UFC Fight Night 34 in Singapore was pretty much a success. The main event between Tarec Saffiedine and Hyun Gyu Lim was an absolute striking clinic, as Saffiedine outstruck the bigger, more powerful man with grace and seeming ease. Lim managed to wobbl…
UFC Fight Night 34 in Singapore was pretty much a success. The main event between Tarec Saffiedine and Hyun Gyu Lim was an absolute striking clinic, as Saffiedine outstruck the bigger, more powerful man with grace and seeming ease. Lim managed to wobble Saffiedine in the final seconds of the bout, but it was too little too late.
Saffiedine took a clinical decision and looked great (for the most part) doing it.
What We’ll Remember About This Fight
We’ll remember that Tarec Saffiedine is a very good striker while Hyun Gyu Lim is not. But Lim’s late success against the cleaner striker might wind up being forgotten by many. That’s a shame, because Lim’s last-minute magic demonstrated the benefits of heart, the power in his hands and the slowing pace and diminishing effectiveness of Saffiedine in the final round.
We’ll also probably forget the 48-47 card that one judge put forward, which is probably the most lopsided 48-47 I’ve seen. I don’t run my own scorecard because it’s a difficult job, and Lim perhaps won one round, but it’s hard to give a fighter better than a 10-8 loss in a round that saw him get dropped by low kicks.
Finally, it’s clear that in MMA, even fighters who are training for opponents who are notorious for their low kicks do not do enough work on checking them.
Just like Nate Marquardt, Lim simply stood and took the kicks until they hurt; only then did he try to do something about them. With the exception of a couple of leg catches early (which opened him up to right hands in the second and changed his mind about reaching for Saffiedine’s leg), Lim did almost nothing to mitigate the threat of low kicks.
What We Learned About Saffiedine
He’s slick; he might be the crispest striker in the welterweight division right now. And low kicks aren’t going anywhere.
Not only does he feint, move and counter well, he mixes up the authority that he puts on strikes. He wasn’t throwing only power shots; he was performing the kicking equivalent of Nick Diaz’s volume striking strategy. He’d tap that lead leg, tap it again and then hack into it with a hard low kick when Lim wasn’t respecting the threat.
We also learned that even when he’s way in front and the smell of blood is obvious to everyone in the arena, Saffiedine is a cautious and rounded fighter. When he dropped Lim with kicks, he did a bit of work from the Sakuraba position, kicking at Lim’s legs while he stood over him, but then he hopped into half guard and looked to grapple for a bit. It seemed dumb to those who were hoping for a finish, but Saffiedine has always been something of a distance fighter.
In addition, he faded. What is a little worrying is that Lim’s effective offence at the end of the bout came after a round of Saffiedine retreating around the Octagon. I don’t know what went wrong for him—whether he injured himself or just hit a wall with his cardio—but while he got stronger in the last moments against Marquardt, here he looked out of it in the last round.
And he will use that double-forearm guard against even the biggest power punchers. He is the sole example of this traditional-style guard working in upper-level MMA, but this guard also allowed Lim to slip some shots in during the last round, which put Saffiedine on Queer Street.
What We Learned About Lim
He has heart. Tons of it.
He took a pasting in the first four rounds and was utterly outclassed. He was falling down every time Saffiedine landed a kick with authority in the fourth, but Lim gritted his teeth and got through. The referee could have stopped the fight, since Lim was doing nothing to prevent the kicks, but the South Korean’s determination raised eyebrows.
He also has power, which is a huge advantage for a fighter. Even in the final round while effectively fighting on one leg (a ruined leg drains a fighter’s punching power because all the power comes from the stance), Lim still hurt Saffiedine. His knees to the midsection also made the Belgian worry a bit on the rare occasions that they landed.
He’s a terrible technical striker. We knew this coming in; he’s enormous for a welterweight but is from the Stefan Struve school of fighting tall. He has no jab, wings his right hand wildly, gets caught with counters nonstop and has appalling balance.
What’s Next for Saffiedine?
From a completely selfish standpoint, I’d love to see him against the other strikers of the division. If Thiago Alves ever reappears, they could engage in a technical war. Martin Kampmann is a nice gatekeeper who, while not great defensively, has the savvy to finish Saffiedine if he lets up for a moment like he did in the last round against Lim.
From a more sensible standpoint, the man won the Strikeforce belt, so he should have a crack at the upper echelon. Carlos Condit has an engagement already, but that would be a good matchup. Or perhaps Rory MacDonald would be a suitable opponent, after his meeting with Demian Maia at UFC 170 in February. It would be interesting to see if MacDonald’s jab and wrestling alone could combat Saffiedine’s excellent all-around game on the feet.
What’s Next for Lim?
It’s his choice. He has crazy power, so if he stays around, he’ll pick up some huge knockouts. As a result, we’ll periodically talk about him as the next big thing, but he has so little skill in setting up his shots. He let Saffiedine run all around him and couldn’t cut off the cage, and every time he threw a right hand, he ate one in return.
Get him to a good striking coach, teach him to cut off the cage, show him how to lead with a jab or at least a left hook and improve his head movement when he throws that vicious right. Hell, if you could teach him to hide the right hand and the left knee alone, he’d have more success.
He’s a legitimate talent; it’s up to him to recognize why he failed and work to be more than just a power puncher.
Pick up Jack’s eBooks from his blog, Fights Gone By. Jack can also be found on Facebook and Twitter.
The greatest of all time.
You’ve heard it before—fight fans love to throw the term around. If you came here hoping for a definitive answer one way or another, I’m afraid you will be disappointed.
What we are going to do here instead is compare an…
The greatest of all time.
You’ve heard it before—fight fans love to throw the term around. If you came here hoping for a definitive answer one way or another, I’m afraid you will be disappointed.
What we are going to do here instead is compare and contrast Anderson Silva and FedorEmelianenko: their styles, opponents and legacies to the sport.
The Development of Style
The subject of styles could be dealt with by saying: “Silva was a striker who could do it all, while Emelianenko was a grappler who learned to strike, but they were really both mixedmartial artists.”
