to where he is in the cage, he is not going to run right onto the fence.

Instead it is up to the aggressor, in this case this was Nogueira, to rush the fighter who is along the fence and close the distance between himself and the fence, while keeping his opponent in between. Nogueira just looked too slow and tentative to do anything about it most of the time and let Werdum move around half of the octagon along the fence.

Nogueira attempted to get in with his jab over and over but just as often got caught with a punch or a hard inside low kick. When he did close the distance, he often did it too slowly and head first, allowing Werdum to grab the back of Nog‘s head and use his forearms to keep separation between them in a double collar tie.

Nogueira did eventually get to his favourite position: against the fence with an underhook, his head underneath Werdum’s and working to free his other hand in order land slapping punches to the head and body.

However, Nog just isn’t a great wrestler and Werdum has been working on his own wrestling constantly, allowing him to shift his hips out and escape or work for a single or double collar tie after very brief periods of clinch fighting.

The ground work in the early going of the fight was extremely entertaining as Nogueira kept fighting back to his half guard and working to get under Werdum (something which he did remarkably well in their first bout), but Werdum had the good sense to use his top position from an MMA perspective rather than a grappling one and hammered Nog with some good strikes.

What marked the end of the bout for Nogueira, however, was a tactical decision with his grappling which is almost equivalent to poor ring craft in the stand up portion of the fight.

First, Werdum baited Nogueira into overcommitting on his clinch strikes, then turned Nogueira and threatened the takedown. This caused Nogueira to drop for the guillotine and give up top position to the younger, slicker grappler.

Werdum, with his back to the fence, gripped Nogueira’s punching hand and as Nogueira broke free and threw a punch, Werdum used the opportunity to secure an underhook on that side. From here, he turned Nogueira onto the fence and ducked down onto a single-leg attempt.

Smart stuff to bait Nogueira into opening himself up with the punch. From here Nogueira, obviously pressured by the threat of the takedown, fell back into a guillotine which Werdum briefly turned to his side to escape, then came up on top in Nogueira’s guard. Moments later, he was on Nogueira’s back and moving to lock in the fight-finishing armbar.

Grabbing a guillotine and jumping guard, particularly with arm-in guillotines, just doesn’t work very well against the elite grapplers in MMA. Alan Belcher recently threw away a decision win to world-class blanket Yushin Okami by jumping guard with a guillotine and giving away a round on two separate occasions.

Nogueira famously threw away a win over the turtled and hurt Frank Mir by jumping on a guillotine attempt and flopping to his back, giving Mir top position.

Against Werdum, Nog didn’t lose so immediately that we can entirely blame the guillotine attempt, but it seems like Nogueira gave away a move to the ground that favoured Fabricio in hopes of finishing what is ultimately a low-percentage submission for most fighters.

Obviously, it is commendable that these fighters are attempting to finish fights and stay active when otherwise they will just be attempting to fight their way off the fence and defend takedowns, but against good or better grapplers (and Werdum is one of the best in the world), it is often the case that if the submission fails, the guillotine-attempting fighter will lose himself the round and possibly the fight.

Risky guillotine aside, Nogueira is not nearly as durable as he once was, and incremental improvements in punching power and wrestling aren’t going to stop him from getting hurt or losing. Nog looked sluggish on the feet and struggled to even get to the clinch where he has been staying safe in his last few bouts.

It would not be a great shame for Nogueira to accept that he is one of the best MMA fighters ever and to retire to focus on training his many great students.

Thiago Silva vs Rafael Feijao

Rafael Feijao is an interesting fighter but ultimately a very limited one. He has a hard right hand and can stuff takedowns well, as well as a good right low kick, but that’s about it.

He can put decent power in his other strikes but he just isn’t all that practised or scientific in landing them. Against Silva, he simply came forward with the same jab-to-overhand-right combination again and again. He ducked out nicely afterwards and avoided many counter blows but ultimately achieved very little with his predictable attacks.

What Feijao offered was the perfect fight for Thiago Silva. Silva is a good banger with both hands who is pretty good at avoiding punches in the pocket. He doesn’t do a great job cutting off the cage and gets frustrated extremely easily.
This is how Lyoto Machida and Alexander Gustaffson had such great success against Silva while Keith Jardine ended the night staring at the stadium ceiling.

