Tim Kennedy got the job done. He had trouble getting there and looked anything but a world beater, but a leaping left hook knockout is never a bad way to end a night of fights. Unless you happen to be Rafael Natal, of course.
The entire card proved ent…
Tim Kennedy got the job done. He had trouble getting there and looked anything but a world beater, but a leaping left hook knockout is never a bad way to end a night of fights. Unless you happen to be Rafael Natal, of course.
The entire card proved entertaining and enjoyable, with some great technical moments and strategic showings. Criticism about the star power on this card might have been accurate, but names don’t matter on a free card where quality fights do.
Today we’ll make a recap of some of my favourite moments from the night.
Yancy Medeiros Starches Yves Edwards
Before talking about easily my favourite fight of the night, I want to take you on a tangent.
A few weeks ago the UFC announced the strange acquisition of KatsunoriKikuno. While he is past his best, I have always wanted to see how much trouble the Japanese lightweight could stir up with his brilliant snap kicks to the midsection.
To return to the here and now, Yancy Medeiros showed exactly how troubling the front snap kick to the gut can be in his brutalizing of Yves Edwards’ body throughout their short and explosive bout.
There are two ways in which one can effectively box a taller fighter. The first is to get in close by moving your head or checking their hands, the second is to stand at an exaggerated distance and force the taller fighter to give up his reach by lunging in.
Edwards was attempting to perform the second method and it worked when Medeiros stepped in with punches, but the ramrod snap kick to the midsection served to put Edwards behind and wind him while he failed to get off a good counter.
Edwards’ head was always lower than Medeiros‘, he was the shorter man after all, but he often performs ducking head movements, whether that be as he leans towards the opponent or away from them. Medeiros‘ team had clearly done their homework as Medeiros attempted to punish Edwards for dropping his head each time they engaged.
Medeiros‘ lead hand was unusually active on offense for an open guard (orthodox vs. southpaw) engagement. Typically the lead hand serves, for the most part, to check and counter the opponent’s use of the lead hand in such bouts. Medeiros went on the offensive with it but it led to him being cracked with the southpaw Edwards’ famous counter right hook each time he jabbed.
Medeiros‘ team had obviously put together an answer to Edwards’ favourite counter, however. Twice Medeiros stepped in with a jab, right straight and left uppercut while moving to the inside of Edwards’ lead foot. On the second time, Medeiros caught Edwards clean as he ducked with the counter right hook and the fight was over.
The lead uppercut is a fantastically under-appreciated punch, in the right context.Madeiros‘ lead uppercut was perfect to catch the dipping Edwards, but even in this instance it opened up the left side of his head to Edwards’ best punch in the process.
Medeiros‘ angle on this technique was reminiscent of George Foreman’s stepping left.
I had not seen much of Medeiros before, but scoring the knockout of the night in an inventive striking performance against a wily veteran is enough to ensure that I will not miss his next fight.
RustamKhabilov outpoints Jorge Masvidal
Jorge Masvidal deserves serious appreciation for his counterwrestling ability. Where RustamKhabilov‘s previous opponents have found themselves knowing that a suplex is coming and being unable to do anything about it, it was Khabilov who looked to be struggling to answer Masdival in the clinch.
What Khabilov did show was striking aptitude. His use of combinations, body punches and unorthodox techniques, such as the lead back elbow and wheel kick, worked wonderfully to keep Masvidal on the back foot.
The one thing which may be responsible for Masvidal not achieving great things in this sport is his tendency to lay back and go on the defensive when attacked. He does not tend to counterfight much, and when his opponent comes at him, he will back up, forearms raised, until they stop attacking him.
This double forearms guard allowed Khabilov to land a few good right hooks behind Masvidal‘s left hand, but also gave the appearance that Khabilov was in control, even though the fight was proving very even.
The unpredictable wheel kick which dropped Masvidal, and which he recovered from admirably, simply served to secure the final round and give Khabilov the decision.
Both parties looked good in this bout, and there is reason to look forward to the future of both men.
Tim Kennedy catches Rafael Natal circling
There isn’t an awful lot to say about this fight because it was so brief and relatively uneventful up to the knockout. But as Kennedy is a favourite of the military crowd, it was certainly good for the fans that this fight went off as it did.
Natal looked to be confusing Kennedy early with the switching of stances and the use of low kicks. Kennedy struggled to check well and ended up falling over on the end of one.
Once the fight moved past the nervous stage, in which both fighters were throwing grazing techniques from long range, and moved into a more measured phase at a closer distance, Natal’s fundamental flaws became more obvious.
Placing his back almost to the fence, Natal circled away towards Kennedy’s left and only narrowly evaded Kennedy’s first attempt to cut him off with a left hook.
Seconds later he landed with the same technique, and the match was done.
Brief Thoughts on the Danger of the Unknown
Both Kennedy and Natal made poor strategic decisions in the bout. Both men backed up into the fence at multiple points, and much of the fight was spent low kicking without set up in the centre of the cage.
Kennedy was right to be cautious, and it is understandable that he was thrown off and made to look quite average early on. Unknown opponents are far more dangerous to an elite fighter than the ones he has had time to study and prepare for.