Many would write that, and a few readers might even be satisfied with that half-arsed deflection from any actual analysis.
It’s not that simple, it will never be that simple, and with real top-tier guys—who evolved to stay at the top of the pile for so long—it is far more complicated.
Silva in 2000 was nothing like the Silva of 2006, and the Silva of 2006 wasn’t the Silva who got in the Octagon with Chris Weidman. You can decide whether you want to call it growth and decline or continuous evolution, but the guy who let DaijuTakase in on his hips was not the same guy who shrugged off ChaelSonnen in their second bout.
Silva looked like other fighter from Chute Boxe when he started out, plodding forward with his hands ready to swing. He would go forward with strikes and hope to slam his hips down on top of his opponent’s takedown attempts.
You know this style—it was what made Wanderlei Silva and Mirko “Cro Cop” Filipovic great.
When you look at Silva’s pre-UFC fights—when he was something of a hit-and-miss performer—it is clear that coming forward and sprawling didn’t work for him. This could have something to do with him not being as stocky as Wanderlei and Cro Cop or not being as physically strong as them. But whatever the case, his inability to stop a takedown while he was on offence turned Silva into the fighter he is today.
He is largely responsible for popularizing counterstriking in mixed martial arts, and that wouldn’t have happened if he had had a decent degree of success with the go-to method of the day early in his career.
What we began to see in his UFC tenure was a fighter who didn’t like to attack opponents and risk takedown attempts but instead wanted to draw them in.
Emelianenko, for his part, was always known as a judoka with heavy hands. In his early performances through RINGS, though, he was all about takedowns and submissions. His stand-up was not nearly as developed as it would become (but also not as sloppy as it became in the end). Not only that, his grappling was rough in places too.
He was brilliant on offence with brutal kimuras, armbars and chokes, but when he was put on his back, he tended to hold a guillotine for far too long or attempt an Americana from the underside of mount. That’s just strange stuff that few great grapplers do.
Of course, it’s possible to finish a guillotine from the bottom of side control, but you don’t want to waste energy on it and risk getting a kimura slapped on your arm once it’s tired. Yet against Ricardo Arona, a takedown machine, Emelianenkoheld on for dear life to guillotines over and over in a match that most viewers feel he should have lost.
Coming of Age
Every fighter has a point in his career that could be considered a coming-out party.
For Silva, it was when he starched the granite-jawed and then highly ranked Chris Leben in his UFC debut. The Brazilian earned an immediate shot at Rich Franklin’s middleweight crown and showed a completely different Silva once again.
Where he had been fleet-footed and danced before, against Franklin he looked to block or parry blows, move in and slap on his double-collar tie. From here, he demolished Franklin with knee strikes.
After that, we saw Silva’s ground game tested against “the Michael Jordan of Jiu-Jitsu” (but not really) Travis Lutter. After that fight, we saw a well-rounded Silva show a similar game in every bout. He sat back and countered.
If someone came at him, Silva knocked him out with short blows between his opponent’s arsenal. If his foes sat back or wanted him to engage, he’d flick kicks at their legs, dance and generally make them look and feel like they didn’t belong in the cage.
Silva’s greatest accomplishment in the eyes of many was his victory over Dan Henderson, who came to the UFC fresh off winning a title in a second weight class in PRIDE.
After a round of lying on Silva and smothering his breathing with a hand (now illegal), Hendo couldn’t resist swinging at “The Spider” in the second round and found himself eating a couple of sharp left straights and a short high kick in response. Once the fight hit the ground, Silva got the back of the wrestler and secured a rear-naked choke for the finish.
After the Hendo fight, Silva had consolidated his position as the undisputed best at his weight in the world.
Emelianenko‘s explosion onto the main stage of MMA was not, as you would expect, his debut in PRIDE FC—then the premier MMA organization in the world. No, his debut was a convincing but largely uninteresting decision over SemmySchilt.
It was Emelianenko‘s match with Heath Herring that convinced fans he was for real.
Herring was considered the No. 2 big man in the world and had fought an all-out war against the PRIDE heavyweight champion Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira. Some considered Emelianenko to be a tune-up for Herring in preparation for rematch with Nogueira, but the fight proved to be something of a mismatch in the other direction.
Emelianenkohad come from RINGS, which prohibited striking of the head while on the ground. What nobody expected was him to show perhaps the finest ground-and-pound in MMA to date.
After putting Herring “through the meat grinder” in the words of Stephen Quadros, Emelianenkowas granted his title shot against Nogueira. Nobody expected what followed, as Fedor spent the entire fight inside of Nogueira’s guard, stripping the Brazilian’s grips, shucking his way out of triangles and dropping bombs on the champion. He would then return to his initial position inside the great grappler‘s guard.
It was as bizarre as it was remarkable.
Through two more matches with Nogueira, a meeting with Cro Cop and a few good fights in between, Fedor defended the PRIDE heavyweight title until the organization was bought out.
The End of Each Era
Emelianenko‘s era came to an end long after it should have. The longer he went undefeated, the more footage and news of his training camps seemed to focus on his love of boxing. Yet when he came to fight, he didn’t look anything like the man who had lit up Nogueira routinely and outstruck Cro Cop.
His body work and straight punches were gone. After his bout with Tim Sylvia, Fedor‘s left hook seemed to disappear as well.
From Andrei Arlovski onward, Fedor swung the right hand over and over again. But it wasn’t the sharp, arcing right straight that led into clinches; it was an overhand mess that surprised no one.
It is more an indictment of how sloppy the heavyweight division was that he was able to defeat three more top-10 opponents (in Sylvia, Arlovski and Brett Rogers) while showing none of the skills that had made him great.
When he dived into Fabricio Werdum’s guard, it was a shock to most that he got submitted, but we should have seen it coming. This wasn’t the same guy who jumped into Nogueira’s guard but stripped grips, postured accordingly and delivered strikes through openings created by these actions.