Whenever an opponent retreats more than once, Silva throws his arms out then rushes in with his chin out in front of him and nothing to stop his opponent from punching him as he comes in.

When his opponent obliges him with a brawl, however, he can work his great counter left hook, heavy right hand and decent jab. Silva’s jab worked well against Feijao, who ended up getting battered against the cage.

The final punch of the flurry was a right hook which sailed between Feijao‘s forearms. While Silva achieved this by muscling Feijao to his side with punches, it can be achieved more readily with a leap to the side a la the great Mike Tyson.

Pat Barry’s knockout of Shane Del Rosario came off an almost identical hook which entered from in front of his opponent rather than the side. GIF of the Barry knockout here.

Gif of the Thiago Silva knockout here.

Mamed Khalidov vs Melvin Manhoef

I often don’t get chance to talk about promotions outside of the UFC, but I thought I’d sneak this in here. If you get the chance, watch Khalidov vs. Manhoef from KSW, because it was a good tactical showing by Khalidov.

Melvin Manhoef is not bad at sprawling. He is ridiculously strong and explosive, and he has sprawled on takedown attempts from decent wrestlers before. What Khalidov did was to make his job much, much easier by using kicks to set up his takedown attempts.

I previously spoke about how I enjoyed the young Chris Weidman’s use of high kicks to stand Mark Munoz up and then shoot in for Munoz’s hips with great success. Khalidov did much the same thing in using his kicks and punches to trouble Manhoef, who was clearly expecting to have to sprawl from the get go.

Using kicks to set up his shot, Khalidov got Manhoef down for a split second then switched to a guillotine as soon as Manhoef was working his way up. This wasn’t Manhoef‘s weak submission defence, this was an excellent example of mixing it all together by an up-and-coming fighter from the new generation.

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 on Fuel 10’s Fabricio Werdum: Real Improvement?

Something which I have been asked about a good deal in the run up to the rematch between Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira and Fabricio Werdum is just how much has Fabricio Werdum’s striking game improved.In his last two bouts, Werdum has been able to achieve f…

Something which I have been asked about a good deal in the run up to the rematch between Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira and Fabricio Werdum is just how much has Fabricio Werdum’s striking game improved.

In his last two bouts, Werdum has been able to achieve far more and look far better on the feet than any of his previous wins have allowed him to.

Fabricio Werdum has always been underrated as a heavyweight. With wins over plenty of top heavyweights, Werdum is the only man who can claim a win over both Emelianenko brothers, an unusual feather in anyone’s hat.

Werdum has only lost to recognisable heavyweight names and has a brilliant finishing ratio even for a heavyweight. Really the only reason that many fans dislike Werdum is his performance against Alistair Overeem, wherein Werdum was labouring under the delusion that pulling guard was a “one size fits all” gameplan as he was riding high from an incredible submission over an overconfident Fedor Emelianenko.

So with his complete dismantling of Roy Nelson and his knockout win over MIke Russow, how much improvement has Werdum shown on the feet and where do his strengths and weaknesses lie?

Firstly, Werdum is beginning to kick with more commitment and therefore more power. No matter how good a kickboxer you are, if you have fear of a takedown ever present in the back of your mind, it is extremely difficult to throw your best kicks.

Werdum doesn’t need to be afraid of anyone on the ground because no matter who they are, opponents who end up in his world-class guard will be fighting on the defensive.

Watching Werdum open up with his kicks against Roy Nelson was a great pleasure as he brought out a wheel kick and other gimmicks while pounding Nelson’s lead leg with kicks. Werdum’s set ups are poor (in that he rarely does anything but kick straight off the bat), but it doesn’t matter nearly so much when he is completely okay with being bundled over.

The real danger only comes when he kicks and his opponent counters with a punch. Even great kickboxers have been caught dropping their hands as they kick. It is something everyone does at some point in the fight, but Werdum doesn’t seem to defend himself after any of his kicks. Roy Nelson was able to drop Werdum as Werdum was recovering from a kick.

In addition to great confidence in kicking, Werdum has just shown an all-around growth in comfort on the feet. Something which I have always felt his coach, Rafael Cordeiro, excels at is giving his fighters confidence in their ability to scrap.