Rameau Thierry Sokoudjou exploded into the top 10 of the light heavyweight division by starching Lil Nog and Ricardo Arona back to back simply because nobody knew anything about him except that he was a judoka. Nobody knew that Sokoudjou could punch and nobody knew that he would gas hideously if you kept a fight going for more than a round.
The examples go on and on. Fabricio Werdum opted to test out his improving stand up against an unknown Brazilian named Junior dos Santos. Houston Alexander shocked the world against a cocky Keith Jardine, then spent the rest of his career being thoroughly mediocre.
Kennedy looking out of sorts until he found his hook is understandable, and his knockout served to top off a good evening of fights. For those who would speculate about Kennedy’s future, however, it is hard to see what he would have had for his original opponent, LyotoMachida, if he struggled to keep Natal in front of him.
Pick up Jack’s eBooks Advanced Striking and Elementary Striking from his blog, Fights Gone By.
Boxing is an ambiguous term. Boxing can refer to the sport of pugilism; strapping on gloves and fighting under Queensbury rules for ten to twelve rounds. Or boxing can mean a specific type of fighting within that context.
David Tua and Kimbo Slice are …
Boxing is an ambiguous term. Boxing can refer to the sport of pugilism; strapping on gloves and fighting under Queensbury rules for ten to twelve rounds. Or boxing can mean a specific type of fighting within that context.
David Tua and Kimbo Slice are boxers in that they compete under boxing rules in boxing matches, but I doubt many knowledgeable fans would call them classical boxers in terms of their technique and strategy.
In mixed martial arts it seems that a fighter has good boxing if he has good hands. Nick Diaz and VitorBelfort are excellent examples of fighters who lack head movement, footwork and ringcraft, but have good enough hands that they are often touted as the best boxers in MMA.
In terms of a technical boxing skill set, you won’t see much better in mixed martial arts than that demonstrated by Eddie Alvarez.
At Bellator 106, Eddie Alvarez took a close decision over Michael Chandler in their headlining title bout, and showed en route the difference between punching technique and the art of boxing.
Punching with the Feet
Boxing technique, as with any martial art or sport, is more about placement and the feet than it is about the arms and fists. On the most basic level, when you learn to punch you are taught that the power comes from the legs and the hips.
A line from Patrick McCarthy’s translation of the old karate text Bubishisums this up more poetically.
“Like a cat catching a rat, a tiger pulls down a wild boar with it’s body; the claws serve as the means of contact.”
To relate that in a less roundabout manner: Power is generated from the feet. They are the be all and end all of boxing, kickboxing and striking technique.
But more than that, the feet provide mobility.
The Running Man
I write constantly about getting to dominant angles on an opponent by use of the feet, but often it is not possible to do this. The ideal situation of being on an opponent’s blind side with time to throw strikes is not going to happen all that often.
The majority of dominant angles are achieved off of a big miss from the opponent, or against an opponent who is slowing down. They are so effective that they should be pursued throughout a bout, but it is up to the opponent to prevent them from happening. If the opponent fails or tires, it’s a wonderful bonus for the angler and perhaps an early night.
Alvarez was able to land occasionally with his angling right straight, which I made a video breakdown of here.
What Alvarez did so well against Michael Chandler for the most part, though, was to constantly threaten to get to an angle and exhaust Chandler with jabs and body punches as Chandler struggled to keep Alvarez in front of him.
Cutting off the Cage
Cutting off the cage is hard. The Octagon is near enough circular, and the Bellator cage is completely round. There are no significant corners to push an opponent into as there are in a ring.
Alvarez made wonderful use of this, moving around the entire cage throughout the fight. What showed immediately is that despite training with that will o’ the wisp, Dominick Cruz, Michael Chandler did not know how to prevent Alvarez from moving freely.
To cut off the ring, it is necessary to step across and meet an opponent each time they circle, rather than simply pivoting to face them in their new position.
This involves widening one’s stance and squaring up a bit, making a fighter more hittable. That is the sacrifice one must make to cut off the opponent. One has to create a smothering blanket rather than a hard-to-hit but easy-to-move around target.
Various fighters have used various means to make this safer. Mike Tyson and Julio Cesar Chavez both moved their head a lot. George Foreman used the method of his teacher, Sandy Saddler, keeping his palms high in front of him to parry blows.
What doesn’t work while cutting off the ring is keeping your hands low. To cut off a ring you must confront an opponent, and they will throw punches at you. If you have your hands down while you do it, they are going to hit you, or you are going to have to make crazy, reactionary head movements to get out of the way.
Chandler opted to keep his hands down as he followed Alvarez around the cage, and this leads us to our next topic.
Circling Out
To Chandler’s credit, however, he did try to hit Alvarez as he circled out. A punch is twice as powerful when an opponent is running straight into it, and Chandler was attempting to predict Alvarez’s direction well.
Unfortunately Alvarez has been coached well in circling out.
A good deal of fighting is about lies and tricks, not punches and kicks.
Alvarez would feint one way, then immediately go the other. Seems simple, but it completely baffles the vast majority of fighters, even the ranks of boxing.