When he jumped on Werdum, he was trying to swing for the finish, and he got submitted by a man who was fighting smarter and waiting for that to happen. Through his bouts with Antonio Silva and Dan Henderson, the action played out much the same.
Emelianenko was swinging wild, almost parodying himself.
For Silva, the end came due to a different reason. Granted, he met a strong challenger, but just as Fedor dived into a triangle because he used to get away with it, Silva’s losses can be traced back to the incredible things he used to do, which finally got him caught.
In his first bout with Weidman, his error was pulling back at the waist and reacting to punches. In the second, it was his kicking without set up, which led him to power kick into a strong check and injure himself. While not textbook, he was fast enough to pull off both tactics in his previous fights.
Now there is nothing to say that Silva is done yet. Just as Roy Jones Jr. put together some decent wins after he couldn’t break the rules of the textbook anymore, Silva is smart enough to learn his way around any slowing down that age might have brought.
But it is clear that he will have a lot of work to do if he hopes to regain his middleweight title before he retires.
The Legacy
“Legacy” to many means the record you leave on paper. When you are talking about a fighter in the middle of the pack, it is reasonable to talk about his legacy like that.
What Silva and Emelianenko have achieved, however, is a technical and strategic legacy. While it is not entirely obvious now, both men have changed the way that MMA is played. They have left behind gems that younger fighters and generations to come will polish.
The most obvious example is the front snap kick that Silva used to knock out VitorBelfort. Now it seems like someone tries the same kick in every other event, and a decent percentage of the time it connects. Silva took a technique that was considered by many in the MMA community to be classical BS, and he turned it into a whole new wrinkle to worry about.
But more than that, how many fighters who don’t have a great wrestling pedigree do we see use their footwork to evade the threat of the takedown instead of confronting it? That was partly an extension from Chuck Liddell’s methods, but that was largely the work of Silva and LyotoMachida.
Backpedalling is the new trend, and until fighters outside of Cain Velasquez and the Pettis family have worked out how to get an opponent toward the fence, it’s going to remain a powerful means of controlling a fight.
We could point to a lot that resulted from Silva’s influence, but a quick final thought is the new popularity of low, low kicks. Think Benson Henderson’s kicks to the calf or Jon Jones’ side kicks to the lead leg.
Silva unloaded these strikes when his opponents didn’t come forward, and they kept him safe from having to charge Demian Maia and risk being dragged into guard. They might be considered dirty or point scorers, but they are definitely game-changers.
What about Fedor‘s legacy?
One of the fascinating things about Emelianenko is that he used methods that carry enormous merit, but very few fighters have attempted to replicate. The right-hand lead into the clinch and weaving out to the double-leg takedown are two interconnected methods that make closing the distance so much easier and add the threat of a knockout punch when closing the gap. Yet the vast majority of grapplers in MMA are still set on the jab-and-shoot method.
Furthermore, Emelianenko‘s emphasis on grip breaking and baiting the opponent into attempting submissions before standing and passing with a punch are methods that we don’t see regularly. Fighters are having more success from the closed guard, most notably Jon Jones. But while Emelianenko almost boxed on the ground—working the opponent’s head and body up and down—most in MMA seem set on the one method and hammering it home as hard and fast as possible.
Conclusions
If you’ve reminisced with me over the merits, flaws and development of both fighters—and their actual, visible legacy to mixed martial arts beyond the numbers and names on a record—we can all agree on one conclusion.
As much as people love absolutes and want to point to a man who is the best at any weight, at any time, it’s not that simple. Fighters change from fight to fight and with each opponent.
What we can agree on is that both of these men changed the game. In a sport where everyone loses, these men beat the best of the best and held off the inevitable for the longest.
Few men in any field can lay claim to such accomplishment and influence over their own sport. That is something to be applauded, examined and appreciated—not bickered over.
Kicks are getting bad press this week. While the severity of Anderson Silva’s injury at the hands of Chris Weidman was unusual, he got hurt by taking the risk of not setting up a power low kick. Kicking without setup and with no means of preventing the…
Kicks are getting bad press this week. While the severity of Anderson Silva’s injury at the hands of Chris Weidman was unusual, he got hurt by taking the risk of not setting up a power low kick. Kicking without setup and with no means of preventing the opponent checking—and especially power kicking without something to hide the kick—is a great way to hurt your leg, even if a shin snap is pretty unusual.
Many want to write off the end of that match as fluke, but in doing so, they are ignoring one of the most important rules of striking in MMA—setting up low kicks. To those folks I say this: If a gymnast were to practice his floor routine on a cement floor instead of mats, he would probably be able to get away with it for a good amount of time, but when he did botch a landing, it would mess him up. If a gymnast were practising back flips on concrete, then broke his neck, you would not be surprised.
Power low kicking without setup is failing to take proper precautions. It’s similar to throwing right-hand leads or pulling straight back from punches. When you do get hurt, it’s not unfortunate—it’s because you were playing with matches.
There are a great many considerations to make in the kicking game, but with that said, there are two brilliant kickers coming up on UFC Fight Night 34 who are worth watching out for. They are the low-kicking machine that is Tarec Saffiedine and the king of the snap kick, Katsunori Kikuno.
Tarec Saffiedine’s Kicking Chops
In the main event of UFC Fight Night 34, Tarec Saffiedine will make his long-awaited UFC debut. The last time I wrote about Saffiedine was in January of 2013 when he beat Nate Marquardt handily to capture the Strikeforce welterweight belt. The title was basically worthless, of course, because that was the final fight under the Strikeforce banner, but it was Saffiedine’s coming-out party, as he handily outfought a dangerous veteran in Nate Marquardt.
Now, almost a year to the day since his last fight, Saffiedine will make his Octagon debut. Saffiedine, being a Western European fighter, lacks the wrestling pedigree that many Americans come into the game with. He has picked it up well, but his main strength is his brilliant kicking game.
As you will notice in Hello Japan’s excellent highlight, Saffiedine has an affinity for the Brazilian kick (fake low, go high; also called mawashi geri or a question-mark kick) and low kicks.