Sometimes it is good; clearly, the Chute Boxe team benefited enormously from their throwing caution to the wind, and sometimes it is bad, such as in the case of Murilo Rua, perhaps the best technical grappler on the Chute Boxe team, who ruined his career by routinely choosing to brawl when he just wasn’t great at it.

As a relatively rangy fighter, Werdum’s 1 – 2 works wonderfully when he pops it into the face of shorter opponents as they try to engage. Provided the jab lands, he doesn’t even need to worry much about his defence, as a punch to the face will more often than not throw off an opponent’s aim.

Gene Tunney, one of the greatest boxers of all time, broke his opponent’s rhythm with the simple 1 – 2 constantly, so I will never belittle the strategy.

Problems come when Werdum attempts to land his right straight. He completely opens himself up as he drops his left hand and allows his head to follow his bad intentions towards his opponent, leaving the rest of his body and his defence behind.

Werdum’s footwork is also a little concerning if he intends to continue mixing in exciting stand-up combinations into his performances. Often, Werdum will stand still when an opponent attacks or back straight up towards the cage. Mike Russow and Roy Nelson are not light on their feet and gave up so much reach that there is no real excuse for them catching up to Werdum so often.

Werdum’s brilliant double collar tie clinch knees (something Rafael Cordeiro definitely teaches very well to his fighters) were enough to make up for Nelson’s ability to close the distance on him, but against opponents who do not give up so much height, Werdum cannot rely on the Semmy Schilt / Muhammad Ali defence of cupping the back of the head as soon as the opponent is too close for comfort.

Throughout his bout with Roy Nelson, Werdum also continued to circle directly towards Nelson’s right hand. This is basically all Roy Nelson wants. It is his strategy to move his opponent towards the fence and allow them to circle into the right hand, you will notice he often stands closer to the fence on his left side when pressuring an opponent.

Because of Werdum’s early assault with kicks, grappling and knees, Nelson tired early (as he often does) and was unable to chase for much of the bout, but it is ringcraft which separates the decent from the skilled on the feet.

Werdum meets Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira this weekend in a rematch of their meeting in PRIDE FC. In their first bout, Big Nog‘s experience on the feet aided him enormously in defeating the green Werdum. Recently, however, Werdum has shown strides in his stand up while Nog has simply looked slower and less durable.

What Nog might have to offer on the feet is his new ugly boxing style. Nogueira will press an opponent against the fence, free a hand and start punching or elbowing, then break away and box along the fence. This method allows Nogueira to make up for his absent head movement and slow feet, but might be well-suited to Werdum’s weak footwork.

Of course, there is no knowing how these things will play out, especially at heavyweight, but it will be interesting to see whether Nogueira and Werdum can continue their development in striking as they both look like completely different men from their first meeting.

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

Best of the Best: Alistair Overeem’s Knee Strikes

The Best of the Best series is my attempt to look at fighters who best demonstrate one technique or concept of the martial arts/combat sports game. So far these have varied from well-known fighters who provide easy traffic, such as Anderson Silva and B…

We have examined the Muay Thai clinch philosophy, the crafty inside slip and the simple but underutilized counter jab. Today we are going to look a little at the knee strike, something which is still noticeably under used in mixed martial arts competition for a variety of reasons.

It is no secret that the knee caps are dense and an easy surface to do great damage with, and of course ineffectual knees while stalling out in the clinch are a dime a dozen in all MMA promotions. What is rare is a truly effective stepping knee. This is where the gigantic Dutchman Alistair Overeem excels.

Alistair Overeem is always a divisive figure, partly due to his suspicious rapid weight gain, partly due to his being caught with a greatly elevated testosterone level, and partly due to his penchant for throwing away winning streaks through arrogance in the ring.

Overeem’s loss to the massively overmatched Antonio ‘Bigfoot’ Silva is a perfect example of how Overeem alienates fans. Alistair mugged and toyed with the ambling giant before running out of steam and ducking onto a hard punch which began a series of punches that slumped the Dutchman along the fence.

What Overeem does deserve enormous respect for is his commitment to massively improving his striking game.

