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At Legacy FC 24, upcoming women’s MMA star and accomplished boxer, Holly Holm, picked up her fifth win in mixed martial arts.
In destroying Nikki Knudsen, Holm showed a variety of southpaw tactics from her boxing days as well as a wonderful lead-leg si…
At Legacy FC 24, upcoming women’s MMA star and accomplished boxer, Holly Holm, picked up her fifth win in mixed martial arts.
In destroying Nikki Knudsen, Holm showed a variety of southpaw tactics from her boxing days as well as a wonderful lead-leg side kick each time Knudsen attempted to circle past Holm‘s lead leg.
With the victory, Holm moves to 5-0 and continues to attract interest to WMMA.
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Pace is a killer and at its best it is a surprisingly subtle one.
It is not the punches stemming from the whirling dervish in front of a fighter which catch him unaware. No, they are ever present and easy enough to weather. It is the soul-sapping …
Pace is a killer and at its best it is a surprisingly subtle one.
It is not the punches stemming from the whirling dervish in front of a fighter which catch him unaware. No, they are ever present and easy enough to weather. It is the soul-sapping fatigue which sneaks up on him, accompanied by that terrible sense of urgency.
Every moment that his opponent is doing more, even with little effect, the fighter is falling behind. A ticking clock has been set on his performance. He must somehow find an opening in that cloud of offense and land the counter which will end the fight.
But everything that he believes or has been told about aggression−how it opens a fighter up to easy counters—suddenly seems to have been a lie. If he defends himself, he falls further behind. If he opens up to attack, he is holding a door open in the storm.
The greatest fighters of every generation have hit the same wall at some point in their career. A skilled, powerful veteran can be in with a man with half as much power and a quarter of the skill, but can be brought down by the brutal and unrelenting grind of the bout.
The fighter with pace has a weapon which no level of technical skill can negate. When a fighter is in with a Cain Velasquez, a Sean Sherk, a Ricky Hatton, a Nick Diaz or a Henry Armstrong, it is a case of getting the job done early or finding a way to keep them off for the entire fight.
Every professional fighter in the world makes it habit to prepare to fight for the full scheduled length of their bout, to bank on an early knockout would be foolhardy. Benson Henderson regularly describes his preparation for a “25-minute controlled explosion.”
Every fighter, however, inevitably prepares to fight the full length of their bout in the style which comes to them the easiest. Preparing for 25 minutes as Anderson Silva or Lyoto Machida is not preparing for 25 minutes as Cain Velasquez or Sean Sherk.
To put it another way, some of the finest technicians have been relatively inactive fighters in the ring. There is a difference between the 70-plus punches a round that Roberto Duran threw against Sugar Ray Leonard in their first bout, and the sub-30 punch rounds that Bernard Hopkins often has.
Equally, there is a difference between the 60 strikes over 25 minutes that Anderson Silva attempted against Demian Maia, and the 339 strikes and 33 takedowns that Cain Velasquez attempted against Junior dos Santos in their second bout.
Obviously they are very different fighters who were matched against very different opponents. Anderson is a more accurate striker, while Cain is a volume striker. The key word though is attempted. We remember Dos Santos being taken down over and over in that bout, but Cain was working at only a 33 percent success rate for his takedowns.
Often in the fight world, in a bout between two good technicians, both will become less active, thinking of each punch thrown or takedown attempted as an opening given to the opponent.
What is admirable is the fighter who makes the realization that landing a perfect counter is hard. Landing a perfect counter while being swarmed on with offense and dropping rounds is even harder.
Velasquez was absolutely willing to look like a fool on the first two takedowns he attempted in the bout. Diving for Dos Santos’ leg and clinging onto the low single as Dos Santos worked out of the attempts. The important thing to note is that takedown defense in the opening round is not indicative of how the wrestling will look throughout a fight.
Too many fighters are put off by the stuffing of a shot, when in actuality they should consider the effort that the other fighter has to expend to prevent the takedown.