Now the first thing which Saffiedine benefits from is the seeming reluctance to check low kicks in MMA. Many of his opponents will not even attempt it until they are certain that the kicks hurt. Only defending something once it’s hurt you, of course, marks an enormous target on that point. Checking kicks once your leg is already hurting is no easy feat either.
Much like Ernesto Hoost and many other great low-kickers, however, Saffiedine’s success with that weapon stems from his being able to threaten with another. His hands are very solid and smooth, and his upright stance ensures he is always ready to snap out a hard low kick.
Similar to Hoost, again, he is not concerned with connecting full power kicks all the time. Indeed, in his bout with Nate Marquardt, Saffiedine was happy to throw a few slappy kicks without setup, right out of his stance, just to test Marquardts reactions. Hoost said it best when he pointed out that he wasn’t ever able to land full power kicks, because they require almost a run-up. He instead liked to work with what he could sneak in without it getting checked. Little and often is almost always better than loading up and missing.
One thing that Saffiedine does incredibly well is catch his opponent’s lead leg when it is not planted on the ground. That may sound strange, as just the other day, we talked about the importance of ensuring an opponent can’t lift his leg to check. But any time an opponent is retreating, his front leg is not in a braced posture, simply trailing with little to keep its structure when it is kicked. A kick to the outside of a trailing lead leg can hurt a lot more than a kick to a leg which is braced on the floor, and can cause havoc on the opponent’s stance as well.
This happens in one of two ways. Saffiedine will back his opponent up with punches and connect with the low kick, or he will cover (a dangerous thing to do in four-ounce gloves) and deliver a kick as his opponent exits the pocket after striking. Notice both methods on display here.
Here’s another example of Saffiedine using a short, fast kick to catch Marquardt recovering from a jab. These aren’t huge power connections, but they messed with Marquardt’s stance, and the damage over time really added up. Marquardt was wincing in response to every kick by the end of the bout.
Saffiedine’s kicking game has served him tremendously well through his short MMA career, and I anticipate more striking excellence from him on Saturday. If clips of Saffiedine’s son on YouTube are anything to go by, this kicking game could serve the Saffiedine family for another generation as well.
All quotes were obtained firsthand.
This is the first in a two-part series on the great kickers who will be fighting at UFC Fight Night 34. Check out the second part, on Katsunori Kikuno, here.
This is the second piece in a two=part series. The first part can be read here.
Katsunori Kikuno: The Crescent Kick Terror
Katsunori Kikuno is a fighter whom I have enjoyed watching for a long time.
Watching him compete in DEEP and then in Dream,…
This is the second piece in a two=part series. The first part can be read here.
KatsunoriKikuno: The Crescent Kick Terror
KatsunoriKikuno is a fighter whom I have enjoyed watching for a long time.
Watching him compete in DEEP and then in Dream, his kicking game is like nothing I have seen in MMA. Kikuno is a Kyokushinkarateka, and as such, loves snap kicks to the body.
There’s a ton to write about Kikuno. In truth, he deserves his own article for style alone, but until he picks up a UFC win, let’s just cover him in brief.
Similar to SemmySchilt (perhaps the most successful kickboxer of all time and a Kyokushin–based fighter), Kikuno loves to deliver snapping kicks with the ball of the foot.
Koshi,as the ball of the foot is called in Japanese, is used in Muay Thai mainly for the teep, the push kick. Round kicks in Muay Thai are delivered with the shin. In karate, many round kicks are delivered with the ball of the foot to the midsection, and front kicks are often delivered in a snapping fashion.
As with anything, there are multiple approaches to snap kicking.
In Shotokan, the leg is chambered tightly.
A few years ago YukkoTakahashi, an accomplished female Shotokan karateka, spent a good amount of time explaining to me the benefits of chambering the heel almost to the buttock before throwing the snap kick forward. What Schilt and Kikuno do, however, is to barely chamber their kicking leg at all.
This is because their kicking game is based around deception rather than speed.
They want their snap kick to the midsection to look like their low kick and they want their high kick to look like their snap kick. Here’s a nice sequence of Kikuno chaining all three together and throwing his opponent’s composure into chaos.
I have been using the term snap kick because, in truth, Kikuno‘s body kicks come in from a number of different trajectories.
They can come in almost straight as with a front snap kick, or they can come up at 45 degrees as in this example.
The danger of kicking like this is that a fighter may catch the top of his foot on an elbow and perform his own limb destruction. The only way around that is to practice it and learn to recognize the openings. I can guarantee Kikuno will have accidentally dead-legged himself scores of times in training while getting as good with this kick as he is.
I asked the Bellator lightweight champion, Eddie Alvarez, who fought Kikuno in DREAM, about Kikuno‘s style, and Alvarez recounted that the difficulty with Kikuno is in telling whether it will be just another low kick or if it will curve up towards your liver.
While Kikuno lost that bout, he certainly gave a respectable account of himself against the best fighter he has met thus far and one of the best strikers in the game.
Kikuno‘s stance is another thing which deserves touching on because depending on what Kikuno shows in the opening seconds of his bout, we can expect him to either fight well or take a ton of damage while thinking he is fighting well.
Kikuno gained recognition for his weird “zombie style”.
Not dissimilar to George Foreman or Sandy Saddler, Kikuno carries his hands in front of his shoulders, kind of like the cursed mummies from old films. Foreman and Saddler, however, used this to smother their opponent’s hands and to parry punches in the course of cutting off the ring. Kikuno uses it to do that sometimes, but often carries his hands wide so as to draw a punch down the middle.
At that point Kikuno will slip and deliver a beautiful counter right hook. Here are a couple of examples from his kickboxing match in 4-oz gloves (I’m not joking, that happened) with Nagashima.
Now in some of his bouts, Kikuno has pretty much ignored what made him so dangerous and gone straight to wushu nonsense.
For instance, against Daisuke Nakamura, Kikuno decided to fight the entire bout with his hands at his sides. He took a ton of unnecessary damage and dragged out a fight against someone he could easily have bested from his normal, safer stance.