Almost exclusively interested in knee strikes with random stepping punches and trick shots thrown in, Overeem never showed much aptitude for punching until his impressive starching of an underprepared Badr Hari on short notice. Since K-1 amended their already squeamish rules regarding clinch striking to take away Overeem’s tremendous knees while holding the head, Overeem had to learn to box and added a cracking cross counter to his game; but that discussion is for another time.

Overeem has always enjoyed utilizing his knee strikes, and this is evidenced in his fights as a lanky 20-year-old taking on some of the best fighters in the world in PRIDE. Overeem was often wild, jumping in behind wild knee strikes from range and getting hit in the process.

Indeed, Overeem did much of his best work throughout his career in the clinch and on the ground. Overeem’s knee strikes along the fence quickly ruined Paul Buentello and his knee strikes on the ground made short work of Sergei Kharitonov in their first meeting.

Watching Overeem vs. Kharitonov I—or even the brief knees to the ribs from side control in his bout with Brett Rogers in Strikeforce—certainly makes me miss the days of legal knees to the head on the ground.

What we are really here to appreciate, though, are Overeem’s wonderful knees in striking exchanges.

The most notable examples are his stepping knees against Brock Lesnar. Stepping knees are rarely thrown in MMA because they are perceived as easy to grab. It would seem that a fighter who is mainly known as a kickboxer should not be giving his leg so freely to an elite wrestler, but Overeem’s method was very sound.

Every time Overeem moved in, he would stretch his hands to smother Lesnar‘s. Lesnar couldn’t resist handfighting, and it was in this time which Overeem would step forward and land his left knee.

This technique worked splendidly throughout the bout and led to the beautiful body kick which Overeem used to drop the gigantic American.

Overeem’s knockout of Kazuyuki Fujita was performed with an almost identical technique, stepping in with his right leg but faking a right hand instead of hand fighting with Fujita. As Fujita ducked away from Overeem, he met Overeem’s knee and fell to the floor unconscious for a good few minutes.

Overeem will also fake his right hand and step in to directly grab his opponent behind the neck in a single or double-collar tie (one or two-handed clinch). Overeem performs this routinely, as he did against Fabricio Werdum, Fujita and most famously Ewerton Teixeira.

A final interesting method which Overeem uses which one doesn’t see used in MMA all that often is to throw a knee strike and a punch from the same side as he places his striking leg down behind him. The wonderful thing about this technique is that if the knee connects, it will lift the opponent’s head into the follow-up punch, and if the opponent attempts to grab the knee strike, he will expose his jaw to the punch.

Overeem knocked down Badr Hari in their first bout with this technique. Overeem’s one-time stable mate Errol Zimmerman also utilizes this technique frequently in kickboxing (2:52 below).

The most important point to note in Overeem’s successful use of knees is that Overeem always strikes with the right surface—the point of his knee—against a vulnerable surface. Aiming is so much more important in knee striking than power—watching any of Anderson Silva’s wonderful work in the clinch will confirm this. It is far worse to be hit with a light knee strike to the floating rib, bone on bone, than it is to have a thigh muscle thud against your side as the opponent strains to put power on his blows.

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 on Fuel TV 10: The Rebirth of Big Nog and His Big Punch

Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira is a legend in the mixed martial arts community for good reason.One of the first fighters to have solid striking and a brilliant jiu-jitsu game, Nogueira represented the future when he submitted ground-and-pound monster, Mark C…

Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira is a legend in the mixed martial arts community for good reason.

One of the first fighters to have solid striking and a brilliant jiu-jitsu game, Nogueira represented the future when he submitted ground-and-pound monster, Mark Coleman with a beautiful triangle armbar from his guard. As Nogueira’s career progressed, he developed a name for heart, determination and grit under fire. It seemed like every match turned into an incredible come-from-behind victory for him.

The great flaw in Nogueira’s game has been his insistence on striking like a boxer—in the model of his enormously talented brother, Rogerio. Recently, Nogueira has been using a more fitting method of landing his punches in rough, ugly fights, which allow him to strike like he has never been able to strike before. Today, we’ll take a brief look at Big Nog‘s modus operandi.

Classic Nog

Nogueira faced adversity in the ring with many dangerous opponents only to come back and pull off the submission. Up until 2008, Nogueira had never been finished, even through three fights with the great Fedor Emelianenko, which led to his fans quipping that “Nogueira never loses, he just runs out of time.”