I wrote an article before the second Velasquez versus Dos Santos bout in which I outlined how Cain’s plodding approach on the feet and bolt upright stance made him easy to hit on the way in. What happened in the rematch was that Cain’s constant threatening of the takedown and level changes actually served as effective head movement in their own way, mitigating Dos Santos’ counters.
Furthermore Cain’s constant aggression forced Dos Santos to look for counters which just weren’t as easily available.
Dos Santos, despite having much better cardio than most heavyweights in MMA (though that is also true of many chain smokers), is a controlled and thoughtful fighter who excels in measured, technical fights. In Dos Santos’ bout with Mark Hunt—which everyone should have seen by now because it was magnificent—Dos Santos was troubled by Hunt’s counters early, but sussed Hunt out and began dropping the hammer on him to pick up a late stoppage.
Hunt obliged Dos Santos by allowing him time and space to work his man out. Measured exchanges against a better boxer really do just give him time to work. What Velasquez did so well against Dos Santos was to force his hand.
Dos Santos was working in small windows between takedown attempts and began looking for counters which just weren’t there, allowing Cain to beat him up even more on the feet. The most underlined case of this came near the end of the first round as Dos Santos looked to land a counter jab while retreating which only served to give Velasquez a cross counter.
The true downside of constant, swarming pressure is that it is an all in game. Every round must be fought as intensely as the rounds before it, there is no taking a break for a round because that is giving the opponent time to recover from any effect the assault might have had.
A boxer can throw sixty punches a round and find nothing but his opponent’s forearms for the first six rounds. If he changes strategy he has simply exerted a great deal of energy and not reaped many of the benefits. In the UFC it is similar with the many wrestlers who refuse to attempt another takedown after their first is stuffed.
Not many will admit it, but Sean Sherk had the tools to give BJ Penn fits, but he attempted a takedown, failed and then decided to box with Penn for the rest of the bout. Knowing Penn’s reputation for fading, and that his wrestling and cardio were his greatest strengths, Sherk should have been jumping on legs constantly but instead threw his title away.
There is a wonderful tale from Ricky Hatton‘s corner when he was fighting Luis Collazo which sums up the draining effect which high pace can have even on the guy driving it. Like many great boxing quips it could be entirely fictional but it sums up the game nicely.
Reportedly Hatton made a remark to the effect that he was struggling to find the mark much against the wily southpaw. One of his seconds responded “Keep swinging Ricky, maybe t’breeze will give him hypothermia.”
Pick up Jack’s eBooks Advanced Striking and Elementary Striking from his blog, Fights Gone By.
Jack can also be found on Facebook and Twitter.
Read more MMA news on BleacherReport.com
UFC Fight Night 29 was an interesting event for many of the wrong reasons. Demian Maia’s loss to Jake Shields threw the welterweight division further down the path of confusion, Thiago Silva and Matt Hamill re-enacted Kimbo Slice versus Houston Alexand…
UFC Fight Night 29 was an interesting event for many of the wrong reasons. Demian Maia’s loss to Jake Shields threw the welterweight division further down the path of confusion, Thiago Silva and Matt Hamill re-enacted Kimbo Slice versus Houston Alexander, and Joey Beltran managed to make Fabio Maldonado look sharp on the feet.
Even with some bad fights on Wednesday, however, stories unfold through the various stanzas, twists and turns. Some endings are foreshadowed in the opening act, such as Dong Hyun Kim’s knockout of Erick Silva. Other fights take a complete turnaround as the bout progresses, such as Thiago Silva versus Matt Hamill.
Erick Silva: Live by the Sword, Die by the Sword
To get straight down to business, Erick Silva was surprisingly starched by Dong Hyun Kim. “Stun Gun” has always been a peculiar nickname for Kim, with 10 of his 18 career wins coming by way of a grinding decision victory, but he certainly lived up the the moniker in this bout.