Kikuno‘s real skill, however, is not far removed from those of BasRutten (yet another Kyokushinkarateka).
He will kick hard near the ropes and then come in behind it with a salvo of punches. Neither are great technical boxers, but they are hard hitters who you can’t get stuck on the ropes with. Except where Rutten would use the teep to get his opponents onto the ropes, Kikuno uses the snap kick.
Now the effects of the snap kick with the ball of the foot are pretty unspectacular.
There is no flashy KO, and his opponents don’t collapse clutching their midsections. But the fight clearly changes. For instance here, where Kikuno‘s opponent’s hands sag and his head comes up just in time to be knocked unconscious by punches.
Andre Dida, who floored the great Buakaw in K-1 and coached Mauricio Rua for his matches with LyotoMachida, is certainly a tough customer, but one of Kikuno‘s kicks to the midsection had him gasping long enough that Kikuno was able to take an easy takedown and pound Dida out.
Now we started this two-parter by talking about properly setting up power low kicks, using a brilliant example in TarecSaffiedine.
But you might have noticed that Kikuno is the polar opposite.
He doesn’t set up his low kicks at all. This is because his low kicks are a set up to his middle kicks and his high kicks. As soon as an opponent is bracing for the low kicks, that is when he arcs the kick upward.
With these two men fighting on the same night, we are truly in for a treat. If nothing else, it will highlight that while there are general rules to striking technique, every single one can be ignored, broken or approached from a different perspective.
We could talk for hours about Kikuno because he is such a remarkable oddity.
We haven’t even touched on his stance switch to throw his preferred left snap kick, and there’s plenty more to be said about the actual technique of his kicks. Whether he lives up to the (rather limited) hype, or fails to deliver on Saturday, he will always be worth a watch.
If you watch a fight with an open mind, it is easy to learn something from even the most mediocre card. Whether you are picking up on the good or the bad, each fight is unique and provides unique insights. In this brief roundup of 2013, I have chosen p…
If you watch a fight with an open mind, it is easy to learn something from even the most mediocre card. Whether you are picking up on the good or the bad, each fight is unique and provides unique insights. In this brief roundup of 2013, I have chosen pretty much exclusively good fights that illustrate a number of truths about the fight game.
There will be MMA matches, kickboxing matches and boxing matches, and every single one is worth a watch. Some will make you gasp, while others will make you fume, but all of them made 2013 what it was: a great year for fights.
Michael Chandler vs. Eddie Alvarez II
Cutting off the Cage is Still Hard
This theme was prevalent in many of the matches this year, but cutting off the cage is becoming the most noticeably absent wrinkle in many fighters’ games. At this point, it seems like whoever starts back-pedalling first can ensure the opponent is chasing him. And chasing is a great way to get nailed while you’re stepping forward.
Whereas Chandler had done so well coming forward and upsetting Alvarez in their first fight (as Alvarez likes time and space to work), in this fight he found Alvarez was almost running around the cage. In frustration, Chandler chased but ran into punches time and again.
Check out my video breakdown of this fight and then watch the full bout because it was a beauty.
When Mark Hunt and Antonio Silva met in the main event at UFC Fight Night 33: Brisbane, people expected an incredible finish. Neither man is a decision fighter—hell, neither man has the gas to be a decision fighter.
At least that is what we thought. The two withstood the best shots they could throw at each other, with “Bigfoot” showing rare kicking prowess for a near 300-lb man and Hunt showing some remarkable wrestling for someone known as a stand-and-bang guy.
In 25 minutes of cross counters, brutal elbows and terrifying ground-and-pound, neither man disappointed or gave in. Heavyweights are signed to finish fights and sell tickets, not give back-and-forth wars to the last minute, but that is what these Silva and Hunt did.
If more heavyweights could carry the kind of intensity into a fourth or fifth round that these two did, the world would be a much better place. Still, this was perhaps the least likely match on paper to be exciting if it went the distance.
So for your new year’s resolution, when two heavyweights get past the first round, don’t sigh and go for a smoke straight away. Give them a chance…maybe they have the cardio for a good second round.
Badr Hari vs. Zabit Samedov III
Mo’ Aggression, Mo’ Counters
When Badr Hari squared off for the second time this year with Zabit Samedov, most expected a more violent repeat of the first fight. At the 2013 K-1 Grand Prix in their first meeting, a more-sluggish-than-usual Hari worked over Samedov until he scored a knockdown. Then Hari noticeably slowed and avoided engagement. It turned out that Hari had injured himself while picking apart Samedov and had to drop out of the Grand Prix.
A rematch between the two occurred in May, and it epitomized what overaggression can do.
Hari has been a textbook example of losing control throughout his career. Outside of the ring, he has narrowly avoided imprisonment for assault and attempted manslaughter. Inside the ring, he can work over men like Peter Graham and Samedov but get so excited in looking for the knockout that he’ll eat a punch that ends his night early.
Swarming on Samedov from the opening bell, Hari was caught numerous times as he came in with his creative combos and wild flurries. It was lunging onto a big uppercut that called curtains for Hari, and once again the consensus most talented kickboxer in the world dropped a match that he had no business in losing.
Jon Jones had an interesting time in 2012 and 2013. He cleared out the top of the light heavyweight division with wins over Lyoto Machida, Rashad Evans and Mauricio Rua. Then he had a couple of terrible gift matches against middleweights in Vitor Belfort and Chael Sonnen.
Coming back from his obvious tune-up against Sonnen, Jones squared off against Alexander Gustafsson. At 15-1, the Swede had defeated Thiago Silva and Mauricio Rua but never looked anything like the world-beater we all thought necessary to halt the champ’s momentum. Even the UFC’s marketing department struggled to sell this fight. They settled on Gustafsson’s height, which was closer to Jones’ than previous challengers.
Against Jones, Gustafsson was a different fighter. The style that had not made great use of his reach against shorter men suddenly worked a treat against Jones. Gustafsson got into punching range and boxed up the champion beautifully.