In addition to his many dramatic performances—embodying the Rocky spirit that excites fans more than any technical master class can—Nogueira also has one of the finest resumes in MMA. Despite his recent decline in physical ability, Nogueira has fought a who’s who of mixed martial arts talent.

Lacking the ability to shoot with any decent rate of success, Nogueira had such confidence in his guard that he would happily pull an opponent down onto him (including legitimate jiu-jitsu threats such as Fabricio Werdum, his upcoming opponent, and the great Fedor Emelianenko).

More often than not in his early career, Nogueira would shoot on his opponent, and as the opponent sprawled, Nogueira would perform a beautiful sit out (the most effective I have seen in MMA) and move to his opponent’s back or top position.

This sit out was finally countered by Frank Mir, who was able to grab a hold of one of Nogueira’s arms and hop across him to secure a beautiful and brutal kimura finish. This was a wonderful example of a fighter training specifically for an opponent’s tendencies.

A testament to Nogueira’s effectiveness with this technique was that it worked wonders on both the hulking Bob Sapp and the technically brilliant Fabricio Werdum and Volk Han.

From cult favourites like Jeremy Horn and Volk Han, to terrifying giants such as Bob Sapp and Semmy Schilt, to hard-nosed brawlers like Dan Henderson and Sergei Kharitonov, to world-class heavyweights like Fedor Emelianenko, Mark Coleman and Josh Barnett, Nogueira met them all and almost always came out on top.

In mixed martial arts, and especially in the heavyweight division of today where records are so short and careers are so carefully guided, it is almost impossible to find a better resume than Nogueira’s. Were it not for “The Last Emperor’s” two victories over Nogueira, one could make the case for Nogueira being MMA’s greatest heavyweight to date based on his opposition.

His one weakness was that he was always hittable. Until recently, an MMA elitist movement used to love to bring up Nogueira’s outboxing of Kharitonov to demonstrate his elite boxing and to cite his time training with the Cuban boxing team.

Here’s the truth: Nogueira’s outboxing of Kharitonov only showed Kharitonov‘s limited understanding of the striking game.

Almost every time Kharitonov moved in to punch, Nogueira ducked his head down to the right and fired back a jab while parrying with his right hand—Kharitonov ate it every time. Not once did Kharitonov ever attempt to fake out Nogueira or eliminate his counter jab; he just went on doing what Kharitonov does—demonstrating his amazing chin, swinging his club-like right hand and hoping to catch something.

Almost a decade later, Brendan Schaub did exactly the same thing. After hurting Nogueira with an uppercut to counter Nogueira’s constant dipping, he went back to lunging in face first and eating Nogueira’s jabs.

This led to him stumbling back to the fence and being put to sleep. It was only the second standing knockout of Nogueira’s career and Big Nog‘s first against a heavyweight.

In general, Nogueira has always been something of a punching bag on his feet. You can tell me over and over again about how hard he works on his boxing and whom he spars with, but it doesn’t change the fact that he gets hit a lot when he’s out in the open.

Why does he get so much? Partly because he lacks head movement and partly because he has slow, shuffling feet. Nogueira looks nothing like his twin brother when they are moving around the cage, as he seems to eat almost everything that is thrown at him.

Renaissance Nog

Nogueira has had something of a career renaissance of late. Following his first crushing defeat at the hands of Mir, Nogueira started to show hints of punching power that he had never shown before.

It is important to consider the opposition that Nogueira has beaten—Brendan Schaub and Dave Herman aren’t going to be transitioning to the GLORY Heavyweight Grand Slam anytime soon—but Nogueira might be starting to use a style of punching more suited to his lack of swift movement.

Whereas Nogueira was stiff and rigid in his punching form early in his career—trying to remain in stance at all times—the power right hand that he demonstrated against Mir, Couture and Schaub stemmed from stepping forward and performing a transfer of weight. Jack Dempsey spoke about this a great deal in his book, Championship Fighting.

Nogueira lacks the footwork to get in fast and land punches first through speed alone, and along with his poor head movement, it makes him hittable. Therefore, his new strategy of ducking into the clinch and bullying opponents along the fence (as shown in his bouts with Mir and Herman) makes sense.