On other occasions, Alvarez would commit to moving in one direction, anticipate Chandler’s hook swinging in at his head and duck out underneath it.
Body punches and kicks are by far the best method of stopping an opponent circling out, for the reason that they cannot be ducked and held in place for a followup.
Something which I didn’t mention in the days after Daniel Cormier versus Roy Nelson, but which deserves appreciation, was Cormier‘s understanding of these same methods.
Nearing the fence, Cormier would circle into Nelson’s right hand, then reverse direction as soon as Nelson began to move. Alternatively, he would circle to Nelson’s left, reverse and then duck the obvious right hand.
Simple ring circling and changes of direction are something which many boxers, particularly in the amateur ranks, are drilled through long after they think they have “got it”. When you see a fighter struggling to cut off the ring and exhausting himself while doing it, you understand why this movement needs to be drilled far beyond the point of boredom.
Reactions versus Habits
Another area of the game in which Alvarez’s disciplined boxing technique won him the edge was in head movement.
Alvarez has something of a reputation for being easily hit early in a bout. In truth, you would struggle to find a slower starter in his weight class, but Alvarez is consistent. Just as Joe Frazier was known by most for having ‘never won a first round in his life’, Alvarez’s diligent and consistent head movement only begins to protect him later into the bout.
By being in the habit of moving his head after he throws, or when his opponent steps in, Alvarez can mitigate much of the danger and keep his opponent playing catch up with his aim.
Michael Chandler, meanwhile, was working entirely on reactions. He insisted on that hands down fight stance and intended to prove his skill by bending back at the waist or slipping wildly in response to Alvarez’s attacks.
Reacting is hard work. Alvarez didn’t see every punch coming, but plenty which he didn’t see still missed him. Chandler, however, threw himself off balance to get away from punches which he saw coming, and tired quickly as a result.
By the final two rounds, Chandler was simply eating blows whenever he walked forward.
Conclusions
Boxing in MMA is getting better. It’s not up to the professional boxing standard, obviously, because anyone who can box well professionally would be more inclined to make decent money boxing than scraping by as an MMA fighter.
Moreover, elements of the MMA game shut down elements of the boxing game. The few occasions on which Chandler actually used low kicks caused Alvarez to stand still and eat a punch which followed. Another great example is how Cub Swanson and EdsonBarboza used the threat of kicks to stand Ross Pearson up and remove the head movement which made him so hard to hit with punches.
What we will begin to see more of over the next few years is fighters using movement as Alvarez did and as Lyoto Machida, Cruz and Frankie Edgar do now. I will be interested to see if anyone other than Anthony Pettis and Cain Velasquez can learn to cut off a circular cage and buck this trend.
Pick up Jack’s eBooks Advanced Striking and Elementary Striking from his blog, Fights Gone By.
It brought a beautiful and cathartic close to a strange night of fights. As Lyoto Machida’s left shin swept through Mark Munoz’s ever-so-slightly lowered right arm, the mood of the crowd was washed clean.
English crowds are vocal. They are like t…
It brought a beautiful and cathartic close to a strange night of fights. As LyotoMachida‘s left shin swept through Mark Munoz’s ever-so-slightly lowered right arm, the mood of the crowd was washed clean.
English crowds are vocal. They are like that friend you have who is too blunt to ever be introduced to your family, but who is so brutally honest that you could never distrust them. If a fight stinks, the British crowd will let you know about it.
I was cage side for UFC Fight Night 30: Machida vs. Munoz, and the night had delivered some cracking moments in its early going. Earlier in the evening, Cole Miller had hit the Roleta sweep on Andy Ogle, John Lineker had delivered a good knockout with body shots, and crowd favorite Stormin’ Norman Parke had won a convincing but competitive victory over Jon Tuck.
Luke Barnatt had even picked up an impressive submission victory in which he made two attempts at a Mark Hunt style walkaway knockout, both of which left his opponent conscious enough to make a grab at him. The shouts of “What’re you doin‘, ya f**kin’ spaz?!” from his fans were a laugh.
The mood heading into the main event, however, had soured.
Sexton vs. Andrade
On the undercard, the crowd had endured perhaps the worst unanswered beating in WMMA since Jan Finney was decimated by Cristiane “Cyborg” Santos. Jessica Andrade simply brutalized Rosi Sexton on the feet.
It hurt as a fan because Sexton is such an endearing character and her doing so much for women’s MMA, particularly in England. It was more upsetting because of her clear will to continue in the face of such a drubbing. But what hurt the most was the clear ineptitude of the referee and the lack of responsibility from Sexton’s corner.
Sexton was actually landing counter blows as Andrade came in, swinging wild. In fact Andrade was proving pretty predictable in leaning straight back in defense each time. The problem was that Sexton had not had her legs under her since the opening minute and showed none of the power that would be needed to turn a fight around.
It is the duty of the referee to protect the fighter. That is also the duty of the fighter’s corner, but the corner will normally allow themselves to get caught up in the fight. They feel for their fighter, and they can kid themselves that their fighter can land a big punch down the line and pick up the comeback of the year.
It is the referee’s job to prevent the fight from getting that far when the fighter is clearly taking so much damage.