Kim is peculiar as a striker because his striking manages to commit the dual cardinal sins of being both wild and predictable. Normally a fighter who does unorthodox things is a little intimidating because of the “anything can happen” factor, but Kim will pick a showy move and abuse it repeatedly throughout the length of a bout.
Against Sean Pierson, Kim threw more crane kicks than you can count on both hands, and I shouldn’t have to point out that this is probably too many. Against Silva, however, it was the spinning backfist that Kim missed several times but repeatedly attempted anyway.
One of the points that this fight so beautifully illustrated is that if a fighter can wrestle so well that it forces a compensation in striking method from his opponent, he can start outstriking them too. Just as with Cain Velasquez versus Junior dos Santos or Georges St. Pierre versus anyone: If a fighter has to focus on stuffing takedowns, he will more than likely open himself up for strikes.
Erick Silva punches with his non-striking hand low. This is pretty common among strikers attempting to compensate for a lack of wrestling pedigree. Junior dos Santos does it routinely. It basically means that while Silva tries his luck at taking his opponent’s head off as they come in, he will still have an underhook should he miss.
I am sure that I don’t have to point out the shortcomings of this method. Boxers realized way back when that the most common instance in which to get knocked out is in exchanging punches. Gradually word got around that keeping the non-punching hand high could minimize the risk of such embarrassments.
Here is Georges Carpentier demonstrating it way back in the 1920s.
One can punch with the non-punching hand out of position, but something else should be done to alleviate the ever-present danger of an exchange. The head should be moved, a side step should be incorporated or the opponent’s hand should be checked. Silva did none of these things and got caught standing straight upright by Kim, who also had his non-punching hand low, but moved his head to avoid Silva’s punch.
Silva was unfortunate to get caught against an opponent who has never exhibited especially skilled striking, but carrying the hands low to hinder the wrestler is a double-edged sword. Chuck Liddell lived and died by it in the Octagon and it will work the same way for others.
Say what you want about Quinton Jackson, but even at his worst he was one of the best fighters in the world at stuffing takedowns without unnecessarily exposing himself to strikes. His hands were seemingly always high and active or underneath his opponent’s armpits as they attempted to shoot on him.
Hamill versus Thiago Silva: Kimbo versus Houston II?
This bout was by far the most disappointing bout of the night for many. Matt Hamill, coming back from retirement—and having been in sharp decline before that—probably shouldn’t have been fighting. This had all the marks of a gimme match for Thiago Silva (no relation to Erick).
Thiago Silva, despite being a headache for UFC brass, still has the potential to be one of the more exciting fighters at 205 lbs. On paper this match almost guaranteed him a highlight-reel knockout in front of a Brazilian crowd.
In actuality we were treated to the best Matt Hamill in years for the first three minutes. Hamill surprised most of us by coming forward—exactly as Silva wants in all of his fights—and kickboxing Silva. What’s more, he did it pretty well.
Silva’s modus operandi on the feet has always been to stand directly in front of his opponent and hope that they oblige him. When they do, as Rafael Feijao and Keith Jardine did, Silva can look brilliant with his hard catch-and-pitch counters. When they don’t, he can work himself up and charge face first into a beatdown, as he did against Lyoto Machida and Alexander Gustafsson.
Hamill obliged Silva and hit him with hard low kicks, jabs and body shots. It didn’t last, however, and a mildly entertaining gave over to two rounds of both men gassing.
While Silva was expected to run out of breath, having come in significantly overweight and being fined 25 percent of his purse as a result, Hamill’s continuous work to the body and insistence that he was in good shape should have made this bout easier for Hamill as it progressed.
It is hard to take away good technical points from a bout where both fighters are so exhausted and fighting so sloppily, but there were a couple of important moments.
The first time Hamill was hurt was in answer to his low kicks. If one throws rear-leg low kicks without a proper setup, it is pretty much guaranteeing the opponent will eventually step in, jam the low kick and counterpunch.