By moving into the clinch as soon as possible instead of hanging out in the open, he avoids being beaten up by faster fighters.

Fabio Maldonado—a big power puncher whose head seems to be a magnet for strikes in the open—had great success in his most recent bout against Roger Hollett by using similar tactics. The clinch boxer, though still rare, is becoming as effective in MMA as he was in Jack Johnson’s era of boxing.

In his second bout with Mir, Nogueira managed to ruffle the American’s feathers early by pinning him against the fence and using hard punches and elbows. When the two men broke on Nogueira’s terms, Mir had nowhere to retreat and Nogueira didn’t have any chasing to do—allowing him to step in and hit Mir with a hard, weighty right hand.

Against Schaub, Nogueira was able to use his dipping jab to stun Schaub and move him along the fence, where Nogueira’s slow feet were no longer a factor, and tee off. Against Herman, it was much the same: pressure, pinning along the fence, separating and punching.

Whether Nogueira can muscle Werdum to the fence and rough him up in the face of Werdum’s new octopus-style assault on the feet remain to be seen, but in truth, the new, bullying Nogueira who makes fights ugly and lands his punches is more interesting to watch than the Nogueira of PRIDE, who spent so long trying to box like a Cuban amateur and got hit midway through every attempt.

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

Junior dos Santos: MMA’s Finest Offensive Boxer

Boxing in MMA is still in it’s infancy, but it is improving at a rate of knots.I remember being surprised when Takanori Gomi actually doubled up and threw body shots against Jens Pulver back in PRIDE—now such tactics are becoming much more common…

Boxing in MMA is still in it’s infancy, but it is improving at a rate of knots.

I remember being surprised when Takanori Gomi actually doubled up and threw body shots against Jens Pulver back in PRIDE—now such tactics are becoming much more commonplace. That is not to say that body shots aren’t still criminally underused in MMA—indeed one of the main reasons for the success of the fighter I am talking about today is the fact that the rest of the MMA world seems to have largely shunned the body punch.

Whenever a “best of” anything in MMA is brought up, many readers will scan for the names and prepare their venom as their favourite fighter is not mentioned soon enough or late enough for their liking. I dislike terming anyone “the best” at anything in MMA because I haven’t seen every sanctioned fighter out there—but when I do I like to narrow the terms.

I discussed last week how the “best boxing in MMA” title was a ridiculous notion because there is no cookie-cutter mould for what is considered great boxing. Some fighters move laterally wonderfully well—such as Anderson Silva—but refuse flat-out to lead, while others are masterful at leading and countering, but refuse to move off of a straight line—like Dos Santos.

What I can do is narrow the terms and say that in high-profile MMA, Junior dos Santos might just be the best offensive puncher out there. Certainly at heavyweight it is almost impossible to think of a fighter who matches him in variety of punches and setups.

“Setups” is the all-important term there—Junior dos Santos sets his power strikes up. Unless you are fighting pretty poor strikers—who, of course, are in abundance at heavyweight—swinging off the bat won’t work. This is 2013, and you are not going to hit anyone who can box even a little with the first punch you throw, let alone the first power punch.

You have to open up the holes in an opponent’s defence, and to be honest, it isn’t always best or particularly responsible to start trying to smash through with power strikes. What Dos Santos does masterfully is to pick and scratch at the existing holes in his opponent’s guard until they are forced to compensate and allow a big punch through to a now unguarded area.

Dos Santos and the Body Straights

There is physically no way to protect the whole body from attack except to not be close enough to be attacked in the first place. This is what Anderson Silva, Lyoto Machida, Junior dos Santos and other truly good strikers are so good at. Many of their opponents, however, don’t understand this and believe that by covering their head with their hands and their ribcage with their elbows they are safe.

Dos Santos will pick away with his body jab and powerful right straight to the solar plexus just enough to get his opponent to drop their hands or stay on the end of a tiring body punching assault for 15 to 25 minutes.

The body jab is treated as a nothing punch by a great many coaches—who insist one should just condition oneself against it. In truth you are, of course, never going to knock anyone out with a body jab—but if you keep taking stiff, well-targeted body jabs you are going to end up hurt and tired, if you drop your hands, you give the opponent exactly what he wanted in the first place.