Frankly, referees need to learn that it is completely justifiable to stop an MMA fight while a fighter is still standing. Sexton showed no ability to get away from the punches and was on wobbly legs for much of the bout. Even if she had pulled off a last second knockout, it would not have been worth the damage that the referee and her corner allowed her to go through.
This was not the fight to show your friends if you want to get them in to the MMA scene.
Manuwa vs. Jimmo
JimmiManuwa and Ryan Jimmo slowed the show down in their bout. Both are gifted fighters, but both repeatedly swung into clinches in which all they were willing or able to do was hold on. It was less a battle of pummeling for position than it was a case of refusing to budge grips until the referee confirmed that it was safe to.
Jimmo attempted to use the karate game popularized by Machida out in the open, bouncing and retreating before stepping in to meet his pursuer with a hard strike. But more often than not, he did little and ended up back in the clinch.
The fight was brought to an abrupt end through a literal misstep by Ryan Jimmo. Jimmo injured himself and was unable to continue, leaving the crowd underwhelmed. Both men are great fighters, but stylistically it is probably worth avoiding a rematch in terms of entertainment value.
Parke vs. Tuck and Lineker vs. Harris
Of course there were also plenty of enjoyable fights on the card. Cole Miller’s bout with Andy Ogle was stellar. John Tuck and Norman Parke also provided a good scrap which illustrated a couple of good principles which we are always discussing.
This was vintage puncher vs. kicker stuff. Tuck looked to land long kicks against Parke from the outside. Through the first round this looked to be working decently, but Parke’s commitment to keep backing Tuck up worked a treat.
It is exhausting to keep backing up and moving and kicking. The classic example is of FedorEmelianenko versus Mirko Filipovic, but there have been plenty of fights to illustrate the point.
Both fighters were looking for their rear hand all fight as they attempted to rock away or slip and come back with their own.
The main factor which was absent from Parke’s still developing game was a good right-handed strike. Tuck was looking outclassed by round three, but survived because he circled away from Parke’s left hand. If Parke could find a good right hook on Tuck he could have held Tuck in place for the left.
It is not necessary to have a hugely powerful right hook or right low kick, but something to form a barrier and hold the opponent in place as he attempts to circle away from the left hand.
In fact Parke’s wheel kick, probably thrown for the fun of it, actually came dangerously close to a good connection because of Tuck’s constant movement to Parke’s right side.
John Lineker demonstrated this cutting off of the cage with punches when he picked up an easy knockout earlier in the night because his opponent, Phil Harris, was circling exclusively into Lineker‘s right hand. The long, telegraphed right hook to the body looked to be an obvious set up, and I was fully expecting Lineker to catch his man with a left hook as he returned to his upright stance.
What happened instead was that Harris refused to move to Lineker‘s left. In avoiding Lineker‘s highly touted left hand, Harris stood and took the right hands that Lineker was trying to convince him to move away from.
Pearson vs. Guillard
The final bizarre let down of the night was Ross Pearson versus Melvin Guillard. Pearson showed his usual great head movement (some of the best in MMA), while Guillard showed his usual speed and offense. Unfortunately, an illegal knee caused a cut which had the fight deemed a no contest.
By this point the crowd were getting pretty annoyed.
Machida vs. Munoz
Machida‘s bout was something remarkable though. The crowd had been vocal through any moment of inactivity in the past two hours of fights (“stand ’em up!” when Cole Miller had Andy Ogle’s back). Yet two minutes into the Machida vs. Munoz bout, an eerie hush was taking over the crowd.
Machida did much less backpedaling than usual and didn’t seem to want to draw Munoz onto his left straight. Instead, Machida took the centre of the octagon and used his feints to keep Munoz guessing.
Machida threw three meaningful strikes in the entire contest: two middle kicks and a high kick.
This fight illustrated two great points.
The first is that it is not enough to use the wrist or glove to block a powerful kick in mixed martial arts. Gloves are too small and the closer to the end of the arm you take a kick, the less stable the block is, turning moments into action.
The second point was that U.K. MMA fans are a committed and educated bunch. For all the terrible Tapout t-shirts on display and the booing of anyone who was fighting against a U.K. fighter, the Manchester crowd sat in a quiet anticipation as LyotoMachida, a Brazilian, feinted and moved for three minutes without a meaningful connection.
They were rewarded with the knockout of the night, and the misfortune of the co-main event was almost forgotten.
One hundred and three years ago America was treated to “The Fight of the Century.”
Jack Johnson defended his heavyweight crown against the only man to have retired with that title, Jim Jeffries. The ungodly power of the challenger proved wort…
One hundred and three years ago America was treated to “The Fight of the Century.”
Jack Johnson defended his heavyweight crown against the only man to have retired with that title, Jim Jeffries. The ungodly power of the challenger proved worthless as the savvier champion smothered him in clinches, breaking only to deliver a flurry of blows before re-engaging. Jeffries simply had no answer.
Rare is the occasion on which the gap between the champion and his top-ranked contender is so broad and so harsh.
Yet after bearing witness to Cain Velasquez‘s massacre of Junior dos Santos at UFC 166, I find myself recalling Jack London’s account of the Johnson-Jeffries bout: It was not a case of too much Velasquez, but of all Velasquez.