Gokhan Saki uses right low kicks without a setup pretty routinely to draw his opponent into walking him down and thereby setting up his own counters, as I examined in my Glory 11 preview.
The second point to take away is the long cross counter that Silva hurt Hamill with late in the bout.
Both men were exhausted so it looked awful, but the long cross counter is slipping to the elbow side of a jab, lifting the opponent’s head with a counter left hand and attempting to catch him with a long right hand over the top while his head is up but before he can back away. This is a variant of the cross counter because it still effectively crosses over the opponent’s jabbing hand (if the jabber is pulling back into guard, though Hamill was too exhausted).
The final point to take away from this bout is that Thiago Silva seems to be one of the least coachable fighters in the sport. His attitude during fights and even in his corner, refusing to face his coach, is not indicative of a mature, adaptive fighter.
The fight concluded with Hamill barely able to keep himself from resting on his laurels, while Thiago Silva was going all out and couldn’t finish. Silva is a very talented and entertaining fighter, I truly hope he can work himself through whatever is causing this career meltdown and return to the form he carried through his first 13 bouts.
For Hamill’s part, it was brave to come back and his story has always been one which I admire, but you cannot age gracefully in the fight game. Past accomplishments and achievements do not stop a fighter from getting hit. If we see Hamill inside the Octagon again, it could end much worse than this bout did.
Pick up Jack’s eBooks Advanced Striking and Elementary Striking from his blog, Fights Gone By.
Jack can also be found on Facebook and Twitter.
Read more MMA news on BleacherReport.com
This weekend, Glory 11 is taking place in Chicago. For those unfamiliar with the Glory brand, it is the premier kickboxing organisation in the world.
Glory will crown its heavyweight tournament champion at the event as Gokhan Saki, Rico Verhoeven, …
This weekend, Glory 11 is taking place in Chicago. For those unfamiliar with the Glory brand, it is the premier kickboxing organisation in the world.
Glory will crown its heavyweight tournament champion at the event as Gokhan Saki, Rico Verhoeven, Daniel Ghita and Anderson Silva duke it out.
The folks at Glory have kindly given me access to all of their archive footage and allowed me to put together a pre-event analysis of Gokhan Saki.
If you have never seen Saki fight, he is perhaps the fastest heavyweight in kickboxing history, and he is definitely one of the more exciting fighters of this generation.
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Wednesday night, Jake Shields will meet fellow grappler Demian Maia in the main event of UFC Fight Night 29. Shields, while an excellent ground fighter, is still struggling to live down his embarrassing performance against Georges St. Pierre.
The fight…
Wednesday night, Jake Shields will meet fellow grappler Demian Maia in the main event of UFC Fight Night 29. Shields, while an excellent ground fighter, is still struggling to live down his embarrassing performance against Georges St. Pierre.
The fight was a fairly predictable one as St. Pierre lit Shields up with his jab while Shields utterly failed to take the champion down or pull guard. The main surprise of the fight—aside from St. Pierre revealing that he had actually forgotten how to throw his right hand with any heat on it—was that Shields was able and worryingly willing to find the mark with several eye gouges.
The eyes are a sensitive subject in combat sports. One need only look to the MMA news of this week to see how concerning eye injuries can be in a fighter’s career. Michael Bisping has been facing ongoing issues with his eyes which have left many speculating about his future.
I speak constantly about the benefits of getting to angles against an opponent, and of blind angles such as the one which the front kick to the jaw or the uppercut can come up through. Once you have swollen an opponent’s eyes, however, everything comes from a blind angle.
A fighter will aim his jab for the eyes to swell them and blind the opponent. One need only think of Muhammad Ali to remember his back-handed jab, with his hand often open inside his glove, flicking and slapping away at his opponent’s features.