Add to that the fact that if one drops down so as to be jabbing level with ones’ shoulder and maximising the available reach, the body jab is the joint-longest punch one can throw.

Many coaches will explain how a nice right straight thrown simultaneously can act well as a counter, because the body jab is so rarely seen in MMA counters for it are hugely under practised. Fighters aren’t going to start making up their counters in the middle of a bout.

Working the body up and down is a basic trait of Dos Santos’, and it seems to work well in both tiring his opponents out and forcing them to over-react and expose themselves. In his first bout against Cain Velasquez, Dos Santos landed seven significant strikes, four of which were to the body.

Cain’s reaction to the body straights—jabbing back at Dos Santos’ head even though it meant jabbing across himself—was what opened the door for the overhand that finished the bout. It was essentially a cross-counter performed on offence.

Closing the Door

Something many MMA fighters fail to do—most notably Gilbert Melendez—is to “close the door” on their combinations.

Finishing combinations with the right hand or simply lingering too long before returning with the left or tying up is exposing oneself to counters. Not only does Cigano close the door beautifully on many of his combinations, he will actively encourage opponent’s to chase him in order to snap them with a sharp left hook.

Against Frank Mir, Junior would feint a right hand, then begin to retreat as if he had lost confidence. Every time Mir would stumble in after him and eat a left hook on the jaw.

Junior hit Shane Carwin with everything but the kitchen sink on offence, yet it was when he caught Carwin with a seemingly throwaway left hook while retreating that he actually put the giant on his knees.

The difference between hitting a man when he is trying to protect himself and hitting a man as he comes in is enormous..

GIF of that here.

I could keep gushing over the game of Dos Santos and his striking weaknesses, but I have already hit my word count, and we’ve barely started.

Dos Santos is a boxer of wonderful subtlety, and I am extremely excited at the prospect of seeing him in against a man with a technical enough striking game that it could be competitive on the feet.

If you wish to read my thoughts on beating Dos Santos simply find my “Killing the King” article from when he was champion or my “How Cain Killed the King” article.

I, as always, have no idea how the bout between Mark Hunt and Dos Santos will play out and eagerly await UFC 160 for what many consider to be the card’s true main event.

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

How Mark Hunt Puts People to Sleep

Few men have turned their career around the way that Mark Hunt has. Just as few men have fought so many fearsome names. The recent stint of victories on Mark Hunt’s UFC record looks like something of a break from the huge names whom Hunt has been in ag…

Hunt has been in with Jerome Le Banner, Ray Sefo, Ernesto Hoost, Francisco Filho, Semmy Schilt and Mirko “Cro Cop” in kickboxing, and “Cro Cop,” Wanderlei Silva, Fedor Emelianenko and Josh Barnett, among others, in MMA. Win or lose, Hunt is unlikely to be phased by any step up in competition at this point.

Even from the early phases of his kickboxing career, Hunt was one of the few fighters, despite limited training time, to possess knockout power in almost all of the orthodox punches. Make no mistake though, Hunt was focused on his right hand almost entirely as a power puncher in his K-1 tenure. Numerous men fell to his overhand right or his right uppercut, and his left-right flurries also proved enough to stop Jerome Le Banner.

Mark Hunt, however, despite being smart and fairly savvy, is a genetically gifted fighter. With a head possessing the density of a bowling ball and fists to match, Hunt realised that he could beat just about anyone if he drew them into a brawl. Despite having a good technical game, Mark Hunt had a great brawling game and ended up relying on it more and more.

Hunt’s recent career resurgence in the UFC has come on the heels of getting back to technical striking to land his legendary power. It’s hard to brawl in a sport where opponents are just going to grab you if they get hurt/scared/close enough. Hunt doesn’t have the takedown defence to volume strike or swing wild, so he has worked far more on his counter-punching game.

One of Hunt’s newer developments is the low counter uppercut. This punch, thrown at almost hip level, is Hunt’s go-to method of deterring a wrestler’s shot from his opponent. You can see it in action through his bouts with Chris Tuchscherer and Ben Rothwell. Indeed Hunt picked up a spectacular walk-away knockout against Tuchscherer.