Easily we forget when one man loses so decisively that both are very human. There were merits and flaws to both performances; the list of each man’s strategic vices and virtues simply amounted to Velasquez winning and doing so emphatically.
With that in mind, let us review the fight and the methods that Velasquez used to stifle the Brazilian puncher.
A Man in the Rigging
What was evident throughout the fight was that Junior dos Santos can stop Velasquez from taking him down; he stifled numerous takedown attempts and fought back valiantly. Dos Santos used the fence to hold himself up and to allow himself to attempt to break away from Velasquez while the latter attempted to get him to the floor.
Improvements in wrestling and ground game didn’t take away the issue of Junior being beaten up while neutralizing these facets of the game.
The fence served as Dos Santos’ safety net: keeping him upright in the face of Velasquez’s grappling, but it served as much to ensnare him. Along the fence Dos Santos was hard to get off of his feet, but he had little means of offense.
By pressing Dos Santos into the fence, Velasquez was able to flatten out Dos Santos’ boxing stance, destroying his means of generating his numbing punch. Meanwhile Velasquez, with his head underneath of Dos Santos’ and with his feet slightly staggered and driving into the fence, was able to land with weighty blows.
Dos Santos did find a small measure of joy in striking with his back to the cage, borrowing from Carlos Condit the strategy of clipping his opponent with an elbow whenever he could. It was refreshing to see Dos Santos rely on something other than his hands, and the elbows certainly gave Cain reason to be wary each time a small space was created between the two fighters.
Nevertheless, Dos Santos struggled to break from these clinches and more often than not was trapped against the fence for extended periods.
Fighting in the Breaks
Dos Santos’ plan wasn’t a secret; he wanted to strike Velasquez during his approach out in the centre of the cage. We have discussed before how often Velasquez eats strikes on his way in.
Rather than sticking to the retreating counter jab that served him so poorly in their last bout, Dos Santos threw his right straight much more readily in this bout and landed well with it on a few occasions. He also showed a decent left hook from time to time.
Unfortunately Junior dos Santos doesn’t have different gears and can only fight at one intensity; each time he missed a punch the force with which he threw it would almost turn him around. This gave Cain more than enough opportunity to move in on Dos Santos and start making his life very difficult indeed.
It is hardly worth harping on about how little Dos Santos would have to offer either Klitschko brother in a boxing match, but the UFC 166 main event drove home an important point about boxing that I think we tend to forget in MMA and even kickboxing.
Head Position is Everything
In professional boxing, after each combination or counter is completed, evasive action must be taken to avoid a counter punch. Professional boxers spend rounds on the double-end bag and on the mitts with their coaches to drill this in.
When you see a fighter throwing himself off balance as he punches, as Junior often did, or failing to take any kind of evasive action after a punch, you must understand that he is toeing the line of calamity.
When Velasquez hurt Dos Santos with an overhand right, it was almost identical to the first bout. Junior would throw his own punch and then just stop. Because Dos Santos failed to move his head or get behind his lead shoulder, he was wide open for the Velasquez swing that followed.
Many fighters in MMA and kickboxing who have a reputation for skill with their hands suffer from the same flaw. Ray Sefo, for instance, had some of the sharper boxing in K-1, yet his brief boxing career showed exactly the same thing.
As Sefo parried a jab and attempted his counter left hook, which worked a treat in kickboxing, he found himself being force fed his opponent’s right hand. I talk about “closing the door” with the left hook and how it keeps a fighter relatively safe from the opponent’s right hand (more on this from the Melendez-Sanchez bout later in the week), but if the fighter does not recognize the purpose of closing the door and make sure that his shoulder is protecting him, he will still be struck.
Head position and movement is not just important in boxing range, however. It is vital in wrestling and ground fighting as well. Cain Velasquez was able to absolutely dominate the clinch portion of the fight because by getting his head underneath of Dos Santos’, he could keep the Brazilian pressed flat against the fence with little room to move.
This is something that is becoming more and more commonplace in MMA. Fighters are taking an underhook on one side, pushing their opponent to the fence and getting their head underneath their opponent’s. This leaves the pushing fighter in a stance that is staggered enough to generate power on punches with their free hand, while their opponent is pinned in place.
In addition to the old underhook, head fight and punch technique, Cain showed brilliant curved knees and decent elbows.
Perhaps the most interesting point that this bout raised in my mind was the grey area that surrounds jockeying for head position. Both heavyweights fought diligently for head position but clashed heads numerous times as a result.
The line between jumping swiftly into a clinch while looking for head position and the act of butting as one closes the gap is certainly a blurred one. Seeing the swelling on both men’s faces after the bout one can not help but wonder how much came from the head fight.
With that said, neither of these fighters is a dirty fighter, simply savvy. For his part, Dos Santos was doing a good job of driving his hand into Velasquez’s throat as he tried to create space from the clinches, and it was not uncommon to see his fingers stray into Velasquez’s eyes. Velasquez took this well and has his eyes closed a surprising amount of the time when he is head fighting anyway.