When Jones picked up the decision win, many claimed that the challenger had been robbed. This fight more than anything proved that just because someone has not shown great things doesn’t mean he isn’t capable of them.
The next entry was a strikingly similar situation…
Chris Weidman was just 9-0 and coming off a year layoff. Many said he wasn’t ready for Anderson Silva, and even I criticized the decision to give him a title shot so early. Ultimately, he made everyone think twice when he took down the middleweight great in the first round, pounded his skull a little and threatened with a heel hook.
In the second round, Silva was visibly frustrated. Breaking into the usual antics he uses to win rounds and force opponents to open up, he attempted to play off the punches that Weidman was effectively sneaking in without exposing himself. Leaning back at the waist in reaction to a strange double right hand, Silva had nowhere to go as a left hook sailed into his jaw and sent him crashing to the floor.
The lesson here was that when playing a reactionary game, you will always be at the mercy of the man who feints intelligently. The more that a fighter relies on reactions, the worse trouble he will have when his man starts feinting and doubling hands in mid combination.
Andy Ristie vs. Giorgio Petrosyan
Switching Stances Is a Killer
Giorgio Petrosyan is touted by many, including myself, as the finest striker on the planet. He is a defensive genius who systematically shuts down his opponent’s offence and works his own minimalist, conservative offence.
Now the key word there is systematically. He likes to get a feel for how his opponents work: their reach and the angles they’re striking along. When Andy Ristie starched Petrosyan at Glory 12, his whirlwind of offence confused the great Armenian.
Defensive fighters hate switch hitters. Rather than reacting to a set number of common techniques, they are forced to react to double that number and be conscious of stance changes. A left jab and a southpaw left straight are different punches to deal with, and that is true of the angle of any technique once a fighter switches stance.
In the final sequence of the Petrosyan vs. Ristie bout, Ristie switched stance twice in just a few moments, finally landing a left straight/uppercut hybrid from underneath Petrosyan’s guard with what was his jabbing hand just a second earlier.
Unpredictability can never be underestimated.
Floyd Mayweather vs. Saul “Canelo” Alvarez
Boxing Ain’t Changing
Saul “Canelo” Alvarez was an impressive prospect. He hits hard with both hands, he can box, he can fight, and he can throw the kind of confusing and stinging combinations that put Julio Cesar Chavez at the top of the heap for so many years.
But prospect development in boxing has always been a dirty, exploitative business. His management spoon-fed him the usual assembly of old men and boxers who were far past their best. Matthew Hatton, Shane Mosley, Carlos Baldomir and Ryan Rhodes were not especially dangerous names when they met Canelo.
Yet proving further that boxing has not changed in years, he drew an incredible crowd in his fight against Floyd Mayweather. Being Mexican, undefeated and a hard hitter, he ticked all the boxes. Of course, it was an easy fight for “Money,” but the size of the event and the incredible crowd that turned out even for the weigh-in illustrated wonderfully that boxing fans will still fall for the same tricks they always have.
A foreign (ideally South American) challenger, an American champion, undefeated (if padded) records. Tex Rickard doodled the same stuff on his flim-flam notepad in the 1920s when sizing up opponents for Jack Dempsey. Canelo is a better boxer than Luis Angel Firpo, but they got their big fights for almost identical reasons.
Peter Aerts vs. Rico Verhoeven
Old Doesn’t Always Mean Done
Peter Aerts is a legend in the combat sports world. I regret not writing an in-depth piece on him before his semi-retirement match against Glory heavyweight champion Rico Verhoeven. It seems like every time the 43-year-old Dutchman gets into the ring, I find myself worrying that he is going to get starched in the first round, yet he very rarely does.
I was in the front row at Ariake Coliseum when Aerts took on Jamal Ben Saddik at Glory 8 in Tokyo earlier this year, and I almost hid behind my hands at the pasting he looked to be taking. Yet somehow that Aerts magic got him through. He dropped the right hand that has shaken so many chins, followed up with a beautiful left knee and put Saddik down often enough to pick up a TKO.
He is a shadow of his former self, so don’t confuse my meaning. But he is still twice the fighter that many kickboxers will ever be. Against the young, dangerous Verhoeven, Aerts had his legs chopped out and his granite chin punched, but he got in his opponent’s face and made a fight of it.
Some even thought Aerts had done enough to win, although they thought this more out of love for the old lumberjack than from an objective standpoint.
Diego Sanchez vs. Takanori Gomi
Judges Are Awful
Judges have always been into intensity and theatre over effectiveness. Sitting in the press section has ruined how I imagined MMA judges to be. I had always pictured them as slow-witted and easily distracted by someone’s watch glinting on the other side of the arena. But having sat behind them, I can attest that their eyes never leave the monitors that the UFC have provided them in hopes of avoiding some of the horrible robberies that are commonplace in this sport.
This makes it somewhat worse when looking back at fights like Diego Sanchez vs. Takanori Gomi. Gomi has been washed up for some time, relying on his power and chin—neither of which has been getting the job done. He is certainly not the man who cleared out the entire lightweight top 10 in 2005 and 2006.
Yet against a Sanchez—who looked like he didn’t want to be there—Gomi channeled “The Fireball Kid” of old and lit Sanchez up with jabs, hooks and low kicks between his trademark stance switches.
With enough grimacing, swinging wild and theatrical pouting, however, Sanchez somehow came away with another in his list of undeserved decisions. As a result, we were all left wondering what exactly the criteria to become a judge are.
Anderson Silva vs. Chris Weidman II
Checking Kicks Is Not a Waste of Time
This just happened on Saturday, so I don’t want to milk it too much. I’ve already written an article about checking kicks and how these injuries just happen if you kick, with power and without setup, into an opponent’s knee.
Basically, Silva’s only effective offence in the first fight was his low kicking, again without setup but with decent power. In the rematch, Weidman showed his improvement in that area and denied Silva his biting point-scorers.
Not only that, but Weidman drew kicks just to check them. By kicking Silva first, he immediately received a kick in return. Though Silva has been the master of baiting and psychology through his UFC run, he was vulnerable to the same sort of simple drawing that he has used so effectively on others.
