Swagger is a hard thing to define. As a Supreme Court justice once put it with regard to something entirely different: You know it when you see it.
When you spot swagger, in the context of a fight, there’s no mistaking what you’ve seen. It’s an aura of confidence, the overwhelming sense that the fighter you’re watching is winning the fight. A hard edge of contempt for the opponent’s offense, if not the opponents themselves, reinforces that self-belief.
Confidence matters, and few successful fighters lack it in any meaningful way. But there’s a difference between that internal self-belief—the essential component that allows men and women to throw strikes, shoot takedowns and grapple with people who are trying to do them serious bodily harm—and external displays of swagger.
There are two basic questions here. What are some examples of swagger—in the context of the fight itself, not flashy behavior outside the cage—and why do fighters engage in these displays?
Fight Week’s smorgasbord of great fights featured two fighters who each, in their own way, used elements of swagger to their advantage.
Joanna Jedrzejczyk‘s confidence is staggering. One of the more iconic moments of her brutalizing late-round performance against Claudia Gadelha had her dismissively waving to the Brazilian to get up off the ground and then turning her back and sauntering into the middle of the cage.
Jose Aldo put on a technical masterpiece of a performance against Frankie Edgar in their second meeting. In a clear but competitive fight, Aldo stuffed takedown after takedown from the former lightweight champion. It wasn’t just that Aldo couldn’t be taken down, though; he embarrassed Edgar in those exchanges, contemptuously tossing the American to the side with shocking ease.
In prior fights, as against Carla Esparza and Jessica Penne, Jedrzejczyk has throw flurries of 30 or 40 punches against the fence to induce the referee to stop the fight, while Aldo’s sublime defense and supremely untroubled manner minimize the effects of his opponent’s offense.
That’s what swagger is. More than anything else, these displays have the effect of convincing observers—judges, fans and even the opponent—that the fighter engaging in them is winning the fight. After all, if you can afford to contemptuously throw your opponent to the ground or force them to stand, you’re the one who has the upper hand.
Scoring fights is as much about perception as it is reality, within limits. Momentum is real, and so is the energy that fighters give off in the cage. Judges, whether they’re supposed to or not, respond to that energy. They’re human beings, and if one fighter shakes off every shot his or her opponent lands, do those strikes deserve much weight?
Consider that Aldo-Edgar fight again. Per FightMetric, Aldo landed only one more strike than Edgar throughout the fight, and the American threw 72 more strikes over the 25-minute distance. He attempted 11 takedowns, though he completed none.
And yet the judges scored the fight comfortably for Aldo. The Brazilian earned two 49-46 scorecards and one 48-47. Only one judge scored the third round, the one in which Edgar actually outlanded Aldo, for the American. Why?
Because Aldo looked like he was winning the fight.
The Brazilian’s shots were more impactful. His punches snapped Edgar’s head backward, and even Edgar’s clean shots barely seemed to affect Aldo. He easily sidestepped and moved through the space of the cage, making Edgar miss time after time and visibly frustrating the American by the fifth round. When Edgar did shoot for takedowns, Aldo threw him aside with scornful ease.
And at the end of the fight, when Edgar poured out his heart and soul in a losing effort, Aldo was there to pat him gently on the head. Good job, Aldo seemed to say. Good effort. That’s something winners do, out of the kindness of their hearts.
Consider Jedrzejczyk‘s performance against Gadelha. The fight itself wasn’t difficult to judge: Gadelha clearly took the first two rounds, while the final three were equally clear, if not more so, for Jedrzejczyk. Those swaggering hand gestures to Gadelha, however, merely reinforced the overall quality of her dominance.
If Gadelha had somehow rallied, the judges would still have borne in mind those moments of contempt.
Jedrzejczyk knows how to play to the audience. Fans love those displays; they’re part of what has made her a burgeoning crowd favorite. She knows the judges see them, too. As mentioned above, she knows what the referee is looking for when it comes to stopping the fight and will pour it on with a rapid-fire flurry of blows to force the referee to step in.
Aldo and Jedrzejczyk are just two examples of how swagger can play out in MMA, but it comes in many different flavors.
Benson Henderson is a master of playing off the effects of his opponent’s strikes, flipping his hair and then leaping into an impressive-looking shot of his own. Henderson’s nemesis, Anthony Pettis, knows how to play the crowd and judges with flashy strikes and a confident demeanor. Mark Hunt’s walk-off knockouts are the stuff of legends.
The list goes on. Tony Ferguson’s sheer willingness to try unorthodox things in the cage speaks to his confidence, and that bleeds over into perception. Robbie Lawler knows how to turn up his offense at key moments in the fight, and that’s what has given him controversial wins over Johny Hendricks and Carlos Condit. Bellator’s Michael Page is practically defined by his swagger, both in and out of the cage.
Any list of swaggering fighters, however, would be incomplete without Anderson Silva. The longtime middleweight champion built his legend in the latter part of his prime on pure swagger. While many criticized his in-cage trolling—and it eventually got the better of him—his mind games allowed him to slow the pace of the fight and pick and choose his shots.
Anderson was always a confident fighter, but embracing that side of his personality both made him a fan favorite and served distinct in-fight purposes as he aged and could no longer maintain the pace he had in his youth.
Finally, we come to the kings of confidence, Conor McGregor and the Diaz brothers, after whom the swaggering Irishman patterned his game and approach back when he was fighting on the European scene. McGregor‘s in-cage trolling and flashy techniques speak to an unshakable confidence and a desire to convince both viewers and the opponent himself of the futility of standing up to him.
For the Diaz brothers, that outward swagger is both a genuine expression of their personalities and a way of forcing the opponent into their kind of fight. They want the opponent to engage, to consent to fight at their rapid-fire pace and in their chosen areas.
Taunting, finger-wagging and even lying down in the cage are a means of backing the opponent into the emotional space where he goes against his better judgment and agrees to the Diaz style of combat.
That sort of behavior plays with the fans and judges, too. It’s hard to avoid the impression that the fighter who can do that is the one winning the fight. In essence, it projects strength.
And that’s what swagger is all about. Fighting is emotional and psychological, not just for the two combatants in the cage but also the audience and the supposedly impartial judges. Style points matter.
Human beings respond emotionally to the events of a fight, and anybody who has ever been in the live audience for a bout can tell you how different trying to score or judge a fight is in person as opposed to watching on TV.
Swagger plays to those emotional and psychological responses. Fights are as much about who seems to be winning as they are any objective measure of performance, and all-time greats know how to manipulate those responses to their benefit. Fighting is entertainment as much as it is sport, and swagger brings those two things together.
Finally, swagger is just plain fun. We should celebrate its finest practitioners for understanding and utilizing it both as a tool for entertainment and a means of manipulating the opponent, the crowd and the judges.
You know it when you see it, and it can’t be faked. Swagger is real, and it’s important.
Patrick Wyman is the Senior MMA Analyst for Bleacher Report and the co-host of the Heavy Hands Podcast, your source for the finer points of face-punching. He can be found on Twitter and Facebook.
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