In Ali’s third bout with Joe Frazier, The Thrilla in Manilla, the two men beat the stuffing out of each other for 14 rounds before Frazier’s corner, against Smokin‘ Joe’s will, called the fight off.
Frazier had injured his left eye earlier in his career and had greatly reduced vision for many of his fights, but by the time the Thrilla in Manilla came around, he was almost entirely blind in that eye. The scar tissue in his left eye had developed into a cataract. Ali’s continued flicking jabs and combinations across Frazier’s face closed up his good eye, and by the mid-point of the bout, Frazier was essentially fighting blind.
The trouble that Frazier gave Ali in their final and greatest bout really drives home the importance of eyesight to a fighter, even an up close infighter like Frazier. If Frazier had even the limited vision which he usually carried into fights, there is good reason to believe that he wouldn’t have taken such a beating in Round 14.
Targeting the eyes with legal strikes is not uncommon in MMA or kickboxing, either.
Mirko “Cro Cop” Filipovic made something of a specialty of breaking his opponents’ orbital bones.
If you can remember back to BJ Penn versus Joe Stevenson, Penn was able to land a hard elbow straight into the eye of Stevenson on the ground which really turned Joe Daddy’s night from a bad start into an agonizing beat down.
Those examples, however, were all legal blows. What we are seeing nowadays is a growing number of MMA fighters who are quite willing to poke an opponent’s eye in order to take advantage of the moment or get some breathing space.
Thumbing of the eye in boxing has always been seen as a dirty tactic. It is against the rules because it is primarily career threatening, not to mention being disproportionately effective. In the modern era, gloves are made with the thumb attached to the rest of the glove so that it can’t be splayed out and dragged across an opponent’s eye.
The dangers of the eye gouge in the clinch are obvious. A fighter’s hand can be well hidden from the referee and even the crowd by his back. What is more concerning is the eye gouge as an opponent comes in. This is the kind which we are seeing more and more of in MMA.
A fighter who comes in with a good jab can be countered with a good dipping jab. But that requires good timing. It is an explosive movement and one must measure exactly when to launch the counter and to perform the slip so as not to move too soon or too late.
Gouging an opponent as he comes in takes nowhere near that kind of skill. One can get hit in the face clean and still, with one’s hand open, make a good go of raking the thumb or fingers across the attacker’s eyeball.
Here is a great example as the late, great Ken Norton has a match turned around on him through an eye gouge. As he snaps Scott Ledeux’s head back with a stiff jab, Ledoux is able to run his thumb across Norton’s eye and blind the better boxer.
This was the story of Jake Shields versus Georges St. Pierre. St. Pierre was getting in clean and hard with jabs, so Shields gouged him as he came in.
Now it is hard to blame Jake Shields for this. It was a classless move, but it could equally be called a savvy one. Some of the greatest fighters of all time have been incredible technicians, but horrendous sportsmen. Sandy Saddler, one of the greatest featherweight boxers of all time, could beat most men from pillar to post with pure, clean skill, but opted to rough them up with elbows and butts anyway.
To state the obvious, a fighter is in a fight. Not all fighters can simply say “it’s only a sport” when they are losing. It is the job of the referee to be vigilant and stop such behavior with breaks of the action whenever a gouge is seen and issue an immediate warning or point deduction.
Josh Koscheck gets a lot of criticism for the fact that his fighting style seems to be based entirely around leaving his hand out, hoping to catch the opponent on his finger as they move in, then cracking them with his formidable right hand when they are smarting from the gouge. Koscheck‘s pokes are clearly intentional because he will hold his hand closed and open it as the opponent comes in.
But can you blame him? He knows he can get away with it. Against Mike Pierce and Johnny Hendricks, Koscheck went about his usual tactics and, while he was warned against Pierce, nothing ever came of it.
It is not just bad fighters or poor sportsmen doing this, though. Some gouges genuinely seem to stem from open-handed guards and extending the arms in reaction to an opponent coming in.