A few good coaches hold the view that checking kicks is unnecessary if you learn to take them. This normally stems from a counterpunching school of thought. Men like Bas Rutten liked to take low kicks because after the kick connected they would still be in good position to follow with counterpunches.
I wouldn’t want to say any of these guys are wrong, as Rutten’s method worked well for him and his fighters. But talk of fluke injury aside, checking a kick is intended not just to stop a fighter from eating a kick but to deter the kicker from kicking again. The result of this fight was unusual in its severity, but ultimately the check served its purpose.
The more you put into an effectively checked kick, the more you can hurt yourself.
Renan Barao vs. Eddie Wineland
Spinning Sh*t Still Works
The first few minutes of this fight saw Eddie Wineland outboxing Renan Barao at points and generally doing much better than anticipated. Wineland has a graceful in-and-out style and is lovely to watch. After a round of looking underwhelming, Barao attempted a spinning back kick, because why not?
Wineland reacted to the kick by ducking, which in fact took his head right into the line of the kick that was intended for his body. It was an unusual result but indicative of how spinning techniques are hard to differentiate and can often draw less practised reactions and flinches from opponents.
If you’re losing a fight and you’ve practised it a little, it’s always worth trying some of what Nick Diaz called “spinning sh*t.”
George St-Pierre vs. Johny Hendricks & Rory MacDonald vs. Robbie Lawler
Georges St-Pierre’s path has been one toward ultimate simplicity. His striking game had tapered off to an amazing jab in recent fights, but against a good southpaw, that just won’t cut it. In an orthodox vs. southpaw (open guard) engagement, “crossed swords” result, in that the lead hands get in the way of each other.
As Johny Hendricks was able to check St-Pierre’s lead hand with his own, he was able to throw his rear hand freely. St-Pierre doesn’t seem to have any sort of rear hand to deter his opponent from walking in on him anymore. Essentially, they were in a gunfight, but only Hendricks could use his gun.
An almost identical scenario unfolded just an hour or so earlier in the evening as Rory MacDonald was stifled at every turn by the wily power puncher, Robbie Lawler. If anything, but having power in both hands and kicks to boot, Lawler was even more impressive than Hendricks.
While so much can be learned about the proper use of the jab—boxing’s greatest weapon—from St- Pierre, on some occasions, even the best jab is not a good tool to use.
2013 was a hell of a year for MMA. Wherever you spend your New Year’s Eve, have a good one. With a UFC card coming up this weekend, MMA’s 2014 is set to be even more jam-packed than 2013.
Pick up Jack’s eBooks Advanced Striking and Elementary Striking from his blog, Fights Gone By.
And so ended the era of Anderson Silva, middleweight king. Not with a whimper but with a bang.
Yet this bang inspired little ovation, only a stunned silence. It was the kind of loss which every fight fan hates to see. A grotesque and severe injury. A s…
And so ended the era of Anderson Silva, middleweight king. Not with a whimper but with a bang.
Yet this bang inspired little ovation, only a stunned silence. It was the kind of loss which every fight fan hates to see. A grotesque and severe injury. A snapped shin bone. In the replay, it was clear that Silva’s leg had snapped to the point that the lower half of his shin was able to move free from the upper half, as if connected like two links of sausage.
Chris Weidman, the defending champion, was quick to shower praise on the fallen great following the fight’s anticlimax. Ernest Hemingway related it best: One general will always go to great lengths to praise a general whom he has bested, and this was no different.
It is hard to dispute Anderson Silva’s incredible legacy, and Weidman has looked so remarkable that we can only wait with gleeful anticipation to see what he can do against the rest of the division.
One thing is for sure, though, we should see a damn sight more checking of low kicks in mixed martial arts from now on.
The Check
It is very easy when analyzing technique to get caught up in the proactive. The drawing of strikes to land favored counters, the use of combinations, angles and feints or the flashy kicks themselves. The check is easy to overlook because it is considered a passive movement. It is not actively striking, it seems a purely defensive action.
Yet the leg check is by far the most valuable asset in one’s game against a good kicker because it actively discourages him from kicking and has a good chance of punishing him if he does.
Now low kicks in MMA have a long way to come. They are simultaneously underused and used too carelessly.
For a textbook example of under use, one need only look further down the UFC 168 card to Michael Johnson versus GleisonTibau. Johnson was showing all kinds of movement around the cage, and GleisonTibau simply followed Johnson around, swinging a lead hook whenever Johnson came close.
In order to stop someone from simply circling around the cage, low kicks should be employed. The reason that you don’t see Dominick Cruz, LyotoMachida, Anderson Silva or Frankie Edgar like movement in Glory or in Muay Thai is that taking a kick to the trailing leg as you are circling is no fun at all. Picking up that leg to check stops you from circling.
If you need someone to stand in front of you, kick at his legs. But Tibau continued to plod and swing, and Johnson moved out of the way of almost all damage. The finishing blow was a rear straight inside of Tibau‘s lead hook.
This is the counter that the great Barney Ross listed as the most powerful in boxing. It is also the one which BadrHari knocked Alistair Overeem flat on his face with.
Low Kicking the Smart Way
Now the problem with low kicking is that against someone who knows what they’re doing, you should have to work around their checks.
Folks like Ernesto Hoost and Rob Kaman realized that low kicks are awesome, but kicking people shin on shin (or worse, shin on knee as we will talk about in a moment) is as damaging to the kicker as to the opponent. Ernesto Hoost, in his most recent seminars which you can find on YouTube, is often asked how come he almost never ended up kicking shin on shin.
Hoost explains that it was because he always either a) threw a flurry of punches against his opponent’s guard to preoccupy them and keep their feet flat or b) kicked as they were stepping in toward him when their weight was on their lead leg.
Now the second is not a good option for MMA. The kick can ride up the thigh, get caught in the hip of the opponent and he can run into an easy takedown attempt or counter punch. This is how James Irvin got knocked out by Anderson Silva after all. But the former method, setting up with strikes, is what everyone in MMA should be trying to do.