The Tragedy of the Trilogy
The first tragedy of this rushed trilogy is that Junior dos Santos showed genuine improvement. He fought off the takedown attempts and looked to land his right hand much more aggressively than in their second meeting.
The difference between the two men is that Dos Santos is predictable.
Where Velasquez uses the same entry to the clinch almost constantly, his overall tactics throughout the bout vary. Velasquez can look for the takedown or he can smash his opponent along the fence, or he can light them up as they try to stop him; he has a complete bag of tricks.
Conversely, Junior Dos Santos is a very skilled but limited fighter. He excels in one area of the fight, the striking game, and even there he refuses to use anything but his boxing for the most part.
Furthermore Dos Santos is not good at moving around the cage, backing straight onto the fence before inevitably attempting to circle out to his right. Between his last two bouts with Velasquez and the bout with Mark Hunt in the middle, Dos Santos has eaten dozens of left hooks in this way.
Dos Santos would do well to watch Daniel Cormier‘s bout with Roy Nelson to see circling out done right. Cormier was rarely along the fence, but when he was he would fake going out one way until he sensed a reaction, then dodge out the other, while moving his head. Against Roy Nelson one could circle away from his right all night, but Cormier showed he was comfortable to circle either way and keep Nelson guessing. Dos Santos has none of that savvy.
The second tragedy of this trilogy is that we will forever be forced to listen to uneducated fans claiming the outcome of the first bout was the result of a “lucky punch.” In truth the lucky punch does not exist. In their first bout, Dos Santos did everything he normally does and Velasquez fell for it. That’s all there is to it.
Unfortunately history likes to remember the winner of a trilogy and make excuses for the odd match out.
Matt Serra will likely never get the credit he deserves for his repeated right hooks to the body before winging his right hand over the top of Georges St. Pierre’s sagging hands. Junior Dos Santos will probably never get the credit he deserves for drawing Cain into jabbing across himself and landing the right hand over the top just the same.
When fans see an overhand, all they can think of is luck.
The final tragedy of this great trilogy between the two top fighters at heavyweight is that it is already over.
Were there ever a rivalry that I would loved to have seen played out over years, with each fighter being forced to take several fights before another title shot, it is this one. Giving Dos Santos just one bout between his loss to Velasquez and their third bout was obviously not enough to see much improvement. To have him fight against someone completely unrelated to Velasquez, a one-dimensional striker, served only to build hype and not to develop Dos Santos’ skills or career path at all.
Pick up Jack’s eBooks Advanced Striking and Elementary Striking from his blog, Fights Gone By.
Glory 11 took place in Chicago on Saturday, Oct. 12 and aired on Spike TV. The event was undoubtedly a success with good ratings and some cracking fights.
The kind folks at Glory are very encouraging of my technical breakdowns so here’s a small breakdo…
Glory 11 took place in Chicago on Saturday, Oct. 12 and aired on Spike TV. The event was undoubtedly a success with good ratings and some cracking fights.
The kind folks at Glory are very encouraging of my technical breakdowns so here’s a small breakdown from Errol Zimmerman’s bout with HesdyGerges for a reserve place in the Heavyweight Grand Prix.
Anyone who witnessed Cain Velasquez’s dismantling of Junior dos Santos in their second bout will surely understand that Dos Santos has a tough task ahead of him at UFC 166.
Velasquez is relentless, a trait that is rare and troubling at any weight class…
Anyone who witnessed Cain Velasquez’s dismantling of Junior dos Santos in their second bout will surely understand that Dos Santos has a tough task ahead of him at UFC 166.
Velasquez is relentless, a trait that is rare and troubling at any weight class but even more so at heavyweight.
Where Dos Santos is a measured and methodical fighter who takes time to find his openings, Velasquez is a bulldozer who simply drives into his opponents without respite for the duration of a fight. They wilt and shell up or he finishes them.
Despite being considered an extremely well-rounded heavyweight, however, Velasquez’s modusoperandi is no mystery, nor does he hide his intentions in a deep bag of tricks. Almost invariably Velasquez will come in with a jab, move, then come in with a jab and a right hand before ducking for his opponent’s hips.
Simple, right? Certainly not simple to deal with.
The Standard Velasquez Set Up
You needn’t think far back to remember Erick Silva being starched by Dong Hyun Kim. Talented strikers make defensive sacrifices to deal with great takedown artists. Dos Santos, like Silva, keeps his non-punching hand low in order to block his opponent from getting to his hips.
After shucking off a few takedowns in the opening round of his return bout against Velasquez, Dos Santos was looking to counter whenever possible but kept his defensive hand low. Attempted uppercuts resulted in him getting cracked with an overhand, just as Alexander Gustafsson’s long uppercuts often do.
The overhand or any sort of arcing right works remarkably as a gap closer because unlike the jab it does not maintain distance; instead the overhand serves to collapse distance.
“Jab and shoot” has long since become outdated because the two movements are contradictory. A good jab serves to keep distance, a shot is about getting deep on the opponent’s hips. “Jab and shoot” basically ensures a fighter has to go through the longest possible distance to get to his opponent’s hips.