Just the other week, Jon Jones succeeded in breaking the action in a round which he was losing by allowing Alexander Gustafsson to run onto his extended fingers. Chuck Liddell was mockingly called “The Eyesman” after thumbing Vernon White, Tito Ortiz and Randy Couture within four fights.
Eye gouges will be a constant feature of this sport. Even with a redesign of the gloves to one which encourages the hand to close, it will always be necessary to allow the glove to be opened for gripping and grappling. Boxing has seen a reduction in thumbing of the eyes now that the gloves prevent the thumb from being opened, but such forced closing of the fist can not be achieved in MMA competition.
It is the job of referees to actually penalize eye gouges. However, this can hardly be done fairly without the use of video to review incidents and allow the referee to deem whether a gouge was intentional or not. Of course, with an actual crackdown on eye pokes, video review would also be necessary to stamp out the inevitable faking that would come about if referees were more liberal with point deductions.
I hope, as do most others, that eye gouging will fall out of fashion. But it’s been around for centuries and it doesn’t seem to have lost any of it’s effectiveness.
Pick up Jack’s eBooks Advanced Striking and Elementary Striking from his blog, Fights Gone By.
Jack can also be found on Facebook and Twitter.
Read more MMA news on BleacherReport.com
Demian Maia is a genius.
He is not just someone who creates his own methods, but someone who understands why other methods work and builds his game around principles rather than techniques.
Anyone who has watched a Maia seminar or his DVD series, or ev…
Demian Maia is a genius.
He is not just someone who creates his own methods, but someone who understands why other methods work and builds his game around principles rather than techniques.
Anyone who has watched a Maia seminar or his DVD series, or even an interview about his jiu-jitsu philosophy, and then watched one of his bouts on the ground, will understand just how brilliant his principle-based approach is.
While Maia has fallen out of favor in recent years, largely due to his attempts to round out his game, I still consider him one of the few brilliant examples of speed and science regularly overcoming size and strength.
Today we will muse a little on the role of BJJ in MMA, and then look at a few of Maia’s most brilliant moments.
The role of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu in MMA
Most fans have come to the realization that the Gracie family served its purpose in MMA by showing the world the efficacy of the grappling game. Though it is no longer competitive in mixed martial arts at the highest levels, the Gracie family still offers some of the best training available in that aspect of the game. However, one will still hear the occasional delusional statement from a senior Gracie about the fight game.
Most recently Royce Gracie criticized the younger members of the Gracie family, as per Guilherme Cruz of MMAfighting.com, in their attempts to round out their game for MMA competition because “Jiu-jitsu is enough.”
Jiu-jitsu alone does not win fights anymore, and certainly an individual’s style of BJJ will largely affect its efficacy in MMA matches.
For instance, Andre Galvao, an incredible top player, just couldn’t get anything going when he failed to take down Tyron Woodley. Marcelo Garcia, arguably the best pound-for-pound grappler of all time, had a single MMA match, struggling so much with striking and attempting to sneak chokes in while hampered by 4 oz. gloves that he never attempted it again.
Roger Gracie failed to make a great transition, yet someone he has bested on several occasions as a grappler, Ronaldo “Jacare” Souza, just smoked Yushin Okami‘s boots in one round and has not had much trouble getting most of his opponents to the mat. Evidently, brilliant BJJ does not mean MMA-applicable BJJ.
One of the wonderful things about Maia’s BJJ is that it is not only well suited to the transition to MMA, but it is especially beautiful against larger, stronger opponents. Here are a few of his more beautiful moments, as he used his technical prowess and timing to overcome bigger, stronger, equally skilled opponents.
Besting Gonzaga
You know Gabriel Gonzaga. He’s the humongous Brazilian who knocked Mirko “Cro Cop” Filipovic out with a high kick. He’s also a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu black belt, an accomplished grappling competitor and a 260-pound giant. Despite the significant size difference between the two, he and Maia met at least twice in jiu-jitsu competition, and both videos are spectacular.