It works so wonderfully because even if the defensive fighter picks his leg up to check as you start the combination, you will be punching them while they’re on one leg! Who could say no to that?
I’m going to say it now, low kick defense in MMA is mediocre across the board. There are still people coming into matches against Jose Aldo, who is known for low kicking more than anyone else in MMA, and not attempting to check a single kick. This means that low kickers can run into their kicks with less and less care about hurting themselves.
Yet when Aldo clipped Chan Sung Jung’s knee with a low kick, he threw just one more before realizing that his foot was badly hurt. Now of course Aldo managed to pull out the win even without his vaunted low kicks, but the effect of a bad connection by a power kicker was clear.
In MMA, fighters are used to being able to simply run into low kicks. So few fighters consistently check their opponents attempts to kick, and that is ultimately what did Anderson Silva in against Weidman at UFC 168.
The Knee Spike
Something to consider when talking about checking kicks is that there are, as with any technique, several approaches to it (and probably many more which I haven’t even heard of). Some check with the center of shin because it provides the largest surface on either side of the checking point in case of a miscalculation.
Some like to push their shin toward the opponent’s kick and meet it earlier in its path. This is something Duke Roufus talked about in his old instructional series.
And some like to check as close to the knee cap as possible because of its destructive effects on a shin bone. This is something I especially love seeing in fighters because I have always had a great affinity for limb destructions which actually work.
A brief word on “destructions.” Chris Weidman used the term in the post event interviews and recalled that this is the term Ray Longo favors for checking with the knee on the opponent’s shin. Limb destructions are not the many terrible “catch the punch, lock the elbow and ease him to the floor” techniques which fill volumes in traditional martial arts.
Limb destructions are the few grains of brilliance in traditional martial arts which can be applied to combat sports techniques and make them far more potent. Elbow blocks are a brilliant example, getting the point of the elbow in front of the opponent’s punch can destroy his hand and put him at a huge disadvantage for the rest of the fight.
Catching a kick and delivering an elbow onto it (though not a 12-6 one in MMA at any rate) is another brilliant example of something which can easily mess up an opponent’s offensive options.
The knee spike is just one of those brilliant techniques. If an opponent is kicking without set up, or his set ups are predictable, there aren’t many better options than attempting to injure the kicking leg by checking with the knee and the top of the shin.
A similar style of destruction is something which turns up a good deal in Filipino martial arts. Often you will hear about using the hands and forearms to check a mid-level kick down onto a rising knee.
Freak Injury?
Some are claiming that Silva’s injury was a freak injury. In truth, the snapping of the shin bone in that manner was a rare injury, but when a fighter runs full power into a kick which connects on the opponent’s knee, it’s not uncommon.
Within that scenario, it is a very common outcome that the shin will be injured to some degree. Whether the fighter can fight on it or not, he will not want to kick again too soon, and that is the purpose of checking with the top of the shin and knee.
How come we don’t see so many of them? The event of a hard low kick into a knee is not that common. Good fighters set up their low kicks; most MMA fighters don’t even check low kicks. In kickboxing, most fighters are smart enough to set up their attacks because they are used to having to work around an opponent who is willing to check.
Similar circumstance to this only really arises when you have one man who is comfortable checking kicks and another who is far too confident in his own power kicks. A brilliant example is Ray Sefo versus Ernesto Hoost. Hoost was an old man in the fight world by then, and Ray Sefo was on the rise. Yet Sefo threw a low kick without set up at Hoost and quickly discovered that age doesn’t matter when it’s shin on knee.
To draw a parallel, running into a power low kick without set up is like coming out against an older boxer and only throwing power punches because you reckon you can put him away.
Some will say this injury was a fluke because they want to believe that Silva’s 38-year-old shin couldn’t hold up to a good check any more. But in the post-fight presser, Weidman talked extensively about training to put his knee on Silva’s shin. We’re not talking about a good kick that rode up, we’re talking about a poorly planned kick which was checked well.
To see the difference a check on the knee makes just look at Weidman‘s first check on his lower shin and then his second, the one which broke Silva’s leg.
The neatest thing about both is that Weidman kicked first to draw a kick out of Silva. Weidman is not a particularly good kicker, but both times he kicked, Silva kicked back immediately, and Weidman was able to check.
No, freak injury implies it was simply misfortune. There was nothing accidental about Silva getting hurt. When a hard kicker kicks a knee, he hurts himself. Sometimes it’s enough to finish a fight, sometimes it’s just enough to stop him from kicking for a while, but kick a knee Silva did.
Conclusions
This fight was for me, as for most other long time MMA fans, bitter sweet. Weidman dominated and showed (once again) that he is the real deal, but one of the fight world’s great heroes was carried out screaming on a stretcher. Many would have preferred to simply see Silva knocked out, stand up and congratulate Weidman. Nobody wants to see their hero in that kind of anguish.
But on another flat note, it pointed to how far striking in MMA still has to come.
The truth is that Silva hurt himself throwing powerful low kicks without set up, against someone whom he didn’t expect to check. Do not interpret that as a justification to the ridiculous “Silva beat himself” narrative running through this rivalry, though. He is hard to dispute as the most accomplished striking based fighter in MMA, yet he was finished by expecting such a low standard of ability in his opponent.
Two things could happen as a result of this fight. For the next nine months, we could see hundreds of fighters trying to check more kicks, as we saw front kicks after Silva versus Belfort. Or we could see a massive decline in the use of low kicks out of fear of an injury.
But this is how sports develop. Muay Thai and kickboxing look as they do now because of a series of developments over many years. In Muay Thai, the teep and checks developed to counter power kicks, then kicks to the arms and other less easily defended areas came in to work around those defenses.
It would be very interesting to see how Jose Aldo, Jon Jones and the many other great low kickers in MMA would respond to an increased popularity and understanding of proper low-kick defense, though.
Pick up Jack’s eBooks Advanced Striking and Elementary Striking from his blog, Fights Gone By.
The greatest of all time.