The overhand, however, is a shorter-range punch. It is accompanied by necessity with a dip forward and to the left, providing its own head movement. Teaching wrestlers to move their head well enough to avoid getting hit by more experienced strikers is tough. Velasquez still comes in jabbing with his chin up and gets caught with counter jabs a good deal of the time, but anyone becomes a harder man to hit during an overhand.
The second important point about the overhand or most rear-handed punches is that it is a damn hard punch. Anyone can throw a right hand hard with some practice. Consequently it serves as a double threat. A wrestler is no longer just a wrestler. If a fighter tries to defend the wrestler’s go-to strategy by stuffing the shot, his hands leave his guard and he can have the boom lowered on him by the overhand.
Countering The Set Up
One of the key problems that Dos Santos faced in his last match with Velasquez was dealing with the level change off of this overhand. Dos Santos, flustered by Velasquez’s pressure and takedown attempts, wound up trying to counter every jab that Velasquez threw with a jab of his own. This is all good, but he was attempting to do so on the retreat.
A retreating jab is not a power punch, but a setup punch. The rear foot is moving back and so is the body weight. It is an arm punch designed to blind or lift the head in hopes of planting the rear foot, pushing off of it and cracking the blinded opponent with a hard right hand. A retreating jab is not a good counter on its own.
A master of using a blinding jab to hide a counter right hand was Jersey Joe Walcott. By now, many of you will know him as one of my favourite fighters, and that’s because he was as savvy as they come.
Walcott was a master of drawing better boxers onto his right hand. He was the ultimate anti-technician—the better a boxer Walcott‘s opponent was, the worse Walcott made him look. Teofilo Stevenson was also great at blinding oncoming opponents with the jab and landing a long right hand.
Dos Santos wasn’t looking for the right hand, however. He was landing single jabs while backing up and this left him wide open for the overhand that Velasquez threw after his jabs, and then left him stunned as Velasquez changed levels and went for his hips. Junior was providing openings in his guard, with none of the benefits that good punches usually give to offset these risks.
In Velasquez’s basic jab, overhand, level change, Dos Santos has several good opportunities to counter, but should he open himself up at any point he leaves himself exposed to hard blows and a takedown. Basically, with Velasquez using the same set up over and over, Dos Santos has three main opportunities to counter.
Blind with the same counter jab, but follow it with a right hand before Velasquez can follow with his own.
Counter the right hand.
Counter the level change.
Countering the right hand of course means catching the right hand first. Attempting a direct counter with the left hand low is just suicide. Both Dos Santos and Antonio Silva attempted to counter Velasquez with a right uppercut simultaneous to his dipping right hand; both got hit and Antonio Silva got knocked out.
As good a boxer as Junior is by MMA standards (clear your head of any nonsense about him having anything for the Klitschko brothers), I doubt we will see him shoulder rolling Velasquez’s right hand and coming back with a counter right uppercut or straight. That could work a treat here, but Junior just isn’t the shoulder rolling type.
Very few good boxers can land a counter jab, drop their hand and shoulder roll into a right-hand counter. James Toney and Floyd Mayweather are excellent at this, but even most fighters who are good at shoulder rolling cannot do it so well off of a counter jab.
Countering the level change is perhaps a better idea. Doing so with the uppercut, again, would be ill advised as evidenced by Bigfoot and JDS in the above frames. What Dos Santos could do, now that he has shown he is willing to kick, is use his knees more effectively.
Nothing keeps a wrestler off his game as well a knee shooting up to meet him each time he attempts a takedown. The idea that Junior is going to avoid all takedowns is pretty optimistic, near delusional.
Assuming he has been training to get back up from the ground, it might be worth trying to catch Velasquez coming in and fight his way back up. This could be preferable to Junior exhausting himself and getting hit as he tries to stop takedowns.
The king of the intercepting knee was Joachim “Hellboy” Hansen. If you haven’t heard of him, he’s probably one of the best lightweights to have ever competed in MMA and for certain one of the most exciting. In between regular suplexes, helicopter armbars and rolling back takes, he had some of the meanest knees against ducking opponents in the game.
Having seen him knock out CaolUno, MasakatsuImanari and LuizAzeredo each with a knee strike as they ducked, trying to shoot on Hansen was always a terrifying prospect.
Hansen essentially accepted that he would have to play guard at some point and so opted to get off his best strike as his opponent lunged toward it with their face, presumably reasoning, “If I end up in guard, at least he’ll think twice about shooting again when I get up.” But in Norsk.
Using one’s knee strike to punish takedown attempts also carries less of the danger of eating a punch that a counter uppercut does. The fighter’s head may still be protected with his elbows and forearms.
Ring Craft
This is a constant feature of my analyses but it is a crucial one. Ring craft is the be-all and end-all of fighting, because if a fighter never hits a wall, he can move freely indefinitely. Junior Dos Santos is not nearly as good at navigating the Octagon as he is at landing pot shots in the centre of it.
I have previously likened Dos Santos’ boxing style to fencing, being more in and out on a line than one based on lateral movement. When Dos Santos retreats, he often does so straight backwards until he feels the fence, then begins to circle.