This first bout is perhaps my favourite exhibition of Maia’s skills in his entire combat-sports career. The first half of this bout is a clinic in how to defend the guard pass and how to stay serene under a great deal of pressure.
After three minutes of defending everything “Napao” can throw at him, Maia finds himself in butterfly guard. As Gonzaga begins to move around Maia, Maia under-hooks Gonzaga’s leg and uses his opposite-side hook to elevate Gonzaga overhead. Threading his under-hook side-leg through, he achieves X-guard for a brief moment before performing a technical stand-up and attempting to run through Gonzaga into a takedown.
Gonzaga manages to stop the attempt, and the two go back to Maia’s guard until at 6:20 of the video Gonzaga attempts to step over Maia’s guard and is quickly swept to his back while looking for a compression lock on Maia’s knee. Maia escapes and battles the rest of the bout from the top.
In the second recorded meeting of the two Maia shows that though his sweeping game is slick, he can certainly still submit opponents from the bottom. After a period attacking from the bottom (with his usual X-guard antics) Maia finds himself in half guard, defending a pass. From here Maia is able to take a beautiful triangle.
Beating Jacare
Ronaldo “Jacare” Souza might be the scariest Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu fighter in mixed martial arts right now. The man is a submission machine and, as evidenced by his starching of Yushin Okami a few weeks back, he’s a pretty nasty all-around fighter as well.
Jacare is of course remembered for his performances at the highest levels of competitive jiu-jitsu, including his series of bouts with the great Roger Gracie.
Maia’s bout with Jacare was another beautiful display of Maia’s comfort and skill on his back, as he immediately pulled guard on the world-class top player. Maia worked on arm drags, as Jacare postured and looked to break free of Maia’s grips.
One of the beautiful and simple wrinkles of Maia’s guard game is that he will gladly abandon his grips to kick out and attack a single-leg takedown from the bottom position. In the first minute of his bout with Jacare, Maia released his grip on Jacare‘s left arm from a butterfly guard in order to kick out and attack Jacare‘s right leg with a single-leg takedown.
The majority of the bout, however, was spent with Maia on Jacare‘s back after another successful X-guard kick-out to standing. Just as with Gonzaga, Maia under-hooked Jacare‘s leg, kicked him out into X-guard and followed Jacare up to his feet, keeping Jacare‘s leg off of the floor.
Throwing Chael Sonnen
Submitting Chael Sonnen from guard is not really a unique feat. It is a pretty commonplace occurrence on his record. When Sonnen met Maia it was assumed that the fight would take place from Maia’s guard and end in a submission, but Maia surpassed all expectation by hitting a beautiful throw and moving straight into a triangle as the elite wrestler was still recovering from being dumped.
It became obvious early on that Maia would like to get top position on Sonnen, as he shot repeatedly for takedowns and pulled butterfly guard when he was inevitably sprawled on.
Maia’s sweep from the clinch along the fence and move directly into a triangle was completely unexpected, however, and he pulled it off so seamlessly in the confusion of the moment that he either practiced the combination or is super-humanly smooth.
Demian Maia, much like Saulo Ribeiro or Ryan Hall, has such a methodical and principle-led approach to jiu-jitsu that I am certain that he could become a very slick striker if he put in the time and identified the principles. The unfortunate downside to this is that there are only so many hours in the day.
When Maia focuses on his striking, his jiu-jitsu seems to lose a step. When he focuses on his jiu-jitsu, his opponents know what is coming and work their hardest to shut it down.
Demian Maia may be in limbo right now as he tries to progress his career in a new division, but for some time he was catching people out even when they tried their hardest to stop him on the ground, which is definitely worth some appreciation.
Pick up Jack’s eBooks Advanced Striking and Elementary Striking from his blog, Fights Gone By.
Jack can also be found on Facebook and Twitter.
Read more MMA news on BleacherReport.com