In the pure striking department though, Hunt’s game has changed a great deal since his K-1 days. Hunt, like many great strikers in MMA (including his upcoming opponent Junior Dos Santos), fights with his lead hand low. In addition to making a fighter’s lead hand strikes more difficult to predict or see coming, it gives the fighter a much needed shortcut to getting an underhook if his opponent shoots or tries to clinch.

For fighters who don’t have the wrestling hips to fight off takedowns constantly, the act of simply having the lead arm low can make the opponent reluctant to shoot, knowing that the underhook is already there.

Hunt’s low lead hand also allows him to bring his newly polished left hook up rapidly and catch his opponents with little warning. It also baits strikes to his head from the opponent. The lead hand being low worked a treat in drawing an ill-advised right hand lead from Cheick Kongo which Hunt swung over with his left hook to drop the Frenchman.

Hunto‘s right hand is held in front of him, actively parrying. This is another new development. Most kickboxers and MMA fighters will fight with their right fist pinned to the right side of their jaw or head. It is curious that Hunt carries his right hand open and ready to parry jabs when so few of the men he has met lately have been frequent, let alone competent, jabbers.

Stefan Struve, whom I constantly criticized for having no jab despite being almost seven feet tall, threw the occasional jab at Hunt and found himself on the hard end of a counter each time.

In truth, though, Hunt’s right hand is used in a way which so many fighters in MMA don’t understand—pre-emptively eliminating the counter strike. While rear-hand counters are far more dangerous to the fighter on offense (in this case Hunt), they are slow and require the opponent to be waiting on a hair trigger. Lead-hand counters are shorter, quicker and far easier to sneak through.

To prevent himself from getting jabbed in the snout every time he tries to close the distance, especially as most opponents in the division have both height and reach on him, Hunto will cover-press his lead hand into the space between his face and the opponent’s lead hand, eliminating the counter jab.

One of the marks of a good boxer is the ability to use both hands at once—not to punch, that would be dumb—but to shut down an opponent’s offence while delivering one’s own. Joe Louis, the greatest heavyweight champion to date, was not particularly fast or evasive when he moved in to hurt his opponents. What Louis was good at was using his right hand to shut down his opponent’s lead hand as he came in. Hunt, while nowhere near the boxer Louis was, does the same thing as he moves in to throw his left hook.

When he’s not looking to cover the lead hand and enter with the left hook, or parry the jab and throw the left hook back, Hunt is looking for the cross counter. The cross counter is something I have spoken about numerous times before because I believe, and the evidence certainly suggests, that when landed correctly, it is the most powerful counterpunch of all.

Hunt uses this punch extremely well while playing the role of the smaller man. In K-1, we were used to seeing Hunt as the big lad with the big punch and the concrete jawline. In his last four performances however, Hunt has dropped weight, moved more and really showed how fast his hands are for a heavyweight.

To land his cross counter, Hunt will often give ground to opponents and encourage them to chase him. The fight with Ben Rothwell was simply a showcase of Rothwell‘s chin as he walked onto punch after punch. Stefan Struve couldn’t resist the urge to chase Hunt to the fence and ate a cross counter as he stepped in, which put him on rubber legs. It was from here that Hunt followed up and finished.

One of the interesting factors of the upcoming bout with Junior dos Santos is that Hunt will be fighting an opponent who can actually box reasonably well—so rare in MMA—and who utilizes the jab very often. Hunt’s extended rear hand could serve well in moving past these jabs, though Dos Santos often uses the body jab, and if Hunt starts reaching to parry those, he could find himself on the end of a hard punch from the crafty Brazilian.

The main way to take advantage of an opponent with such an active right hand who is constantly looking to smother your own left as Mark Hunt does is to use a lead left hook as his hand is away from his chin. Joe Louis might have been one of the greatest technical boxers in the history of the game, but often he was dropped with wild left hooks out of the gate. “Two Ton” Tony Galento was one of the fighters to famously put him on his seat with this.

While the lead left hook shouldn’t work all that well against an opponent with an overly-active right hand who is concerned with absolutely shutting down the jab, it works a treat.

I, as always, make no predictions about the outcome of the fight—if I could do that I would be rich from the proceeds of bets—but I anxiously await the most exciting meeting of strikers at heavyweight since the Overeem—JDS match was taken off the table.

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