This meant that against Cain Velasquez and Mark Hunt, Dos Santos ended up circling out into left hooks along the fence when he had no ground through which to retreat. Dos Santos has a great chin on him, but if I were placing bets on how he will eventually get knocked out, getting trapped along the fence would be a close second to getting hit with his hands down.
This fact alone makes Velasquez a nightmare matchup for Dos Santos. Dos Santos hates the fence and Velaquez adores it. Any time Velasquez can get Junior along the fence and threaten even a lackadaisical takedown, he can get Junior’s hands away from his face and start roughing him up with punches all over again.
Now, retreat is an extremely useful tool against Velasquez. His hyperactive offense should leave holes to counter through, but then all he uses it for is getting on top of his opponents. If his opponents are simply shuffling back jabbing, he can walk them down then swarm in on them.
It is rare that I praise Cheick Kongo’s hands, but he beautifully demonstrated the art of getting Velasquez to overextend. Stand in front of Velasquez and it’s jab, right hand, shot, but if you can get him chasing, he opens himself up more.
Kongo flicked his lead hand in front of Velasquez’s eyes while retreating. He did a bad job of staying off the fence, but he did an excellent job of drawing Velasquez forward, blinding with the lead hand and then following with the right as he retreated.
Cain Velasquez, with his aggression and porous defense, seems to be a tailor-made opponent for back-step punching.
I spoke earlier about how the retreating jab is not a power counter, but back-step punches—which are rarely practiced much in traditional boxing—can prove to be true power counters while on the retreat. Essentially instead of jabbing as he retreats, a fighter shifts his lead foot to his rear, changing stances, while extending what started as his lead arm.
This creates distance and a barrier through which the opponent cannot pass in the form of the extended left arm, braced by the retreating left leg as it touches down. Against an aggressive fighter this works a treat. The back-step punch should always be followed with a second back-step punch.
In boxing form, the rear foot moves back and the lead foot moves back into a stance with it. Back-step punches are thrown by retreating with whichever side one is punching with.
It is not necessary to step back into a southpaw stance, only to bring the left foot back underneath the fighter before he kicks the right foot out behind him. This method provides a faster retreat than would otherwise be possible, coupled with a hard right hand as the opponent chases.
The left straight keeps an opponent on the end of the reach, blinds him and lines him up perfectly for a back step into orthodox stance and a hard right hand. A few guys have been really good at this, and none of them have been what you would call orthodox boxers.
Muhammad Ali, Anderson Silva, FedorEmelianenko, sometimes Chuck Liddell and frequently Igor Vovchanchyn, to name a few. Back-step punching has an interesting history and serves extremely well in avoiding standing toe to toe against an aggressive fighter.
A good boxer must be able to move backwards, but so few can punch well while retreating.
Conclusions
Junior dos Santos will have to fight off takedowns and he must be able to get up from the floor. If Velasquez doesn’t get caught up in fighting on the feet or put off by his first takedown getting stuffed, it is very difficult to see a turn of events where Dos Santos can stop shot after shot, never going to the floor.
His life is going to be hard; he is going to have to work in short windows on the feet when Velasquez isn’t chest to chest with him, and in their last meeting this caused him to take ill-thought-out shots and get hit more than he normally would.
It is in Dos Santos’ interest to make this into the kind of fight he likes, because Velasquez damn sure isn’t going to give it to him. Velasquez knows not to stand around and play silly beggars with Dos Santos; he knows that he needs to be up in Junior’s face from the first bell until the referee separates them.
It is Dos Santos’ job to make sure that doesn’t happen. Even periods when little is happening give an advantage to Junior dos Santos in this bout. Velasquez is known as the whirling dervish, the hive of activity. When an active fighter is in an inactive round, he appears ineffective and judges can often perceive him to be losing an even round.
Of course winning points this way is not a guaranteed victory. Dos Santos should be doing what LyotoMachida and Anderson Silva do so well, limiting exchanges. When he lands, he lands with power. He doesn’t land with volume. Prolonged exchanges are Velasquez’s wheelhouse and he can duck into a takedown whenever one occurs.
Getting a cushion of a round or two by avoiding action and pot-shotting might well be a better plan than simply looking for the knockout from bell to bell, but as long as Junior is hitting hard and getting away, he has a good chance.
The harder Junior makes Velasquez work to force an engagement, the more chance he has of hitting Velasquez clean with a counter.
Aggression does leave holes and they do exist in Velasquez’s aggression, but distance and a chase is necessary to bring those holes out. Dos Santos would do far better executing a Machida strategy of running three times and intercepting with a right straight once than he would attempting to counter with a body jab or hook, or throw a jab while backing away each time Velasquez comes in.
The flaws are there. Velasquez does leave himself exposed, but at the same time he has heavy hands, elite wrestling and a pace that cannot be matched. Dos Santos has the tools and the power; it’s whether he can understand the difference between worthless counters and priceless ones that will decide how this fight plays out.
Pick up Jack’s eBooks Advanced Striking and Elementary Striking from his blog, Fights Gone By.
Tim Kennedy got the job done. He had trouble getting there and looked anything but a world beater, but a leaping left hook knockout is never a bad way to end a night of fights. Unless you happen to be Rafael Natal, of course.
